The Arrest of Professor Ennos

A Teacher During Covid #9

The following is an excerpt from a forthcoming novel (filled with realities) called ‘A Teacher During Covid’. It is based on the experiences of a secondary school teacher from 2020 to 2022. None of the extracts are in chronological order.

Before the excerpt, let’s not forget what Covid did. It destroyed lives. Let’s not forget and in aid of that, Common Knowledge are holding an inquiry, The Scottish People’s Inquiry. The first of its type in history. Hear world class experts, victims and survivors on the 22nd February, in Edinburgh. All day, tea, coffee and lunch included. Join us in making history. Ticket here.

A Teacher During Covid

During the second lockdown, Professor Richard Ennos, a professor of Biosciences, with a life dedicated to the subject, is arrested for protesting unfair and illegal measures based on biology.

Professor Ennos was keen to have some kind of public event that challenged lockdown rules. Nothing dramatic, but something symbolic. We [our protest group] settled on a ceilidh. Since all the venues were closed, it would have to be out of doors. There were few places in Edinburgh where many could gather to make any sort of protest, however, outside the Scottish Parliament was one of them. It was supposedly a legally protected ground for protest. Anti-lockdown protests had been held there before and people had gathered unmolested by the police. The numbers at these gatherings had waned as restrictions eased and attendees became bored with the same old speakers who piped the same tune, week after week, to an audience who knew it all anyway.

There was a form of open-air amphitheatre to the east of the parliament building, constructed for the very purpose of public debate. It provided a flat, circular grassed stage with rising stone steps that was propitious as seating to the south side. We could dance on the green arena, cheered on by supporters and proclaim our defiance to the wider public. Gerry, one of the group, had a battery-operated, large, mobile speaker - it was on a trolley - that could connect to a phone and provide us with an easily shifted, easily sequestered sound system.

This simple approach ran through our planned ceilidh. It was not some spectacular show of insurrection. It was an attempt to re-affirm human connection through dissenting dance. Let’s face it, the Puritans must have hated it for some reason. And there was much about Nicola Sturgeon’s New World Order that stank of a digitally and legalistically enforced Puritanism. The BBC was recommending wearing masks during sex and publishing graphic graphics of the less infectious sexual positions. No doubt, scientifically tested by BBC interns, of course. The implication that sex was dangerous and that we were being discouraged from carnal relations was clear. Another step in trying to estrange us from one another. However, no one on our side was proposing an orgy as a form of audacious opposition. It was too cold. This would be a measured act of protest that brought a little pleasure and fun to those cut off from one another.

It was a pared-back ceilidh. We put it on Facebook to make people aware; it was not a large, well-promoted event. All we hoped was that a few members of the community turned-up. Nonetheless, in spite of the low key advertising, it turned out to be probably the most media-attended ceilidh in Scottish history. When I turned-up at Holyrood, all the Scottish, and some UK, media were there: The Sun, The Record, The Express, The Mail, STV, BBC and more. There was either a photographer, a journalist or a film crew from each of them. They were continually taking photos of us or filming us. It was unnerving. It was intimidating. Some of our community felt the pressure and had balked appearing in public, which was a little disappointing. Nonetheless, there was a decent number in attendance to make a dance viable on this freezing cold, clear day, our grassed stage laced with frost. There were more than three…around thirty of us.

I wondered what appeal this could hold for the media? Possibly because we were giving faces to this shadowy group called ‘Anti-vaxxers’. This might attract clicks from readers wishing to indulge their subjugated rage. Was it wise? The scapegoating of dissenters was amassing a head of steam. We were proving that we existed. To the closed minds of the ‘Sheeple’, we would seem wilful, reckless and probably wantonly murderous. I could imagine them, spitting venom, their hatred burning like glowing hot coals.

