ANYONE who has travelled on London’s tubes or rush hour trains will know how commuters strive to maintain anonymity and avoid eye or verbal contact with fellow passengers.

Barring exceptional situations like the 2005 terror bombings city commuters are not well known for helping each other in times of trouble.

But you wouldn’t expect Lancashire folk to react in a similar fashion.

It’s not surprising therefore that 15-year-old May Rubery and her stepfather are angry that no-one tried to help her as she was subjected to an unprovoked, eight-minute long assault by a drunken woman on a busy Blackburn to Clitheroe train.

She was shaken, had her hair pulled and her arms and legs scraped by the woman’s nails as fellow travellers looked the other way or ‘started to hide behind their newspapers.’ No-one is suggesting that lone passers-by should be encouraged tackle gun-toting bank robbers or axemen.

But this was a train crowded with adults, many of whom probably have children of their own and would no doubt have expected them to receive aid in a similar situation.