British should honour victims with the truth
Posted by Jim on December 31, 2016
Patrick Murphy. Irish News. Belfast. Saturday, December 31, 2016
Yes, it is time for the New Year’s honours list when, in recognition for their services to the crown, Her Majesty appoints Commanders, Officers and Members of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.
News of the Empire’s disappearance does not appear to have reached Britain. It once covered one quarter of the globe and contained a fifth of its people.
Today, it consists of 14 overseas territories, including the Pitcairn Islands (population: 48) and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (population: 99, none of them permanent).
In addition to CBEs, OBEs and MBEs, the Queen also appoints Knights and Dames (well, it is the pantomime season) of various types, including some within the Most Honourable Order of the Bath.
It began in the pre-Reformation Church, as symbolic purification by bathing and going to confessions. (I think they have now dropped those conditions.)
Good luck to anyone who has received an honour and who genuinely believes that the honours system has merit in the modern world. However, even they would probably accept that the system is less than perfect.
For example, David Cameron’s wife’s hairdresser received an OBE, following the prime minister’s resignation after the Brexit referendum.
This was only fair, since Mr Cameron’s barber had received an MBE in 2014, “for services to hairdressing.” (On that basis you deserve an award “for services to newspaper reading”.)
One of Mr Cameron’s former advisers, Steve Hilton (who did not receive an award) says the honours system is “a serious type of very British corruption”.
But even without the cronyism, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that at best the honours system is a bit silly and at worst divisive, pretentious and even downright obnoxious.
The appointments process is secret and highly hierarchical. So while only 25 hand-picked people receive the Order of the Garter (don’t even ask) senior civil servants, for example, might receive the odd knighthood or a CBE.
Lower civil service ranks and other public servants, usually receive OBEs. (Why honour those who have been paid for doing their job?)
School crossing patrol ladies, however, tend to receive mere Membership of the British Empire (which presumably puts them on a par with the Pitcairn Islands).
It is difficult to understand Britain’s glorification of an empire which killed countless millions across the world, including in this country.
Anti-racism campaigner and former Liverpool footballer, Howard Gale, recently refused an MBE because, he said, it would have betrayed all the Africans who suffered under the British Empire.
That has not stopped the Stormont executive from planning to send children from all our schools to visit and glorify the Somme, where thousands died so that the British Empire could continue to inflict murder, starvation and famine on those who dared to oppose it. (Stormont calls it education.)
If the British must have an honours system, they might like to honour (in a non-imperial way) the relatives of those killed at Kingsmills and Ballymurphy, for example, for their dignity in the face of government evasion, intransigence and secrecy.
Probably the only honour these people really want is the truth about what happened their loved ones.
Others who deserve honours include people engaged in voluntary and charity work, such as organising food banks for those among us who would go hungry without them.
The most appropriate honour for them would be a society in which there is no hunger.
Such honours would make a welcome change from, for example, Tony Blair’s knighthood for Philip Green, “for services to the retail industry” in 2006.
A report by MPs says that Sir Philip should be stripped of his knighthood, because he “systematically extracted hundreds of millions of pounds from BHS”, leaving a £570 million hole in its pension fund.
A charity once chaired by Charles Dickens says it has been overwhelmed with requests for help from struggling shop workers in the months since BHS collapsed.
Perhaps Mr Green should keep his knighthood, since it symbolizes the Empire which the honours system reflects.
You see, that’s the real insult of New Year’s honours. Granting an MBE to a school-crossing patrol lady suggests that somehow everyone is equal in the eyes of an unelected monarch.
But the truth is that the false grandeur of Britain’s honours system is merely another distraction from the growing inequality within our society – which means that, like poverty, it is likely to be with us for some time to come.