Please note that this is BBC copyright and may not be reproduced or copied for any other purpose. RADIO 4 CURRENT AFFAIRS ANALYSIS GOING, GOING, GONG! TRANSCRIPT OF A RECORDED DOCUMENTARY Presenter: Bob Tyrrell Producer: Sue Ellis Editor: Nicola Meyrick BBC White City 201 Wood Lane London W12 7TS 020 8752 6252 Broadcast Date: 08.04.04 2030-2100 Repeat Date: 11.04.04 2130-2200 Tape Number: Duration: Taking part in order of appearance: Phillip Collins Director of Social Market Foundation Baroness Dean Former trade union leader and member of the Honours Scrutiny Committee Alain de Botton Philosopher and author Simon Jenkins Columnist, former Editor of ‘The Times’ John Lidstone Retired businessman Hugh Vickers Author of ‘Royal Orders’ Parminder Vir Film Producer and Diversity Consultant CEREMONIAL MUSIC TYRRELL: The Honours system is under scrutiny as never before. A leaked government memo on the 2003 New Year’s Honours revealed that some people get onto the list because it’s thought they will spice it up and add public interest. Others are kept off it because, despite their contribution to the life of the nation, they’re deemed too controversial. There are now high level government reviews underway and an intense public debate. COLLINS: The honours system is one of the darkest corners of the British constitution and does need a thorough overhaul. I don’t think we can reform the absurdity of the status quo back to anything that resembles life. I think you need to blow it all up and start again essentially. DEAN: I think it would be a shame to throw the whole thing out, but I think it is time to have a reform. I wouldn’t necessarily say a root and branch reform, but it certainly needs updating, there’s no doubt about that. TYRRELL: Why do we have an honours system? There are many things we might want it for. It could be there to reward those who serve the nation and their communities and would otherwise go unrecognised. Another use might be to motivate and gratify the need for status and distinction in society. Alain de Botton is a philosopher whose most recent book is on the subject of ‘Status Anxiety’ DE BOTTON I think the honours system, looked at at its most sort of idealistic, is that it’s supposed to be a neutral way, a bias free way of ascribing honour. Or rather, I mean there is a bias but it’s supposed to be a more noble kind of bias than that that might be shown by Hello magazine. It’s supposed to be a dispassionate, mature view of a good human being as opposed to a market driven view of human goodness. TYRRELL: So the honours system is there to recognise the efforts and the achievements of the ‘good’, but can we all agree on a definition of a good citizen? DE BOTTON I think any society has a relatively coherent vision of what goodness entails. In our society we tend to think that people who are good are more or less able to look after themselves financially or perhaps are the great generators of wealth. These people should be moral; they should be kind to children; they should be polite; they should be creative either in the arts or in the sciences; they should be sporting talents, etcetera. So you know you can easily sketch out an ideal modern person, as you could sketch an ideal Athenian or an ideal Roman. You know any society tends to have a vision of a good life and our own honours system reflects that. TYRRELL: It sounds like we’re talking more about the criteria for sainthood than knighthood. But Simon Jenkins, columnist and former editor of the Times, clearly made the grade because he was knighted in the 2003 New Years Honours list. He accepted the honour although he’s stated that he will not be calling himself ‘Sir Simon’. How did he feel when he heard about the honour? JENKINS: I think I felt rather old. I’m fairly sure it’s not something I would have accepted if I’d been younger or sort of starting out in my career or profession. On the other hand, I have to admit I felt rather pleased. I didn’t feel it was in any sense a thank you from politics or from the government, largely because no one who reads what I write could ever imagine that would have been the case. TYRRELL: Are you looking forward to the ceremony? JENKINS: I don’t think I am desperately, no. I think it’s a form of archaism that I don’t respond to. I’ve got nothing against history as such, but it seems a curious way of acknowledging achievement or reward or whatever it might be to have someone you know clip you over the shoulder with a sword. TYRRELL: Despite his own ambivalence, even awkwardness and embarrassment about the knighthood, Simon Jenkins acknowledges that large numbers of people in Britain take awards very seriously. So we need clear principles and practices underpinning the system. JENKINS: A good honours system should in some sense reflect society’s values, it really should, and it is damaged to the extent that it doesn’t. In other words, when you give it to an entire rugby team, it brings the whole thing into ridicule and contempt. When it’s sold or when it’s given to buddies of the Prime Minister to shut them up in Parliament, it devalues the system. I think that there needs to be some reasonably common thread that runs through them, which is that you did well beyond the call of duty; you did well because you aren’t rich or because you went out of your way, the Good Samaritan principle, or because you did contribute more than your peer group to whatever it is you were up to. TYRRELL: OK, it’s easily brought into disrepute, so handle with care. But actually, could we do