How The Egalitarian is Redefining Safety and Equality in the Night-Time Economy

In the wake of growing social inequality and the need for safer spaces, The Egalitarian was founded by York alumna, Elysia O’Neill, to challenge injustice and create real change in communities across the UK. Through grassroots activism, innovative projects like Spike Report, and the Safe Place Project initiative, this movement empowers individuals to take action and reframe the conversation around safety and equality.

“The Egalitarian, a grassroots movement I co-founded in October 2020, began as a simple social media channel with a bold mission: to raise awareness of inequality and injustice in society. Our focus initially started with gender inequality, but as the movement grew, we realised that the scope of our work would encompass a broader range of social issues.

At its heart, The Egalitarian is about empowering people, giving a voice to those often silenced by societal structures. Our platform quickly became a community blog space where anyone could come to share their opinions on issues they were passionate about. The goal was to create a collective voice for activism, encouraging individuals to participate in driving social change.

As we started to expand our reach, we introduced “Call to Action” posts on social media. These were designed to move beyond simply raising awareness, instead focusing on concrete steps people could take to help make society a more just and safe place for everyone. One of our most poignant Call to Action posts came in response to the tragic murder of Sarah Everard. The post wasn’t just directed at men, but at everyone, offering practical ways to make others feel safer when walking alone at night: crossing the road, avoiding eye contact, making a call to create a sense of safety. These small acts of awareness and solidarity can make a huge difference.”

The Egalitarian tackles some of the most pressing issues facing our communities, from gender inequality to the alarming rise in drink spiking. Through innovative tools like Spike Report, which collects,analyses and publishes spiking data, and venue training under the Safe Place Project initiative, Elysia and her team are working to reshape the narrative around personal safety. Their work doesn’t just stop at awareness – it aims to hold institutions and individuals accountable, creating safer spaces for all.

“Another critical issue we’ve tackled head-on is drink spiking. Our stance on this is clear: victim blaming is unacceptable. It’s easy to tell people to watch their drinks, but that doesn’t address the core problem. Why should the burden of responsibility fall on potential victims rather than on those perpetrating the crime? We wanted to push people to think collectively about safety and how communities can work together to solve the problem. One idea we floated was the creation of a publicly accessible spiking database, where people could report incidents, and others could view patterns of where spiking was happening. The government showed little interest in creating such a tool, so we decided to do it ourselves.

In November 2021, we launched *Spike Report*. This tool allows individuals to report instances of spiking – where, when, and how it happened, and crucially, how venues and the police responded. With over 600 reports now submitted, we’ve collected an invaluable dataset that has never existed before. It shows how badly spiking incidents are handled and how venues and police fail victims. Our data has attracted attention from various organisations, including the SIA, the regulator for the night-time economy, and the Home Office. We are pioneering this in the UK and, to our knowledge, globally. Our Spike Report data is now being used by the UK Government to guide the legal changes to make spiking a standalone criminal offence. After campaigning for this in 2024 with our ‘Spiking Out, Justice In’ campaign, we are now at the forefront of Government discussions, having been invited to Parliament to discuss our approach and now attending Home Office consultations with stakeholders.

The launch of Spike Report also gave rise to our *Safe Place Project. This initiative involves training venues: pubs, bars, clubs, student unions, door staff firms, festivals and events companies on tackling spiking, sexual violence, domestic abuse and hate crimes. The goal is to create effective allies in these spaces, shifting the narrative from passive bystanders to active supporters of a safe environment. The majority of our team is based in Leeds and Wakefield, but our work through the Safe Place training is national, and we’re going international in 2025 as we are funded by the Guernsey Government to train every venue in Guernsey.

Our Safe Place Project has developed since we launched the certification scheme in 2022. Since then, we have expanded our workshops to now cover student safety by directly training up students, committees and sports teams on responding to disclosures of harm in a victim-led way, running safe socials and creating inclusive sports teams. We also now train up workplaces on workplace inclusivity, demonstrating how we can call out mansplaining and offer inclusive working methods for teams.

“Why should the burden of responsibility fall on potential victims rather than on those perpetrating the crime? We wanted to push people to think collectively about safety and how communities can work together to solve the problem.”

What drives us is the belief that change happens when there’s a cultural shift. We want to create environments where people feel empowered to challenge bad behaviour and where perpetrators can no longer act with impunity. This is especially important when you consider that when venues respond poorly to spiking incidents, victims are far less likely to report the crime to the police. It’s a perpetuating cycle where the police and Government have no idea of the extent of the issue as it is invisible. Through education and accountability, we believe we can break it.

