A “Bermondsey born and bred” man took part in early celebrations for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee on Saturday (May 21) – and even the people sitting around him didn’t know his own personal history with Elizabeth II.
John Heasman, 79, has been a St John Ambulance volunteer since 1959. And it was in that capacity that he was standing in a large crowd on the Mall in central London on a hot sunny day in June 1981, when he heard six shots ring out from over his shoulder.
Marcus Serjeant, a 17-year-old from Folkestone in Kent, had fired at the Queen – blanks as it turned out, but no one knew at the time.
John instinctively turned around and grabbed him, using his training from a stint in the army to disarm the would-be regicide. He was the first to grab Serjeant, before a lance-corporal in the Scots Guards moved in with his bayonet, followed swiftly by angry members of the crowd.
The police soon came and took Serjeant away. Serjeant, who only used blanks because he couldn’t find bullets for his father’s revolver, was given five years in prison for treason and was out in three. The Queen’s horse was startled, but she was praised for the speed with which she got it under control.
John had to give a police statement, missing the rest of the ceremony, and was later escorted home to Bermondsey by officers so as to avoid the tabloid press, who all wanted an interview – only to find the reporters gathered outside his home when he got there. “How did they find out where I lived?” he said on Saturday.
He was given a citation for bravery and invited to meet the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh in 1982. Asked how they were, he said “they were like us really, very polite”. At the event on Saturday, people sitting around John said they didn’t know of his heroics.
John grew up on the Rotherhithe New Road, before moving to the old Bonamy Estate and then the Bonamy and Bramcote. He served in the army in the jungles of Borneo, where he had his 21st birthday, before being discharged. “I couldn’t take the climate,” he explained. He later delivered girders for a lift company for a living.
John has been a St John Ambulance volunteer for over 60 years, where he is chairman of the Dulwich unit, and still works giving first aid at Millwall home games.
He was discussing the incident at the Bonamy and Bramcote Estate’s event to celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee. Dozens of local residents came to the Links Community Centre for drinks, sandwiches and cake, as well as for a raffle.
Bermondsey murder: four victims of Bonamy Estate stabbing named
The estate has recently been rocked by the murders of residents Dolet Hill and Denton Burke, and Ms Hill’s daughter and granddaughter Tanysha (aka Rachquel) Ofori-Akuffo and Samantha Drummonds, by Ms Drummonds’ partner. Residents shared their shock at the incident on Saturday, with one woman saying: “It’s just terrible. You’d expect that somewhere else, like in Hackney, but not here.”