without an honours system? The Swedes came close to abolishing theirs as part of a wide-ranging constitutional reform in 1974, but interestingly, even with their egalitarian political traditions they found it impossible to get rid of honours entirely. It’s hard to find a country without some honours system, a point acknowledged by John Lidstone. He’s a retired businessman, who has taken a keen and critical interest in honours and gave evidence to the Public Administration Select Committee reviewing the system. LIDSTONE: I believe that every nation, every tribe wants to honour those who’ve done deeds of valour, those who’ve done outstanding things in other fields, so I think every society wants to honour people. There are a lot of people in this country of republican views who want to scrap an honours system. Okay, if you go to the extreme of the honours system to places like China, to Russia when it was in the thrall of the Socialist Republics, even there they had honours of some kinds. TYRRELL: John Listone calls ours a ‘Dishonourable System’ but even he wouldn’t abolish it entirely. But does it need to be state-sponsored? Surely we live in an open, meritocratic society and it’s the job of the market to ensure that reward and esteem are fairly and efficiently distributed. Not according to Philip Collins, director of the Social Market Foundation COLLINS: I think if the market were perfectly efficient in awarding merit, then an honours system might then simply replicate that. But that simply isn’t the case. There are so many areas in community and charity work, in particular, where incredible work goes on which is not rewarded by a market. They’re not market goods that peple are doing. So for sterling public service, I still think there is a very good case for public recognition of that kind of work. TYRRELL: Whilst the unsung heroes, the dedicated lollipop ladies and members of the emergency services, are appearing on the honours lists, there are still very large numbers who, by any standard, already have plenty of fame and fortune. Are these our ‘good citizens’? We got a revealing and, some would say, a shocking, insight into the criteria being applied to the award of honours in the leaked memo on the 2003 New Year’s list. As well as worrying about whether Colin Blakemore, the scientist who defends vivisection, might be too controversial to be given a gong, the Committee compiling the list also thought Tim Henman would be useful to ‘add interest’. Hugo Vickers is the author of ‘Royal Orders’ about the honours system and says there’s nothing wrong in that. VICKERS: I think that’s probably always happened and I don’t think it’s such a bad thing. I hope I’m not being frivolous by saying this, but if a woman is made a dame for being involved in the educational sector and having achieved a lot in that area, it’s quite fun that you’re going along the same day as Julie Andrews to become a dame for a totally other reason. It’s this balance again of the sort of … that unless there are some rather exciting dames in the list as well as the less well-known ones and perhaps, arguably, the more worthy ones, it will again lose its mystique and its excitement. TYRRELL: So awarding gongs to the likes of Sir Alex Ferguson, Dame Julie Andrews and billionaire Sir Richard Branson lends a bit of glamour to the honours lists. But the criteria applied to the award of honours shouldn’t be the same as those that get you into Hello magazine. Exceptional talent and achievement should also be necessary. And of course, plenty of people who get honours aren’t celebrities. Two years ago, Parminder Vir, a film producer and diversity consultant, received an OBE. VIR: When you do get the honour, life doesn’t become any easier. In fact it’s hard work after you’ve received it because you suddenly are required to give even more back. There’s a lot of responsibility which I hadn’t realised and appreciated that goes with having received an OBE. You suddenly become an important role model. You are expected to go and sit and talk and chair, lead and provide inspiration and support to enormous initiatives. And certainly having my title, the OBE, has helped to mobilise and inspire a lot more Asian women. TYRRELL: This is the honours system operating at its best, but the other side is the seductive power of the gong to those who don’t yet have one. Alain de Botton. DE BOTTON: It’s a form of bribery. It’s a way of influencing society and it’s absolutely the power and the responsibility of governments to use such things. Adam Smith made a fascinating point – I think it was in ‘The Theory of Moral Sentiments’ – where he said that in a capitalist society people will naturally strive for their own egoistic ends and this could seem like rather a bleak future and bleak destiny. But he pointed out that what governments can do is to ascribe honour to people for some rather noble ends, so that the honours system can be used to curtail and divert some of our natural egoistic impulses towards good ends. So a typical example of this is the way that very, very wealthy individuals are encouraged to give their money away, and that’s a perfect example of the honours system working well: on the one hand you’ve got the market driven values encouraging people to further their own ends; and, on the other hand, you have this wonderful thing which is that you’ll be able to call yourself a Sir or a Lady or whatever and this will encourage you to give away all your money. TYRRELL: So it’s a way of getting our public services and motivating