BRITAIN has a new hero: Ingrid Loyau-Kennett, the woman captured on camera talking it out with the still-bloodied, machete-wielding killers of Drummer Lee Rigby.

Indeed, she was one of three such figures, dubbed "the Angels of Woolwich", to emerge as the reassuring antidote to the story of the brutal public slaying of a soldier.

Even as we recoiled in shock at this attack, we focused, through the footage and stills of the event, on these three women: Loyau-Kennett, plus mother and daughter Amanda and Gemini Donnelly-Martin, blurred figures seen offering comfort and prayers over the soldier's body. How had they found the courage to walk into the midst of this horror?

As with all such atrocities, we looked for heroes to counterpoint the barbarism. Seeing what she thought was an injured person lying in the street, Loyau-Kennett got off her bus intending to offer first aid, but found herself talking to the attackers. She hadn't been scared because "he was not drunk, he was not on drugs. He was normal". She asked the other attacker if he wanted to give her what he was holding, which she knew to be a knife.

Many witnesses testified to the courage of the three women. Amanda Donnelly-Martin, according to witness Joe Tallant, had "just walked up to them [the attackers] with no fear. She put her hands on his [Rigby's] chest and I think she prayed for him". Donnelly-Martin is reported to have said she stepped forward "because she thought it could have been her own son".

What is apparent is that these women, and others, seem to have been acting on instinct, unaware exactly what the situation was.

"What were all the male bystanders doing?" one online commentator asked of the Woolwich aftermath. In fact, the attackers had told the men to stand back, in effect deciding who was permitted to be the heroes and that they would be female.

Gemini Donnelly-Martin told the Mirror: "We did what anyone would do. We just wanted to take care of the man. It wasn't brave. Anyone would have done it."

The attackers had specifically allowed women on to the scene because in their eyes, women were not a threat. In his rant to camera after the killing, suspect Michael Adebolajo said: "I apologise that women had to witness this today but in our lands our women have to see the same."

Of course, to say that women are the gentle pacifists, the bearers of non-violence, is simplistic. According to reports, it was a female armed police officer who shot the Woolwich suspects as they moved forwards with their weapons.

I celebrate Ingrid Loyau-Kennett's heroism. It takes great courage to walk up to men whose hands are still bloodied. And, though I find it troubling that she was only permitted that role because she was a woman, it seems for the most part good that we live in a society where women can have this enduring function as non-aggressors; that they can be seen as mothers and sisters, not fighters.

All three of these women claimed there was nothing particularly brave or special about what they did. But most of us have read their stories and disagreed. We have doubted whether, come the hour, we ourselves would have such courage.

Identifying everyday heroes in horrific circumstances is partly about making ourselves feel better and reassuring ourselves that civilisation has not collapsed.

Again and again we look for a hero, someone who, finding themselves in the wrong place at the right time, rises to the occasion. In the London riots we found "grandmother" Pauline Pearce, who was caught on camera lecturing those on the rampage: "This ain't about fun and burning up the place."

With the Boston Marathon attack, it was cowboy-hatted peace campaigner Carlos Arredondo who, after the blasts, ran across the street to tear away fencing and scaffolding to reach victims.

The "angels of Woolwich", like these other heroes, reassure us of something else. One of our fears is that we are a society of bystanders, of mobile phones on legs, whose only interventions are to upload what has already happened on YouTube. But these women suggest that, as well as those who walk on by, there are some active citizens.

This is not to say that those who watched, witnessed and merely tweeted failed. There is only room for so many angels in a situation like this. And where we find them, they are justly to be celebrated. Not because they form the perfect piece of propaganda for our side, but because to talk of them, and their courage or calm, is the one antidote to the explosion of fear-generating publicity any horror like this creates.