When someone like Tony Blair gets a knighthood you can understand why many folk feel the honours system stinks like a badger’s breath.
I’m all in favour of recognising the many unsung heroes in our communities.
The ones who strive selflessly and often without any reward to help their fellow citizens.
There are dozens of good, decent, and hard working folk who daily go beyond the call of duty while the rest of us are wrapped up in our own daily grind.
They help the budding sports stars, the talented musicians, the homeless, the helpless, the hapless, the hungry, the addicts, and a whole host of others.
And they don’t seek out praise or favour for their efforts.
But when someone like Tony Blair is knighted the whole system is undermined and regarded as discredited and shabby.
As Prime Minister, Blair marched the country into a war in 2003 which millions in the UK protested against.
It left countless people dead, disabled and homeless, and Iraq shattered, along with Afghanistan.
Yet now we’re expected to genuflect before his newly minted status as a Knight of the realm.
The contempt in which Britain's elite holds the public has never been more eloquently expressed than in the decision to award Tony Blair the highest order of knighthood. One million Iraqis dead, three million dispossessed, a trail of blood to 7/7. Rise Sir Tony!
— John Pilger (@johnpilger) January 1, 2022
Harry Potter couldn’t pull that one out of his wizard’s hat and get away with it.
Local heroes deserve their honours – others not so much
Give the establishment their due; they know how to con the great British public.
The honours system is neatly designed to ensure that just a sufficient number of baubles are dispersed to those truly worthy individuals, while also cutely rewarding a selection of self serving chancers and charlatans with a range of distinctions which are ill merited and in some cases a disgrace to decency.
No one begrudges recognition for the altruistic and honourable.
But making the likes of Tony Blair a Sir means the system is seen as tarnished, tawdry, and disreputable.
He’s been recognised and rewarded with the highest accolade in the land when many think he should be in the dock for war crimes.
The system is also neatly subdivided into grades of inbuilt inequality, with Knighthoods and Damehoods at the top.
It’s actually an ingenious way to divide society by creating a two-tier system of those recognised as worthy and those who are not recognised at all.
There are serious questions asked but unanswered as to the mysterious and hidden process that permits some folk to be rewarded for simply doing their jobs, while others doing work of equal value go unnoticed and unheralded.
Interestingly John Major’s attempt to make Britain a more classless society by scrapping the British Empire Medal in 1993 only succeeded in a detour since the honour was restored in 2012.
Rewards for establishment chums ruin it for everyone else
In theory the honours system awards merit, and recognises exceptional achievement or service.
In Courier Country in this round of awards many of those honoured are richly deserving of acknowledgement for their great contributions to dementia, medicine, business, and sport, among other things.
However a key problem with the honours system is when fawning establishment nonentities, or those who’ve donated to political party funds, pick up a gong, even if such donations are (in theory) not supposed to influence the decision.
Or when those who appear to have contributed very little to the greater good of humanity are recognised, while many others who graft hard every day to keep society functioning are ignored.
The great British establishment understands human nature very well though.
And recognition by the honours system is like nectar to bees for many people; it’s very hard to resist.
Plenty say no but Tony Blair won’t be the last to accept a knighthood
Not everyone buys into it.
Jon Snow, who’s just retired as the anchor on Channel 4 news after over 30 years of sterling service to journalism, refused an OBE in 2000.
He later made a documentary about the honours system and said when he asked who had proposed him and why he’d been nominated he couldn’t get a clear answer.
And a host of folk, from ordinary Joes to the very well known, have turned down baubles over the years.
David Bowie declined a knighthood. Paul Weller rejected a CBE. Comedians French and Saunders knocked back OBEs and John Cleese a CBE, while celebrity chef Nigella Lawson refused to stock a CBE in her larder.
The physicist Professor Stephen Hawking did accept a CBE. But he didn’t see stars when a knighthood was dangled in front of him and refused on a matter of principle over the government’s dismal record on science funding.
However there are plenty more for whom the attraction of letters after their name or the chance of being dubbed a Sir or a Dame, is a powerful aphrodisiac.
I suspect that means the honours system is safe for a while yet.
