Despite causing derision and bafflement Britain’s system of awarding honours is not to be changed, according to a government announcement. This is despite an official review finding that the highly stratified system of state awards is failing in it’s supposed objective of “making the country feel good about itself”. The government has decided that change might offend those who hold the honours that are highest in the official hierarchy.
The review was undertaken in 2001 but published only last week. It said that the practice of awarding prestigious awards such as knighthoods to honourees of high social status and lesser ones to those lower in the country’s class structure could cause derision. The review notes one description of the system as the “most complex, class-ridden and – to all but a handful of civil servants, courtiers and snobs – the most baffling honours system in the world”.
The government accepted the advice of its officials, however, that it should let sleeping dogs lie, rather than risk upsetting so-called lords and knights by seeming to devalue their awards.
The government’s decisions has disappointed those who had hoped that it had paid heed to Professor Linda Colley who, at a Downing Street lecture in 1999, told the Prime Minister that “We will need to cleanse our public political culture of antiquated remnants . . . Titles suggestive of rank, as America’s Founding Fathers recognised, are incompatible with a Citizen Nation pledged to equality.”
Civil servants recommend who should receive the over 1000 honours awarded annually.