Reclaiming the Streets

An interview with #ReclaimTheseStreets co-founder and Regent’s alumna Henna Shah

Henna Shah (Politics, Philosophy and Economics, 2012) is a political advisor to the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury and a Labour Councillor for the London Borough of Lambeth. In the aftermath of the murder of Sarah Everard in 2021, Henna co-founded the #ReclaimTheseStreets Campaign and organised a vigil in memory of Sarah and others affected by violence against women and girls. In March 2022 Henna and three other women successfully argued in the High Court that the Metropolitan Police Force had breached their rights to freedom of speech and assembly by informing them that their proposed vigil would be illegal under Covid regulations and that they, the organisers, would be at risk of fines of £10,000 each. We spoke to Henna to find out how her experiences while at Oxford and since have influenced her work as a campaigner.

On arriving at Regent’s in 2012, Henna quickly began to make the most of the opportunities offered by the College, the University, and the student population. ‘It’s easy to end up doing a lot of things and falling into a lot of things when you are at Oxford. There’s always something happening and someone doing something. It’s the most creative place, and one of the few points in your life when everything is so close and you can just turn up.’ Henna worked as a producer for shows at the Burton Taylor Studio and the Union, including productions of Molière’s Tartuffe and Peter Morgan’s Frost/Nixon. She also organised events for the Isis Magazine and co-founded The Sophist, a magazine on popular philosophy.

But Henna’s passion was ultimately campaigning, especially on education and equality issues. ‘Oxford is really a tale of two cities. You have the University, which is a knowledge powerhouse, and then you have the schools around the outside of it, some of which serve areas of real deprivation.’ Motivated by these issues, Henna became involved in conferences on education equality and international relations. She worked with the Oxford Hub, a local charity that works to build community and make positive changes throughout the city of Oxford. In 2014, Henna worked with members of JCRs across the University to fundraise for places at Oxford for refugees from Syria. This inspired her to pursue a career in campaigning.

On graduating from Regent’s, Henna began working for an educational social enterprise. Volunteers, often finalists or recent graduates, would deliver practice Oxford or Cambridge interview tests to prospective students. In return for their time, the volunteers would accumulate money that would be donated to a charity of their choosing. ‘If you’re a fresh graduate and you want to do something for charity, but you’re probably cash-poor, you can do practice interviews with people, and donate back to something you care about. It really motivated people who wanted to support small charities and projects, especially around Oxford. It was great for students, too.’

Henna eventually left the role, hoping that a job in politics would allow her to deliver a greater positive impact. After withstanding the rejections that most recent graduates are all too familiar with, she began working as a research intern at a policy think tank. This was followed by a series of roles at Progressive Britain, a centre-left policy platform with a specific focus on the Labour Party. Initially working as an Editorial Assistant, Henna was responsible for commissioning and editing Progressive Britain’s monthly magazine, editing its online content, hosting its policy podcast, and working with candidates and grassroots activists. She later went on to work on Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour leadership campaign in 2020.

Henna had initially become involved with the Labour Party during the 2017 General Election. Her parents’ constituency had seen Labour win by a narrow margin in 2015, and Henna became a committed member of the successful campaign to build on that majority in 2017. She became increasingly involved with the Labour Party, attending its annual conference and editing Anticipations, the Young Fabians’ magazine, alongside her social activism outside of the party. In 2019 Henna became one of the founding organisers of the #CharitySoWhite Campaign, working to root out racism in the charity sector. This intensified during the first Covid lockdown in 2020. #CharitySoWhite produced a position paper, ‘Racial Injustice in the Covid-19 Response,’ which argued that the pandemic was having a disproportionate impact on black and minority ethnic individuals in the UK. It was widely circulated and eventually arrived at Number 10 Downing street.

After leaving Progressive Britain, Henna became a Campaign Manager at Make My Money Matter, working with the legendary writer, director and producer, Richard Curtis. The campaign’s overarching focus is pensions and the way that pension funds are invested. Its founders believe in emboldening individuals and organisations to engage with asset managers and pension providers and encourage them to invest more sustainably. Henna’s role involved working with a broad range of individuals and organisations across the political spectrum, from outsider grassroots campaigners to Government Ministers.

Henna explains that, like many women throughout the UK, the news of Sarah Everard’s murder affected her a lot. ‘It was very close to where I lived. She walked the same route home from seeing her friends in Clapham Common that I used to walk.’

A friend of Henna’s asked her if she would help to organise a vigil, knowing that she was an experienced campaigner and had been talking about Sarah’s death. ‘If I’m honest, the next week and a half of my life were a complete blur.’

After initially approaching the police to organise the vigil, the group were informed that it would be unlawful due to Covid regulations. ‘I remember having to make the decision about whether we would take the police to court, and just being so surprised that it had come to that. It came to a point where we were told that, if it went ahead, even if we weren’t organising it anymore, and we went there, they would arrest us all under the Serious Crimes Act and hit us with fines. But they weren’t willing for us to try to help control the flow of people coming.’ After repeated attempts to work with the police, the group were forced to formally withdraw from the event, which went ahead anyway. A number of attendees were arrested and charged, but the Crown Prosecution Service later decided to discontinue the prosecutions.

Now unable to organise the event, the group instead asked people to light candles outside their homes, in memory of Sarah and all women affected by violence. ‘I remember I cried. Driving through South London, and seeing that all these people had lit candles outside their houses. And I watched the news, and Carrie Johnson had lit a candle outside of Number 10.’ The group made the decision to take the Metropolitan

Police Force to court, crowdfunding the legal costs. They were successful, and in March 2022 the High Court ruled that the Metropolitan Police Force had breached Henna and the other three organisers’ rights to freedom of speech and assembly.

Henna is now a Labour Party Councillor for the London Borough of Lambeth, elected to the position in May 2022. She focuses on projects aimed at preventing violence against women and girls. Henna explains that there are barriers to getting younger women into local politics, and that ‘we’re losing a lot of talent’ because of this. One of her focuses is working with Lambeth Youth Council. ‘They are really inspiring. They came and spoke about the things that they care about, and it was really valuable to hear what they have to say and to think about how we can bring them into decision-making locally because we’re trying to make a community that serves everyone.’ Alongside her work as a Councillor, Henna is also a Shadow Adviser to the Treasury, advising on public spending.