Horror hits Hainault

 Horror hits Hainault

You awoke this morning to the news which both shocked and horrified you within a matter of seconds. This morning a mad and deranged man took it upon himself to terrorise a neighbourhood literally half an hour from the idyllic East London suburb you grew up in 60 years ago. For a minute you were dumbfounded and slightly disbelieving for violence and murder are not normally words you'd associate with Hainault in East London in the sunny uplands of Essex.

But there it was right before your eyes, a manic and mentally disturbed individual who turned up in a quiet backwater of East London and just created panic, fear and a palpable sense of anxiety that must have left most of the people who live in Hainault's sleepy terraced houses trembling and just terrified. For those who have seen it all before then this was something they may have been expecting because the police are never there when you need them and besides the whole of Britain is losing its moral compass anyway. And yet what else could have the police done under such extenuating circumstances.

It could have happened in any other part of Britain because, on a fairly frequent and possibly daily basis or so it would seem, firearm related atrocities, knife crime and increasing instances of stabbing, have darkened the back streets of both London, the inner cities and right across Britain, running rampant and getting worse by the day. So you expressed your private revulsion and disgust and just threw up your hands in another display of helpless exasperation. The trouble is that these appalling acts of mindless bloodshed and barbarity show no sign of stopping if only because this has become the accepted norm. 

Suddenly at the crack of dawn, some pathetic psychopath who must have been released from a psychiatric ward, burst into a quiet East London community and wreaked havoc. Soon, a man with a yellow top and shabby trousers was seen wildly wielding a sword with a clear intent to kill, maim and harm. Without any provocation, the man was seen climbing onto roofs, threatening to injure and then murder anybody who came anywhere near him. He then jumped down back onto the pavements before scurrying around in an almost catatonic state, crouching on his haunches and then trying to hide himself from view.

For a while it began to resemble the kind of incident you would normally have associated with the local tenements and homes of New York, Harlem perhaps, Chicago quite possibly and then you realised that this was Hainault in East London and it could have been anywhere in Britain. Then the police arrived quickly and intelligently because this was the incident they'd been trained to deal with so diligently and thoroughly. What they probably hadn't bargained for was a bloke with what might have been some samurai sword who was just taking out all his pent up frustrations on an unsuspecting public.

So our evil criminal had by now senselessly killed a 14 year old boy, leaving two policeman severely injured and several others who had suffered superficial injuries but had to be taken to a local hospital by way of a precautionary measure. Eventually the crazy and possessed swordsman was cornered at the back of garages and gardens before being sprayed with pepper and then tasered by the police. It was an outrage that most of us have witnessed before on the evening news without fully absorbing the sheer severity and magnitude of such a crime.

Eventually the man was arrested by the police and normal life was restored to Hainault. Some of us took an inward gulp of breath and tried to pretend that we hadn't been woken from our nightmare. For Hainault is literally a couple of miles from your childhood home in Ilford where, to the best of your knowledge, nothing like this morning's incident was ever known to happen. Ilford was always calm, civilised, respectable, polite and proper to the local constabulary and never in trouble with the boys or girls in blue.

Of course we were subjected to the alarming sound of wailing police sirens and ambulances from time to time but as they always say, you could always leave your back doors open and your neighbours were lovely. In Ilford's bustling town centre there were several nightclubs and pubs who might have carried something of a reputation but none that you'd ever heard about. There was the Room at the Top and Ilford Palais, two social gathering places where the kids of the 1960s, 70s and 80s would hang out with a certain amount of intoxication in their bloodstream. And maybe some of the pubs did get quite rowdy but nothing on the monumental scale of the Queen Vic where the Mitchell brothers drunk in TV's East Enders while both the landlords and landladies were always quarrelling. 

And so you watched today's events unfold quite dramatically and couldn't really believe the evidence of your eyes. The industrial estate in Hainault which employs work for most of the factory workers and warehouse staff is, as far as you know, still there, a prosperous business area that today was cordoned off by fleets of police cars and ambulances. The local residents, of course were scratching their heads in bewilderment. This was off the scale, unheard of and certainly there was never any precedent for this shock horror moment.

For some of us are still trying to take it all in. At some point we will discover the reasons for this random attack, this unforgivable violation in a very private suburb. Terrorism was ruled out almost immediately and you can only imagine the feelings which must have been experienced at the time by those who just wanted to go to work, school, college or university,  going about their lives in a dignified fashion.

Most of us are probably immune to bad news since the world  might have lost the ability to control its temper decades ago. But we're the decent and well mannered ones, the cultured ones. We just want to live in a society where the inhabitants in all populations just get along with each other without fearing swords, knives or guns that shatter the peace. The citizens of Hainault will, of course, settle down for the evening, enjoy some precious family time and switch on the TV only to be reminded of what happened today. But there is of course an inner resilience and strength of character about the people of Hainault that will support them all the way. We must hope that they never have to go through such a traumatic ordeal ever again.