charitable acts on the cheap? DE BOTTON: Absolutely. My view is of course the honours system is propaganda, of course it’s a way of trying to twist society for political ends, but I think those ends are basically benevolent and basically rather nice. TYRRELL: Alain de Botton is relaxed about governments ‘bribing’ their citizens. But John Lidstone experienced it and took exception. LIDSTONE: When I retired in 1989, I had a call saying I had a lot of knowledge of the pharmaceutical industry and I was asked if I would become chairman of a regional hospital board. It was pointed out to me that this would be a non-executive chairmanship and I said “well that means of course one day a month.” “Oh no, three days a week”, they said. And I thought to myself well now what’s the salary going to be out of interest and they said “ten thousand a year”. And I drew breath a bit. “And you’ll have a chauffeur driven car.” “But”, said the man, “to top the whole thing off and make it worthwhile, you’ll get a CBE at the end of it”, and I thought that really contemptuously dangling a bauble in front of me to tempt me to take the job, which I refused. My concern, I think, was about the way it was used in advance of me performing a service beyond my job and duty, if you like, that I found offensive. TYRRELL: Others have different objections to the honours system. The poet, Benjamin Zephaniah refused his honour because of its reference to the British Empire. But, if anything, it’s more remarkable how widespread the appeal of a gong is rather than how many are up in arms against them. Who would have thought that amongst our knights we would now have such scourges of the Establishment and social convention as Sir Mick Jagger and Sir Bob Geldof. We’re told that 98% of those sounded out on whether they would accept an honour do so. Parminder Vir had mixed emotions on being approached about her OBE. VIR: I opened the letter and I was completely speechless, very, very shocked, and then once it had sunk in felt very honoured and touched that somebody somewhere had recognised the work that I’d been doing. TYRRELL: So there was never a thought in your head that for any reason whatsoever you would refuse this honour? VIR: Oh I had doubts as to whether … No, the first question was should I accept it? And I’m lucky that I do have a number of people who are my guides and mentors, so I phoned and talked to them – what does this mean, should I accept it, is it a compromise? It does say empire in the words. We are no longer part of the empire. And the feedback that came back was no, Parminder, now is the time to accept it. You have a whole body of work and this represents a kind of consolidation of that body of work and the recognition of that. And it wasn’t just for personal gains that I was honoured, but for really I think a transformation and change in society. And I guess the OBE represented almost being seen part of the mainstream of British society. TYRRELL: The honours system has succeded in recognising and appealing to people who might not have expected to become one of ‘the great and the good’. But there’s no doubt that there are still large numbers of civil servants, diplomats and military personnel who seem to receive their honours for no other reason than that they served their time and didn’t step out of line. The chance of getting a gong as a diplomat is 1 in 123 whilst for a nurse it’s 1 in 20,000. And that’s not the only problem. Baroness Dean, formerly trade union leader Brenda Dean, was enobled as one of the political appointments made by the late John Smith and sits on the Honours Scrutiny Committee. DEAN: I continue to be angry about the imbalance of women and the ethnic minority, if you like. Somehow we’ve got to start to bring in greater diversity in the honours that we have. We’ve got to get to the groups of people in Britain that we don’t get to at the moment who are quietly day by day making a real difference in the various areas of their community that they’re working. I’d like to see more women coming through – not just because we need more women, but because it reflects society more. And Britain is now a multicultural society and I’d like to see much more of our ethnic communities represented in the honours list. TYRRELL: There must be countless numbers of heroes out there who continue to go unsung. Another insider, a former senior civil servant who wouldn’t speak on the record, described the system as very hit and miss. If you’re a worthy recipient of an honour and a friend or a colleague knows how to write a good citation, you’ve got a chance of getting a gong. If not, frankly forget it. Baroness Dean believes that the the nomination process is a mystery to the vast majority of people. DEAN: I think more members of the public today know about the honours system, so if they think their local doctor or schoolteacher has really given exceptional service, I think they know they can make a nomination. The problem is they’re not sure how to do it or where to go. If you’re in the know, you know, and I think we have to make sure that those who are not in the know, know if they wanted to do it – they might not succeed in what they want - but they can put forward the name of someone to be recognised and it has a real chance of getting through. TYRRELL: John Major, conscious of this problem and keen to promote his classless society, tried to open up the nominations process in 1993. The number of nominations made by the public has increased and more now go to those working in the voluntary