My experience on a train yesterday made me realise the importance of speaking out, when you need something to change.
I’ve always felt that we have a collective human responsibility towards each other. My feeling is, for example, that all children deserve our collective watch, just for the moments when Mum is distracted and they wander off etc. I also believe that disabled people have a responsibility to others to do what they can to help – just as they would expect to be helped themselves were they in difficulty. However, it’s not always that simple, as I found out.
The train, just so you know, was the 11.30am from Edinburgh to London King’s Cross and had just stopped in York when the disabled persons’ alarm started to sound. People shuffled off the train as others joined and we moved off on schedule with the next stop being King’s Cross in London. The alarm was still sounding – even though it’s quite a gentle recorded voice message asking for a member of train crew to assist.
Minutes passed, the confectionary trolley passed, somebody tasked with counting passengers passed, but the alarm continued. Only after about five uncomfortable minutes did it cease.
As the guard was looking at my tickets I asked him what the delay was in attending the alarm. (Much of the time, the button is knocked accidentally and I was expecting him to tell me that on this occasion he knew it was a false alarm.) Instead, the guard (who I will spare from naming and thus receiving the vitriol of a social media backlash) told me to mind my own business, asking me what it had to do with me anyway.
My response was reflexive. “It’s everybody’s business” I stated, adding the question: “What if that disabled person was trying to get off the train at York?”. At this I was treated to a sneering response along the lines of having to get the train away from York on time and that he couldn’t be in two places at once.
There are some battles you just can’t win and although another passenger chose to support me, I decided to withdraw and regroup, following up with a phone call to Virgin Trains this morning.
Indeed, on the phone with the Virgin Trains press officer, I discovered that the guard was the ‘only’ member of staff able to deal with the alarm – and for reasons I didn’t fully understand and that indeed, having been part way through his station-stopping safety procedures, that he would’ve had to rely on his own judgement regarding how ‘safe’ it would be to leave his post to answer the call.
After some discussion of the various scenarios that might have been playing out – because, of course, having not seen the person that sounded the alarm, I don’t really know what happened, I was assured that if the disabled person had been taken unwell, procedure would have involved phoning ahead to the next station (Doncaster) where they’d be sure that an ambulance or doctor would be able to meet the train and deal with the situation. (This plan would’ve taken no more time than to wait for an ambulance to turn up at the train’s current location.)
It is never my intention to get into a tangle with anyone. My search for the mythical ‘quiet life’ has been going on for years but there are times when we all need to speak up. In this instance, there was a procedure, though with obvious weaknesses in play and it’s difficult to blame a person with little or no experience of disability in making the decisions he did – hence my not naming and shaming the individual.
It does prompt me however, to remind everyone that we all owe each other the moral courage needed to speak up about issues. People that don’t deal with disability as part of their everyday lives are not equipped to make consistently sound judgements in these instances. It’s awkward, difficult and embarrassing but I still think it’s the right thing to do.
Whilst I suspect that the guard will get a deserved telling-off regarding his passenger interface skills, I also hope that Virgin Trains start to the think about the ‘What-ifs?’ that this small incident raises.