Kenneth
Roy’s
Week
Heroes and heroism
At the risk of writing a subversive article on the internet – punishable by 12 years in China, but still just about legal in this country – I confess to being uninspired by the Olympic success of the cyclist Chris Hoy. A decent chap, no doubt, a fast man on a machine or a man on a fast machine or a bit of both (hey, I’m no expert). I would not wish him a puncture, but if only someone would puncture the politicians and the media in all their reflected glory. In the fictional world of the press, the populace consists of heroes or villains, with nothing much that matters in-between. Mr Hoy, today’s hero, must be tomorrow’s fair knight of the realm: for nothing less will satisfy the rules of this parallel universe. Arise, then, Sir Chris. Let there be a parade, also. May there be a circus and some bread, before the cost of a loaf rises further. God bless Britain; there’s life in the old dog yet. And, by the way, three cheers for plucky Hazel Irvine.
Unable to muster an ounce of the required patriotic fervour, and feeling generally un-, I was forcing myself to examine my cold heart when I spotted some street kids hanging about Glasgow. They should have been at school, for it was one of those rare days when the schools were neither on holiday nor closed because the jannies were on strike. They looked as if they might be up to a spot of no good, yet I took to them, remembered my own career as a serial truant, and saw in them kindred spirits. Not for them the sad, vicarious life of the couch potato. Mr Hoy might have been busy in Beijing winning another of his medals, pride bursting in the loins of every true Brit, but here on the streets the young preferred to make sense of their own lives, however clumsily. Who would inspire any of these detached young men? Who would inspire this detached old one?
Any act of human kindness is capable of inspiring. Whenever someone falls in the same Glasgow streets, a small, protective group gathers. I saw it recently: a girl in agony from what might have been a broken arm, the familiar circle of human concern, invariably including someone who is practical enough to do the right thing for the afflicted. That inspires. Acts of great courage inspire – the selfless, instinct-driven, humanity-loving courage which motivated a few extraordinary people – among them a young woman of 22 and a man suffering from cancer – to stay with the dead and grievously injured in a devastated tube on the Edgware Road on the day of the London bombs. The young woman took a risk, applied a tourniquet, and saved a life. The cancer victim tended a dying man, whose body had been cut in two by the blast, in his last moments. This was inspiring.
Great reformers are inspiring. So distracted and obsessed are we by professional sport, the death of Leo Abse this week passed almost unnoticed. Yet Leo Abse, by transforming the lives of millions of people with his bill legalising homosexual relations between men, was a true hero of our age, someone who increased the sum of human happiness. Even ‘Team GB’ could have inspired had the athletes defied the disgraceful ban which prevented them from speaking out against the human rights abuses in China. That too would have been heroic, on a par with Eric Liddell’s principled stand. None did. The medallists at the Olympics are not heroes and should not inspire; they are simply people who are good at what they do.
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