Heroism

Two black British heroes have emerged in the past week - during a time when many old questions about racism are being revisited. After all, black lives really do matter.

In the picture above you can see Patrick Hutchinson carrying an injured white demonstrator away from trouble at a heated political demonstration in London on Saturday. Naturally, Mr Hutchinson is a supporter of "Black Lives Matter" but the fellow he was rescuing is a right wing counter-demonstrator who was in Parliament Square to turn up the heat with like-minded thugs who confronted the police with violent intent.

Mr Hutchinson said, “His life was under threat so I just scooped him up on to my shoulders and started marching towards the police with him. It was scary. But you don’t think about it at the time, you do what you’ve got to do.”

Even more of a hero to me is 22 year old Marcus Rashford - the Manchester United and England footballer. It would be so easy for a young fellow like that to pull down the shutters on the world outside his window, to check his bulging bank account and investments, order a new Italian sports car on a whim and forget where he came from.

But he hasn't done that. He has remembered his origins - growing up in a deprived district of Manchester in a one parent family, often not knowing where the next meal was coming from.

Even before yesterday he had raised £20,000,000 during the pandemic to support food banks and address child poverty. He is a shy, quietly-spoken young man but yesterday he graced our TV screens to urge the government to continue its food voucher scheme for poor families throughout the school summer holidays and this morning he has tweeted these challenges for everyone to read:-

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1. When you wake up this morning and run your shower, take a second to think about parents who have had their water turned off during lockdown. 

2. When you turn on your kettle to make a cup of tea or coffee think of those parents who have had to default on electricity bill payments just to make ends meet having lost their jobs during the pandemic.

3. And when you head to the fridge to grab the milk, stop and recognise that parents of at least 200,000 children across the country this morning are waking up to empty shelving 

4. Recognise children around the country are this morning innocently questioning ‘why?’ 9 out of 30 children in any given classroom are today asking ‘why?’ ‘Why does our future not matter?’ 

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Marcus's pleas for a U-turn on government policy will be debated in The House of Commons today. Kudos to him for sticking his head above the parapet in the cause of social justice in order to simply put food in children's bellies. He isn't carrying  a  right wing demonstrator away from a good kicking, he is doing something much more important and arguably more brave than that. After all of her struggles, his mother must be so very proud of him this morning.