The Martyn’s Law campaigner Figen Murray is due to reach halfway today on her 190-mile walk from Manchester to London, due to reach Downing Street on Wednesday morning, May 22, and her cry to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is: ‘Are you ready for us, Rishi?!’
The PM should need no introduction to the activist because in December 2022 he said that he was ‘committed to working with Figen to improve security measures at public venues and spaces and to delivering this vital legislation’, namely the Protect Duty, better known as Martyn’s Law, named after Figen’s son Martyn Hett who was among those killed in the Manchester Arena suicide bombing in 2017. May 22 is the seventh anniversary.
However, as reported in the May print edition of Professional Security Magazine, such has been the lack of progress since on actually bringing the draft Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill to Parliament, that Figen has spoken of having a ‘plan B’ of speaking to Labour, should the law fail to pass before a likely autumn general election and show labour (as is widely expected) take power.
Hence Figen’s walk – after some months of training and planning – that began from the Arena on May 7. The most public part of the walk is on that Wednesday, May 22, from 9am at Marble Arch. That relatively early start of 9am is so as to pass memorials to the July 7, 2005 suicide bombs in London; and the Bali bomb of 2002, and to reach Downing Street by 10.30am.
Figen’s walk so far has been understandably one of ups and downs, and not only in terms of Pennine hills and valleys. While the weather has been quite kind – above all, rain holding off – she and other supporters have been suffering from blisters. But as she told Professional Security: “Know what? I am just going to do it.”
Numerous security industry people and other well-wishers have been accompanying her on parts or entire days or more of the journey. Among the more practical backing has been a support vehicle and (volunteer) driver courtesy of Carlisle Support Services.
Figen is pictured at the Professional Security Magazine Women in Security afternoon tea at Birmingham on International Women’s Day in March.
