A HISTORY OF RE-INVENTION
15. This table illustrates the antiquity of some of the Orders
of Chivalry, but it also indicates the many changes the national
honours system has undergone in more recent times. It is a history
of adaptation, even of improvisation. Professor David Cannadine
argued in his evidence to us that there had been two main periods
of change in recent centuries:
"By the mid eighteenth century, the British system of
honours was both elaborate and restricted. In ascending order
of precedence, it consisted of knights bachelor, the Order of
the Bath, the Order of the Thistle, the Order of the Garter, baronets
(essentially hereditary knighthoods) and peers (in five levels,
ascending from baron to viscount to earl to marquess to duke).
This was an exclusive and hierarchical system, which recognized
and supported aristocratic authority and military prowess. Knighthoods
were not hereditary; baronetcies and peerages were.
"Since then, the British honours system
has undergone two great phases of elaboration and re-invention.
The first (and lesser) was from the 1780s to the 1810s, which
saw the creation of the Order of St Patrick for Ireland (matching
the Thistle for Scotland and the Garter or England), the extension
of the Order of the Bath for military service in the Revolutionary
and Napoleonic Wars against France, and the creation of the Order
of St Michael and St George. This was still, essentially, an aristocratic
cum military system, partly hereditary, partly not.
"The second (and greater) phase of expansion
lasted from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until the
First World War, and witnessed the creation of a much more complex
system, which was imperial rather than national, and (in some
areas at least) was open to a much wider spread of the population".[7]
16. The history of individual Orders lends support
to Professor Cannadine's thesis. The Order of St Michael and St
George is less than 200 years old, and was originally intended
to honour leading figures in the Ionian Islands and Malta, both
then British possessions. But in the mid-nineteenth century the
function of the Order changed; and from the 1870s onwards, in
response to the presumed requirements of diplomacy, it was conferred
on a growing number of British ambassadors. At around the same
time it began increasingly to be bestowed on leaders in various
parts of the Empire (see below, chapter 3). Today it is the principal
Diplomatic Service honour, and no longer has any substantial connection
with its origins in the islands of the Mediterranean.[8]
17. The Order of the British Empire is less than
a century old, having been created in 1917, in large part to honour
civilian work during the Great War. Its introduction led to a
huge expansion in the number of awards made, honouring a wide
variety of contributions at local and regional as well as national
level. In 1921 Burke's Handbook to the Order of the British
Empire hailed it as "the British Democracy's own Order
of Chivalry". The Order of the Companions of Honour was founded
on the same day as the Order of the British Empire, and was intended
to provide an honour for those who would, as the Lord President
of the Council, Earl Curzon of Kedleston, put it, "not refuse
a decoration but would, for reasons entirely honourable to themselves,
abjure a title".[9]
18. Not everyone, however, was enthused by the prospect
of honouring the humble. Partly because it extended the reach
of the system for the first time well beyond the Court and similar
limited circles to which honours had previously been restricted
(and partly because of the scandal that surrounded the selling
of honours by political parties in the 1920s), the new Order was
the object of some derision in its early years. As the historian
of the Order, Dr P J Galloway, puts it, the Order "suffered
a certain amount of scorn and ridicule throughout the 1920s".[10]
The Order of the Bath, an honour most often nowadays conferred
on senior civil servants and officers in the armed forces, is
so-called because of the knightly medieval tradition of ritual
bathing, but it is not truly medieval in origin, having been founded
in 1725.
19. Obsolescence has also been part of the history
of honours. The official account produced by the Central Office
of Information describes a number of Orders as "obsolescent",
including several whose demise was a result of political change.
The Order of the Star of India and the Order of the Indian Empire
have had no additions to their numbers since the end of Britain's
Empire in the sub-continent in 1947, while since 1936 the same
fate has befallen the Order of St Patrick, once conferred on Irish
peers by the British monarch.
20. This picture of the birth and death of honours
demonstrates the accuracy of Professor Cannadine's judgement that
"the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were periods
of unprecedented honorific inventiveness", in which "Britain's
titular hierarchy was exported to the far boundaries of empire".[11]
THE GOVERNMENT'S APPROACH
21. The present Government has, as a matter of policy,
tried to increase the proportion of honours conferred on women
and people from the ethnic minorities. It has also increased the
proportion of awards to those who directly deliver public services.
An example of the latter is the regular flow of knighthoods and
damehoods for state school headteachers.[12]
22. Sir Hayden Phillips, Permanent Secretary at
the Department for Constitutional Affairs and the most senior
official responsible for the honours system, initiated an official
review early in 2004. It has concentrated in particular on further
increasing the diversity of recipients, enhancing transparency
and strengthening the independence of the system by which recommendations
for honours are made. The outcome of the Review is likely to be
published soon.
23. In recent times, the most substantial internal
analysis has been the "Wilson Review" of the system
carried out in 2000 and 2001 by the senior official David Wilkinson
at the request of Sir Richard Wilson (now Lord Wilson of Dinton),
then Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service. That
Review contained a series of proposals for reform including the
creation of a new order and an end to exclusive arrangements for
state servants. It also recommended enhanced independence in selection
procedures and improved publicity to encourage more public nominations
for honours.
24. Other countries, including some with Westminster-style
systems of government, have in recent years also taken a radical
look at their honours systems. Australia has perhaps gone furthest
in reviewing the system, through major public consultations and
acting on the results. This review took place in the mid 1990s
and, when it asked the public, found "overwhelming support
for a structure which reduces the impression of a reward hierarchy
duplicating occupational or socio-economic hierarchies".[13]
1 Public Administration Select Committee, Fourth Report
2003-04, Taming the Prerogative: Strengthening Ministerial
Accountability to Parliament, HC 422 Back
2
Harold Wilson's resignation honours list of 1976, popularly known
as 'the lavender list' because of the paper it was said to have
been written on, was the subject of much criticism and a dispute
between the government and the Honours Scrutiny Committee. See
Michael De-la-Noy The Honours System (1992) p 141 Back
3
This committee covers the arts. Back
4
Cabinet Office Honours Review 2000-01. (Thereafter referred to
as the Wilson Review): Committee membership, para
2 Back
5
HC Deb, 4 March 1993, Col 455 Back
6
HC Deb, 30 June 2004, col 353W; HC Deb, 17 June 2004, col 1087W;
HC Deb 18 June 2004, col 1143W; HC Deb, 8 June 2004, col 295W;
HC Deb, 8 June 2004, col 288W, HC Deb, 7 June 2004, col 259W;
HC Deb, 7 June 2004, col 3W; HC Deb, 7 June 2004, col 103W; HC
Deb, 7 June 2004, col 95W; HC Deb, 27 May 2004, col 1724W; HC
Deb, 20 May 2004, col 1193W; HC Deb 17 May 2004, col 676W Back
7
HON 53 Back
8
PJ Galloway, The Order of St Michael and St George (London,
2000) Back
9
PJ Galloway The Order of the British Empire (London, 1996),
p 14 Back
10
HON 61 Back
11
David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British saw their Empire
(London, 2001), p 86 Back
12
Wilson Review: Criteria,para 34 Back
13
Ibid para 27 Back