My dear Q,
I am really sorry that I did not write you your letter as I should yesterday. At present I am working at such high pressure that if anything unexpected turns up it must swallow something else. So long as nothing interrupts my routine I get on just fine, with little time to spare at week ends for writing and reading: when something does, I am stranded. However I hope to be regular in future.
I am frightfully sorry. We will not be discussing “Why China works”, in this letter as promised last week. But please don’t let this be a big disappointment because we shall come to this issue in a few weeks time.
What you may ask got me to change my mind about discussing China. Well my dear man: a catalogue of events in recent days has got the British intelligentsias debating and asking questions about whether Britain is at the point of moral bankruptcy … Britain! Facing moral bankruptcy? Well as you know, I am an outsider, peeping in, but I will try and explain what has been happening lately.
No doubt you must have heard about the man who died last week during the G20 protest here in London. Well, as the police officer and his colleagues who witnessed the incidents leading to the man‘s death were patching up their story, against a very loud background noise of police brutality, Britain’s top counter-terrorist police officer committed the cardinal sin by exposing his security documents to a photo-journalist on his way to briefing the Prime Minster at No. 10 Downing Street. And we all thought Barack Obama had left some of his divinity at the entrance of Downing Street, after he shook the hand of a police officer when he arrived there last week.
So is this why Britain is on the verge of moral bankruptcy? You may ask … Oh! No! there is more.
On the political fronts, there has been a steady drip-drip of dishonest stories in recent weeks about the conduct of both Government Ministers and Members of Parliament, relating to their lax and excessive expenses and allowances regime. And just few days ago, one of the British Prime Minister’s closest assistants was forced to step down from his highly paid job over emails making nasty allegations about the British opposition leader, David Cameron and his team.
Then there is the sad but cruel case of two brothers aged 10 and 11 who have been charged with attempted murder and robbery after a brutal attack on two other young boys recently. The victims had allegedly been hit with a brick, slashed with a knife and burnt with cigarettes in the incident, which took place in the North of England. According to police report, the older victim, aged 11, was found with life threatening injuries, lying face down at the edge of a stream, covered in dried mud and blood.
Trusting that you and your family have had a wonderful Easter, I wonder how you will react to the fact that in a recent United Kingdom poll; only 22% of British people could identify what Easter stands for. But more importantly, I am told by one pollster, that when the stories of Christmas or Easter is told to atheists, there is anger in the air followed by accusations of ‘people been conned’ by the church.
It was against this background that I told some colleagues of mine that they should not be seriously alarmed after watching a BBC undercover investigation in to the state of Britain’s elderly care system; Secret filming by the BBC’s Panorama programme revealed a string of shocking incidents including an elderly woman left lying in her own excrement for 24 hours after helpers forgot about her. Another woman was badly bruised after being hit in the face twice with a hoist, while an elderly man was denied a shower or bath for six months and fed a diet of cold spaghetti, sandwiches and Quavers crisps.
So, how did Britain get to this stage, you may ask? Well my dear fellow, this is a very serious question, begging for challenging answers and solutions, in a country that was once the envy of the world.
One commentator recently observed that “perhaps God has forgotten us”. Another commentator, Peter Hitchens, in his weekly column reminded his readers of all the cruelty, death, and injustice that has occurred in the country leading to the Holy Week and Easter and concluded by saying; “It seems to me that when Easter was still a great festival, and Good Friday, a sombre, silent day of reflection, we were kinder to others, less kind to ourselves, and -in a good way- afraid of a higher justice than can be provided by the Crown Prosecution Service”. He then asked; “Is there any good reason why we cannot restore what has been lost?”
But how do you start to restore what has been lost when those in Power and Authority are considered by their peers and many in the wider public to be morally bankruptcy ?
If you will recollect in my letter to you about the G20 summit here in London, I mentioned that the policing of the G20 summit and the several demonstrations would be well managed and policed by Scotland Yard. And I must say that in the immediate aftermath of the G20 protests; the worldwide consensus was that the police had done a relatively good job handling the demonstrations and containing any potential acts of violence.
But this picture changed overnight after the true story about the death of a Mr Ian Tomlinson came to light, thanks to a member of the public who recorded the brutal and unprovoked attack on Mr Tomlinson on 1st of April by a police officer. I will not go into details because I imagine that you must have heard about this story over the BBC World Service or seen it on one of the many international television news channels.
