From Our Home Correspondent 21/04/2019
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 21 April 2019
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the latest programme of the monthly series, Mishal Husain introduces dispatches from journalists and writers reflecting the range of contemporary life across the United Kingdom.
Shabnam Grewal grew up near Southall where, forty years ago, the New Zealand-born teacher, Blair Peach, was hit on the head by a police officer and later died. He was taking part in a protest against racism. The west London suburb had already witnessed the racially motivated murder of an Asian teenager. She remembers the tension and fears of the time and reflects on them in the company of her young son.
BBC News presenter, Tanya Beckett, has found herself part of a "Lady in the Van"-style drama - only in her case it's been a man in his fifties and a caravan. She muses on the unexpected connections she's forged with her unconventional neighbour amid the demands of contemporary living for them both.
Martin Bashir, the BBC's Religion Editor, asked about the meaning of Easter, has discovered that pondering a long-held guilty secret has helped him explain the most important festival in the Christian calendar.
Jane Labous in Dorset takes the plunge and goes mermaiding in Blandford Forum and finds out how the swimming craze that involves donning a fin and a tail is found empowering by women swimmers of different ages.
And Dan Whitworth, reporter for Radio 4's Money Box programme, prepares to return home to Sheriff Hutton in North Yorkshire and enjoy the spectacle of the flowers which are synonymous with spring and indicate the thriving nature of the village.
Producer: Simon Coates
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:05.0 | Thank you for downloading from our home correspondent from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:10.0 | I'm Michelle Hussein, and our pieces this time include an on-air confession from our religion |
| 0:15.9 | editor all in the cause of explaining the meaning of Easter. |
| 0:20.9 | We have a Lady in the Van style tale from a correspondent with her own rather |
| 0:25.0 | unconventional neighbour. We've been discovering mermaiding the swimming craze |
| 0:29.8 | with a group in Dorset and there's a Yorkshire village with a rather celebrated host of golden |
| 0:35.6 | daffodils. |
| 0:38.0 | First to the West London suburb of South Hall. |
| 0:41.1 | Tuesday will mark the 40th anniversary of the death of Blair Peach, a teacher who was struck |
| 0:46.4 | by police as he took part in a protest there against racism. |
| 0:51.0 | At the time Southall had already seen the racially motivated murder of an ancient teenager. |
| 0:57.0 | Shabnam Grewell was growing up nearby in the late 1970s and remembers vividly the tension and fear of that period. |
| 1:05.0 | She's been reflecting on it in the company of her young son. |
| 1:09.0 | That's the street, I tell my 10 year old son, |
| 1:12.0 | where a policeman hit a teacher on the head with a |
| 1:15.4 | truncheon and killed him. I hold my breath and wait. What's a truncheon he asks. It's not the question I'm expecting. |
| 1:26.0 | We're on one of a series of historical walks around Southall, commemorating the death in 1979 of Blair Peach, the teacher from New Zealand, and the |
| 1:37.0 | murder of a teenager called Gurdip Chaga in 1976. Though I've never lived in Southall, my mother and I went to the market every Saturday, |
| 1:48.0 | and it's shaped who I am and what I believe. |
| 1:51.0 | And I want my son to understand this history, which is why on a Saturday afternoon he's |
| 1:56.7 | being made to walk past and not into shop selling Somosas, Julebys, bright Indian clothes and plastic toys. He is vaguely |
... |
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