BRITAIN IS A DANGEROUS PLACE FOR HAVE-A-GO HEROES
DILEMMA: Should we turn a blind eye to thugs or step in and help?
By Frederick Forsyth
FOLLOWING the beating to death in Norwich of Frank McGarahan, the old argument has been revived again: have a go or mind your own business and walk on by?
Some ministers say one thing, others the reverse.
The same applies to senior police spokesmen. But what no one does is point to the long list of law-abiding, tax-paying people who, driven finally by constant thuggery and official apathy to utter despair, hit out and end up being treated like Jack The Ripper.
Let me postulate a horribly feasible scenario. Like Mr McGarahan, you are coming home perfectly sober from a meeting with friends. Like him, you see a couple of snarling thugs setting about a cowering pedestrian.
The victim may be a homeless Lithuanian (as in Norwich) or a woman clinging to her precious handbag, or a girl fearful of being raped, or a householder asking for peace and quiet. (All these have been victims over the past couple of years).
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You are up against two street yobs who are swearing that you launched an unprovoked assault.
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Does anyone in authority honestly think you are going to stand there saying: “I am performing a citizen’s arrest upon you both and I require you to stand still until the arrival of the police, whom I am now calling on my mobile?” Only if you really want to die, for the thugs will have hours before the fuzz arrive from their form-filling.
So you “have a go”. Let us suppose you are a bit useful with the dukes; you land a haymaker on Thug One and down he goes. Black eye, sore jaw, whatever.
And round the corner come 10 of the bold gendarmes. They find Thug One in the gutter counting stars and you standing over him with a grazed right fist. Now you are really in trouble.
In politically correct modern Britain you will certainly be clapped in irons, whisked off to Form-Filling Central and slung in a cell. Thug One will be assisted to an ambulance and thence to hospital. The person you tried to save seems to have done a runner.
Let me cut it short. Charged with assault causing actual bodily harm, you are up against two street yobs who are swearing that you launched an unprovoked assault. Your full name and address will, as of right, be given to them. If their mates don’t go round and terrorise your family, or even torch the place, you will be damned lucky.
You have assets so you will not get legal aid. For a year the stress of the pending trial will make your life a misery. The thugs will be handed leaflets on post-trauma therapy; you will get offers of counselling in anger management.
At your trial, which has so far cost you £10,000 in defence lawyer fees, you will be lectured by a judge who lives in leafy suburbia on the gross irresponsibility of taking the law into your own hands. (I tell no lies; this has happened over and again). If the jury acquits you, you leave the court a free man; but probably a shattered one. Job gone, savings gone, home vandalised. You think it’s over? No chance.
Under the new “no win, no fee” lawyer system, some ambulance chaser will offer his services to Thug One for free. I mean the civil suit against you for damages. There is up to £100,000 waving in the wind for a black eye.
Of course, you will have to pay your own defence; there is no chance of a fee for defending someone in a civil tribunal. It’s a share of the damages award the ambulance chaser is after.
When the second (civil) trial is over, you are well and truly bankrupt for life. Still, you did the right thing. Such a pity the authorities treated you like a criminal and the thug like a victim.
We Brits would not be so frightened of the street thugs if we knew we had the total support of the authorities. But we do not. In our Brave New World the authorities persecute us as much as the yobs.
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REPLY TO TIFF
16.10.08, 1:07pm
TIFF,You quote Brown,s policy,s and state ments,which is fair comment and I accept are also true,all these statements could equally apply to Blair,neither of these two would have got within a mile of Downing Street if I had had anything to do with it.The trouble with the country now is thanks to the rabid policy,s enacted by Thatcher in the eighties the country does,nt make things any more thanks to her manufacturing went tits up,all we do now to make a few quid is stare into a damned computor screen and the events of the past few weeks seem to prove we can,t even do that.I would like to say merry Christmas TIFF but I fear for an awful lot of poeple it will be anything but
• Posted by: bootty • Report Comment
THE DANGERS OF INDIGNATION
15.10.08, 7:17pm
The trouble with the modern drug addicted moronic paranoidal creep is that all his brainpower is exemplified by his fists and his nether regions, and something similar is happeneing to the females of the ilk too. And this brings about a bloodbath of violence that is fuelled by a mindset normal people just don't have. I have come across scenes where I would have intervened out of a violated sense of fair play, but the odds are stacked so high against success it's better to move on and keep yourself safe. It certainly isn't cowardice, just good sense. These slimeballs are out to destroy if fronted, to beat someone beyond hope. I regard them as a cancer, most of them are young - hence youthenasia as a final deterrant.
• Posted by: bluenote • Report Comment
TORY FAT CATS
15.10.08, 2:41pm
Hey booty (9:15am) ! Where have you been for the past 11 years?
Labour has been in power since 1997 don't you know? They have been calling the shots to the banking and financial industries and Brown used to boast of his wonderful achievements with them.
Remember his immortal words at the despatch box, "No more boom and bust under New Labour" when he was Chancellor? Hailed as the greatest of all time by the labour loveys. Yet you still lay the blame with the tory fat cats. Hello! Compared to these money grabbing politicians the fat cats are mere **** cats. But like all sickening socialists, you ignore your bad events like the plague and try to divert attention to the positive ones. A very hard job for you now as there just ain't that many around are there?
The sooner this garbage of a government is dumped in a landfill project, the better for my country.
• Posted by: Tiff • Report Comment
WE SHOULD ADOPT USA DEFENSE LAWS
13.10.08, 8:19am
Americans have been
down this road.
Their milestones
were cases like
Kitty Genovese
and Bernard Getz.
They did the only sensible thing--
aprrove a substantial right to
self-defense,
'defense of others',
and the 'castle doctrine'.
In some states,
where they are allowed
concealed weapons,
crime drops substantially,
replaced by an
'outbreak of civility'.
Seems we now have the problems
that they've had for a long time.
How many Brits will
die
be assaulted
go to prison for defending themselves
or have a criminal record
before we have the courage to admit
that we are being destroyed
not only by yobs
but by those whose duty
is to protect us.
Time for MAJOR changes.
• Posted by: SammieHall • Report Comment
THE DANGER INCREASES.
12.10.08, 12:51pm
Of the two main paths to travel, give me capialism every time. The ugliness that prevails today has only been nourished by the weak brains of the left. NOBODY today wants discipline, kids adults, financial services etc. The regulators have been swallowing amazing salaries for longer than I've been born, and all they've done is regulate their own house bills.The Tory government, when they get in next time must get tough and unpopular in order to bring not just efficiency to our system, but good old TRUST, which today is a sour joke.
• Posted by: bluenote • Report Comment
NOTHING WRONG WITH CAPITALISM
12.10.08, 9:10am
I tell you what Forsyth I,ve read some crap in my time but your article about nothing wrong with capitalism just about fills the pan.Nothing wrong hey Fred,tell that to the poor bastards who put their trust and hard earned money in banks and institutions run by your tory fat cat mates not one of whom has had the balls to come on television and say Sorry folks I made a complete bugger up,and even in that bastion of free enterprise the USA it took a congressional commitee to force one of these towrags to come and say he was sorry ,Oh and I forgot this was after trousering $350,000,000 the previous year.Perhaps it is time we had something similar here.What say you Fred?
• Posted by: bootty • Report Comment
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