During World War Two, London’s Underground train network offered sanctuary. Above ground, Luftwaffe bombs rained down. But below the streets - in the tunnels of the Tube - men, women and children slept in safety.
That was 85 years ago. Today, that subterranean world is changed. There are some gleaming new stations, but there are also unprecedented dangers. This week, a man rampaged through Balham Station with a machete.
But not all commuters are affected equally. Last year, the number of sexual offences specifically against women on public transport in our capital rose by more than 10 per cent. One tenth more, in just one year.
When I appeared on Times Radio this week to discuss whether this meant it was time for female-only train carriages, my fellow guest suggested the spike in sex crimes was a result of “more reporting”. A victory, then, for campaigns designed to ‘raise awareness’.
I very much doubt this is so. Because it’s not just our capital facing an epidemic of sexual violence against women who have the temerity to travel by train late at night. In Paris, for instance, the increase in attacks on the Metro has prompted demands for men-free compartments.
Those demands were given impetus by the attempted rape of a young woman by a 26-year-old Egyptian on a commuter train last month.
The alleged victim said her attacker had sat next to her in an otherwise empty carriage and tried to pull down her trousers. She told a reporter that: “He started to kiss me. As I resisted, he bit my mouth. He started to hit my face, to hurt me, to strangle me.”
These ordeals are rare, but on the rise. And to assert they are merely a function of enthusiastic reporting is folly. Worse than that, blaming “increased awareness” for more sex crimes on public transport smacks of displacement. Of avoiding some difficult verities.
A clue as to what those realities might be can be seen in the very campaigns which are designed to make us all aware of the dangers. Again and again, they peddle a politically correct stereotype. An inversion of the truth.
Women-only train carriages are another lurch towards a more medieval Britain - Colin Brazier | Women-only train carriages are another lurch towards a more medieval Britain - Colin BrazierLast month, for example, Transport for London released a short video to highlight sexual harassment on the Tube.
The victim was a black woman, with a smartly dressed forty-something white man playing the part of the pervert. A year earlier, the perpetrator was played by a younger actor, but just as white.
What is the reality? In Paris, the data points to awkward conclusions. As the French MEP Marion Maréchal recently pointed out: “Eighty-three per cent of victims of sexual violence on public transport in the Île-de-France region are French, while 61 per cent of those accused of these crimes are foreigners. The problem is not men; the problem is mass immigration.”
As my former GB News colleague Alex Phillips made clear in a brilliant documentary for the New Culture Forum last year, we have been ignoring the link between ethnicity and crime for years.
She drew much-needed attention to figures officialdom would rather suppress: that men from countries like Afghanistan and Algeria, nations not known for sexual freedoms, were three times more likely to commit sex crimes than their British counterparts.
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