Neil McNicholas: Why foul language speaks of a moral decline

IF people are caught using bad language in Barnsley town centre from now onwards, South Yorkshire Police will be imposing on-the-spot fines.

Well, good luck Barnsley and more power to you for trying, but these days that may be as far as this initiative will get.

We all remember Tony Blair’s announcement, back in 2000, of his intention to introduce on-the-spot fines for anti-social behaviour.

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Two years later, the Metropolitan Police was going to do the same in Croydon, West Midlands Police planned to do likewise, and the same crackdown was going to happen in Essex.

Whatever happened to these fine-sounding plans?

Laws against anti-social behaviour and public drunkenness already existed, they only had to be enforced.

Clearly, they weren’t being, and so along came the idea of on-the-spot fines as a deterrent, but they obviously didn’t work because the problems still exists.

Good luck, then, to South Yorkshire Police as they reinvent this particular wheel in Barnsley – but will they also fine every foul-mouthed footballer at Oakwell, or is offensive language only offensive in the town centre?

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To effectively catch people using bad language in public you’d have to have a police officer on every street corner, but the police are too rare a species these days.

Many of our town and city centres are effectively no-go areas on weekend nights as pubs and clubs swap clientèle, and that’s because anti-social behaviour and public drunkenness are not being dealt with.

No-one cares, and the threat of a fine will make no difference, just as the existing law makes no difference.

The nature of the problem is illustrated when you get someone like Phil Davies – whose organisation, “Barnsley Voice”, is sponsoring this latest initiative – quoted as saying: “There is nothing wrong with swearing – I do it every day – but it’s when it is targeted at somebody.”

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Sorry, Mr Davies, but there is a lot wrong with swearing: from an anti-social point of view (because it is almost always targeted at, or overheard by, someone) and from a religious point of view, because it is overheard by God.

And I make no apology for saying that, as unpopular a statement as it might be; I am a priest, after all.

What South Yorkshire Police and “Barnsley Voice” are trying to do (and Tony Blair and West Midlands and Essex police forces before them) is commendable.

Something certainly needs to be done to try to halt the decline in moral standards that we see in society these days.

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The latest “Honourable Member” of Parliament – actually a member of the House of Lords – found guilty of falsely claiming Parliamentary expenses, said by way of justification as he began a 12-month prison sentence: “I knew I shouldn’t be claiming them, but other peers did it.”

Unbelievable. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect kids to say.

No-one cares any more about the law, not even peers of the realm – and they make our laws.

Drivers continue to use mobile phones; speed limits are ignored; parking regulations are ignored; litter laws are ignored; ASBOs are ignored; court-imposed fines are ignored – it just doesn’t matter.

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Everyone was wringing their hands when knife attacks by young people on young people seemed to be at an all-time high and yet, despite everything that was said and done and all the appeals in the media, nothing has changed and knife attacks continue.

What is wrong with us?

Sad to say, there just seems to be something fundamentally adrift in the society in which we live and, basic to the examples above and many more that we could give, is a total lack of respect for others and of civil behaviour and decency.

I always feel that swearing in and of itself, and, all the more so, the use of obscene language, is an assault on the other person, albeit a verbal assault.

To begin with, it is an abuse of the gift of speech, but it is also an abuse of the person to whom such language is directed.

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No doubt just as the person using it intends, it belittles the other, it hurts them, it offends them, it treats them almost as a non-person.

It’s not the way we should speak to one another; it’s not the way we need to speak to one another. It treats the other person as somehow undeserving of the regard and respect that a fellow human being should expect and should be shown.

At one time, in an attempt to shame the person into an apology, we might have asked: “Would you use that sort of language to your mother?”

Sad to say, these days, the answer would probably be “yes” because they do, and, sadder still, that might even be where they learned such language in the first place.

As I said at the beginning, good luck, Barnsley – more power to you.

Father Neil McNicholas is priest for St Hilda’s parish, Whitby.