I think that if the situation arose we would all rally round. You only have to see the cases of people helping after the 7/7 attacks. The chances of it happening to any of us is slim so we may never have to rise to the occasion.

Of course we do, it's part of human nature, regardless of country - there are an ignorant useless minority in evey community, but they have no greater hold over society now then they have ever done in the past. For millennia we have been saying that society used to have better moral values in the past, and that the current generation is especially bad, it's never been true.