Please, Thank You, and Other Forms of Control

How politeness is the last surviving pillar of the British Empire

As right-wing politics and racist sentiment gain ground once again in the UK, it’s becoming harder to ignore how familiar it all feels. The quiet authoritarianism, the nationalism and the moral superiority all echo the logic that once underpinned the British Empire.

But not all legacies of the empire are loud. Some are quiet, habitual, and dressed in good intentions. In Britain, tone still trumps truth, and politeness remains more culturally sacred than justice. We need to talk about how something so seemingly benign has become a barrier to real accountability and change.

Growing up, my brother and I were the most polite kids — confirmed by every adult we interacted with. ‘Please’ and ‘thank you’ without prompting, shoes off at the door, never asking, always waiting to be offered. Seen and not heard. We were more polite than our classmates, more polite even than our teachers. That wasn’t an accident.

My mum knew we had to be. We were a mixed-race family in almost entirely white rural Scotland, and she understood something it took me years to articulate: politeness isn’t about manners, it’s about safety. A form of social camouflage, a way to pre-empt disapproval, defuse tension, and show a willingness to capitulate in a very British way.

Being ‘part-Pakistani’ meant that I grew up surrounded by racism. Some violent, some overt, most casual. At no point in my young life did the urge to speak up, to ferociously defend my family as I wanted to, ever outweigh the pressure to be polite. I was taught early that harm didn’t matter, only how I responded to it.

Over time, I learned to flinch behind a closed-lipped, dead-eyed, but entirely appropriate smile. I swallowed anger like a stone and paid more attention to my tone than my thoughts. The cost was slow, cumulative, and mostly invisible. I became fluent in politeness, and fluent, too, in self-abandonment.

Politeness isn’t about decency or even decorum. It’s about control. And it doesn’t need to raise its voice. Everyone has already internalised the rules.

The British Empire, which in the early 20th century held dominion over a quarter of the world, is now dismantled: the railways have rusted, tea monopoly long gone, Commonwealth exists largely in name only. But politeness has endured; the final pillar of the empire.

For hundreds of years, the British Crown exported violence dressed as civility. Sold conquest as stability, and suppression as diplomacy. It administered order, enforced belonging, and punished noncompliance. Politeness does all of that without ever leaving the country.

Politeness wasn’t just a national habit, it was the brand. Missionaries, civil servants, and soldiers alike were taught to ‘uplift’ colonised people through moral superiority. Good manners were seen as proof of British enlightenment, and were expected, even while land was seized, languages erased, other cultures violently crushed.

That same logic didn’t end with the Empire. It followed us home and embedded itself in everyday life. What was once an export became naturalised into a domestic system of obedience. The colonial tone became a national one, and politeness fused into British identity. But its function was never harmony. It was control, dressed as civility.

You can be cruel, as long as you don’t raise your voice. Racist, as long as you’re doing it calmly, but to name harm plainly, without euphemism, apology, or self-effacing humour? That’s unforgivable. That’s making a fuss. That’s rude. And in Britain, the worst thing you can ever be is rude.

‘Rude’ says: not a team player, difficult, disruptive. Not one of us

Politeness is the narrative voice of the British Empire, justifying everything, then denying it ever happened. It offers small talk about the weather, but never the elephant in the room. It lets those who maintain ‘politeness’ position themselves as tolerant, reasonable, and fair, even when the facts say otherwise.

I’ve had legitimate complaints shut down for being ‘discourteous’. And when I was praised for how I ‘carried myself’ while reporting discrimination (that was ultimately ignored) it felt clear: what mattered wasn’t the harm, but how politely I managed to package it.

Politeness is seen as protective. Anything beyond stifled dinner party conversation and the tight-lipped chuckles that follow racist jokes has been framed as the collapse of civilisation itself. We’re taught that manners keep us safe, enlightened, but politeness doesn’t prevent harm. It just ensures harm isn’t recorded in the minutes, and that those responsible remain untouched.