‘No bailing out now,’ I thought when I saw the wall of media gathered next to the steps of the amphitheatre. A wall of camera lenses. It was like the droves of paparazzi seen at large celebrity events, all grouped tightly together, their long-lensed cameras jutting out from the corporate body like porcupine quills, or, since they pointed in one direction alone, at where we were standing, like rifles on an embankment. We were in their sights, and they were already firing at will, even before the dancing had begun. Recording everyone of us. Intelligence servi…Argh! Stop being paranoid! It’ll be fine. Fine.

There was a lot of fiddling around with the speaker delaying the start. I think many in our usually clandestine group were nervous. The media were not there alone. Several police vans sat sinisterly a couple of hundred metres away at the gates of Holyrood Palace. Dark, hulking officers could be seen sitting in them. There were numerous individual police officers placed tactically around the area we were busily converting into an open air dance hall. Surreptitiously, innocuously, they had created a cordon. They were constantly milling around, back and forth, just behind the amphitheatre. Their yellow high-vis with their black uniforms and their constant hovering gave a waspish threat. An officer by the roadside, who seemed to be coordinating operations, was glued to his radio. He was continually raising his head from a lowered, eyes on the pavement position, swivelling it around to observe us, then returning to speak intently into his phone, doubtless focusing on relating developments, I assume, to the sergeant on duty. Discussing, I presume again, whether to pre-emptively arrest people or to allow us to break the rules, then make arrests. The a couple of the police vans parked not at the gates but on the road and the car park further away were the type used to house multiple detainees.

Eventually, the speaker worked. Sound blurted out. Suddenly, there was life on this cold grey day. Familiar Scottish sounds carried across the grassy knolls of Holyrood. Richard turned round wearing a determined expression. ‘Right, let’s go,’ he said undaunted. We hesitated. He asked one of our braver members to dance and they both sprung into the grass arena, Scottish music pounding out from the speaker. What the hell. I turned to the woman next to me who I knew only slightly from meetings and asked if she’d like to dance. She did, and laughingly, she accompanied me onto the grass, although I was much more grim-faced than my partner, resenting the journalist-parasites who would portray us as ‘nutters’ the next day but not write a sentence that questioned all this madness. The wall of cameras to the east clicked away like Pasimachi, and beetled around each other to take better shots. Ignoring them, we marched to the Scottish cadences; Richard calling out the moves. Still the photographers clicked and clicked away. If anything they became more frenzied as if the clicks themselves were the hysterical but impotent tuts of the conformist class. Yet, regardless of the attention and the possibility of being ‘outed’ in the media, more found their courage and joined in. There were at least a half-dozen couples dancing within a couple of minutes.

It wasn’t cold; it was arctic. We managed to do a few spins and reels, a few turns, for a handful of songs. It was good fun. We swapped partners and chatted. More people joined in. It took less than a couple of minutes to become accustomed to the press pack and for their presence and threat to become negligible. They changed their positions and their angles. In themselves, as people, they were harmless; they’d just take photos of whatever would sell. I spoke to one afterwards and he ended-up showing me the entire gallery of photos he took. There were hundreds. He’d taken about seventy of me alone. He cheerfully took me through all the ones he took of me, pointing out the ones which he thought were good. He was seemingly oblivious to the possibility that this could lose me my job, turn me into a social pariah and finger me as a minor figure in opposition to a global tyranny, which could result in charges, imprisonment and being kicked to death in a camp by a troop of mask wearing goons.

‘See that, that’s a good one,’ he said enthusiastically, indicating one in which my full face was turned to the camera. What a callous bastard! He’s pleased with himself too!

‘Yes, that’s great.’ He was tone deaf to my supercilious agreement. My sarcasm was developing to another level in line with my incredulity at others’ amaurotic behaviour. I’d probably end-up thanking the guards in the camp who dished out the beatings. Ironically, of course. It’d be lost on them too.

