If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. If you have missed the martyrdom of London bus driver Mark Hehir, 62, I promise you his ordeal will make you choke with incoherent rage.
As you read of his suffering at the hands of the system, it will crystallise everything that is wrong with the wet, woke, anal, legalistic pettifoggers who run Starmer’s Britain and who have long since abandoned all links with common sense.
The saga began two years ago when Hehir was plying the No206 route between Wembley and Maida Vale. On June 25, 2024, a female passenger got on board, closely followed by a male passenger, who observed that she was wearing a rather nice necklace.
This man then grabbed the necklace, yanking it off her neck, and jumped off the bus. Now how did the rest of the passengers respond?
Well, how do you think? We are living in Starmer’s Britain, and Khan’s London. I am sure that they expressed shock and sympathy with the victim but, other than that, it does not look as though they did much to intervene.
It was a scary, horrible but sadly routine event – and they probably didn’t expect anyone actually to do anything about the robbery. I expect the thief was operating under the same assumption. Well, he reckoned without Mark Hehir.
Even though he was then 60 years old, with his best sprinting days behind him, the bus driver did not hesitate. As he later said, ‘You have seconds to think, so I am going, I am not letting this guy get away…’
He got out of his cab, chased the man 200 yards down the street, overhauled him, overpowered him – and retrieved the stolen necklace. He then brought it back to his female passenger.
Mark Hehir was sacked after an altercation with a thief who robbed a passeneger on his bus
At which point it seems that the thief – plainly feeling a bit of a chump – came back at him and threw a punch, to which Hehir responded by knocking him down and out, holding him prone until the police arrived.
All this was confirmed by the CCTV and also by the evidence of Detective Sergeant Waddington, who said that Hehir had used force that was proportionate and necessary in the circumstances to defend himself and his female passenger.
On the face of it we are all thinking: What a man! What a champ! What’s the right recognition for his public service and his bravery? An MBE? Freedom of the City of London?
Hehir’s conduct is not unprecedented, of course. Every day there are transport staff in London and up and down the country who behave with enormous courage, and who hold their nerve in the face of outrageous provocation. But there was something very special about Hehir.
He did not have to get out from behind his plexiglass shield and run the risk of chasing down a much younger man who could have been armed, after all, with a knife. In that instinctive decision to help a victim of crime, he was obeying the central teaching of Jesus Christ himself, in the story of the Good Samaritan.
The whole point of that story is that the Samaritan’s act was supererogatory*. He didn’t have to do it. He didn’t have to help the man who had been robbed on the road to Jericho; indeed, there were plenty of respectable people who did nothing.
There were the priest and the Levite, who saw the crime victim in distress, and who passed by on the other side. Every day on the streets of London I am afraid there are now people who pass by on the other side, literally edging past pensioners who are being mugged on the pavement – but not Hehir.
He got stuck in, and helped the victim in the best way possible, by catching the thief and restoring her property. So how does modern Britain reward a Good Samaritan? Well, what do you think?
He was sacked! He duly reported the incident to his bosses, and insanity descended. The bus company, Metroline, decided that he had broken protocols in two ways, in that he had hit a passenger – the thief – and above all that he had left his bus with the engine running to do so.
Mr Hehir had worked for Metroline for two years before the incident
He had therefore ‘brought the company into disrepute’ – and a tribunal in Watford has now decided, sadly, that the company acted within its legal rights.
But really! Disrepute? Have you ever heard such nonsense? What could be better for the reputation of a bus company, than the idea that its drivers actually care about the passengers?
Hehir hasn’t brought his former company into disrepute. It’s the crazed and pharisaical* response of the company. No one disputes that the theft took place, and that Hehir showed outstanding guts in restoring the necklace.
Metroline even acknowledged the theft, though they claimed in the tribunal that the thief came back to ‘shake hands’ with the victim and apologise. A likely story, and one not supported by the police evidence.
What kind of robber comes back to say sorry? And yet the have-a-go hero has been thrown to the wolves. It’s sickening, and also amazing. How on earth has it happened?
I used to be responsible for every one of London’s 8,000 buses (during which period crime on buses fell 40 per cent), and I can tell you exactly why the bus company has decided to persecute Hehir.
What they hate is the very fact that he showed initiative, and that he went over and above the call of duty. What Metroline hates is that he did NOT just sit in his seat, and declare a ‘code red’, which is what the protocols require.
By acting as he did, he exposed the moral indifference – or cowardice – that is built into the system. The Pharisees of the Metroline Human Resources department have thrown the book at him, precisely because he did not do the expected thing – because he did not pass by on the other side.
It is time for London’s apology for a Mayor to get off whichever West End red carpet he is currently gracing and get a grip of all this. Can he not see what is happening in his city?
Does he not know how people around the world are trashing the reputation of our capital? Sometimes I feel that is unfair but there is no doubt that there has been an increase in street robbery in the last few years, and when people are fearful to visit – because they think their phones or watches or jewels are going to be snatched – then that has to be addressed.
Here is a bus driver who has stepped in bravely to prevent a robbery, and the least Khan can do is get him into City Hall and publicly thank him. The managers of Metroline should make a penitential pilgrimage, on their knees, the length of 206 route between Maida Vale and Wembley, weeping and groaning and scourging themselves with their fat TfL contracts.
As for anyone who next sees a woman having her necklace snatched on a bus, I say don’t just applaud the actions of Hehir, but go and do thou likewise!
