Charles Dickens | Muriel Murch

Written and recorded by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side

Eurostar from Rotterdam Station – photo by Beatrice Murch

Though paused along the track, the Eurostar train to St. Pancras arrived on time and we disembark. It seems to have been a full long weekend away in Amsterdam for musicians and young families. We had joined the train at Rotterdam after our grandson David’s 9th birthday and the best Dutch birthday cake ever, homemade by David and his mother. On the platform, those of us who are older, the grand-parent tribe, and the wandering poets are quickly passed by the young musicians and even the families struggling with all their stuff to gather and bundle up. By the time we reach the last turn into the exit there is hardly anyone with us as we pass the four customs officers standing together. They seem to be hanging out, just chatting, but as I look at them – and they don’t meet my eyes – I realize they have been looking at us all. First I wonder what on earth do they think we are carrying, and then I realize they are also looking at whom we might be carrying.

Slavery – indentured servitude – is still alive and well in Britain and Europe. The German far right politician Jörg Dornau employs political prisoners from the uprising against Aleksandr Lukashenko’s political re election in 2020. Dornau owns an onion farm in Belarus where around 30 prisoners work, many of whom, like Nicole who told the story, had been jailed on political grounds and for “liking” old social media posts from 2021. The prisoners sorted onions for roughly £4 a day on what Nicole described as a strictly voluntary basis. And the onions tasted good. They are the lucky ones. But the customs officers waiting to see the passengers leave the Eurostar train were watching for those not so lucky.

Emerging into the station proper we pick up breakfast essentials before heading to the taxi rank. This evening the queue is not too long and we shuffle forward at a steady pace. Naturally everyone is tired, looking at their phones and not speaking. But suddenly there are quick soft running footsteps, and a child’s voice shouting “I ain’t’ done nothink.” More running footsteps, a longer stride and a uniformed youth catches up with the child, who is clutching a brown paper shopping bag and still yelling. “Let me go, I ain’t’ done nothing.” Faces lift from the phones and those in the taxi queue look as the young officer catches the barely clothed child wearing shorts and a very oversized t-shirt. Now there are more footsteps, heavier as in regulation police boots, and six uniformed security policemen, all under the age of thirty catch up with their young partner who is barely holding onto the child still crying out, “Let me go I ain’t done nothing.” Then suddenly the air goes silent and it is over. Taxis come to the curb, the line moves forward, and as we wait three patrol cars with lights flashing and sirens ringing come to a screeching halt beside us. I marvel at all the adrenaline rushing through at least nine men holding one child. And the silencing of the voice that echoes Oliver Twist in 1837 – led on by The Artful Dodger, used and abandoned by Fagin. What really has changed in almost 200 years? Not so much. Hardship finds us along many paths.

Flying high over the carnival – photo by Beatrice Murch

On the autumn Sunday afternoon in Utrecht we visit a carnival. It has popped up outside of a Jumbo shopping center and is an easy distraction for small children, and some who are no longer so little. We’re cruising, grandson David passes the candy floss as he leads me to this fishing hall, that shooting range, all the time with his eye out for the bungee jumping trampoline that looks terrifying – to a Granny. Suddenly there is his best friend from down their street. The boys are thrilled to see each other, the bungee jump forgotten for the moment while the mothers chat together. The afternoon ends with a closing-time visit to the big public library which is institutional but welcoming and impressive. I am – as Grannies do – sitting, resting and waiting outside when the mother of David’s friend approaches me. Bea has sent her over. “Mum’s a nurse, ask her.” “May I ask you something?” “Yes of course.”

She is from Ukraine and has three children, two boys and one girl. Her husband has left her and they are now divorcing. The afternoon carnival is a cheap distraction for them together. Her long hair is matted, her clothes look to have come off of the floor and her sneakers are – for want of a better word – inadequate. The children are hovering, watchful, a little distant, protecting her as best they can. They are nervous of her speaking with a strange woman, even from their friend’s family. The mother had a little accident on her bike and her thumb hurts. Is it broken? Should she go to the hospital? But that means a four hour wait in the emergency room and she has three small children. In her state the slightest upset blows into a potential disaster. Softly I ask if I can touch her hand and she nods. I take her hand in mine and begin to gently feel here and there, bend the hand and fingers this way and that. Quickly I know that it is not broken. There is a little warmth suggesting the thumb is strained. I continue to hold her hand, for with the act of touching and receiving her, she begins to calm. I tell her about arnica gel. Seeing their mother relaxing, the children creep closer to us as we retrace our steps to the pharmacy. Which is – naturally – at 5.30 on a Sunday afternoon – now closed. But the young mother is looking better, more purposeful and with a little smile. The children cluster closer still around her as we said goodbye. The eldest boy shakes my hand, the two little ones smile and wave. They are grateful that someone had listened and received their mother. This little Ukrainian family have been in the Netherlands since before the war began. Maybe they knew what was coming or maybe they just got lucky. Now it makes no difference. They are adrift and broken in a foreign country. Hardship finds us along many paths.

The conflict – pick any red dot on the map – in the Middle East – has pushed the Ukrainian War off of the page and the screen. Cold mud and snipers are not as photogenic as nighttime rockets and buildings ablaze. Rubble and body bags are more prolific in any of the states at war in the Middle East than in the Ukrainian villages on fire. This war has a published start date of October 7 but that cannot have been the beginning. Israeli solders are schooled that attack is the best form of defense, but all of those red dots – in Gaza, in Lebanon and beyond – do not appear as the work of a country defending itself. Back, back we go into history, Europeans and their pens, pencils and rulers, drawing lines across the desert, pointing fingers and saying ‘That will do.’

