Last night I met a woman whose face will continue to haunt me for a long time.
At 10pm in Victoria Street, after saying goodbye to a friend after dinner, I was on my way to pick up some milk from Sainsbury's before taking the train home. As I was about to cross the road to the supermarket, a clearly deeply distraught young woman on the other side of the road called out to me: "Can you please help me? Please help me?"
I paused, and waited as she ran towards me. Pointing to a horrific, huge black-eye, and shaking, she told me her boyfriend had beaten her up, she had gone to the police station but no one would help, and that I was the first person to even listen to her story. She said she needed to get a bus home to Middlesex. "I have to get away. I just have to get away," she said, deeply agitated and not very coherent. I assured her I would help, tried to calm her down, and tried to work out precisely what kind of help she needed. It became apparent she wanted money for a bus fare.
Preparing to give her a couple of pounds, I then asked if she knew what number her bus was. I was going to walk her to the bus stop. She then told me she needed to get a bus and a coach. I gave her £10, but she looked at me pleadingly and asked if I could help her with the full fare. She offered to give me her address, her name, her number, so she could repay me, but I said that wasn't necessary. "How much is the coach fare?" I asked. "£24.90," she told me. "To Middlesex?" I enquired, puzzled. "No, I live in Middlesex, but I need to get to Middlesborough," she said. I gave her £30. "Are you sure you don't want my contact details?," she asked. I assured her I didn't. "God bless you," she said. "You're the only person who has even bothered to listen to me."
As I walked back to Victoria station and travelled home, my stomach churned with anger. First, it crossed my mind that this could have been a set-up, an elaborate act to deceive. Middlesex, Middlesborough, the police not helping - none of it made sense. It's possible to create a black-eye with make-up and act distraught, agitated, traumatised. Had I given £30 to someone who would go out and buy heroin or crack cocaine? I kicked myself. But then I felt anger that I should be so cynical, have so much distrust. Her story could have been true, and I believed it at the time. Thirdly, I felt anger at our broken society, for either way, something is wrong. If her story was true, then it is an illustration of social breakdown. It disgusts me that we could live in a society where a woman could be beaten so badly, and be so clearly terrified and traumatised. It disgusts me to think that the police didn't help her and that I was the first person who even listened to her story. Yet if it was a scam, then it disgusts me that someone - and perhaps a group of people - could be so deceptive and devious as to play on the compassion of others. If untrue, it is disturbing to think that I might have helped a drug addict fuel her habit, and that trust has been broken in the process.
All around me the signs of our broken society are obvious. In 2005, when I was Parliamentary Candidate in the City of Durham, I went out on the streets with the police and saw the ugly reality of binge-drinking up-close. I put out a campaign newspaper headlined "Fight North Road binge drinking says Ben Rogers". A few days later, I received an envelope in the post, with a piece of paper. On it were the words of my newspaper cut out and moved around. It read: "Fight Ben Rogers says North Road binge drinker." I framed it as an amusing memento of the campaign, but the underlying message is disturbing. Five years on, things have got worse.
A few months ago I went to visit Karen refugees from Burma who have been resettled in Sheffield. They have fled the brutality of the Burma Army. Many of them have been used for forced labour, tortured, raped and seen their villages burned down. They fled their country, to the restrictions and harship of a refugee camp on the Thailand-Burma border, before then being uprooted again and finding themselves in cold, wet Sheffield. I met one woman in her flat in a run-down council estate. On the stairway as I walked to her flat, I passed surly young English kinds, in hoodies, smoking. It was intimidating. As I sat in her sitting room, she told me how she had been shot by the Burma Army. But she also told me how just a few weeks before, her flat in this estate in Sheffield had been broken into. Again, a sickening feeling developed in my stomach. After all she had been through, now she faces the terror of inner-city gangs. Couldn't Britain offer her better? With remarkable grace, she smiled. "At least I am free," she said. Even that supreme value, freedom, however is being compromised and threatened by a combination of ultra-political correctness and radical Islamism.
These are small snapshots of our broken society. Others would have many more stories to tell - of knife crime, teenage pregnancies, debt, family breakdown, gang murders. Anyone who denies that we have a broken society is divorced from reality. Some would grumble that it is too negative to say society is broken. But it depends on what you mean. By "broken", don't hear the word "irreparable". The situation can be redeemed, our society can be rebuilt, life can be restored. But it will take courage, conviction and hard work. It will take a new approach, combining government, the voluntary sector, families, schools, the police, business and religious organisations. It will require government to listen to groups such as the Centre for Social Justice, whose excellent work is shaping the heart of a future Conservative government. As David Cameron says, we are all in this together. If we rediscover that value, of being in it together, perhaps trust can be rebuilt and it will become clearer to identify who is genuinely in need and who is simply part of a scam.
