Britain Reels From a Rise in Bad Manners

It’s been a tough spring for British icons. First it was beef. Now it’s civility.

A country where “sorry” sometimes seems the most frequently heard word is wondering where it has lost its manners.

Rude Britannia.

Tribulations over noisy neighbors, uncontrollable grade-school children and violent parents are provoking introspection in a nation where politeness has long been a pillar of civic discourse. At times, the results of such unbecoming conduct are tragic: A recent epidemic of “road rage” has cost at least two lives.

In a newly published book, “Gentility Recalled,” 12 academics assay the current state of British manners. Mostly lacking, is their conclusion.

“Britain is becoming ruder. Loutishness in the streets, slovenly and aggressive dress, swearing, cheating sportsmen, parents aping the style and slang of teenagers and a false chumminess from doctors and other professions point to a crisis in manners,” admonishes Digby Anderson, head of the Social Affairs Unit, a right-wing think tank that published the study.

The book touched a nerve, Anderson said in an interview: “The press coverage--major articles in national papers--is itself the story. People are really worried about the decline of manners.”

Stress, moral erosion and the decline of “family values” are usually named as culprits for the growing inability of people to get along with one another. Complaints to police about noisy neighbors have tripled in a decade.

“To many people, the evidence that Britain has become a ruder, cruder society seems all around them,” the Guardian said in an editorial commenting on the book.

Indeed, critics find examples at every level of British life: A 45-year-old emergency room doctor in Manchester is sentenced to 14 days in jail for pummeling the car of a college English professor who blocked his way. And the British government throws a tantrum involving the European Union.

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Last week, hurling vetoes the way Soviets once did at the United Nations, British ministers disrupted the work of the European Union in retaliation against an export ban on beef, one of Britain’s paramount and proudest symbols. Some British beef herds had been infected with “mad cow” disease, which has been linked to a fatal human brain ailment.

Prime Minister John Major’s European partners were nonplused at the sight of such institutional incivility by usually urbane Britain, but polls show strong support for Major’s actions.

A confrontation with foreigners, in fact, seems less troubling to many than the growing truculence of British children. Newly released statistics show that 1,500 children younger than 12 were expelled from primary schools last year for incorrigible behavior, four times as many as when the decade began.

In many cases, teachers say, their parents have bad manners too. Decrying “school rage,” the national association of school principals has reported a 50% increase in attacks by parents on teachers in the last four years.

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By cuss-’em-out, shoot-’em-up American standards, today’s Britons are still exceptionally polite. On the road, they are remarkably careful and law-abiding. The nation has one of the world’s lowest accident rates; 3,621 people died here in traffic accidents in 1995, the lowest toll since 1926, according to figures published Friday.

In this relatively peaceable society, few police officers carry guns. The United States has about four times the population of Britain and 200 times the murder rate.

So it is by their own high standards of civility that the British now find themselves lacking.

“In Italy, where I drive a lot, motorists have been known to bite each other’s ears off, but in general I feel safer driving there than at home,” commentator Alexander Chancellor said with no sign of a straight face. “The Italians, for all their competitiveness, do not, on the whole, want to die. They would rather withdraw from a confrontation than put their lives at risk. The British are braver and will go to almost any lengths to make their point.”

Five years ago, senior British police officers dismissed road rage as an American phenomenon.

But next year’s edition of the Highway Code will include an “anti-confrontation” section for the first time. It suggests acknowledging an error that annoys another motorist, avoiding eye contact with other drivers and never leaving the car if threatened. After a hard day, take a walk before driving, and telephone if late to avoid a stressful trip, the code recommends.

The national Assn. of Police Officers says that angry drivers forced as many as 1.8 million people to pull off the road last year. In a survey of 1,000 people, the association reported, 90% said they had been victimized by road rage but only 6% confessed to having expressed any.

In a recent case that attracted national attention, Stephen Cameron, 21, was stabbed to death by a man who drove across his path on a freeway in Kent. Returning home from a trip to buy bagels with his 17-year-old girlfriend at the wheel, Cameron shook his head in reproach at the other driver. The man forced them over. There was a fight, the flash of a knife; Cameron died in his girlfriend’s arms.

Since then, a truck driver who flashed his lights in irritation at a van was attacked by the van’s driver, and a 73-year-old man in Portsmouth was hauled from his car and beaten by young men who mistook his gesture of thanks to another motorist for an insult.

Thursday night on a London street, a motorist was shot to death and his friend injured when they argued with another driver over who was to blame for a minor accident.

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“Beyond the number of high-profile cases, we are seeing a general increase of anger and frustration on British roads,” said Richard Woods at the Royal Automobile Club. “Blame it on the everyday pressures, bad road conditions, congestion, a rush by people to get where they’re going. It is a whole cocktail of factors, lifestyle being a key ingredient.”

The image of millions in Britain obediently queuing for underground trains and double-decker buses is accurate, but it is also incomplete. In the 1950s, there were 4 million cars in Britain. Today, 25 million cars snarl across an island remarkable more for its narrow, often twisting two-lane roads than for its freeways.

Think tank director Anderson says the decline in manners is a function of the rapidly changing society in Britain. But what is new is also old. In 1817, Lord Byron punched out a carriage driver who had frightened his horse. The driver complained to police. They told him to mind his manners.