Paying respects (From York Press)

Paying respects

11:07am Tuesday 31st January 2012 in Columnists By Andrew Hitchon

ONE of the complications with our wonderful language is how one word can mean so many things. Take “respect” – not a particularly long word, but with such different significance for different people.

Some time ago, when I had a slightly different job, I remember a colleague telling me, in an aggrieved fashion, how all he wanted was respect – with a distinct hint that his problem was that I wasn’t providing it. A few years later a different colleague told me “the team” we worked in liked me, but didn’t respect me.

There’s that word again; in the first case it was something its user demanded, rather in the manner of a street gang member. In the second instance the user was telling me it was something I lacked.

My reaction to the first guy was to think: “Isn’t respect something you earn rather than demand?” In the second case, I felt he was basically confusing respect with fear; both clearly associated the word with power.

I kept my counsel with both colleagues, but I didn’t have much respect for their viewpoints, because my definition of respect doesn’t essentially involve fear or power.

To me, giving respect to others is a voluntary thing, something at its most basic level we should try to do to as many people as we reasonably can, even if we don’t necessarily like or even agree with them.

I really don’t think you can demand it, no matter how powerful you may think yourself to be. But how then can you earn respect?

There’s probably as many answers to that as there are different meanings of the word, but one way might be to show respect to others, and to try to “do the right thing”.

Two different uses of respect came in recent sports-related news stories – not in football, where the word is subject to multiple misuse, but in rugby union.

England and Scotland square up on Saturday, and the Scottish coach complained England’s World Cup squad had not respected his men when they last met – no doubt a sincere view, but also a way of winding his lads up for the game, and very much in the macho tradition of demanding respect.

The England coach had a different take; he spoke about “respect and responsibility” in the context of restoring the side’s much-tarnished reputation after their World Cup debacle. It may just have been a slogan, but I’d like to think he was getting at something a little nearer to my definition; that his players should show respect to others by behaving responsibly, instead of simply demanding it for themselves.

Maybe he even meant they could earn it by “doing the right thing”. But then, setting a good example isn’t something sportsmen are renowned for in public life.

This brings me, almost inevitably in some respects, to the row over Royal Bank of Scotland boss and Easingwold School old boy Stephen Hester’s £963,000 bonus, which he finally declined yesterday.

The controversy generated much hypocrisy, from both his backers and detractors. He may well deserve respect for his past record and turning RBS round, and I don’t agree that the Government should have blocked rewards that were included in his contract – though I notice the people who were most appalled by that thought don’t normally object to companies cutting back on benefits for more humble employees in tough conditions.

But in recessionary times, would taking the money be doing the right thing? Would Mr Hester displaying his undoubted professional power have earned respect from the British people? Or would that more readily go to RBS chairman Sir Philip Hampton, who declined an even bigger bonus without all the political pressure?

It would be nice and neat to conclude by saying Mr Hester, by setting a good example, will now earn lots of respect to replace the cash. But sadly I have instead to suggest that, with all due respect to Mr Hester, he probably left doing the right thing just a little bit too late.