Passover, Easter, the Spring Break, however we call it, the sun came out to bring a little warmth and welcome spring on Sunday. But reminding us to why the English talk constantly about the weather – on Monday snow fell in London. Further north there were gales and serious snow storms and sheep that needed watching as they tried to lamb under the hedgerows.

Over the weekend, Church services took place following the Covid guidelines laid out by the government. Queues outside of one church were reported and, in line with the increasing iron hand of the home office, the Metropolitan police force went out to do their duty. Like a bombing target, the Catholic Church, Christ the King, in South Wimbledon was cited.

As well as following the Covid restriction guidelines, the service was being streamed live on social media, so showed officers striding in, warning priests and parishioners that the gathering was ‘unlawful’. Threatened with fines, the service was abruptly ended. Other places of worship were holding restricted services, and there were probably queues outside of Synagogues and Christian Churches but maybe it was safe to target a nice Polish immigrant Catholic Church. That would do nicely. But it didn’t do nicely and once again the Met has back-footed their agenda. Or have they?

Bringing Covid restrictions into law was the opening the Home Secretary Priti Patel had been looking for, and she is forcing it into action with the Metropolitan police under the Commissioner, Cressida Dick. It looks increasingly clear that Patel wants stronger control of how people behave and, like an insecure school teacher, her default position is to add more regulations with harsher penalties for those who break her rules.

But why has this all gone so wrong – to the right? The British are addicted to their TV sitcoms of Cops and killers. We love to see the police track and solve the most gruesome of murders; either tromping across the rain-battered Yorkshire moors or in the picturesque villages of Oxfordshire, where the weather is almost always sunny. They remind us of gentler days, as when at our small town train station, a policeman would meet the last train from London. I remember returning, close to midnight mind you, and the young policeman, wheeling his bicycle, as he walked me along Elvetham Road to my mother’s house. Surely we would be supporting those fine upstanding men and women. But today they have been found to be not so fine and, like the politicians in power, the humanity they brazenly show dances on either side of criminality.

Trust in the police force has eroded steadily and visibly since the trials of The Guildford Four in 1974, building to a concentrated core over Steven Lawrence’s murder in 1993. Today when people march and protest for Black Lives Matter, or with a policeman held in custody over the murder of Sarah Everard, it seems to frighten Ms Patel into producing a bill called the ‘Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill 2021‘. It is a mere extension of the Coronavirus Act passed in 2020.

In a Democracy, protesting is considered a human right, and the Home Office says its proposals will respect this. Writing for gal-dem, Moya Lothian McLean says the proposed rules have given the state “enormous authoritarian power using extremely vague language that can be twisted for any purpose”.

The Labour MP Nadia Whittome said: “This bill will see the biggest assault on protest rights in recent history”. Kill the Bill Protests are continuing around the country. It could seem that the freedom to protest governments and military takeovers of state powers, and the freedom to report globally on these issues are getting as tricky and dangerous in England as we’ve seen in Belarus, Moscow, China and Myanmar.

Last week the the BBC’s correspondent John Sudworth abruptly left Beijing, taking his family to Taiwan. The Chinese Government do not care for – and have denounced – his reporting for the BBC on the treatment of the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang region.

In Hong Kong, China held a four week trial and found guilty seven of Hong Kong’s most senior and prominent pro-democracy figures of organizing and participating in an un-authorized rally.

And for leading an opposition party to the government, Alexei Navalny is jailed in Russia following an attempted poisoning on his life. Navalny is now in hospital with respiratory symptoms which must be as alarming as in jail when guards had tortured him with sleep deprivation while encouraging the other prisoners to do the same.

Rebecca Radcliffe reports in the Guardian on Myanmar where the military-controlled media state newspaper, Global New Light, has published wanted lists with the names and photographs of dozens of prominent figures, from actors to musicians. The junta said it would bring charges and criminalizes comments that “cause fear” or spread “false news”. Those accused under the law can face up to three years in prison.

But for the first time in a long time we look back at the United States and see a glimmer of hope, holding our breath as we watch President Joe Biden get right to work with a little train engineer’s hat atop of his head. Maybe he can grease the wheels of government and get that engine going again to carry the American people forward into safety and work. Biden had been around the Washington block a long time and knows how that engine yard works. His oil can is at the ready and he is busy greasing those wheels.

This has been a Letter from A. Broad. Written and read for you by Muriel Murch 

First aired on Swimming Upstream – KWMR.org. 

Web support by murchstudio.com