sector. Today there are 6-7,000 nominations a year for the 3,000 honours awarded annually. But if the nomination process has become a little more open and accessible, the machinery of the honours system has remained inaccessible and secretive – as Phillip Collins found out when he started to look into it. COLLINS: The process is very difficult to discover and it takes a lot of digging before you can work it out. And as far as anyone knows, what happens is that the ceremonial branch of the Cabinet Office receives nominations from councils, from MPs, from businesses, from lobby groups, from the public. The names then go to government sub- committees in the relevant departments of state and a revised list is then considered by the Central Honours Committee. This committee then deletes those they find unacceptable and they send a revised list back to the Prime Minister with their recommendations attached. TYRRELL: As it stands today around half the nominations for honours come from the public, while the rest percolate up from within the government machinery. The Prime Minister alone accounts for 1000 of the 3000 honours awarded and he and his senior ministers also make recommendations and approve the final list. For Simon Jenkins the place of honours in a web of political patronage is its worst feature. JENKINS: It is simply wrong that it should come under the Prime Minister. It is not about viewing public service through the prism of politics or political leadership. It should be through some other mechanisms, through some other conduit that merit is recognised. It is just wrong. And not only is it wrong, but it is constantly polluted thereby. TYRRELL: But it’s going to be hard to break a habit of a lifetime. Use of honours to repay favours and to buy compliance goes back a long way. LIDSTONE: It has always been if you look back in history – Wellington called it a well-oiled machine which people use to advantage themselves or their party or whatever; Lloyd George refined it in the sense of saying here is something which can be sold to people who’ve got deep pockets and large bank balances, and he then appointed Maundy Gregory to sell them. And he was largely regarded as perhaps the biggest villain of the sale of honours. TYRRELL: John Lidstone. After the Lloyd George scandal, steps were taken to stop such blatant abuse of the honour system. The Political Honours Scrutiny committee was set up to examine the way in which political honours were awarded. But the problem hasn’t gone away. With public cynicism and distrust of politicians having grown so much in recent years, it seems that accusations of abuse and cronyism each time a political honours list is published can only grow louder. So we have an opaque honours system, with a variety and sometimes questionable criteria applied to who gets an honour. It can be a hit and miss affair so far as genuinely deserving candidates are concerned and the political control of honours has a long history of abuse. While some concerns may be trivial, some are more serious. But are we taking the whole thing too seriously? Is the twice yearly honours list just a harmless sideshow, a source of voyeuristic satisfaction about as significant to our national life as who appears in the Rich List? Phillip Collins … COLLINS: I do think it matters. I think that it’s part of a set of public institutions which collectively define where we are as a nation. And I think as we become a much more diverse nation, to have a space which is common to us all actually becomes more important rather than less, and I think this kind of public ritual is one such space and therefore it’s important we get it right and it’s important we say the right things about ourselves. So I do think we can retain a public space in which we come together and honour things. As long as we get the symbolism right and we symbolise merit, then I think there’s no reason why we can’t bind ourselves together with an honours system in that small public space we have when we come together. TYRRELL: Get reform right and the honours system can help to unify us as a nation and in this respect the symbolism is crucial. Titles are highly symbolic and provoke strong reactions from people. Some of the honours we’re awarding were created in the 14th century, and others go by such colourful names as the Principal Dresser to the Knights of the Thistle and there’s even a Yeoman Bedgoer. The most modern titles and the most frequently awarded have ‘Empire’ in their name and date back to 1917. Hugo Vickers believes we need to approach the question of titles a little lightheartedly. VICKERS: I think they’re great fun and I think we’d certainly lose something if we got rid of them. I mean you certainly wouldn’t invent orders called the Garter, the Thistle, the Bath and things. But if you think about the Order of the Bath, this goes right back to the days of the crusades when knights came steaming from the battlefield and had to have a bath before they could be invested. Well that’s rather fun. I mean if you think it’s a bore and you think it’s silly and you think it’s divisive, then don’t accept it, you know, but I mean I think in a way they’re part of this strange heritage that we have. TYRRELL: Finding a middle way between the traditionalists and the modernisers on the issue of titles shouldn’t be too difficult.The mistake would be to substitute a bonfire of these titles for radical and imaginative reform in other areas. What about transparency? The Cabinet Office is currently reviewing arrangements