There was a point in the 1980s when the Rev Ian Gregory, a former journalist and church minister, who has died aged 93, was himself making the news. In the time of Margaret Thatcher, the yuppy and union battles, Ian, my father-in-law, launched a campaign to bring back courtesy. Ever with an eye for a good headline, he called his campaign group the Polite Society.
The landline in his Staffordshire house lit up with calls from newspapers and broadcasters around the world. The Los Angeles Times quoted Ian as saying that Britain had rebutted many enemies in the past 80 years, but “in 1986, the British people face national defeat at the hands of a sinister foe: our ignorant and ill-mannered selves”.
