To Kill a Mocking Bird - thought for the day for Southwark 18th August 2026

One of the particular pleasures of finding myself back in London at this stage of life is that I feel able to engage with the huge range of culture that is there, just a bus ride away Last time round, in my twenties, I somehow lacked the courage – though I did have 2 memorable years with a season ticket to the Proms. Now, however, I’m doing all that I can to catch up with myself – so last night we went en famille to see  the stage adaptation of To Kill a Mocking Bird.

You’re probably familiar with the story – but just in case…To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel written in the 1960s, amid the struggles of the US Civil Rights movement by Harper Lee, but set in the mid-1930s in the small town of Maycomb, Alabama. It is narrated by Scout Finch, a six-year-old tomboy who lives with her lawyer father Atticus and older brother Jem. 

While the book includes far more about growing up in that context, the play by Aaron Sorkin majors on the second part of Lee's work, and the trial of Tom Robinson,  a black man wrongly accused of raping a white woman, whom Atticus agrees to defend. The inherent racism of small town America at this time means that justice just doesn’t stand a chance. Simply to look at the jury of respectable white citizens is to know the inevitable verdict, regardless of any evidence to the contrary… 

Although Atticus’s defense is strong, Tom is convicted, and he is later killed while trying to escape custody…a death compared to “the senseless slaughter of songbirds,” which echoes Atticus’s comment to his children that it is “a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

Like the book, the play is extremely powerful and equally painful. 

What made last night yet more remarkable, though, was the fact that to reach Wyndham’s Theatre we had to walk through Trafalgar Square, shortly before the vigil for Jason Arday

My friend  Ayla, who was part of the evening described it thus

"30,000 people. Silence, music, words of kindness and solidarity, and so many flowers. Artists, musicians, MPs, activists, friends, colleagues. Every person gathered because we all know that racist cruelty and violence need to end. Pauli Murray said that ‘hope is a song in a weary throat’."

Whether or not the allegations of plagiarism that led to his resignation are founded on  truth, there seems to be no doubt whatsoever that Professor Ardhay was hounded in the media in ways that would be intolerable for anyone, - most of all someone made vulnerable by their neuro divergence. 

When this treatment is compared with that meted out to other academics facing similar allegations, most of whom have continued their careers unscathed, it is impossible not to believe that the media witch hunt arose because Jason Ardhay was not only neuro divergent but black.

I won't labour the point further. Atticus Finch is an optimist, encouraging his children to respect their neighbours however abhorrent their views, to try to empathise by imagining themselves in the skin or those whom they would otherwise fear, tobelieve that there is good in everyone. He's right of course -for each of us is made in the image of  God, so that stepping from the fictional world to that gathering in Trafalgar Square, those many Christians present there, and each of us as we pray, should ask for the grace not to demonise anyone, even those who seem responsible for Ardhays untimely death 

But we need, too, to ask for the strength and courage to speak out against ANYTHING that seems to dehumanize any individual or group. Last nights play ends with a reminder of that verse from ps30

Weeping may endure for the night but joy cometh in the morning...

We need to weep...but we need to work so that these words may be true in our time...despite the gathering shadows of the far right and those who provide fuel for their thinking.

Weeping...

so I'm clinging to the reminder from the Benedictus

In the tender compassion of our God ...