May the force be with you...

QUESTION Is it still an offence to fail to go to the aid of a policeman if he calls for your help in, for example, a public order situation?

‘Refusing to aid or assist a constable in the execution of his duty of maintaining or restoring the Queen’s Peace when called upon to do so, if that person is physically capable of rendering such help and has no lawful excuse for so refusing’, is still an offence in Common Law, but is almost never applied.

it has ancient origins. The laws of Aethelstan (927-39) provided that ‘every man who neglects to give such help beyond the border shall forfeit 30 pence or an ox’.

The law’s current definition dates from the case of R v Brown (1841). it was held that when the defendant was requested to assist an officer to quell a riot, it was necessary to prove that the constable had witnessed a breach of the peace being committed, that it was reasonably necessary for the officer to call on the defendant for his assistance and that the defendant had no physical reason or lawful excuse for his refusal.

The scope of a citizen’s duty to assist the police seems limited by the conditions specified in R v Brown. There has been no indication in any case that a person’s duty to assist extends beyond preserving the peace. Over time, this obligation has been eroded and is now treated as a moral or civic obligation and is rarely prosecuted.

Those who do assist are protected by section 89(2) of the Police Act 1996 which makes it an offence for a person to resist or wilfully obstruct a police constable acting in the execution of his duty, or to do likewise in relation to a person assisting the constable in the execution of his duty.

Carol Browning, York.

QUESTION Are any song titles worse than The Statler Brothers’ You Can’t Have Your Kate And Edith Too?

FURTHER to earlier answers, The shadows were the kings of such titles: examples include, genie With The Light Brown Lamp, Theme from A filleted Plaice, Alice in sunderland, i Wish i Could shimmy Like My sister Arthur, The Rise And fall Of flingle Bunt, The fourth Man, hate Of The Wally, national Provincial samba and many others.

Bernard Larkin, Birmingham.