Manners makeyth woman if men are polite again

Press, 27 December 1986, Page 16

Manners makeyth woman if men are polite again

JOHN GASKELL, of the London “Daily Telegraph,” puts in a word for polite behaviour.

She balanced with a bag of shopping on an Underground train heading up the Northern line. I offered her my seat, a small act of bravery on this, the homing route of the Camden lesbian wrestlers and the Chalk Farm harridans.

Hoping not to attract too much attention, I stood, then gestured that she could sit down. She feigned distraction. A quiet word summoned a smile so wintry it might have frozen her eyeballs.

"No. Stay where you are,” she said. I obeyed and sat out the journey, seriously considering abandonment of this manners malarkey once and for all. Is it not a problem familiar to every modern man: whether to obey doctrines of courtesy ingrained since youth, or to behave according to the lessons of brutalising experience? The Reverend lan Gregory has no such qualms. Be firm with feminists, he says. Insist on good manners.

Indeed, in early September he went so far as to tell his congregation in Newcastle under Lyme, Staffordshire, that, if he could find enough like-minded souls, he would form a Polite Society, a late bulwark against the floods of boorishness slopping around in Britain today.

(And not just in Britain as readers discovered from recent reports of the “Daily Telegraph.” Britain now exports drunken behaviour and the ugliest arrogance to the hypermarkets of the French Channel ports.)

This paper and other media reported his intentions with the result that his manse was flooded by a tidal wave of mail from hundreds of well-wishers whose predominant sentiments were: “Thank goodness! At last! Count me in! I thought I must be alone.” (These people also put stamps on their letters, a sure sign, I think, that Mr Gregory is dealing with The Quality.)

Encouraged by all this he has produced Polite Society’s first newsletter which has been posted to early members, those who, says Mr Gregory, are: “... sick of the yob mob dragging their country into the gutter ...

who thought they were alone in deploring the rapid downhill slide in human behaviour ...

who are not surrendering to moral anarchy.”

More than 600 people have inquired about the society. An entire primary school in Clitheroe, Lancashire, has joined and been asked to devise a junior code of courtesy.

Very heartening, you might say. But as I pore over the society’s code of conduct I wonder if it will be enough to correct the posture of a nation stooped in defeatism. The code calls for courtesy, self-control, kindness, consideration, chivalry and the eschewment of vulgarity but there is no mention of bravery, a few drops of which are essential to stiffen resolutions.

I fancy, however, that Mr Gregory lacks none of it. He is married with a daughter and admits that he doesn’t get “many marks at home” for what comes next.

“Women are trying to price themselves out of the courtesy market by their determination to be equal, so that their very special .qualities of gentleness and their insight into humanity is going. “We have to insist that we are going to be polite to them whether they like it or not. They are going to have to learn to be women again.”

Oops. Manners, Mr Gregory.