All I'm askin' for is a little respect
A chance remark by Alastair Campbell made me think about how we address people, what it means, and that it may be more important than we realise
A passing remark on The Rest is Politics, the Rory Stewart- and Alastair Campbell-fronted podcast, made me think about how we address other people. Rory mentioned that he’d stopped calling Rishi Sunak “Rishi”, even in text messages, and now used “Prime Minister”, while Campbell revealed he never called Sir Tony Blair “Prime Minister” even when he was in office.
I hold my hands up to erring on the side of formality rather than informality. But when I worked as a clerk in the House of Commons it was something that preyed on my mind, because our relationships with MPs were delicate and not always easy to judge. My approach was simple: start formal—Mr So-and-so, Ms Whatever—and wait for the Member to invite you to be more familiar. This was for the very simple reason is that it’s very easy to become more informal but virtually impossible to go the other way. Equally, I began by calling chairs of committees for which I worked “Chairman” (by coincidence I never served under a female chair), and they could chose to invite me to call them by their name or not. I think only one did, as it happens.
I stress that this did not bother me a jot. Members of Parliament, from the best to the worst, all had one qualification over me, which was an electorate mandate, and for that reason alone I took and take the view that they could be called what they liked, and if they didn’t want me to use their first name, fine. There was one exception: I once heard a colleague call a male MP “sir”, and that was something I would never have done. I can’t easily explain why, but instinctively I found it too servile, too obsequious. Yet if I think about it, I wouldn’t turn a hair at someone working in a shop or a restaurant or a bar calling me “sir”. But from a clerk to a Member, it just seemed beyond the Pale.
This is a microcosm of the intellectual knots in which Americans tie themselves about presidents. The office, they will say, is to be respected, and so one treats the holder of it, whoever it is, with a degree of politeness. I can’t imagine many Democrats would have objected to calling Reagan “Mr President”, or many Republicans giving Obama the same honorific. But Donald Trump’s tenure has put this under almost unbearable strain: some people regard him as so egregious, so malign, so blind to propriety that it is permissible to withdraw the usual courtesy. This is a dangerous path but an understandable one. On the one hand, it is not a courtesy at all if you are consciously exercising judgement on whether the recipient is worthy of it. On the other hand, if you take that to its logical conclusion, you are Éamon de Valera visiting Eduard Hempel, the German minister in Dublin, to pay your condolences on the death of the Führer.
In everyday professional life, it’s a matter of courtesy but also individual preference and self-perception. One of the nicest and most thoughtful things an MP ever said to me, and I hope he won’t mind me saying this, was when I introduced myself to David T.C. Davies, now secretary of state for Wales, during a chance meeting in Brussels in 2008: he was a member of the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee and I had just joined the committee as second clerk, but had not yet met them in my new post. I explained who I was and called him “Mr Davies”, and he said, with a sensitivity that didn’t even seem to need any thought, that I should call him “David”, unless we were in a formal situation in front of the committee or chairman (the appalling Keith Vaz) snd I felt it was in any way inappropriate. It was a small piece of empathy but one that I greatly appreciated from an MP who must have a million more important things on his mind.
Part of this is special pleading. Clerks have to navigate a delicate line when establishing relationships with MP. We (if I can assume the collective identity again for a moment) are not their employees, nor are we dependent on them; we are not straightforwardly their subordinates, as employees of the House of Commons Commission and the House in general; but we are employed in general terms to help them do their jobs, and to do what they want, not to tell them what they should or shouldn’t do. We are not—at least not necessarily—their friends, as sometimes we will have to tell them unpalatable truths, but we will spend a lot of time with them in various guises, in formal and informal scenarios, and they may become friends. Some MPs may even find a friendly clerkly face a welcome respite from the unremitting politics of Westminster, as they know that clerks are professionally impartial and will make no judgements or comments in that regard.
A completely different aspect of this business of courtesy and distance: what do you call your general practitioner? For some atavistic reason, ever since I was old enough to see clinicians without parental supervision, I have called my GP—and I’ve had a few over the years—“Doc”. I don’t know why. Never forename, never “Dr So-and-so”, not even “Doctor”, always “Doc”. I suspect I’m rare in this, as it is no longer the 1920s, but I can assure you it was not a conscious choice.
The more informal our society gets, however much I regret aspects of that, the more it becomes a matter of judgement how we address people in professional terms. I realise this would be an opportunity to discuss the issue of pronouns, but if you think I’m going down that rabbit-hole at this point, you must be mad. I bridle at the overfamiliar use of my name in sales calls or emails, but I realise many people may find it friendly and welcoming. On the other hand I very much appreciate it when someone from a call centre asks if they can call me “Eliot”; yes, of course, but thank you for that small courtesy.
The whole thing is a mixture of three things, I think: respect, empathy and authenticity. Respect because professional relationships need to begin with respect as a foundation; empathy because no-one wants to be thought of as cold and distant, nor does anyone want to seem over-familiar or intrusively matey; authenticity because the way you interact with people outside your immediate circle of friends and family should be honest and transparent. I was going to say “unaffected”, but in fact that’s not quite right. A professional manner may indeed be “affected”, and that is no criticism, but it should not be a subterfuge or a disguise.
Many people are probably guided by the notion that you treat people the way you would want to be treated. That is, I think, partially solipsistic, as it assumes everyone shares one’s own standards, preferences and prejudices. There has to be a broader view, acknowledging and accommodating different points of view. My advice, not that anyone has sought it, would be to begin with a degree of formality because it shows respect and costs nothing; it can then be graduated at the preference of your interlocutor with minimal fuss. It will offend almost no-one (only one Member ever got a bit cross if I called him “Mr X” rather than using his forename, and he is a friend now so I no longer do it accidentally). But as a general principle, in these tense and fractious times, thinking about how we treat each other is a small but worthy contribution to our public discourse.
(As a postscript, a story I find funny but no-one else ever does: a young boy, many years ago, was being introduced to the Duke of (I think) Argyll, and, in a fluster, called him “my lord”. His father prodded him and to correct him muttered “Your Grace”, which is how dukes are addressed. The boy, panicking, said by instinct “For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful.”)
I was in screwfix yesterday and i called female asst ma'am. Its courtesy. Its crap job. She needs the money. I respect that. Ive been her. I could do with a permanent PT job. Hate it when younger people call me mate or guy or dude when in a commercial or work environment. I usually say so. If they dont like it, tough. If im customer i have the say to take money elsewhere. I do.