McGarahan was standing in a taxi queue on a Norwich street, the next he had embarked on an act of mercy that led to his death
One moment 45-year-old Mr McGarahan was standing in a taxi queue on a Norwich street, the next he had embarked on an act of mercy that led to his death. He saw someone being assaulted and went to their assistance - the kind of action that was once held to be a virtue in our society but is now widely regarded as folly. He was set upon by drunken thugs, badly beaten and taken to hospital, where he died after a traumatic cardiac arrest. His bravery was instinctive and admirable, and it cost him his life.His case might have been just another crime statistic, except that Mr McGarahan was a leading figure in the banking world, in charge of more than 7,000 staff, managing the assets of some of the world's wealthiest people. An assault which, in the East End of London, in Moss Side, Toxteth or Easterhouse, Glasgow would barely have merited a paragraph, became headline news. For most of those who read it, the story must have confirmed a gut feeling that the country is in the grip of random violence, and that on no street in our towns and cities are we safe from assault, fuelled by drink or drugs, with knives or even guns an occupational hazard.
Yet his death coincided with the issue yesterday of figures from Scotland, which showed that violent crime has dropped to its lowest level for 25 years, and these in turn follow statistics from the British Crime Survey in July, which demonstrated that the risk of being a victim of crime has fallen from 24 per cent to 22 per cent, the lowest level recorded since the survey began in 1981. For most middle-class citizens, violent crime in Britain is a rarity, more rare indeed than it has been for a generation. That may be why a grim assault of the kind that led to the death of Mr McGrahan is so shocking. But it does not explain why the generally accepted perception that we live in a violent society is so deep rooted
That may be because in some places the perception is an accurate one. The uncomfortable truth is that we live in a society divided by postcode. For those who inhabit the secure world of middle-class Britain, in the suburbs or inner-city enclaves where the height of drama is a failure to empty the wheelie-bins, violent crime is sufficiently unusual for most of us to get through life without ever encountering it directly. We may catch a whiff of it late at night as the crowds pour out of a rowdy nightclub, or find ourselves crossing the road smartly to avoid a sinister-looking gang on the street corner, but we are still shielded to a remarkable extent from the harsh reality of crime.In other places, by contrast, it has become ingrained in daily life. Most burglaries, most assault, most knife or gun crime, most domestic violence takes place in areas of high unemployment, rundown housing and broken families, which feature on every known index of social deprivation. In places such as Moss Side, Manchester, where the combination of drugs, gangs and racial divisions have, over the years, created a culture of crime, it is almost routine to expect that a gang of youths will be armed.
In Glasgow's meaner housing estates, the expectation that at least one member of a street-corner gang is carrying a “blade” has become so well established that it is not considered worth reporting, and police fight a losing battle in communities that are ruled by a fear of retaliation from criminal elements. There are communities in South London where drugs are the common currency and where some young people have dropped off every known social register to form an underclass that is almost unreachable by the statutory bodies that should be monitoring them.
In places like these, to report that crime is in decline becomes meaningless. The figures that may suggest a percentage point down here or there collide with the grim facts of daily life; here, perception and reality are one and the same. They rarely impinge, however, on the better-off areas that may sometimes adjoin them. Unlike cities such as Johannesburg, where crime is so all-embracing that, to survive at all, it is necessary to retreat behind high fences and barbed-wire barricades, Britain retains social divisions that demarcate between areas high in crimes of violence, and others that are relatively free of it. From time to time, of course, these two societies collide - by accident, perhaps, by mistake sometimes, through some vicious burglary, fuelled by drink and drugs - or, when a decent human being like Frank McGarahan assumes that the rules that govern his world also apply in the other. That, sadly, is an assumption that none of us can any longer make with impunity. To intervene on behalf of a fellow citizen at risk is a fine thing to do. It may, on the other hand, be just too dangerous.
Yet his death coincided with the issue yesterday of figures from Scotland, which showed that violent crime has dropped to its lowest level for 25 years, and these in turn follow statistics from the British Crime Survey in July, which demonstrated that the risk of being a victim of crime has fallen from 24 per cent to 22 per cent, the lowest level recorded since the survey began in 1981. For most middle-class citizens, violent crime in Britain is a rarity, more rare indeed than it has been for a generation. That may be why a grim assault of the kind that led to the death of Mr McGrahan is so shocking. But it does not explain why the generally accepted perception that we live in a violent society is so deep rooted
That may be because in some places the perception is an accurate one. The uncomfortable truth is that we live in a society divided by postcode. For those who inhabit the secure world of middle-class Britain, in the suburbs or inner-city enclaves where the height of drama is a failure to empty the wheelie-bins, violent crime is sufficiently unusual for most of us to get through life without ever encountering it directly. We may catch a whiff of it late at night as the crowds pour out of a rowdy nightclub, or find ourselves crossing the road smartly to avoid a sinister-looking gang on the street corner, but we are still shielded to a remarkable extent from the harsh reality of crime.In other places, by contrast, it has become ingrained in daily life. Most burglaries, most assault, most knife or gun crime, most domestic violence takes place in areas of high unemployment, rundown housing and broken families, which feature on every known index of social deprivation. In places such as Moss Side, Manchester, where the combination of drugs, gangs and racial divisions have, over the years, created a culture of crime, it is almost routine to expect that a gang of youths will be armed.
In Glasgow's meaner housing estates, the expectation that at least one member of a street-corner gang is carrying a “blade” has become so well established that it is not considered worth reporting, and police fight a losing battle in communities that are ruled by a fear of retaliation from criminal elements. There are communities in South London where drugs are the common currency and where some young people have dropped off every known social register to form an underclass that is almost unreachable by the statutory bodies that should be monitoring them.
In places like these, to report that crime is in decline becomes meaningless. The figures that may suggest a percentage point down here or there collide with the grim facts of daily life; here, perception and reality are one and the same. They rarely impinge, however, on the better-off areas that may sometimes adjoin them. Unlike cities such as Johannesburg, where crime is so all-embracing that, to survive at all, it is necessary to retreat behind high fences and barbed-wire barricades, Britain retains social divisions that demarcate between areas high in crimes of violence, and others that are relatively free of it. From time to time, of course, these two societies collide - by accident, perhaps, by mistake sometimes, through some vicious burglary, fuelled by drink and drugs - or, when a decent human being like Frank McGarahan assumes that the rules that govern his world also apply in the other. That, sadly, is an assumption that none of us can any longer make with impunity. To intervene on behalf of a fellow citizen at risk is a fine thing to do. It may, on the other hand, be just too dangerous.
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