Where have all the have-a-go heroes gone?
We have become a walk-on-by society – and the reasons are searingly obvious
Paul Embery is one of the most interesting, insightful and original voices to have emerged in British journalism for some time — Douglas Murray
On a December day back in 1993, I was sauntering through Barking town centre, near to my then home. Suddenly, away to my right, there was some sort of commotion. As I looked along East Street, I saw a man hot-footing it away from an elderly lady, who was screaming after him.
Within seconds, a small band of passersby had started to pursue the man. After hearing someone say that he had stolen the old woman’s purse, I tossed aside the hamburger on which I had been happily chomping and joined the chase.
Being a pretty fit 19-year-old, I was able, alongside another chap, to catch up with the thief within about a hundred yards. The rest of the pack arrived within seconds and, between the lot of us, we retrieved the purse from the fellow’s jacket pocket and bundled him into the local police station (which, fortuitously, happened to be located just a few yards away).
I later gave a statement to the police, and there my involvement ended. I have no idea if the case ever ended up in court.
Barking was, at the time, a low-crime, high-trust town populated by thousands of families whose forebears, like my own, had moved to the Essex borderlands from London’s east end after the slum clearances in the early part of the century. Like many towns of its kind, it was fortified by deep reserves of social solidarity and cohesion. It was only years later that it was rocked by massive and rapid demographic change, causing profound disorientation and bewilderment among local citizens and resulting in the British National party scoring its best ever success in local government elections.
It didn’t at all come as a surprise to me at the time that so many individuals helped in the task of apprehending the purse snatcher. In places such as Barking, where common cultural bonds and a sense of shared purpose had developed over many generations and served to foster a spirit of unity and harmony, that sort of reaction was quite natural – instinctive even.
It was the 1990s, but it seems a lifetime ago. Now, anyone who spends any length of time on social media is almost certain to encounter one of the many videos routinely uploaded there showing crimes being committed across our towns and cities with breathtaking audacity and usually without the slightest hint that any passerby will intervene.
I shall give one example. Earlier this month, a video was posted on ‘X’ (formerly Twitter) showing a gang of thieves, all dressed in black and wearing crash helmets, using an angle grinder to remove a bicycle from a stand outside Maryland railway station in east London. It was broad daylight. The area was busy with commuters and pedestrians, several of whom looked directly at the criminal act occurring under their noses. Yet not one of them stopped to even remonstrate with the culprits, let alone attempt to impede them.
We all know that near-identical incidents play out with alarming frequency throughout our nation daily and with the same indifferent reaction – evidence, if it were needed, of the fact that we are living in a fundamentally different society to the one in which most of us grew up.
I think there are three main reasons for this shift in the public psyche. First, we are, as a nation, far more atomised and fragmented than we were even a decade ago, not least as a result of profound demographic and cultural transformation.
While pockets of Britain can – just about – still boast of low crime rates and decent levels of cohesion, many areas are witnessing the slow process of social disintegration. Study after study has shown that the more diverse a society, the lower the levels of trust and solidarity between its citizens. Uncomfortable though it may be for some to hear, that’s just a bald truth, and we need to be honest enough to recognise it.
Second, I suspect that many would-be have-a-go heroes are persuaded against intervening out of fear they might find themselves on the wrong side of the law. So litigious has our society become, and so obsessed with the rights of the wrongdoer, that it’s a fear that isn’t entirely misplaced.
Third, the glaringly obvious reason. Knives. We live in a knife culture. Thousands of young people carry them about their person routinely, especially in our major cities. That reality is enough to convince most people that it would be unduly risky to get involved when a crime is occurring in their midst.
It’s why security staff in shops and supermarkets don’t apprehend shoplifters, in spite of the massive increase in this type of crime and the sizeable costs to business owners. It’s why staff on the railway and bus networks shy away from confronting fare evaders. It’s why bystanders look on casually as they see muggers stealing the personal property of their victims.
The proliferation of knives on our streets has fundamentally altered the nature of our society. When I helped to nab that purse thief in Barking, it did not occur to me for a second that he would be armed with a blade. I would bet that he wasn’t. But if I found myself in the same scenario today, I would probably bet the other way.
Many will argue that we need to invest in our young people more and give them better opportunities in life – including rewarding work and the chance of a decent home – if we are to divert them away from crime. Well, fair enough. I am all for improving the life chances and living standards of the younger generations. But in the meantime, we cannot ignore the profoundly deleterious impact that knife crime is having in our communities and, more widely, on the social fabric of the nation.
So there are other things that we must do in the shorter term if we are to combat the epidemic. First, there should be a massive expansion of stop and search. In areas prone to high crime, and particularly knife crime, that should extend to ‘suspicionless’ stop and search. We should have no truck with those who would complain that such a measure would affect persons of an ethnic minority background disproportionately. We cannot pussyfoot around or indulge the race lobby on such a vital issue.
Second, there needs to be a punitive minimum custodial sentence for anyone caught with a blade on his person without good reason. Two years would seem reasonable. More where the individual is a repeat offender. If that means government using its massive fiscal capacity to build more prisons, so be it. As things stand, there is barely any deterrent to carrying a knife in public. Offenders know they are unlikely to be caught or, if they are, they will escape with a light prison sentence – and often not even that.
Third, there should be a ban on face coverings in high-crime areas. One of the reasons that so many criminals feel confident about breaking the law these days is that, with their features concealed, there is only the slimmest chance they will be identified and arrested.
Our society is changing too fast, and much for the worse, for us to be squeamish about enacting the radical measures necessary to hit back hard against the knife fiends. Only when we do so might members of the public find themselves willing once more to intervene on the side of law and justice.
A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery
Love reading what Paul has to say, he says it as it is, just what everyone else thinks but frightened to speak out. I really look forward to reading his Substack . There was a time when I would confront anti-social behaviour, but now I would probably think twice.
It starts with things like not feeing free to ask people to behave in a civil manner. In the last couple of years a man was stabbed in the leg in on a south London bus for asking someone to take his feet off the seat. The man was stabbed in the leg for asking this. There were brief headlines, but nothing more. Twenty years ago there would have been national outrage.