The picture I’ve attached to this message is there as a mark of my huge respect for a truly decent, intelligent, beautiful and pleasant human being who was denied her future and her deserved joy by a despicable, deluded and ignorant savage.
During my first couple of weeks of living in France, I was walking back to my apartment from an evening with my friend, JC, when I came upon an incident. It was one of those times when you think you’re on a film set as, to any decent human being, these situations are normally only ever seen on screen but this was all too real and all too “now”. Amid the crying of a girl in her twenties and the angry shouting of a so-called man, I saw, across the road from me, a guy on the floor being kicked in the head by some savage. Like an idiot, I crossed the road, told the savage “That’s enough” and picked up the guy from the street. I gave neither of them any time to wonder what was happening. I simply took the victim away from that situation and sat him down on a kerb at the earliest safe opportunity. He was bloodied and weeping. I guess I’ll never know whether he was weeping at the fact that he’d lost a fight, the fact that he was physically hurt, the fact that he was in shock, over the woman at the centre of the fracas or at the fact that he’d been hauled out of there by an English git.
I gave him a cigarette and, as best I could a year ago, I talked to him. Gradually, the crying stopped. The fact that he was crying like that was not something I found at all contemptible or shocking. I’m not that shallow. It was quickly clear that he was a decent guy and, like most decent guys, maybe that sort of barbarism didn’t usually invade his existence so why wouldn’t he be shocked and upset? He explained something about a girl but he’d clearly had a shandy or two (to the average Frenchman, the equivalent of 1 ½ bottles of Johnnie Walker 12-yr-old malt) and my understanding of the lingo wasn’t then what is today but, let’s face it, rivalries and conflict in the name of “love” are a universal language in themselves so I didn’t need the details. I asked him how old he was. He was 27. I wish I’d had enough French in my quiver to have been able to find a direct translation for “Fucking hell, Cobber! I don’t even remember 27. Whoever she is, if she’s with a twat like that then she’s beneath you and not worth the pain.” I think he got the drift and, once I knew he wasn’t going to do anything daft (like going back for more) I left him and carried on my merry way, checking beneath the streetlamps that I wasn’t wearing his blood on my clothing as a reward.
It wasn’t until I recounted this tale to a few French bods at the office that I became truly aware of the situation in Law here. As much as it might have been dangerous to do what I did that night, it wasn’t brave or ill-thought-out on my part at all. It was an instantaneous reaction based on a combination of anger at what I was seeing before me and standards which were either always in me as an individual or which were added to my being by parents with good standards themselves. I NEVER court confrontation, partly because I’m not very good at it these days and partly because I’m wise enough to know how futile and unnecessary it almost always is. My French colleagues put me wise to something I’d never even been remotely aware of in that, had I not done what I did that night, I’d have been breaking the law myself! I can’t claim to tell you precisely what the law says as I haven’t yet researched it in detail (I will check it out some time) but the nuts and bolts of it seem to be that, if you’re in France (nb – maybe it’s only “if you’re French”……I’ll check) and you see that someone is in peril and needs help, you are legally obliged to assist. Therefore, that night, it might be the case that, in doing what I did, I was simply doing what I was legally obliged to do, as much as I had no idea of any such obligation at the time.
Is this a “good law”? On the face of it, it seems to be a very “good law”. Something which might also be a “good law” in other countries but………. wait a second……. doesn’t the very need to have a law of that nature constitute something extremely bad in itself? Doesn’t the successful insertion of a law such as this into a “Constitution” say something along the lines of “Without a legal compulsion to act, our citizens will stand by and allow any person to suffer whatever attack or misfortune they may be facing and so we need to make their duty to act a matter of law”?
Would I, now suspecting that I’m subject to obligations under the law, react differently tomorrow to a situation effectively identical to the one which befell on that night a year or so ago? The answer is, of course, a resounding “No, I wouldn’t”. I didn’t NEED to be legally obliged to act. But ask that question of others and you might well find various groups of people, distinct by the nature of their replies. There will be those who, ignorant of the law, would do nothing, keep walking but who, once aware of the law, would feel a duty to act. Well, it’s something, I suppose. There would certainly be a group who, irrespective of their knowledge or ignorance of the laws applicable, would always do nothing to help. (I hope that, when I’m attacked, I’m not surrounded by a group of these!) Then, of course, there will be the ones who, when faced with the same situation, would concentrate on the attacker in the all too predictable style of “mine’s bigger than yours”. These people are far more a part of the problem than of the solution. Of course, I’m very happy to say that I’m not alone in being someone who doesn’t need to be compelled to do the right thing. There are always others but, amidst the violence, lethargy, selfishness and paranoia of our lives today, I’m sad to say that we are, with each passing month, year and generation, rarer.
Laws. What are they? Why are they there? Why are they necessary? What would life be like without them? The very existence of laws is born of the existence of selfish, ignorant scum like the guy doing the kicking that night. By “sheer coincidence”, (not!), I seem to have an understanding of what’s right and acceptable and, of course, what’s not. Not everybody has this understanding and, dear reader, these dregs of humanity are costing you dear in many ways, not just financially. I’ll blog on the true cost of crime in the near future.
In the meantime, in true Nick Ross style, “don’t have nightmares, do sleep well”.
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