The Lynch Mob

'Our voice may be a drop in the ocean, but enough drops will help to turn the tide.'

Dragos and Alina tried to ignore the negative press that Romanians got in the UK. After all, most Brits they’d met were nice and kind and welcoming and if the locals did agree with what was written in the papers, at least they had the manners not to show it to the Romanian couples’ faces. You always met a few nutters but that was to be expected and you couldn’t judge a whole country on the nutters you met and the right wing press.

They’d been in the UK for the best part of three years, after being headhunted by an NHS trust looking for qualified doctors. They settled in a nice two bed rented house on a quiet suburban street and tried to embrace the local culture as best they could. Like this Saturday for example, Alina had just been out to buy the Guardian while Dragos cooked bacon and eggs for breakfast. How much more British could you get?

But this Saturday wasn’t going to turn out like any other Saturday they had known. They first became aware that something was wrong when they heard angry voices from the street outside.  Dragos looked out of the bedroom window and saw the mob about twenty or thirty strong coming down the street. He felt a lump in his stomach, it was unusual for there to be demonstrations in their street. Alina joined him at the window, they put their arms round each other nervously. What were they shouting? Dragos and Alina couldn’t make it out, but when the demonstration stopped in front of their house they could hear them clearly.

‘Go home, Go home, all Romanians go home.’

It wasn’t the most eloquent of chants, but they weren't the most eloquent of people. 

‘I’m calling the police’ Dragos said, but he didn’t have time to act before the mob was kicking down their front door and swarming through their house. A baseball bat took Dragos’s knees from under him, while Alina was knocked to the ground by a plank of wood of some kind. Both were then carried out into the street to face the rest of the mob.

Fears and tears, pain and confusion, why? Why had the mob turned on them? They were a hard-working family. Both Alina and Dragos recognised faces in the crowd who they’d treated in the emergency ward. They could even see some of their neighbours for example there was the guy who lived two doors down. Why were their friends and neighbours turning on them? They expected to hear sirens, saviours with blue flashing lights but none came. They were aware the mob was thicker now, grown from twenty or thirty to fifty or sixty, maybe even more.

They were dropped in the middle of the baying crowd like scared bulls in a bullring. One man stepped forward. He was the leader, the showman. He swung a baseball bat through the air, a coward’s show of strength.

‘This is the people’s court of the United Kingdom,’ he shouted as much to the crowd as to the scared couple in front of him.

‘You are charged with being Romanian, how do you plead?’

Dragos and Alina looked at each other but remained quiet?

‘You are accused of coming here and stealing our jobs. How you do plead?’

Again the Romanians said nothing.

He took a step closer to Dragos and raised the bat? ‘Are you Romanian?’

Dragos nodded in fear of his brain being smashed in with the bat.

The skinhead turned to Alina.

‘Do you have jobs here in the UK?’

Alina also nodded, both of them had seen baseball bat damage in their jobs and it was not a pretty sight.

‘In which case the court of the people of the United Kingdom finds you guilty as charged.’ The crowd cheered. 

‘Your punishment is…’

I stood in the crowd watching events unfold. I lived two doors along from the Romanian couple, I didn’t really know them but we had exchanged pleasantries and they’d seemed nice enough. The noise of the mob had brought me and my other neighbours out on to the street, swelling the crowd. To start with I thought it was some sort of carnival, the speaker was entertaining and I smiled at his patter, but then when they brought out the defendants, I realised this was no game this was serious. I looked more closely at the crowd and saw that amongst the causal onlookers were a serious mob that looked dangerous, skinhead haircuts and baseball bats, hiding their faces behind scarves and hoodies, more tattoos than in a sailor’s bar in Portsmouth. I was scared, so god knows how Dragos and Alina were feeling. This was barbaric but what could I do? I was heavily outnumbered, I could do nothing to save them. I tried to get out of the mob so I could call the police but I was hemmed in.

The leader was playing to the gallery. He’d found them guilty and was about to announce their punishment.

Shit, if I let them continue I’d be complicit in this, I couldn’t blame others, I was in the crowd and if I didn’t stop this then I was as guilty as the wankers with the baseball bats. Surely my neighbours and other onlookers didn’t want to see Dragos and Alina punished for being Romanian. I was scared but that was no excuse, I took a gamble.

‘Your punishment is…’  said the skinhead with the baseball bat.

‘Stop!’ I shouted at the top of my voice. ‘This is barbaric.’

The street fell silent, all eyes turned to look at me. My heart thumped, surely I would be now dragged into the pit to join the other two ‘defendants’.
The silence lingered on, before another voice

‘Yeah stop!’ 
and then another.

‘Stop!’
and more.

‘Somebody help them.’

‘Go home yourselves, you bullies.’ 

Voices rang out from all around now; even some of the original mob were dropping their weapons and calling for the end to this kangaroo court. It had been my very own Spartacus moment.

The lead skinhead looked around, his body language changing rapidly as he realised the climate of fear he had created was melting around him. He no longer controlled the crowd by force and was reduced to the sorry looking, pathetic man he was.

People pushed through the crowd to help Dragos and Alina to their feet and back into their house. Men appeared with tool kits willing to fix the damage the mob had done.

At last blue-flashing lights arrived in the streets but we hadn’t needed the police. We’d stood up to the bullies and began to dismantle their myth of fear.

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