The Petri Dish: Compare and Contrast

The Petri Dish: Compare and Contrast

A few days ago I wrote about the 100^th anniversary of the Tottenham Outrage. Yesterday, Rachel Lucas wrote of the Oldham Outrage:

A judge has hailed the heroism of an 83-year-old war veteran who tackled a gunman during a robbery at a bookmakers while nine other men stood by.

Sidney Bannister, who served with the Royal Artillery Corps during World War II, put 30-year-old robber Henry Rockson in a headlock.

But the pensioner's calls for assistance met a wall of silence and up to nine other men in the shop - most far younger than Mr Bannister - stood by as Rockson smashed him twice in the head with the butt of the gun.

The robber escaped with at least £250 and later carried out a further string of armed raids.

Mr Bannister, a retired HGV driver, needed stitches for a head wound.

The nine other men should need treatment for removal of boots from their asses.

Mr. Bannister comments:

'I wasn't being brave that day - I just acted on human instinct which I would have hoped most men have.

'I had seen this man raise a gun at a woman and grab some money ... and when he started to make a run for it I just thought, "Why should he be allowed to get away with it?"

'People don't want to get involved these days. In my day we were brought up to have a go and not be a shrinking violet when we saw something happening that was very wrong.'

To (re)quote Robert Peel's Seventh Principle of Modern Policing (c. 1829):

Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

As I stated previously:

Britain today represents a perfect example of the pacifist culture in control, because that culture doesn't really distinguish between violent and predatory and violent but protective - it sees only violent. Their worldview is divided between violent and non-violent, or passive. There is an exception, a logical disconnect if you will, that allows for legitimate violence - but only if that violence is committed by sanctioned officials of the State. And even there, there is ambivalence. If violence is committed by an individual there is another dichotomy: If the violence is committed by a predator, it is the fault of society in not meeting that predator's needs. The predator is the creation of the society, and is not responsible for the violence. He merely needs to be "cured" of his ailment. If violence is committed by a defender, it is a failure of the defender to adhere to the tenets of the pacifist society. It is the defender who is at fault because he has lived by the rules and has chosen to break them, and who must therefore be punished for his transgression.

Obviously I'm taking this example to its extreme. Certainly the pacifist culture in Britain hasn't taken over completely, but it is, without a doubt, the motivating factor behind the last fifty-plus years of ever more stringent controls on weapons and violent behavior.

"Certainly the pacifist culture hasn't taken over completely . . ."

Read the comments.

The difference is now, apparently, moot. From the unremarkable to the unimaginable in 100 years.

(Formerly) Great Britain, indeed.