We constantly track spiking trends, given that Spike Report allows us to receive reports from victims as soon as it happens. We analyse alarming developments, such as the rise of spiking by injection in 2021 and later the use of vapes to spike which became apparent in 2023.  The pandemic lockdown seemed to foster a surge in this type of crime, and we see developments most often during Freshers Week in universities. We believe the isolation of lockdown contributed to an outpouring of repressed urges, resulting in a significant increase in spiking incidents post-lockdown. Our theory is that when bars reopened, it unleashed a wave of harmful behaviour that had been bubbling under the surface during months of isolation. This increase has continued, in line with the rising polarisation in society and online misogyny that means perpetrators want to commit these types of harms to marginalised groups – and they know that the justice system most likely will not catch them

Starting Spike Report was never part of our original plan for The Egalitarian, but the overwhelming response from the media, universities, and communities asked us: What are you going to do with this information? We realised that simply sharing our data with the government wasn’t enough. We needed to take action ourselves, and thus, the Safe Place project was born. We attended various training sessions with local councils and the police, but many of the programs fell short – they didn’t go deep enough, and too often, the narrative was framed around victim-blaming. We knew we had to do better.

Our team all have lived experience of the issues we train on. I’ve been spiked twice, as has my  co-founder, Della. Our team have all experienced sexual violence of some form, and a lot have been spiked too. Sharing personal stories in our workshops from ourselves, our team and our community (with consent) adds weight to our training and humanises the statistics. There are victims behind the data that need to be heard. Further, our workshops are friendly and collaborative – we know a lot of safeguarding training and workshops are delivered by people not close enough to the real experiences of victims. That’s why we get such powerful feedback from our sessions. Participants often tell us how impactful the training is because we speak from a place of lived experience.”

Grounded in lived experience and driven by community input, The Egalitarian has already garnered over 7,000 social media followers and widespread attention from venues, councils, the Mayor of West Yorkshire and the Government. Yet, their mission is far from over. The Egalitarian is setting the standard for a safer, more equitable future in the UK’s night-time economy through both legal changes and hopes to train every venue in the UK, as well as expand globally.

“Our ultimate goal is to institutionalise change. We want accountability at every level of society, especially in the night-time economy. While we’ve had significant success with venues paying for our training services, it’s frustrating that the government has yet to take meaningful steps to mandate such training across the board. But the fact that businesses are voluntarily coming to us shows that the demand for change is there.

What makes us unique is that we’re community-led. Everything we do is informed by the people we serve. We run regular polls, surveys, and engagement activities to ensure that our work is grounded in the needs and experiences of our community. For instance, we run annual surveys to track changes in peoples’ experiences and see how people want change to take form. Our first survey in 2022 directly informed the launch of our Safe Place project. 

While the majority of our community identifies as women and non-binary people, we are also here for men, and we actively work to address issues that affect them. For example, 25% of Spike Report victims are men. It’s important to us that our work is intersectional and inclusive of all marginalised groups.

One challenge we’ve faced is the reach of Spike Report in certain areas. For example, despite repeated efforts, we’ve struggled to gain traction in York. We’ve done everything from placing stickers on campus to sending bars our posters, but the number of Spike Reports we’ve received from the area remains low. It’s puzzling because we know the problem exists there; students have told us about spiking incidents but for some reason, it’s just not being reported to us. In contrast, Leeds has the highest number of spiking reports, likely because we’re based there, and our presence is stronger. Our traction has increased since training up student committees at the University of York since 2023 on running safe socials with elected social secs.

Looking ahead, we have big plans. In the next five years, we aim to become the national certification scheme for venue safety in the UK. We will continue to lead policy change in relation to safety in the night-time economy, advising the government fighting for systemic change and amplifying victims’ voices. But our ambitions don’t stop there. We will continue to tackle issues like women’s representation in business, exclusive working routines and rape culture in schools. We have the right resources, a great team of volunteers and a strong community network to achieve them.

Starting this journey with The Egalitarian has been incredibly fulfilling. It’s not always easy, and there are days when the weight of the work feels overwhelming. But knowing that we’re making a real difference in people’s lives keeps us going. We’re not just a movement; we’re a force for change, and I couldn’t be prouder of what we’ve accomplished so far.”