#GlasgowDecides: What you need to know about... Women's Safety

Glasgow will go to the polls on May 5th to choose a new city council and in the run up to the local council election, we're putting your questions to the parties and getting the answers you want on the big issues in Glasgow.

In December last year, we launched our Light The Way campaign, calling for safety lighting to be installed in Glasgow parks.

It has been an issue in Glasgow in parks like Kelvingrove for a number of years, with women's groups and runners all calling for better lighting in the evenings.

The debate over lighting in the park was reignited during COP26 after a Police diversion forced women to walk through a dimly lit area of Kelvingrove to get home. Police Scotland issued an apology.

People from across the city came together to support the campaign and call for change. A number of politicians and charities also gave us their backing.

So where do the politcians hoping to form the next Glasgow City Council administration stand on the issue of women's safety and our #LightTheWay campaign?

We asked them!

SNP

SNP group leader Susan Aitken said: “We have to remember that is a balancing act here. What I would say is that it is absolutely wrong, and we need to address the fact that women feel that they can't go places just now, and they're not safe to go places just know where men do go and that inequality is unacceptable.

“It's about a lot more than parks. There has been a focus on parks, but it's been about a lot more than that. It’s about the way the whole city has been built over decades, centuries even. And there are a lot other things to address.

“The issue in parks is a complex one and it's not completely straightforward. Clearly parks have become much more important to people during the lockdown. And we completely recognise that. The position is known as much, much more about protecting our green species and protecting biodiversity.

“But undoubtedly, and we have made a commitment, we do want people to be able to use the parks, particularly in the summer longer, and to be able to feel safe and to feel as protected as possible and doing so.”

Glasgow Labour

Glasgow Labour group leader Martin Cunning said: “We are absolutely committed to this. In this day and age, there are all sorts of developments in the technology of lighting, which allow us to do things in parks that both create a safe environment, but also address some of the issues around wildlife etc. light pollution.

“Things that were impossible 20-30 years ago in terms of lighting are now easily achievable. Even locally, in my own wards, there is a small park, Castlemilk Park that is a three minutes walk from the nursery at Castleton Primary going around the park it is about a mile and a half, or would be a considerable taxi journey and no public transport is available.

“Within the park, the lampposts are still there, there was lighting in that park, and is relatively simple to put that back in. But women particularly are frightened to use that pathway, either early in the morning, or once it gets dark at night and that obviously in the winter time can be half past four or four o'clock.”

Glasgow Conservatives

Glasgow Conservatives leader Thomas Kerr said: “In our manifesto, we will be fully signed up to the Light The Way campaign and ensuring that we have proper lighting in our parks. There's a way to do it. There's environmentally friendly ways to do it and make sure that women feel safe when they're walking through the park because it's disgraceful that we have a situation where one of my female candidates in the centre feels unsafe in a park, or my little sister can't walk through a park because she feels unsafe.

“If I feel unsafe as a man, I can only imagine what it's like to be a woman in those parks. That's why I'm really really proud of the stuff that the Glasgow conservatives have done. When we were asked to sign up to your campaign, we done it straight away, because we know that it's the right thing to do.

“I'm very happy that we supported the labour motion that came forward. So the Conservatives are fully behind the Light The Way campaign and will ensure it's in our manifesto. And if we're in a position to form the administration or to help from the administration, it will be one of the things that we were pushing to say there has to be a solution. There has to be a report. There has to be policies that are going to make sure that our parks are safe for women to be able to walk through.”

Glasgow Greens

Glasgow Green co-leader Jon Molyneux said: “It's a really important issue.

“The Light the Way campaign has done a huge amount to get this on the agenda. One of our candidates, Holly Bruce, who's our candidate in Langside, is involved in the young women lead work that informed some of that in terms of taking a feminist approach to looking at some of these issues, both in parks but also on public transport.

“So, you know, we have we've got that insight there. And you know, absolutely, there's opportunities. We need to listen to women and other vulnerable users about their experiences of public space.

“Might the solution be lighting, there might be other solutions about how do we animate a space, how we bring people in on underpasses and reduce bad design that we've inherited from the mistakes of previous administrations in Glasgow, but how do we think differently about creating public space that is much more accessible and inclusive for everyone so that absolutely something that that we will press on and will make a big impact if we can.”

Glasgow Liberal Democrats

Glasgow Liberal Democrat spokesperson Theo Lockett said: “As a young person we tend to find ourselves working late night shifts we find ourselves out in town, and from my peers, I can genuinely feel a fear that they sometimes have walking home by themselves.

“No matter what time you walk home, you should always feel safe in testimonials that we've heard from wise women and other advocacy groups, saying that women can't walk down the hall Street and feel safe. We must act together.

“Planning safer public spaces, routes home for women, then we back calls from these advocacy groups to improve street lighting and CCTV and provide police patrols where were they necessary.

“Liberal Democrats in Glasgow think that the action taken is an insult to women, that temporary lighting solutions can be put up for COP26 delegates, but actually petitions that are reaching 10,000 signatures and campaigns from Clyde 1 that making a real impact are brushed aside and embodied in a council motion. That is gesture politics at its worst.”

Alba

Alba spokesperson Chris McEleny said: “I'm a man, you know, I can go and walk my dog any time of the day or night and never feel unsafe. It’s simply unacceptable that in 2022, that women can’t do that.

“So of course, we should have safer parks but that's also got to go hand in hand with better community safety initiatives.

“The last thing we want is well lit parks that then end up with antisocial behaviour issues so we’ve got to have a holistic approach of putting things in place for young people to do to keep them entertained, we've got to make sure that we've got enough adequate resources so that women can go to gyms at night, they can go a walk at night, they can walk home without feeling unsafe.”

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