Observations on manners

It might be bad form to point this out, but we appear to be in the grip of an etiquette-guide epidemic. Simon Fanshawe's new book The Done Thing will be followed this autumn by two more primers on modern manners, by Thomas Blaikie and Lynne Truss. These new-style guides aim to rescue us from discussions about how to get peas on to our forks or whether we should wear scent before six o'clock when in the country. Once we have dispensed with absurd rules designed to make the lower classes feel ill at ease, they suggest, we can invent a new code of manners to counteract what Truss calls "the utter bloody rudeness of everyday life".

Are we really all becoming ruder? People have been complaining about the decline of manners for decades. After the Second World War, middle-class commentators frequently noted the increased incivility of workers, who seemed reluctant to return to pre-war standards of class deference. A 1957 Times leader pointed to the "anger of the middle classes" at the loss of a common system of manners, and complained: "It is nowadays hard to have a relationship with a subordinate which rests on mutual consideration based on acknowledged authority."

Changing codes of etiquette often respond to specific historical dilemmas. Alan Ross and Nancy Mitford's famous distinction between "U" and "non-U" in the 1950s addressed the problem of the genteel poor, which meant that the upper classes now had to differentiate themselves linguistically, by saying "napkin" instead of "serviette", for example. The lower orders could be kept in their place with subtle put-downs, such as the use of "civil" to describe non-U people who knew their place ("The guard was very civil").

New technologies can also generate uncertainty over protocol. In the 1980s, one etiquette expert ruled that it was unforgivable to hang up on an answering machine, claiming that leaving a message was "exactly the same, in modern terms, as leaving one's card with the footman".

Nowadays, the changing nature of public space creates its own potential frictions. Supermarkets, hotels and airports often require no human interaction at all, just a series of anonymous contractual obligations: "queue this side", "sign on the dotted line", "key in your ID number", "have your boarding card ready". We can get through daily life without talking to anyone around us. But we are endlessly available to absent friends and colleagues through the use of mobile phones and pagers. Hence the need for quiet zones on trains, and the silent seething of fellow passengers when we abuse them.

According to Fanshawe, we should no longer be thought snobbish for objecting to strangers' rudeness. "This is the perfect time to reinvent the notion of manners," he writes, "now standards of behaviour can be divorced from class." But others do not seem so ready to separate good manners from social background. When the government talks about "fostering a culture of respect", it is referring to the charmingly named "chav-nots", not the people who use their mobiles in quiet zones. And we are still expected to learn from our social betters. A current prime-time TV show suggests that the way to turn "ladettes" into "ladies" is to send them to a 1950s-style finishing school where they can learn elocution and deportment. And on the commercial channel as well! Oh dear, how very infra dig.

Joe Moran lectures at Liverpool John Moores University

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