The British Empire positioned itself as benevolent and inevitable. Challenging it made you the problem. Politeness works the same way. If you question it, you’re rude, and if you’re rude, nothing else you say can matter. Politeness doesn’t just disguise injustice, it makes injustice feel reasonable, and resistance feel extreme. It is a rigged system. The moment you step outside it, you discredit yourself. In the UK, power no longer needs to shout, it simply finds ways to insist that others stay quiet.

As a mixed-race woman with light skin, I’m often spoken to as if I’m white. My appearance creates a false sense of safety, offering a quiet invitation to share grievances, to say things like, “This country isn’t really ours anymore.” The assumption is that I must agree. For years, I stayed silent. Too scared to out myself, granddaughter of a Pakistani immigrant, in a moment that felt precarious. The silence protected me, but it did real damage. I stayed welcome in rooms where I should have walked out.

When I began calling that racism what it was, I learned something quickly: speaking up was seen as far worse than the racism itself. Naming harm disrupted the mood. It made people uncomfortable. I wasn’t being polite anymore. And although I was finally protecting integral parts of myself, invites dwindled.

And it’s not just interpersonal. It is institutional. Harm must be reported with perfect composure, perfect language, and with the perpetrators’ feelings perfectly centred. A performance of emotional control that amounts to unpaid emotional labour, keeping others comfortable at your own expense. Anger discredits. Distress disqualifies. Truth damages relationships. And this allows institutions to stall reform, protect their reputation, and rebrand silence — and silencing — as nothing more than professionalism.

Complaint processes are littered with euphemisms: you’re asked to ‘raise concerns’, not state facts. You’re encouraged to submit feedback through anonymous forms, but discouraged from directly naming patterns. Politeness creates deniability. It erases accountability by demanding ambiguity. If no one names the problem plainly, then the problem never formally existed.

Even in more progressive spaces, politeness determines who gets heard. Tone policing is a familiar reality for many marginalised people — a pressure to present lived experiences in palatable, non-threatening ways. Speak too plainly, or with too much emotion, and your truth is reframed as aggression. It becomes a tightrope act: speak honestly and risk being dismissed, soften the truth and risk erasing it. While tone policing is well documented internationally, robust UK-specific studies remain limited, which is telling.

The less power you have, the more politeness is expected of you. Migrants, working-class people, young women; those with the least are expected to do the most, and to do it through deference. According to the Fawcett Society, 50% of women of Pakistani or Bangladeshi heritage, and 48% of Black African women reported being criticised for behaviours other colleagues got away with. That’s compared to just 29% of white British women.

In the Victorian era, entire books were devoted to posture, what to say and when, and dress codes. These rules had less to do with courtesy among peers, and more to do with identifying who didn’t belong. Manners were a value marker, a filtering system. Today, the rules are unspoken, shifting, and selectively enforced. No longer written down, but they still functioning as soft borders. You’re expected to be fluent in rules never taught, and will be punished for breaches never named.

And we still mistake politeness for goodness. We still raise children, especially girls, to prioritise it. To be agreeable, accommodating, easy to like. Even our everyday language gives us away. “No worries if not” isn’t just a harmless phrase, it’s the mark of someone taught to express a need while already expecting it to be ignored.

Politeness is not a virtue. It is a costume, a cover story, pomp and ceremony hiding a cobbled-together, ugly interior. And just like the Empire, British politeness is committed to making things look neat while they fall apart.

As a society, we’ve gradually come to understand the harms of the British Empire, its violence, and the long shadow it casts. At least in theory, we now accept that what was once seen as benevolence was, in fact, racist domination. But we haven’t yet learned to see politeness the same way. We still treat it as harmless when it often performs the same function: maintaining power for the few, suppressing dissent among the many, and making injustice feel necessary and proper.

For a long time, I was terrified of what would happen if I stopped being polite. It kept me silent and desperate to stay in line. These days I’m less scared. But every time I challenge authority or speak plainly about race, gender, class, it is difficult; there are real costs attached — emotional, reputational, professional. But at least now, it feels like I’m laying down a brick in a different kind of foundation. One I agreed to build.

So maybe it’s time to be rude. Prioritise your own clarity over expected tone, your sanity over what they want to hear. If enough of us choose truth over decorum, we might topple that final, incorporeal pillar of the Empire: politeness itself.