RobynHarris99

[RobynHarris99 @Robyn_Harris99]

@depressionlesss That movie broke my heart. Couldn’t ever watch again

[RobynHarris99 @Robyn_Harris99]

@LauraFMcConnell Snap!

[Crazy Vibes @CrazyVibes_1]

November 1971. Chiswick, West London.
Erin Pizzey is 32 years old. She is not a lawyer. Not a politician. Not a doctor.
She is a woman who talked Hounslow Council into lending her a cold, rundown building on Belmont Road — a former community hall — for almost nothing. Her original plan was modest. A warm room. A cup of tea. Somewhere for mothers with young children to simply get out of the house.
Then the door opened.
A woman stood in the entrance. She was covered, head to foot, in bruises. She was holding two small children. She was shaking.
She didn't want tea.
She needed somewhere to hide.
Erin let her in. She didn't turn her away. She didn't tell her to call the police.
Because Erin had already called the police. They told her the same thing they told every woman in Britain at the time: they could not enter a private home over a "domestic dispute." That was the law. The home was private. What happened inside it was a family matter.
When Erin contacted a female civil servant to report what she was seeing, the response was astonishing. The woman told her flatly: "There wasn't a problem of battered wives until you made one."
Erin put down the phone. Then she went back to her residents and made sure they were fed.
Within weeks, 40 mothers and children were sleeping in four tiny rooms. No funding. No staff. No legal authority.
She didn't stop.
By 1973, word had spread through quiet whisper networks — one woman telling another, "There is a place. Go to Chiswick. She won't turn you away." That same year, Erin hosted the first National Women's Aid Conference in the UK. Women from across Britain arrived, and they all recognized the same thing at once: what she had built needed to exist everywhere.
In 1974, the council set a maximum of 36 residents. At peak times, 150 women and children were living inside those walls — sleeping on floors, on chairs, in hallways. The building smelled of cooking, fear, and something else entirely: relief.
Erin was taken to court for overcrowding. She appealed all the way to the House of Lords.
She kept the doors open the entire time.
That same year, she wrote a book. Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear. It was the first published account of domestic violence in British history. It used real stories from real women inside the shelter. Overnight, a problem that had no official name was on front pages from London to New York.
The movement spread. Refuges opened across the UK. Then Australia. Then Canada. Then the United States. The pattern she created in four small rooms in West London — no blueprint, no permission, no funding — had been replicated in hundreds of shelters across the Western world.
MP Jack Ashley stood up in Parliament and said: "It was she who first identified the problem, who first recognised the seriousness of the situation and who first did something practical."
She was ranked 14th in a poll of the 100 women who shook the world. She was awarded the Italian Peace Prize. She received a CBE. The charity she founded — Chiswick Women's Aid, which became Refuge — grew into the largest domestic violence charity in the United Kingdom, with over 460 employees and an annual income of more than £33 million.
Erin Pizzey passed away on October 4, 2025, aged 86.
She never stopped.
It all began with one woman, one borrowed building, and an absolute refusal to say no.
Forty women and children showed up with nowhere to go.
She made room.

Share this if you believe one ordinary person, refusing to look away, can build a shelter that holds the whole world.

Follow us Lost in Yesterday

[RobynHarris99 @Robyn_Harris99]

@giveashitnature The Daddy Long Legs I’ve seen, UK, fly.

[RobynHarris99 @Robyn_Harris99]

@DiscussingFilm @RealGDT As long as the dog doesn’t die

[Nature Unedited @NatureUnedited]

These two giant tortoises have been fighting each other for over 120 years. According to the zoo, one tortoise stole the other’s food 120 years ago, and from that day on they became enemies. There hasn’t been a single day where they haven’t fought for a while

[Andy @PositivFuturist]

Fixed it for you BBC

[𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓱𝓻𝓸𝓸𝓶 @phoolanndevvi]

May we all live long enough to see Afghan women taking revenge against the Taliban and everyone else who was involved in their suffering.

[Cat Brown 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🚜🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇮🇪 @MrsBr0wn_82]

The BBC is running a story trying to pull at our heartstrings for starving fathers in Afghanistan who are ready to sell their young daughters just to buy food.

One man weeps while holding his seven-year-old twins, saying he'll sell one to feed the rest. Another already sold his five-year-old.

I don't care how hungry I get I would never do this. Not in a million years.

These beautiful, innocent little girls are being treated like goods to be traded by the very men who are supposed to protect them.

Instead, they're guarded by monsters.

Poverty and hunger are horrific, but selling your own child isn't an "impossible choice" it's a moral failure.

The BBC can frame it as tragic desperation all they want, but we should be disgusted and outraged for the daughters, not feeling sorry for the fathers willing to do this.

These children deserve real protectors, not men who see them as a survival asset.

Absolutely sickening

[BelindaSales. @sales_belinda]

Starmer builds the party, takes it out of the ashes, makes it electable. Takes it from a devastating loss to a landslide. Two years later, in arrive 2 chancers & traitors who fancy their chances at playing PM & want to steal what was hard won.
No credibility. Contemptible.

[Scottish Rugby @Scotlandteam]

Scottish Rugby is immensely saddened to learn of the death earlier today of former Scotland and British & Irish Lions centre, Scott Hastings. He was 61.

[Just Dave now @justdavenow89]

Starmer is a better prime minister than Boris Johnson

[Carole chapman @Carolechapman17]

I’m beginning to think that Keir Starmer is the only one. who truly is in politics for the good of the country. I feel so angry at Streeting and the one‘s backing him, they are just in politics for themselves and their own good.

[RobynHarris99 @Robyn_Harris99]

@zubirahmed @alexisnaomiii Putting yourself first nit the country

[Kathy @CentreLeft_]

I keep reading about the ‘heavy hearts’ of Labour MPs calling for the overthrowing of the elected PM.
Guess what: I don’t give a shiny shit if your heart is heavy. I’m disgusted with each one of you. 14yrs we waited for a Labour govt and you lot have chosen to fuck it up 2yrs in

[Joshua Silver @eyejosh]

Please repost if you agree that it would be extremely unwise for Labour to remove Keir Starmer right now

[Cal Cowen @calculus52]

Hey @BBCNews , got a story for you!

About 11 reform new councillors have stepped down or been expelled already!

It will cost a lot to elect new ones. How about running that as a story, just for a smidgen of impartiality?

[The Rev. Anton Mittens 🌹👮🎓 @MittensOff]

I just emailed my MP to tell them to hold the government together and not give in to Reform. It takes two minutes - you should too: https://t.co/9x0DRX8bqI

[RobynHarris99 @Robyn_Harris99]

@ToniaAntoniazzi @DalgetySusan He shouldn’t step down. He is doing a good job in the face of huge media pressure. He’s genuinely there because he wants the best not to further himself. I disagree with some of his opinions but we need some stability. Genuinely nobody cares about council elections. meaningless

[David Atherton @daveatherton]

This is Mohammad Baghdadi "Baggy" Khan reporting to duty as a newly elected Councillor in the Halliwell ward, Bolton. He looks composed in his Lamborghini Huracán Spyder, worth £100,000-£200,000, it does 19-23 mpg.

He is a member of @TheGreenParty.