Last updated 16:24, Thursday, 07 February 2008

MANCHESTER United were considering having one minute’s silence to mark the recent 50th anniversary of the plane crash that killed so many of the Busby Babes.

They decided that applause might be better than silence because they were concerned that rival Manchester City fans might shout and jeers.

I would have been slightly less appalled by that if it had not been for a Christmas present my husband received.

It is a reproduction of instructions for American servicemen coming to Britain in 1942.

It is a delightfully quaint book full of stereotypical ideas. It is also a little sad to compare what a similar handbook would say in 2008.

Under the heading of sport, for instance, soldiers were warned that the British were much more polite to players than American crowds would be.

When a player made an error, the crowd would shout encouraging remarks like “Good try!”

Yes! That’s exactly what football hooligans do!

Under “amusements” the book suggested that the British drank mainly beer and could hold their drink.

Would an American serviceman feel that way if he could see the state of young people all over Britain on a Friday and Saturday night now?

The serviceman would probably still find that the majority of Brits are “kindly, quiet, hard working people.”

I know that is still true, but sometimes we hide our good traits more than we did.

The booklet pointed out that the British were quite reserved and polite.

The reserve might remain, but how many times have you clenched your teeth when groups of yobs shout comments as you walk past?

How irritated have you been when you’ve held a door open for someone and they have barged through without noticing?

Mind you, we are still quite polite. I was in Oxford before Christmas where the streets are always crowded. I went to a cash machine, which was being used, and stood to the side waiting my turn.

I was suddenly aware of about 20 sets of disapproving eyes and realised that people milling around on the pavement were, in fact, a queue which had been formed with military precision right across the pavement and on to the street.

I was shamed into going to the v back of the queue and dodging passing buses.

No pushing and shoving there!

Mind you, under the politeness rule it also warned the soldiers not to mock British accents.

“They think yours is funny, too, but they would be too polite to say so,” it advised.

Yes - but nowadays they might hit you with a bottle.

It advised soldiers not to say “bloody”, which was an offensive swear word, in mixed company. It also suggested that they didn’t use phrases such as “I look like a bum” which meant something entirely different in the UK.

I wonder what the soldier would think if he turned on the TV set in 2008 where the use of the word “bloody” would indicate that this was family viewing.

As for the “mixed company” bit, we have more ladettes than ladies nowadays, most of whom could outswear any drunken sailor.

In some ways the book makes depressing reading. It shows the Brit we have all read about: backs to the wall, cheerful, and proud in the face of adversity.

But I guess the handbook is as much a generalisation as some of my responses.

There were some brave, wonderful people during the war and there were others who took advantage of people’s misery for their own gain.

In fact, the Britain of those days was probably much the same as today with the good, the bad, the kind, the unkind, the greedy and the selfless.

In the end, we’re the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of those people and what we have learned, we’ve learned from them.

We can be proud to be British but maybe, too, we could aspire to be the person the American soldier was told to expect.