Britain used to be a civil country – now all we have are nagging signs
At the entrance to the National Theatre on London’s South Bank a notice has appeared, identifying the standards of behaviour expected from the venue’s visitors. Audience members are reminded that they should not assume that “other visitors and staff will necessarily agree with your point of view”. An injunction in red type urges people to be “open, patient and kind”.
No doubt these excellent qualities should be the guiding principles of all our lives, but some people have taken exception to the “scolding” tone of the advice. Denise Fahmy, co-founder of the organisation Freedom in the Arts, suggested that it encouraged visitors “to habitually self-censor”.
The NT’S advice is only the latest in a proliferation of such exhortations that have become familiar sights in A&E departments and GP’S surgeries, on public transport and in shops, all warning of the consequences of aggressive behaviour. It is fair to assume that these minatory placards have not sprung up spontaneously, like mushrooms after rain, but are a response to objectionable behaviour. And they are not an entirely new phenomenon.
The propaganda posters of the Second World War, warning against careless talk and wasting food, are still admired for their humour and handsome design, while the injunction to “keep calm and carry on” has become a current catchphrase, emblazoned on everything from mugs to fridge magnets.
But a curious tension now exists between the pervasive sense of a noticeable breakdown in public courtesy and the sense of affront at “busybody” interventions. A correspondent to The Telegraph notes the frequent sight of train passengers resting their feet on seats, unreproved by passing train staff. At the same time, campaigners of the Free Speech Union criticise the use of Public Spaces Protection Orders to impose fines for anti-social behaviour as “busybody charters”.
The instruction to “be kind” is a favourite hashtag of celebrities on social media (often oddly juxtaposed with strikingly unkind gossip about public figures). But it seems not to occur, either to the proponents of #Bekind or to the advocates of free speech who deplore “busybody” guidance on civil behaviour, that a degree of selfcensorship is an indispensable element of courtesy in public places, both real and virtual.
We are all, as John Donne said, “involved in mankind”; so an affront to our fellow human is, ultimately, an act of self-harm.
Researchers at Colossal Biosciences in Texas, the world’s first “deextinction” company, have high hopes of reviving extinct creatures such as the mammoth and the dodo, using ancient DNA. Delightful as it would be to see a flock of dodos waddling around the parks of Oxford, where the University Museum of Natural History holds a unique specimen of the flightless bird, it is hard not to wonder how such revenants would thrive in a modern environment. Would it not be wiser (if less showy) to concentrate on preserving some of the 44,000 species currently facing extinction?
Happily for the English landscape, just such a work of quiet dedication has been undertaken to develop a disease-resistant variety of English elm, devastated in the 1970s by Dutch elm disease. Thanks to the labours of elm enthusiasts Fergus Poncia and the late Dr David Herling, the English summer may once again echo to Tennyson’s “moan of doves in immemorial elms”.