Listen / Read
Well, don’t I feel morally repugnant. Because if you click on the ‘gubbins’ link above you’ll see that I joyously provided linkage to Victoria Coren’s latest column, which pretty much sums up the same attitudes Tilby was condemning. I even said “she was asking for it”. Shame on me. I’ll never be able to look Aquinas in the eye again.
Is it really necessary to say that of course I don’t think Buchanan deserved to be pushed off the platform to her almost death? Of course I don’t think that. Of course I’m not on the side of the sort of people who would do that sort of thing. And no, I don’t think she deserved that, not that. Not any sort of physical violence or verbal abuse (well, perhaps some verbal abuse).
The men were breaking the law which prohibits smoking on train platforms all over England. They were in the wrong and they reacted abhorrently when asked to extinguish. But a police source said “She turned round and told them to grow up, and they pushed her. She stumbled backwards and fell on to the track. We don’t think they meant to push her on there. They were as surprised as she was.” This wasn’t a case of attempted murder. If she had stumbled and fell on the platform, this wouldn’t be national news. As it happens, she was a bit close to the edge, and she fell off it and could very have well died.
If it wasn’t Linda, but Larry, Lloyd or Lembit Buchanan, the story would be a different one. It wasn’t a man who confronted the law flouting, cancer-stick pricks, because most men would think twice before doing so. As a man, to tell another man (certainly two men) what to do in that way would be something I’d quite be reluctant to do.
Personally, I wouldn’t be inclined to tell someone, male or female, on a train platform to put their cigarette out. Passive smoking isn’t honestly something I much care about. I find smoking unpleasant and I wouldn’t want to be sat in a restaurant eating a meal with some cunt at the next table blowing smoke at me. No non-smoker has ever appreciated that. And I was glad when smoking was banned in pubs, it makes your clothes stink. But on a train platform in the open air? I really couldn’t give a toss. So it’s illegal. So is weed but everyone smokes that. So is speeding but everybody does that. So is invading someone’s privacy, but the government does that all the time. This isn’t about the law.
In the same situation as Buchanan found herself in, most men wouldn’t bother. They’d know that in doing what she did they’d run the risk of a) being told to fuck off, b) getting shoe’d in or c) being told to fuck the fuck off and getting shoe’d the fuck in. Any bloke willing to tell those two men to put their fags out and “grow up” would know that he was actually saying “excuse me gents, sorry to bother you, I don’t suppose you’re in the mood to shoe me in?”
I’m not saying I want to live in a society like this, I just do, and so does Buchanan. Because she’s a woman, she’s only just learnt that. The (particularly) hard way. But nor do I want to live in a society where there’s a law to regulate each and every aspect of my life and a willing prig to enforce such intricately obsessive legislation upon me in their spare time, taking the opportunity to condescend to me while they’re at it.
The real problem people have with the coverage of this incident is, like Coren says, that Buchanan isn’t a hero. She didn’t face down injustice or protect the weak. She took it upon herself to enforce a pathetic law. If you’re going to stand up for something, please, find something better than that. And while you’re at it, grow up.
It was Gandhi (yes, I’m about to quote Gandhi, just you watch me) who said “you must be the change you wish to see in the world”. That’s not the change we want to see in the world. That’s the change we’re sick and tired of seeing.