for the award of honours in response to recent criticisms. Baroness Dean argues strongly against the secrecy that surrounds these honours committees. DEAN: What I’d like to see is the committees that sift should … the names of those people, not their debates, but the names of those people should be known. I can remember when I was appointed to the then Political Honours Scrutiny Committee in 1998. No one talked about it. There’s three of us on it. No one talked about it. I was told if I was ever asked questions about it, I deny it even exist. And everyone knew, I mean the chattering classes all knew it existed, but I wasn’t allowed to talk about it. And then we got summoned before the Neil Committee on Standards in Public Life and we actually had a discussion about this. We couldn’t refuse to go. And all the press were lined up when we walked in the room and I thought, great, I mean you know now everybody knows, everybody can admit that they know about this committee scrutinises. So I think to be more open is much better. I don’t agree with the line that some people are projecting that what we need is an independent group of people who will sift the names, who will then decide. I rather suspect if you had that, after three or four years some in the media and other people would be saying but they’re not really independent, we want someone else. So I think the civil service that does the sifting at the moment, I think you keep it like that. I think they do a good and fair job. TYRRELL: Sounds sensible up to a point, but what’s wrong with independent bodies? The Bank of England’s generally thought to be doing a good job. What’s more, the second stage of House of Lords reform looks likely to create a wholly appointed body with peers selected according to party lists and party representation in the country. This will clarify the distinction between peerages and other honours, and could make it easier to remove knighthoods, OBEs and so on from political control. Simon Jenkins … JENKINS: I would start by taking it away from the Prime Minister. It should have nothing to do with Downing Street, it should have nothing to do with the Whips Office, it should have nothing to do with secretaries with addresses in Downing Street, and I think that everything should be done to de-politicise this process. The question then is through what conduit do you admit these awards? We actually have an admittedly secret but structure in place for making recommendations for awards which does not need to have Downing Street at its apex. They are awards made in the name of the state, so I think they should come under the Head of State. The Head of State is the Queen. I suppose I’d put it under the Monarchy. That at least is a remove from Downing Street. TYRRELL: Australia is one country that has taken its honours system out of politics. In 1975, it broke with our system and created the Order of Australia with four different categories. The honours are decided by an independent Council, made up of 19 members whose names are all in the public domain. What chance is there that Britain will successfully make a break with the past? Phillip Collins … COLLINS: Periodically in Britain, we have reinvented our rituals and we’ve reinvented our public life, and we had a period of very good reinvention in the 1870s and I think we need another period of reinvention. We need to reorder our public rituals and free them of some of that monarchical excess that they have and free them of the imperial affiliations that they currently have. TYRRELL: You’re advocating reform and removal of some of the anachronisms in the honour system. Maybe the word I would use is modernisation. I just wonder whether you think that modernisation is the curse of too many public institutions in the last few years; that isn’t the danger of modernising the honour system that it goes the way of cool britiannia? COLLINS: I don’t think so at all. I think we could easily just lose the current names, I think we could easily lose the stratification that there is between different awards; have a single body of awards, which we’d call an Order of Merit, under which we could have three separate types of award – one for great courage, one for great public service and one for exceptional achievement in artistic and sporting fields. Everybody would get the Order of Merit, there’d be no stratification between them and no ranking. I don’t see that the sky would fall in. TYRRELL: At the moment, the honours system reflects and reinforces the class-obsessed nature of British society. But it doesn’t need to be like that. Whether we modernise or not, we will continue to have an honours system. It won’t always speak to the highest motives in human nature, but it will fulfil a basic human need for recognition and distinction and along the way provide a useful and cheap way for society to motivate good citizenship. But failure to reform runs risks. The lack of transparency and the political control of awards threaten the public’s respect for the system in an age of cynicism about political motives. Courageous reforms which address these threats will help to keep the honours system in an important place in our national life. If we were also to use reform as an opportunity to discuss what we mean by the ideal of ‘the good citizen’ it could have wider positive repercussions. Agreement on what is ‘the good’ will be more difficult than some philosophers believe. But starting the discussion could catalyse a wider debate on the state of values in contemporary society. 1