The UK witnessed nation-wide contempt in its first day of new lockdown measures.

In London, 104 citizens were arrested for breaching restrictions as they protested the new government guidelines. The majority of arrests were made on the grounds that protestors were in breach of the new restrictions, which prohibit large numbers of people from gathering.

London’s Metropolitan Police Tweeted in response to the march. “A small group have [sic] gathered in #TrafalgarSquare to protest tonight. Officers are talking with those there and directing them to go home. If they do not, officers will take enforcement action. We remain in a national health crisis and new heightened restrictions have been brought in to limit the spread of Coronavirus.”

However, the police presence was considered disproportionately large when compared with the numbers of protestors.

Meanwhile, in Manchester, university students ripped down “huge metal barriers” that had been erected on campus in order to supposedly limit the spread of Covid-19. A first-year student told the press: “there is fencing around the whole outside, we feel like it’s completely unnecessary. It makes it feel like we’re in a prison”. The university responded by apologising “for the concern and distress caused”.

Meanwhile church service continues to be suspended despite growing pressure on the government from church leaders to revise its regulations. “[W]e have not yet seen any evidence whatsoever that would make the banning of communal worship, with all its human costs, a productive part of combatting the virus,” said Cardinal Vincent Nichols of Westminster and Archbishop Malcolm McMahon OP of Liverpool — respectively President and Vice President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales — in a statement issued Saturday evening in the wake of the announcement. “We ask the government to produce this evidence that justifies the cessation of acts of public worship.”

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