I will not drag you back to the protest itself; suffice to say that the police have come to view protests as opportunities to express their own political beliefs, and advertise their own frustrations. Protesters often jeer that the police are state parties, unquestioning in their defence of their masters. The police, in turn, appear to go out of their way to confirm that this is so. This must sound very familiar to your ears … I know what you are thinking now … that they are the same everywhere … indeed, they are.
A very senior British Barrister, Robert Rhodes QC, once pointed out – and, as the lawyer who represented the Belgian government against English football hooligans after the Heysel stadium disaster, he knows a thing or two about thuggish behaviour – “The really worrying aspect of the police involvement in Ian Tomlinson’s death is that several officers saw (the incident) but just stood by, doing nothing. It is this closing of ranks until the video was published that is likely to be destructive of public confidence in the integrity of the police.”
You see, until that video was published by a newspaper, the police had presented themselves to the general public, the Authorities and Mr Tomlinson’s benefactors: they had had no contact with him before he collapsed, and their medical officers’ subsequent attempt to treat him had been made more difficult by a hail of missiles, a barrage that no independent witness seems able to recall.
As an outsider who have lived in this country for many years; but also witnessed first hand the conduct and system of policing in many countries in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, South East Asia and the United States, I can say without a doubt that British policing is not in systemic crisis. But that there is a problem and that some areas of policing are in a mess. Some will argue that the mess I am talking about is indeed, systemic crisis. Lines of responsibility are tangled; structures opaque; division illogical; management appalling; leadership low-calibre; accountability confused; corporate ethics defective; cost-control shoddy; results uneven; and the service’s public reputation low-and sinking.
I will not labour much on the resignation of the Assistant Commissioner of Police; his crime, as you very well know was to have exposed secret documents to press photographers as he heads towards Downing Street to brief the Prime Minister.
This is not a resignation offence under normal circumstances, but the resignation of such a very senior officer revealed the increasing politicization of the British police force, according to those on the centre-left of British politics, whilst those on the right strongly believes that successive Conservative governments have traumatised the rest of politics by attacking criticism of the police as all but seditious.
Talking of trauma. Less than a week after most of us were left thinking that Barack Obama might just have saved Gordon Brown from sinking, the British Prime Minster is in trouble and the Conservatives are out for blood. And it is because of recent events at Westminster and Scotland Yard that many are now saying “our society is indeed broken-but at the top, not the bottom”.
When Gordon Brown took over from Tony Blair he promised “a different kind of politics”, one that was more open and honest. He would be guided, he said, by the “moral compass” that had been provided by years of listening to his father’s sermons.
But almost two years into the job as Prime Minister, things have changed and ‘good ole Gordon’ is up to the same tricks of his predecessor ‘slick Tony’. A few days ago, it was revealed that a dirty tricks operation has been operating inside Downing Street with one of the PM’s closest aide at the heart of it. This aide, Damian McBride is also known within the Westminster circles as Mr Mc Poison.
The game-plan was to drip poison about senior Conservative opposition parliamentarians via a Labour-sponsored political website called Red Rag. It included entirely unsubstantiated smears about the private life of George Osborne, the opposition Finance & Economics Spokesman and his wife. It suggested that embarrassing disclosures could be made about David Cameroon’s medical history. Any bit of rumour or tittle-tattle was apparently fair game for Mr McBride, the more embarrassing the better. David Cameroon is the Leader of the Opposition Conservative Party in the British parliament.
As the British economic standing worsens everyday with predictions that a record number of individuals and companies will go bust this year, it is becoming nigh-impossible for the Labour Party to be re-electable in about 18 months time … so the desperate tactics appears to be to diminish the standing of the Conservatives and make Labour the least unattractive option.
But is this how a “son of the manse” runs his office, his staff and the country? We will talk about that in my next letter to you. Also, there is still the issue about Ministers and Parliamentarians abusing their expenses and allowances to a point that it is now seen as blatant corruption and abuse of power.
Then there is the sad case of the children who were charged for attempted murder of two other children … and how the Queen’s country has forsaken the Establishment’s church whilst an African Church based in a disused cinema in north London has emerged as one of the country’s richest religious institutions.
Please remember me to all and remain blessed!!!
Winston Ojukutu-Macaulay Jnr
wojukutu@africanalytical.com
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