14/07/04
On the subject of knighthoods, they declare: "Such titles are redolent of past preoccupations with rank and class, just as 'Empire' is redolent of an imperial history." As such they should be abolished.
This is political correctness gone way too far. Some of the honours the committee proposes to abolish have been in place for hundreds of years. They are a tradition set in stone that actually mean a lot to the majority of British people. What is wrong with a reference to the British Empire? Please inform me. Why do these politicians (and the far-left) always have to assume that it has such a negative connotation? The Empire and its successor, the Commonwealth of Nations, have done a lot of good for the world. Of course, the Empire was used in ways that we would not all find acceptable today, but then a lot of things Britain does now will not be considered acceptable in a hundred years time (doing very little about international poverty when we are so weathly, for example).
If people do feel negative attitudes towards our imperial past, it is probably because it has been drilled into them to be ashamed of it - mainly by people leaning too far to the left. It is almost as if: when at a function where there are people with whom you are not familiar and someone mentions the Empire, you have to cringe. It should not be like this.
Look at other nations with Imperial pasts. The French still idolise Napoleon, even though he was a tyrant, and nobody complains about that. The Dutch have museums that proudly display paintings and artefacts from the age of empire. The Greeks are happy to be associated with the conquering Spartans and the alcoholic Alexander the Great; and the Romans are thanked from everything from aqueducts, to roads, to even civilisation itself, their brutal plundering mentioned as only a marginal side-effect.
I am not saying we should blast the trumpets every time we see a map covered in the red of Empire, but that we have nothing to be ashamed of. So we come back to the matter at hand. This committee is acting as a sop for people who care not one ounce (gram) for the traditions of this country: Traditions that define the British around the world. To remove them will make us dull and boring: it will make us non-British. And after all, this is Britain.
The report uses Charles de Gaulle's culling of France's honours system as an example of how it can be done. But de Gaulle was acting in the French tradition by doing so - thing back to 1879 and the rather more gruesome culling that began the French Revolution.
The British tradition is not the same (if one, perhaps, omits that dastardly Cromwell): we allow things to evolve at a steadier pace; gradual changes that are generally for the better. Of course, this is not always the best solution (think transport), but on matters of ancient honours it most certainly is.
Not all the committee's recommendations are bad. They want to take the nomination of honourees away from Downing Street and to a more independent body. To this I wholeheartedly agree, and I cannot emphasise that enough.
Yet there is no reason to change something so fundamental to the 'Britishness' of this country. We are nothing if not British. So if you hear someone spouting that it is a good idea to be rid our our honours system, give them a piece of your mind.
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