There are many kinds of respect, self-respect, respect for others, respect for community and respect for authority and country. The other kinds of respect first stem from self-respect and respect for others.

Some people in Britain do not teach manners, believing that the constraints of manners inhibit children. Respect for self and others in part stems from the early teaching of manners and consideration for others, from this comes respect for self and with this self-respect comes those important early lessons in self-discipline. Children not taught good manners, from an early age, grow to be selfish and imperious and believe that rules only apply to others. This way lays disaster for society as a whole.

Mrs. Thatcher told the British people that there were “no such thing as society,” only individuals, which led to the “I’m all right, Jack” selfish attitudes of the eighties. Society began to disintegrate, as values were turned on their heads. Speculators, who distorted the currency and stock markets and business leaders, some of whom, we later found out, were responsible for shady practices, were heralded as heroes. Whilst workers were vilified as being lazy, work-shy, and addicted to strikes, a massive generalization describing a few hotheads, but not the vast majority of honest, hard-working people. A business cannot possibly be successful only because of its management; it needs both good and fair managers and excellent workers. Manufacturing industry was deliberately allowed to decline in favor of service industries, proud working people were made redundant and the result was that whole communities died. This led to a lack of hope.

Then someone decided that huge great secondary schools, most these days have fifteen hundred pupils and some more than two thousand, were better for children than the smaller neighborhood schools where the head teacher knew the name of every child and their family background. In these smaller schools, each child had contributed to, and was a known and, therefore, valued member of the school community. Children get lost in huge education factories and then society wonders why when those children get older they have no respect for the law, anything or anyone. It is because they have no respect for themselves, because they feel that they do not matter, because no one knows them or cares about them. Then the establishment wondered why these youngsters turned to gangs for a sense of belonging and identity.

Then politicians had the great idea that the majority of young people should go to University and therefore education was tailored to academic needs, to reach this end, a “one size fits all” education. The educational elite and politicians alike sidelined vocational subjects. The problem being that those children, who are not academically minded, do not receive the kind of education that would be more suited to their needs. They therefore lose hope and feel once again that they are unworthy and unwanted. The truth of the matter, and the result of this deliberate policy, is that in Britain today you can find plenty of unemployed graduates, but it is extremely difficult to find a plumber, for example. The mistake was to think that academia was the be all and end all and better than the more practical side of life, for surely artisans are just as important (and sometimes more so) as “thinkers.”

The other thing that made the British lose respect for themselves was the brand of multi-culturalism, which celebrated every culture except the British culture. This attitude led to both separatism and resentment within society. True multi- culturalism means that all cultures are celebrated.

There is a lack of respect within British society; some people have no respect for themselves, for one another, for their communities or for the British Government and laws, but by no means do all of the people within British society lack respect or the knowledge of its meaning.