Chapter 13: Spray Paint

Jack Toven had picked out his place carefully. He wanted somewhere he’d not be noticed, somewhere without CCTV and somewhere that would get the attention of passengers arriving in the station.

His mouth was dry. He was conscious of the cans, stencils and posters in his coat pocket. It was early in the day – much earlier than he was usually up. Still, this way there was no curfew but the streets were still quiet.

He chose one of the tunnels leading from the railway station to the Underground and on to the Bus Station. It would see plenty of traffic as the rush hour started and the police would find it difficult to close it off if they didn’t like what he was planning to do.

He put the posters up first – four of them – all trumpeting “Resist Regulation! Reject Sponsorship! Reverse the Erosion of Male Rights!”, the same slogans used at the rally in Fitzroy Square. Then – positioning his stencils carefully in the gaps between the posters - he used the day-glo yellow spray paint to add the letters, “ECR”.

He’d asked Gerry what it meant. “Mainly,” Gerry had said, “it’s to throw the MCF off the scent. We don’t want them busting up the stuff CRMRE are doing and this will maybe have them thinking there are other groups.”

“And the letters?”

“Oh, its a bit simpler that that ‘Resist – Reject – Reverse’ stuff. It just stands for ‘End Cunt Rule’. We’ll have to see when the Government work it out.”

Jack found that interesting. He liked the idea of giving the Government something to puzzle over and he reckoned the Government would get a lot more scratchy about the insult than they ever would about something that looked like a rational argument. Insults had a way of taking hold in the public imagination.

“You don’t want me to spell it out?”

“Nah. We’ll let them guess for a while. There were half a dozen of you out this morning across town. Daisy went to the printers this morning picked up posters and helped drop the materials off. We’ll have a go at different sites on Thursday and Saturday. We’re getting some ECR stickers done too; easy just to slap on anywhere flat. If they see enough around they’ll get the idea its something significant. After a while we’ll start leaving them some clues. Who knows maybe we’ll get some men interested too.”

It felt to Jack like there was a real sense of trying to make a change. It had helped him overcome his fear of being discovered while he was putting up the posters.

The adrenalin rush from his actions lasted until he was almost back at his room in Hampstead. He bumped into Daisy on the way. “Well,” she said, when he’d told her about the posters, the graffiti and what Gerry had said, “at least you’re doing something. I think you should get a reward.” The flirtatious look that she gave him wasn’t open to misinterpretation. “I’ve got one of these,” she waved a little square packet – a condom. “Do you know somewhere we can go?”