“For evil to triumph it is sufficient for good men to do nothing.”
These words, and innumerable variants of them, are attributed to Edmund Burke. The closest Burke actually comes to these words is thought to be: "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." This with the usual Wikipedia caveats...
No matter. I go with the first version, partly for sentimental reasons. Over 20 years ago in Cape Town, a fellow Black Sasher supplied me with dozens of orange stickers on which she had had these words printed. I worked out that lifts were good places to ‘place’ this message, provided I was the sole passenger (I am a coward). The stickers did not peel easily, and occasionally the lift doors opened just as I was placing one. Pretty soon I learnt to unobtrusively start the peel, before I got into the lift. I'm not even sure that the stickers delivered a clear message, as more than one person remarked that the message they sent depended on the reader's interpretation of who was good and what was evil!
I felt rage and despair often, in South Africa, because of the "I'm alright Jack" attitude of people who disapproved of racism yet who, I believed, were doing nothing.
So who are our good men, doing something today?
Here's one. Hassan is a Northerner, who has been writing eloquently about the impact of the London bombings. His latest is a Letter from Leeds, which has been posted by Rachel of North London.
Thank you, Hassan, for speaking out and for not passing the buck.
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