Recover courtesy to heal Covid damage

One of the advantages of living in Sussex is being close to Gatwick. The airport offers jobs to thousands of people. Covid virtually closed it down, with Crawley bearing the brunt of job losses and economic hardship.

The Chaplain of Gatwick, Father Jonathan Baldwin, has been telling me about the challenges of closing an international airport and then opening it up again, both at short notice.

We immediately think of queues and cancellations, the misery of disappointment and the frustration of missing important engagements. Fr Jonathan also told me about the human cost of this from a staff perspective.

For 20 years he has effectively been the vicar of

Gatwick, sharing the laughter and tears of the community that works there. He’s presided over weddings and funerals and christened babies who are now approaching adulthood.

This working community has been dedicated to public service by giving the best experience possible to travellers.

People pass through the airport for a wide range of reasons. They travel for work purposes, to share sad and celebratory life experiences with families and friends, and they go in search of new discovery and relaxation.

The community that works at Gatwick understands this. It’s no different from their own experience and for many of them it’s what makes working at Gatwick so worthwhile.

Across the nation we are struggling to recruit to the service industries, like transport, the NHS, schools, retail, hospitality and the criminal justice system.

These are important areas of employment on which we all depend. People working in this sector don’t generally have the benefit of being able to work from home, though they do know the benefit of mutual support and human interaction in real time.

And though we depend on these workers in so many ways, they are often treated badly by the people they serve – that’s us, the public.

So recovering courtesy might just help us recover from Covid’s damage.