Our Boys in Blue

The British Broadcasting Corporation, a cornerstone of our democracy, a pillar on which we often lean in times of stress, part of what makes Britain, Britain. Built upon a, truly, lofty set of ideals, ‘Educate, Inform, Entertain’, inspiring yes, but do they manage to live up to such ambitions? Given that 4 out of 5 adults in the UK use some form of BBC News service, one would hope that there was, at least, some quality information being provided.
Yesterday, marked the biggest day of action against the new crime and policing bill, which, if passed, would mean that protesters would have to request permission from the police to protest; along with a myriad of other alterations designed to make it more difficult to protest. Now having seen some of the violence displayed by many of ‘our boys in blue’ towards peaceful protesters, I’d imagine that they aren’t enamoured with the idea of protesting generally, let alone, a protest which was calling for ‘no racist police’. It is, perhaps, unsurprising that they behave in such a manner, after all, No 10 has just released a report acquitting the UK of any systemic racism - which should surely be a cause for celebration?! In addition to this, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services released a statement explaining to everyone that, although it may have seemed, to many, to be an extremely unnecessary abuse of power by forcefully arresting mourners at a vigil for a woman murdered by a police officer, it was, in fact, ‘appropriate’. One can imagine that the wonderful, Priti Patel, also probably thought it was quite satisfactory to sneak this bill through at a time when protesting became an offence due to the lockdown, but to rationalise her thinking is, fortunately, not within the scope of this argument.

Our boys in blue, on their big day out, were seen stamping and kneeing protesters, laughing at the friends of people who’d been nicked, and arresting legal observers; obviously, giddy at the news of being acquitted of any systemic racism - they were having it large! Now, the legal observers were there to monitor the police’s behaviour; to check that our boys in blue weren’t having too much of a good time. But, not to be cowed by anyone on their big day out, the police were relentlessly ebullient and certainly weren’t going to have the boring legal observers dampen their celebrations on the bank holiday, so they dispensed with them. A big no-no for human rights, but boys will be boys? “Sadly certain types of people are what they are”, to borrow words from No 10’s report on race, which is referring to the many racially motivated hate crimes that cause “serious psychological effects”.

Now, given all of this, you’d expect that the news at 10 would, at the very least, bother to tell their audiences of the sheer scale of the protests, which took place in 50 different locations across the UK, or maybe, remind the audiences, of the reasoning behind the protests. A national protest should surely be the story of the day? Such hope, was, unfortunately, totally misplaced. To the disgust of many, they didn’t even expend an entire minute on the story, they did however, choose to give more airtime to a story about Pharaohs which is obviously more important than nationwide protests. What they did mention in the brief 30-second slot allotted for the national protests against authoritarianism, was the number of arrests made and the number of police officers that were ‘injured’. But as we saw in Bristol, the injury numbers are often subject to manipulation - much like the reporting from the BBC!