Robertamathetes

Writing about faith, commenting on current social and political issues. All views my own.

[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.

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[Robertamathetes @robertamathetes]

@InsideLucysHead @panvalues "You Mecca Me Hot" lol. This is brilliant.

[Basil the Great @BasilTheGreat]

Henry Nowak's final moments were surrounded by:

The Man who murdered him
The Family who covered it up
An officer who didn't believe him
An officer who thought he was a racist
An officer who arrested him

Not a single person cared about Henry

And they wonder why we're angry?

[Robertamathetes @robertamathetes]

@Channel4News Fun fact: white writers also have their writing rejected by publishers, sometimes multiple times, before being accepted by one that decides to take a punt on a new writer. This is not specific to black people, it's the reality for all in the world of publishing.

[Robertamathetes @robertamathetes]

@CatharineHoey Three guesses

[Luai Ahmed @JustLuai]

In honor of Pride month, here’s a list of countries in the Middle East that recognize same sex marriage:

1. Israel

[Robertamathetes @robertamathetes]

@RealSpitfire You're not the only one

[George Alexopoulos @GPrime85]

There's no more accurate a metaphor for the West than slowly bleeding to death by the hand of barbarians while corrupt authorities tie our hands behind our back.

[𐌁𐌉Ᏽ 𐌕𐌉𐌌𐌉 @OrevaZSN]

I’m genuinely astonished by the idea that you can be the very first patient of the day at the doctor’s office and still end up waiting 30 minutes to be seen.

[Robertamathetes @robertamathetes]

@HeidiBachram Is he also "trans"? Trying to figure out the costume - headscarf, frilly apron, lacy sleeves, it's all so incongruent 🤔

[Robertamathetes @robertamathetes]

@AnnieBishop123 @HJoyceGender This is shocking for 1961. If it had been 1931 I would not have been surprised, but for this still to be happening in the 60s is shameful.

[Robertamathetes @robertamathetes]

@ScoLibertarian @Provokatov Thankfully sex isn't 'merely genitalia'. It is present in every cell of the body and that cannot be changed.

[Robertamathetes @robertamathetes]

@ScoLibertarian @Provokatov But biological sex isn't. And that's her point.

[Jill Gillson @JillGwynne]

Hey @marksandspencer what do the men in your Malvern store get their own fitting room and the women don’t? This is illegal

[Robertamathetes @robertamathetes]

@AnthonyAinsdale What a very good question

[Robertamathetes @robertamathetes]

@Gillian_Emm @WingsScotland She never shopped, spent no time in the kitchen, noticed nothing arriving to the house....I'm beginning to think he did it all in a desperate attempt to get her attention.

[Robertamathetes @robertamathetes]

@TheGriftReport I'd be very interested in the flight they did get on to and whether he was still saying that word 🤔

[Robertamathetes @robertamathetes]

@MorEdge_Insight I feel sorry for this deluded young person

[Robertamathetes @robertamathetes]

@ImtiazMadmood Just one small problem - Syria is refusing to take them back

[Robertamathetes @robertamathetes]

@elonmusk Why are you doing this?