Thought for the Day, 30 September 2009

Rhidian Brook

Seeing the faces of Fiona Pilkington and her daughter Francesca on the news and listening to the newsreader outlining the facts from the inquest into their deaths, I found myself wishing he'd move quickly on to something else - the missile launch in Iran, or the sleazy drama of Polanski's arrest or even the peculiar rhetoric of a political party conference. Some news stories are so painful you just don't want to know the details.

I wanted to put this tragic tale of two unsung and vulnerable people in that category of events that illustrate a wider malaise in our country - one of those social tragedies from the front line of what some like to call 'Broken Britain.' I'd lazily blame the police, the social services and those anti-social kids and move on...to other news. But this story doesn't really allow for such dismissive explanations. It's more complex and it's too close to home. And maybe this is what makes it so difficult to face.

While the observable facts suggest a collective failure: of the police to protect the vulnerable, of the social services to communicate; and even of the local community to anticipate what was about to happen, none of these things fully explain the despair that led to a woman taking her own life and that of her daughter. At the conference yesterday, the government promised to 'fight anti-social behaviour wherever it is;' but as Fiona Pilkington's own parish priest suggested, we can't just put our community life in the hands of outside agencies. We have to take some responsibility ourselves.

My own discomfort with this story lies partly in seeing myself in the shoes of the abusers as well as those of the neighbours. I was once in a group of boys that was paid in Mars Bars to verbally abuse an older pupil to the point of breakdown. We weren't socially deprived, or even bored. We were just cruel and thoughtless. And even to this day, through busyness or self-interest, I choose to ignore the needs of my neighbours. Only last week I crossed the road to avoid saying hello to a man I knew had some personal difficulties simply because I didn't want the hassle.

The day before Fiona and Francesca died their neighbour took a Bakewell Tart round to their house. In a heart rending interview she expressed what probably no politician, policeman or church minister could say...namely that if she had known what was going to happen she would have stayed with them - all through the night if that's what it took.

Hopefully this sad story will lead to some changes in the way our society protects its most vulnerable, but we should remember that we too can be agents of the very things that can save a neighbour from despair. As is says in Romans: 'we who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not please ourselves. Each of us should please his neighbour for their good, to build them up - for even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written, 'the insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.'