One chilling second to decide: Would you be a have-a-go hero?
Hilary Freeman
King's Cross Station in London, late one Sunday evening. I am standing in the taxi queue when ugly cries break the silence. "Oi, yiddo!" they shout. "Stupid fat Jew!"
Three young, inebriated thugs have decided it would be amusing to abuse a group of Orthodox Jews at the front of the queue.
When their victims don't react to the name-calling, the yobs get physical, grabbing the men's hats from their heads, pulling their beards and long, curled sideburns. All the while, they are laughing and shouting anti-Semitic obscenities.
Appalled, I try to make eye contact with the other people standing in line with me, but they appear to find their own shoes fascinating. I know it has to be me who puts a stop to this.
I walk to the front of the queue and position myself between the bullies and the Jewish men. "Leave them alone," I say, as loudly as I can.
My heart is pounding but I don't feel afraid - I feel angry. The fact that these thugs might have knives doesn't even occur to me, or that they might just be itching for an excuse to attack someone.
I'm not sure what I expect to happen, but they let go of their victims. I think the fact that I'm a 5ft 3in woman, and I've dared to challenge them, has disarmed them.
"Why are you standing up for them?" one of the yobs asks. "Because I'm Jewish," I reply.
"No, you're not,2 he says, staring at my jeans and leather jacket. "You don't look like them." He laughs and runs off with his friends.
Ironically, this incident occurred when I was on my way home from visiting my grandmother in Leeds.
Both she and my late grandfather were German refugees who fled to Britain in the Thirties to escape the Nazis. Many family members didn't survive the Holocaust.
I've been brought up with a hatred of intolerance and an understanding of the vital importance of speaking up for the persecuted.
It's not about being Jewish - I would have done the same if it had been Sikhs or Muslims being abused in that queue.
The men I helped escaped into a taxi. They didn't thank me; they didn't even acknowledge me.
But I know I did the right thing - and I'd do it again. I didn't step in because I was brave or foolhardy. I stepped in because I had an obligation to, because I don't want to live in a world where people don't intervene or look out for one another.
Because next time it could be me. Or you. And who will stand up for us?
James Delingpole
It all happened so quickly I didn't even have to time to think, let alone feel scared. One second I was sauntering through my kitchen on my way to make a cup of tea, wondering what that strange man was doing in my garden. The next I was through the French windows and giving chase across the lawn.
There was no conscious decision involved. But I suppose it had to do with the spate of daytime burglaries in my area of South-East London last year, which had been worrying my wife and kids and infuriating me.
My subconscious must have twigged that this was the man responsible, and instead of ringing the police, I told myself: "Enough is enough!"
As I ran out, a wheezing young policeman tried to clamber over my garden fence in pursuit of the same man. "Stop him!" he said.
It's funny how the mind works, but I remember thinking: "That's odd. I thought policemen weren't allowed to encourage members of the public to chase criminals." But I was glad he did. It spurred me on.
I caught up with the burglar just as he was escaping into the next garden. He was amazingly swift and agile, but I still could have had him in my grasp if he hadn't turned round and done the most extraordinary thing.
As I grabbed him, he looked me right in the eye and said in a calm, friendly voice: "Here, mate. What are you doing?" And I thought: "Cripes. How embarrassing. I'm about to apprehend a plain clothes policeman." Cunning villain. In that split second he made his escape - only to be caught by police later, hiding in the bushes.
Some people said to me afterwards: "What if he'd had a knife?" And it's true, I suppose, that this 60 seconds of quite unexpected drama could have left my children fatherless.
But it wouldn't stop me doing it again - not because I'm brave, definitely not because I'm a hero, but because it seems to me that the way you react on these occasions is in fact completely arbitrary.
But I'm glad I did it - if everyone looks the other way, the villains will win, won't they?
Frances Hubbard
Last year, I was on my way home to South London from work at about 8pm on a half-empty train when two teenagers slammed aggressively into our carriage through the connecting doors.
I knew immediately that there was going to be some kind of trouble, and I moved my credit cards to my pockets in case they were planning to "steam" down the aisle snatching bags.
Instead, they turned their attention to two boys who'd been sitting quietly further along the train. I couldn't hear exactly what was said, but one of the boys answered back and within seconds he was being viciously beaten and whipped around the head with his attackers' studded leather belts.
I remember feeling literally sick with fear at the ferocity of those punches. The violence was like an assault on the whole carriage. People froze in their seats and their faces were blank with shock.
I stood up to reach the emergency stop cord but it was too close to where they were fighting and so, like everyone else, I did nothing to help. Less than a minute later, the doors opened at the next station and the teenagers ran out.
I can rationalise my paralysis by saying that, as a woman, I wasn't strong enough to pull them apart, but actually I wasn't brave enough. Perhaps if the victim had been another woman, the two sides less well matched, I would have intervened. Who knows?
Afterwards, I felt tearful, powerless, ashamed of myself and unfairly angry with the male commuterswho'd been equally useless. At least I helped find an official to attend to the injured boy and gave my name as a witness, but that was only after the danger had passed.
The case went to youth court almost a year later, but though the victim and I turned up, the defendants didn't. I never heard any more. I assume they must have changed their pleas to guilty.
And if it happened again? I doubt I'd be any more impressive. The sad fact is that if you value your own life, the wisest action these days is to hide behind your newspaper.
Richard Price
When I moved my family away from the grime and crime of South London to Surrey's leafy stockbroker belt last year, I thought yobs would be a thing of the past. How wrong I was.
Last summer, when my daughter was less than a month old, a stream of vile language came pouring through our living room window one Saturday afternoon.
Looking out, I saw a young, shaven-headed man, no older than 21, stripped to the waist and screaming threats at the top of his voice as he stood in the middle of the road, forcing cars to swerve past him.
I immediately recognised him as the (apparently unemployed) partner of a teenage mother who rented a pretty cottage across the road.
Fuelled by the overwhelming protective urge of a new father, I marched out to confront him. It was only when I was within spitting distance of him that I realised, with a surge of dread, that blood was pouring from a wound next to the tattoo on his right bicep.
And clutched in his white-knuckled hand was a nine-inch kitchen knife.
Changing direction in midstride, I walked briskly past him, barely brushing his shoulder as I did so. He turned, stared, and resumed his stream of invective. I didn't fight. I walked 50 yards up the road and called the police on my mobile.
To their credit, the response was swift. Within minutes three squad cars, two vans and a police motorcycle screeched to a halt outside my house, sirens blaring.
As they took him away in handcuffs, the emotion of the near-miss suddenly swamped me. How close had I come to being stabbed because of a stupid, macho surge of adrenaline? What use is a dead father? And isn't anywhere safe in this godforsaken country?
By now a group of the yob's friends - also shirtless and shorn - were milling about in the road, muttering darkly about the situation being a "domestic" and "nobody else's ****ing business".
Their friend, an arresting officer later told me, had been arguing with his girlfriend and stormed out into the street after things "got out of hand".
I was given a stern ticking-off by the police for even thinking of defending my family and ordered to "keep my head down" in future.
The yob? He was back home the next day. We moved house six months later.
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