The police were a withdrawn but ominous presence. The majority remained partly submerged in the surroundings, like crocodiles, under the trees and inadequately hidden by the low sweeping branches, or they lurked at inauspicious distance in the open spaces. They waited, menacingly. A few roamed slowly and separately around the invisible perimeter they’d marked around the amphitheatre. They intermittently gathered together in pairs, whispered to each other, then parted to patrol around us once more. We were in the middle of a very loose-fitting net whose mesh could be drawn narrow quite quickly if the officers surrounding us, augmented by those sitting in the vans, and, I had no doubt, those circulating nearby, but whose presence was not made known in case it either frightened us away or was seen as too provocative, were called to act. All this time, the more senior officer appeared to continue to exhaustively relate all happenings to his own senior.

My father was a policeman, so I am generally quite positive about the police. I’ve benefitted personally from their generosity and sense of honour many times. I have witnessed distressing situations where the police have had to intervene: they have always done so bravely and compassionately. I am aware of how difficult, sometimes loathsome, a fraction of society can be. I am aware when it comes to political protests that there is nearly always a vociferous, agitated element that are unreasonable, making demands well beyond legitimate rights, and I understood that the police had a job to do that day.

Nonetheless, I don’t believe the intimidating, skulking manner in which the Scottish police conducted themselves that day was their finest hour. They were obviously waiting until the media started to drift off before making arrests. Pointless arrests. I had shallow concerns I’d be reported to the Education Authorities, then be up before the GTCS on a fitness to teach charge. I felt I could handle that. An arrest would be more difficult as it would probably mean the Council would become involved. Yet these were far off fears. There would have to be a proper investigation, taking months or even years. I was sanguine about these eventualities. I was more pre-occupied by an arbitrary arrest at night and transfer to a prison. That was not on the cards, today at least.

A photograph in the newspaper would be more complicated. Parents might, probably would, demand some sort of punishing consequence. Tensions around Covid were not always apparent but latent and ever-present, and could erupt in spectacular and ugly ways. Parents, teachers and vulnerable groups would howl in outrage, baying for me to be removed from a position of responsibility. Scotland’s a small place. Something like this could quickly become political and before I’d know it, the deranged Tartan Cassandra, Sturgeon herself, would be invested in my case – calling me out publicly to strengthen her policy and provide an example to others - possibly demanding that I be struck off.

I should have been more worried, but the looming prospect of life in a Scottish gulag was far more unsettling than losing a job, but, as it happened, the police were not interested in a small fish like me. They wanted Richard. As a Professor of Biosciences, Richard gave credibility to the protest movement in the eyes of the public that few others did. They wanted to intimidate him and scare him off.

Richard was a genuine expert. He had worked on viruses. He had spent his life studying varying aspects of biology. He could read scientific papers…and knowledgeably identify flaws. He was prepared to speak out, angered by the traducing of science and to defend the importance of genuine scientific inquiry. He was not like so, so many scientists who repeatedly shamed themselves by their pre-determined conclusions that they publicised during the Covid Hoax – arrived at by the money on offer to write the paper and the doors it kept open to them. For Richard, the scientific method was inviolable – it was profane to tailor your findings by using sloppy assumptions, unmethodical experiments or false data, all deliberately, having been bought off for wonga. For Richard, this was sacrilege. This was an outrage.

He wasn’t naïve. As a university professor at Edinburgh, a place regularly visited by ill-willed individuals and corporations to check on the progress of their substantial investments, he knew how grants, competition between projects, fake claims, incorporation of findings for profit - despite funding hitherto by the taxpaying citizen - and subsidised ideology had infected science. The corpus of knowledge, the disinterested pursuit and expansion of for the benefit of all mankind, which is the goal of any self-respecting university, was riddled with a malign disease. Self-seeking fame, power and profit.

We also had an immunologist and a doctor in our group. No one listened to them or their arguments in the public world, at the moment. This was the problem for the censors. Men and women like Richard and a few others were beginning to pick-up something of a profile. They were organising. People might start to listen, especially if lockdown continued.

