Artwork AJ Mawhinney
As the dark nights taper off, the streets of Belfast are perhaps safer. The band Gender Chores have chosen to mark the new season with a shudder, a farewell and a grievance. A few weeks ago, they released a song called ‘January Blues’:
“Don’t take shortcuts,`
Don’t look down`
Watch the shadows,
Hear every sound.”
(Trigger Warning: mention of gender-based violence)
Gender Chores by Ellen Blair
‘January Blues’ is available on Bandcamp and sales will be donated to Women’s Aid NI and Nexus NI. The song’s opening lines repeat a night-time drill that may lessen the danger. But there is also anger in Sam McCann’s lyric:
“We are not afraid of the dark, we are afraid of who waits there,
We are not afraid of the dark, we are afraid of you.”
Just as Gender Chores were preparing to release their song, Ulster University published a report, Every Voice Matters! Violence Against Women in Northern Ireland. It maintains that 98% of women in Northern Ireland have experienced at least one form of violence or abuse in their lifetime.
The femicide rates for Northern Ireland are appalling – 25 deaths since 2020. This is addressed by Gender Chores on their record and repeated in a statement they released at the same time. Here is an extract:
“Violence against women continues to exist regardless of the countless protective measures we employ to try and keep ourselves and our loved ones safe. Often, what has been recommended for our ‘safety’ is thrown back in our face in order to twist the narrative, leaving perpetrators free of guilt, of responsibility, of shame.
“The reality is, the danger usually isn’t cloaked in the shadow of a dimly lit side street. The real threat waits at home. Of the 25 women murdered in Northern Ireland since 2020, at least 19 of them have occurred in their own home by men who were known to them. These aren’t just statistics, these are women whose lives were brutally cut short, women who were deserving of so much more. That’s where the heartbreak and anger lies for us.”
Problem Patterns by Stuart Bailie
Problem Patterns is another group that’s furious about night-time safety. In the song ‘Y.A.W.’, they reject an unwelcome comment (“Not All Men…”) on social media:
“He gets his kicks looking for another reason to fight
But he can’t understand why I walk home at night
With my keys in between my fingers like knives
But sure it’s just a bit of banter for all the guys.”
In the lyric. Alanah Smith was remembering “a really bad experience” in London, getting home from a punk festival. When I spoke to her about the song in 2022, she was also thinking about the murder of Sarah Everard (kidnapped and killed by a Metropolitan Police constable in Kent, 2021), as well as Aisling Murphy (murdered by the Grand Canal, Tullamore, 2022).
“The unfortunate thing was if it wasn’t Sarah Everard, it would be another person,” Alanah explained. “Like Aisling Murphy, last month. It’s always the same horrible thing that happens and a horrible conversation around it, but nothing to do with, ‘How do we actually make things safer?’ And everything to do with, ‘Well, what was she wearing, what was she doing?’
“Aisling was jogging during the day and Sarah was on the phone with a family member, walking in a busy area. And even then, it shouldn’t matter what they were doing. No-one should be killed. It’s pretty straightforward. It shouldn’t happen to any woman, or any person.”
Gender Chores also use their song to mention unreliable policing:
“It’s no safer with them around,
State mandated danger puts more bodies in the ground.”
Belfast’s Enola Gay released ‘Through Men’s Eyes’ in 2021, using phone messages from the ‘rugby rape trial’ of 2018. While the band’s intentions were well-meaning, their creation of a lyric video was unwise. A trigger warning was added after an outcry in the local music community. The lyric video has since been removed from the band’s YouTube channel.
During the first punk era, Belfast bands sometimes sang about the perils of getting home during a period of sectarian carnage, when murder gangs like the Shankill Butchers were active. The Defects sang ‘Survival’:
“You take a walk in the park
To relieve the tension
You see somebody get killed
But you walk on by
The good Samaritan’s dead
You’re the one that matters…”
Meantime, The Outcasts bashed out ‘Gangland Warfare’, fighting their way home after a Saturday gig at the Harp Bar, posturing like extras from the 1979 film, The Warriors. Another Outcasts song, ‘The Cops are Coming’ was themed around femicide and necrophilia. A more innocent picture came from Stiff Little Fingers and ‘Alternative Ulster, when the only option after a punk gig at The Trident in Bangor was to walk back to Belfast, 12 miles away.
One of the most unsettling songs from this era was ‘Strange Obsessions’ by Protex. It was about a voyeur who haunted the unlit places at night, oblivious to the violence around him:
“When darkness
Comes around you
And you go sneaking
Sneaking out of your house
And you’re not scared, walking through the backstreets
Crawling through the alley
With one thing on your mind…”
Forward again to 2025 and Northern Ireland has supportive organisations like Free the Night, co-founded by Boyd Sleator and Holly Lester – plus the associated events programme, Reclaim the Night. The critical issues have been platformed, select nights have been reclaimed and a trial scheme for late-night buses last December was considered a success.
Yet at Stormont, things are characteristically fragmented. SDLP have motioned for the legal definition of “reasonable belief” in rape cases, and to introduce (as per the 2019 Gillen Report) pre-trial jury education. On January 14, Sinn Féin MLA Emma Sheerin told the Assembly that “The North of Ireland is the most dangerous place in Europe to be a woman, and the most dangerous place to be a woman in the North of Ireland is in her own home.”
Two days ago, the Green Party’s Malachi O’Hara listed some of the perceived failures at Stormont:
- Half-implemented Gillen Review
- No spiking laws despite 1 in 3 young women at risk
- Limited & slow justice reform to stop survivors being retraumatised in court.
“We’re told ‘lessons will be learned’ after each tragedy,” he wrote. “But when will our leaders actually act?”
Green Party information sheet
Beyond the arcane world of politics, we return to our songwriters for insight. We find important truths with Gender Chores, in the darkest mid-winter, holding out for better days:
“In 47 days the sun will set after seven
In 47 days I can run in the evening
In 47 days I’ll still turn on my live location
In 47 days I’ll still be glad to get home breathing.”
(Support: 24/7 Domestic & Sexual Abuse Helpline – 0808 802 1414)
Stuart Bailie
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