Thank God for passers-by who get stuck in
What does courage look like in 21st-century Britain? In an age in which fatuous celebrity challenges are staged in the Australian jungle for our nightly entertainment, what constitutes a genuine hero?
On Friday we found out. As knife-carrying jihadist Usman Khan set out on his killing spree, there was chaos, fear and hysteria among those who instinctively, rightly ran to safety. And yet there were others who stood firm, who gave no thought to their own lives as they fought back and sought to save others. Two people were killed and three injured; it is thanks to the selflessness of strangers determined to disarm and bring down the attacker that the toll of victims was not higher.
Bravery has many faces: Lucasz, a Polish chef wielding a 5ft narwhal tusk; Stevie and Thomas, London tour guides who leapt from their car and ran towards the assailant; an as-yetnameless man who grabbed a fire extinguisher and used it to tackle him to the ground; the passers-by who jumped over the central reservation and piled on top of convicted terrorist Khan, forcing him to release his knives, before kicking and carrying them away.
When the police arrived, these men did not retreat. Even when Khan was rolled over, revealing what appeared to be a suicide vest (it turned out to be a fake), they did not flinch and remained on guard – one had to be forcefully pulled from him by officers before they opened fire.
Lucasz had been working at Fishmongers’
Hall, the Grade II-listed building where a University of Cambridge conference on prisoner rehabilitation was being held. It was here that Khan began his deadly assault – prompting the chef to pluck the narwhal tusk from the wall and use it as a weapon.
Even when he was stabbed himself, he continued to battle with Khan. In the grainy footage of the incident we see him confronting him with what appears to be a long white stick; eventually that narwhal tusk will become an icon of courage in popular culture, but not yet, not today.
Today there are dead to mourn, injured to nurse and shockwaves running through a city and a nation as we realise the hateful, hatefilled enemies within are still plotting our destruction.
None of us know how we would react in such a horrifying scenario. The advice on the Metropolitan Police website is to run, hide and tell. It makes sense. Have-a-go heroes can pose a risk to themselves and others, and official guidelines could never counsel the public to place themselves in harm’s way.
But for those courageous individuals who intervened on London Bridge, fight not flight was their instinctive reaction. In defending the vulnerable and the frightened, they embodied the best of what the British way of life represents.
“I was brought up on rugby and the rule is ‘one in, all in’,” Thomas said, afterwards. “I did what any Londoner would do and tried to put a stop to it.”
We might urge our nearest and dearest to get the hell out of a violent situation. But we must also thank God that not all bystanders stand by.
In defending the vulnerable, they embodied the best of the British way of life