Richard had appeared in the newspapers, spoken at rallies and been interviewed by a couple of the alternative community’s high-profile podcasters. He was too self-effacing to acknowledge this, but he was well-known. Many celebrities knew of him; many opposed to lockdowns were following him. The police knew him well too, as I found out later, and I’m sure higher authorities were aware of him.

Whether this influenced the police’s decision, I don’t know for certain, but I had noticed that the eyes of the officers were drawn to him more than to the rest of us. They must have identified him before the operation. Attempting some misinformation on our part, and as the lowering temperature and draining light drove people from the grass, the police were told that the event had been organised by a ‘Peter’ who had left. They ignored this. They showed no interest in Gerry or his speaker, which would be an obvious place to start if they wanted to send a message by stopping the ceilidh. No, they wanted Richard. And as the ceilidh started to wind-up in the chill afternoon, the police presence seemed to wander less around the grass arena and started to cluster at the paths that provided possible exits with officers positioned in the spaces between.

The fact that the police were looking for the organiser meant we tried to draw our wagons around Richard and use deception and distraction to allow him to get away. He had come on a bike with a luminous, high-vis jacket. Someone put on their own luminous jacket and walked off in it, in the hope that would confuse the officers since Richard was becoming more and more obviously the focus of attention. The dark, shadowed officials in the encroaching twilight began to close in upon his person alone. He tried to slip away. But they knew the man they wanted.

As Richard left the amphitheatre, a couple of officers confronted him and grabbed him by the wrists. What ensued was a prolonged, restrained but forceful nonetheless, tug of war, as the police slowly pulled Richard towards a police van across the road at Holyrood car park. Throughout his ‘arrest’ Richard literally dug his heels in, making it difficult for the officers to move him without increasing their number and the pressure applied on his frame to shift him onward – they did increase the amount of officers and were pushing him and pulling him along.

Meanwhile, a crowd of supporters gathered round claiming that ‘Peter’ had organised this and he was now gone. I hung back with J. Unfortunately, once the police had targeted Richard, I accepted his arrest as inevitable. What would be worse was further arrests, which would happen if people got too worked-up. We’d inevitably be smeared. Undignified Protest. Troublemakers. Anti-vax idiots. Our objections to the police were having much effect: it would be better to stand back, have a moral victory which can be relayed when we described what happened later. The politician in me calculated that if Richard was arrested, with the media present, then the detaining of a Biology Professor protesting Covid measures might not be a bad article to have in a newspaper or on a website. Not my finest thought.

Slowly Richard was managed to the police van’s doors at the back. The crowd were outspoken but not physical or threatening. They started to chant ‘Shame on you!’ at the officers. The constables ignored them and loaded Richard into the back of the van. It was caged, darkened recesses which they pushed him into; but before they could shut the door, Richard turned round, forced himself forward and leaned out beyond the frame of the cage and the gaping van doors. There was still a fading sun and its last beams of dying light illuminated him as he emerged from the blackness, looked at the small crowd and shouted, ‘Scotland will be free!’. The small group around the back of the van erupted, cheered their acclaim and applauded. He was quickly pushed back into the cage by the gloved hands of the Law. The cage shut. Locked with a click. And the van doors slammed on him.

The police vehicle with Richard inside drove off to hold and process him at St. Leonard Street station. It was about a mile or so away. Therefore, we all collectively marched up there and held a brief vigil for the Holyrood One. After some chanting and some singing, we started to drift off as word got out that Richard would not be released till 6pm, but that he would definitely be released. The policewoman who conveyed this was, the person telling me said, ‘sympathetic’. The police that I did see at the station gave an impression of being ever so slightly shame faced. Although, I might have been imagining it. Hoping that was the case.

The country of the Enlightenment put in a caged police van one of the only scientists with any decency and honour in the whole land. Shame on Scotland! Shame on the half-wit Sturgeon and her demented, clueless lackeys! And all those in government, science and politics in this country!

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