Manners and politeness

Manners and politeness were more important in the fifties than now – or that is how it seems to me. Broadly, children or teenagers would not have been rude to any adult and would have sworn a lot less; the thought of people swearing at the police (and even now, I am inclined to capitalise Police) back then is inconceivable. Schoolboys would raise their caps as they greeted and adult and would automatically remove them inside a building; many men (I think most) wore hats or caps and they too would raise them in greeting. It was normal for a child, when walking down a street, to give a polite greeting to any adult passed; adults would politely greet each other too – whether or not they knew each other. Normal too for a male to open a door for a lady or indeed any female and also to offer their seats in a bus, tube or train to any female or older male. I have seen schoolboys raise their caps to schoolgirls. I guess feminists would abhor the practise but I think it was rather nice. In those days, smoking was very widespread but it was normal, out of politeness, to ask the person in the next seat (bus, train, cafe, tube, wherever) if it was OK for them to light up. One might argue that the politeness was ritualised, maybe it was, but the result was a more polite society where it seems to me that people were less focused on demanding respect as a right than they were in simply being polite. I think that table manners were a lot better, maybe because the majority sat down at table with their family.