Guest post by local historian Philip Grant in a personal capacity
Medal of an Officer of the Order of the
British Empire (OBE). (Image from the internet)
I had been hoping to write this article earlier in the centenary year of
the British Empire Exhibition, but the excellent recent guest post “An
Afternoon with George the Poet: Refreshingly honest conversation about Empire”, reminded me that I had still not done so. I read that George the Poet
had turned down the chance to be made a Member of the Order of the British
Empire (MBE) in 2019. Like others before him, including Benjamin Zephaniah* and Professor Gus John, George did
not want letters after his name that spoke of British imperialism.
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, to give its full name,
is one of a number of “orders of chivalry” under which titles and medals are
awarded as part of the UK’s “honours” system. Some of them go back centuries,
such as the Order of the Garter and the Order of the Bath. “Chivalry” goes back
even further, signifying courtesy and valour – just think of the legends of
King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, or Saint George and the dragon
(and those who wave the flag of England’s patron saint in protest against immigrants
should remember that if he actually existed, he would have been Turkish now!).
15th century painting of St George,
rescuing a princess from a dragon. (Image from the internet)
Just as the British Empire is now history, although its legacy is still
with us, and the focus for the
“Becoming Brent” project, I believe that
the Order of the British Empire, or at least that name for it, should also
become history. But what is its history? I first started looking into that
about 15 years ago, when I was researching the history of the Cox family of
Sudbury, and their part in Wembley’s volunteer fire brigade.
Wembley’s volunteer fire brigade, with their fire
engine, in 1920. (Courtesy of Carol Snape)
Edward Cox (standing on the right) was the brigade’s Chief Officer from
1920 until it was replaced by a full-time professional Wembley Fire Brigade in
1936. I found that he, and his brother Ernest (sitting on the running board
next to him), had the letters O.B.E. after their names, and wondered how they
had come to be awarded that honour.
A report from the “Middlesex County Times”, 10
February 1917. (Ealing Local History Library)
Research in local newspapers (on microfilm) took me back to a night in
February 1917, when the Wembley Brigade were called out to a fire in Greenford,
with Edward as the fire crew’s Captain and Ernest as the engine’s driver.
[Luckily, this was during a three-month postponement to his army call-up, so
that a new driver could be trained!] The Wembley firemen organised the effort
to bring water from the canal, which stopped the fire at the Purex lead paint factory
from spreading to the adjacent National Filling Station No.28.
That “filling station” was not a petrol station, but a large complex of
wooden huts used for filling 6-inch diameter artillery shells with high
explosive charges and poison gas, for use against the German forces on the
Western Front. If the fire had spread, it could have been disastrous for people
and property over a very wide area!
It was for honouring actions such as these that King George V
established the Order of the British Empire in June 1917. The new Order was principally
intended to recognise courageous acts by civilians during the First World War,
as distinct from the medals which could already be awarded for distinguished
military service. As I wrote in my first
BEE centenary year article last January, the King had visited many parts of the British Empire, and considered
it to be a family of nations (although not all of equal status), so the name of
the Order did reflect that the honours could go to anyone within the Empire,
not just to his British subjects.
The London Gazette list of OBE medals awarded,
July 1920. (Image from the internet)
The Cox brothers’
awards of the Medal of the Order of the British Empire were made in July 1920 (‘For
conspicuous courage and devotion to duty on the occasion of a fire at a
munitions factory’). They were among the names listed alphabetically in the London
Gazette, and as you can see from the image above, one of the first names was
Ali Akbar Khan of the Indian Police, for his wartime work in the Straits
Settlements (now Singapore and parts of Malaysia).
Thousands of
these medals were awarded, and their holders were allowed to use the letters
O.B.E. after their names. But the Order of the British Empire was expanded, to
reward contributions to the arts and sciences, and for public service and
charitable work. Although these were at first awarded in much smaller numbers,
there were other classes of honours within the Order, from bottom to top being
Member, Officer, Commander, Knight or Dame, and at the very top, Knight or Dame
Grand Cross.
I don’t know
whether it was because of class snobbery by Officers of the Order, but from
1922 the Medal of the Order of the British Empire was renamed the British
Empire Medal. It is now awarded to anyone in Britain or the Commonwealth whose
meritorious service ‘is considered worthy of the honour by the Crown’. Those,
like the Cox brothers, who had already been awarded the medal could continue to
use the letters O.B.E. after their names, but from then on BEM has been the
lowest class of honour under the Order, still with “British Empire” in its
name.
Why hasn’t that
name changed, given that the former British Empire had been redefined as a
Commonwealth of Nations as far back as 1949? I’m not the first person to ask
that question. In fact, a cross-party House of Commons committee, the Public Administration
Select Committee, considered it twenty years ago, and published a report “A Matter
of Honour: Reforming the Honours System”, including this recommendation:
An important recommendation from the Select
Committee Report in July 2004.
It wasn’t just politicians
on the Left who thought this was a good idea. The report includes the views of
a former Conservative Prime Minister on removing the word “Empire” and
replacing it with “Excellence”, given as part of his evidence to the Committee:
‘Mr Major also backed the idea of an Order of
British Excellence. This view was a direct reversal of his opinion of 1993,
when he told the House that he could “see no advantage or purpose in changing
the Order of the British Empire”. Today, he told us:
“Although that argument still has force, I believe
it is now out of date. In order to remove one of the persistent criticisms of
the system, I would now be inclined to propose an “Order of British Excellence”
with Awards at the level of Companion (i.e. CBE), Officer (OBE) and Member
(MBE). This is minimum change for maximum effect. It retains the familiar
abbreviations whilst removing reference to an Empire that no longer exists. It
does have an awkwardness with Northern Ireland, but no more so than now”.’
I don’t know why Tony Blair’s Labour Government did not follow this
sensible advice from Parliament. The Order of the British Empire was already
“past its sell buy date” then, and is even more so now. I hope that the current
Government will look again at this suggestion, but the people with the greatest
power to make that change are the “Sovereign” of the Order and its “Grand
Master”. They are, respectively, King Charles III and Queen Camilla.
Do you agree that change is needed? Please feel free to add your
comments below.
Philip Grant.
* Benjamin Zephaniah wrote this in 2003 about his
reaction to the offer of an OBE: ‘“Me? I thought, OBE me? Up yours, I thought.
I get angry when I hear that word ‘empire’; it reminds me of slavery, it
reminds of thousands of years of brutality.”
