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Evil lurks where no-one bats an eye

by Simon Longstaff

Kill the Pig ... Kill the Pig ... Kill the Pig ...

So William Golding introduces one of the most enduring images of twentieth century literature. In Lord of the Flies we find a marooned group of choirboys yielding to the beast within as they savagely kill first a pig, then their misfit companion, Piggy.

The novel concludes with the rescue of the boys. As the newly arrived adult survey the scene of half-naked savages hunting down one of their own, we are confronted by the simple fact that the murdering tribe is made up of children: otherwise respectable, middle-class, English children.

The shocking force of the novel lies in its suggestion that the veneer of innocence and civilisation is wafer thin, that the ravening beast lurks just below the surface in us all.

This is a powerful and contentious suggestion that many of us would prefer to reject. Yet how can we do so in the light of events that unfolded on Sydney's Oxford Street during the early hours of Sunday morning?

As the sky lightened in the east, a crowd of up to one hundred people, some of whom cheered and applauded, stood by as two men beat a third.

Why? I wonder if those involved can answer that question. What could Scott Gilroy have done to deserve this? Had he somehow forfeited his humanity and its right to protection? What did people think was happening?

Is it possible the people in the crowd thought they were witnessing a relatively harmless altercation? Unused to the sight of lethal force, many may have been quite unaware that they were celebrating events that would lead to a young man's untimely death.

Or was the crowd taking its cues from the nightclub security guards who watched the whole sickening event and did nothing? After all, there were notional figures of authority with a capacity to act, standing back because their management had ordered them not to get involved in street brawls.

Perhaps the key to understanding this dreadful event lies in the size of the crowd and the relative anonymity it conferred. Perhaps people found themselves carried away by the mood of the mob. Did they catch a whiff of the scent of fear, smell blood in the water and give in to that primal urge to be part of the kill? If they did, they surrendered much of what it means to be human.

We are and will remain part animal in nature, driven by instinct and desire. Yet, we have the capacity to transcend our animal nature and to choose to do what we believe to be right and good.

Did the crowd deny this choice or was it blind to the fact that the choice was there for the making? Why?

I doubt there is a single answer to this question. I doubt that even those most closely involved will be able to give a coherent response. In the end, the explanation may be as mundane and simple as the fact that he found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, a victim of chance and the rage of his assailants. The simple reason is that Gilroy is dead and for no good reason.

I wonder if people in the crowd felt their innocence ebb away with the life of their victim? Yet, Gilroy was as much a victim of that crowd as he was of the men who attacked him. A single individual or a couple of passers-by might have hesitated to intervene and few, if any, would blame them for doing so. To choose to risk personal safety for the sake of another is the act of a genuine hero.

But that is not how things were on Sunday morning. What are we to make of those one hundred bystanders? Even half, even a quarter, even a tenth of that number might have saved Gilroy, if only they had thought to do so.

Just one voice raised in protest might have galvanised the crowd. Yet, it appears, no one came forward. Instead they clapped. Instead they cheered.

All we can do is hope that Gilroy lost consciousness soon after the attack began. He must have known he was in mortal danger and that knowledge must have been terrible enough. He must have known there was a crowd of onlookers. Did he catch someone's eye and ask for help? Did he call out? Either way, he must have realised no one was going to help. Among so many, he slipped towards a lonely death.

That is bad enough. However, it may have been worse. He may have passed out of this world with a final image of cheering, clapping people celebrating his pain.

It has been hard to commit such thoughts to print. They wound. Yet it must be done if we are to face the truth that the experience of evil is not limited to those who live in Kosovo, Rwanda or some dark period in the past.

What remains of our innocence is worth protecting. Is it too much to hope that we might decide, at last, to stand together and silence the chant:

Kill the Pig ... Kill the Pig ... Kill the Pig ...?

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