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

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Written and produced for you by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side.

‘Yes Minister’ first aired on The BBC television in 1980 until it ended in 1988, possibly due to the fact that it was becoming harder to distinguish the comedy series from the nightly newscasts that followed. Among the many quotes attributed to the Cabinet Secretary Sir Humphrey is “Minister there is going to be an Inquiry” to which the reply from The Prime Minister Jim Hacker is “Oh good, then nothing will happen.” Well yes and here we are again –

Baroness Hallett promises the inquiry would be ‘thorough and fair’. Photo from Piranha Photography.

Last week saw the beginning of “Britain’s Public Inquiry” to understand the Conservative Government’s responses and handling of the Covid pandemic. But for the life of me, I can’t find out who is in charge of “Britiain’s Public Inquiry” and what – after the facts have hopefully been gathered – will happen? Will lessons have been learnt? Will those deemed responsible be held responsible? Will there be any retribution? Will anyone be called before a court of law or those pages of documents produced be filed away rather than read. Last week when Dominic Cummings gave his testimony he asked that the inquiry also focus on the broader failures of the system. Reading – for I can’t listen to them talking – it is clear that as blame is shuffled about like pearls under walnuts, the prize goes to the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Dominic Cummings likened working with Boris Johnson to driving a shopping cart with a wonky wheel.

It is not without irony that the inquiry is taking place at Whitehall just across the river from the Covid Memorial Wall that was created and painted in 2021by people who had lost loved ones, or worked in the NHS, coming together with the good guidance of the group ‘Led By Donkeys’. Over 240,000 painted hearts cover more than a third of a mile alongside the Thames River outside of St. Thomas’s Hospital. During this time the public were afraid and looked in vain for leaders in the government where all the common sense had been bred and educated out of almost anyone in Westminster not yet of pensionable age. It was like putting drones in charge of the beehive to collect pollen and care for their queen, when all they could think about was kingship and sexual obsession.

From left: Rabbi Daniel Epstein, the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and Imam Kareem Farai visiting the wall in April. Photograph: Chris J Ratcliffe For Covid-19 Bereaved Families For Justice/Getty Images

People are booking their theater seats. We follow the inquiry like a serialized Charles Dickens story in the magazines of the day. Up to testify next are the past Prime Minister Boris Johnson, his hovering henchman Matt Hancock, and the holder of the chair at the moment, Rishi Sunak. But it is the failings of one particular individual, Boris Johnson, who was ultimately responsible for directing the government, which will continue to be scrutinized in the months ahead. Johnson’s successor-but-one as prime minister, Rishi Sunak — who was U.K. Chancellor during the pandemic — also has questions to answer. All three men — Johnson, Sunak, and Hancock — are to appear before the inquiry in the same week at the end of November.

Sunak has thrown his dead cat into the ring – by hosting an international AI conference on safety issues that was held at Bletchley Park. The conference produced some back-patting for, and from, the UK, US, and European leaders who attended while getting a nod of approval from the United Nations. Elon Musk arrived to give a speech and chat with Rishi at Downing Street. Both men in their uniforms, Elon remains rumpled and a little unshaved while Rishi rolls up his pristine white shirt sleeves possibly looking for his next job opportunity after this gig is over. So will anything happen from this inquiry apart from “Lessons have been learnt”? The Infected Blood Inquiry – the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry – and the Greenfield Tower Inquiry – have each chipped away at this UK government, but not a lot has changed. Could this inquiry be the one showing that Britain’s democracy has really gone up in flames? I’m writing on Guy Fawkes night – our night of fireworks – celebrating the failure of the 1605 attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament. We may be holding our breath and will it happen this time? I cannot watch the inquiries – it is too painful – so instead I read.

in an interview, the American thinking and writer, James Baldwin, said “You must realize that if I am starving you are in danger”. And in this simple truth, buried deeply, lies some of the reasons the wars are being fought all around us. Johnathan Freelander writes eloquently and with great heart in this weekend’s Guardian Newspaper, that no side of the Israeli, Gaza, and Jordan triangle conflict are searching for a peaceful conclusion – at this time. In Pulse “Stories from the Heart of Medicine,” I read a translated account from Hadar Sadeh, an Israeli youth psychiatrist working at a Medical Center, about twenty-five miles from the Gaza Strip. Then I open an email from our Palestinian friend and filmmaker, Annemarie Jacir. Each woman weeps at the death of children and physical destruction that they see around them. Each letter could have been written the other.

And see how the war in Ukraine gets roughly pushed to one side even as we know it continues? Old statesmen take planes from one capital city for talks then board another, exchanging their suit jackets for a flack vest as they land in a war zone to encourage young men to face death bravely for their country. Ukrainian President Zelensky rightly worries that this other war is distracting from support to his war – defending Ukraine from Russia’s invasion. How much can we carry in our hearts? And tucked away even further is the news that Russia’s President Putin’s arch-opponent Alexei Navalny’s three lawyers have been detailed. They are facing trial for participating in the so-called extremist group, Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. If they end up in jail then all contact to the outside world will be lost for Navalny. Each of these eruptions is bleeding like an aspirin-fed wound and all the pressure that is applied will not staunch or stop it any time soon.

This has been A Letter From A. Broad written and read for you by Muriel Murch.