Yesterday’s Sunday Times printed “a long list of people who had refused honours”:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-939310,00.html from the British government. An interesting list including Michael Oakeshott, H.L.A.Hart, Isaiah Berlin and Gilbert Ryle. I also scrolled down the list to see if the reason the most successful manager in English football history had not been knighted was that he’d turned them down. No such luck — they never even offered (even though two managers from an inferior team have been honoured).
{ 16 comments }
jdsm 12.22.03 at 6:43 pm
If you think the honours system is undesirable and you are offered an honour but refuse it, what is the rationale for keeping your mouth shut?
I noted that a couple of people on the list said (in the Guardian) that if you refuse an honour you shouldn’t talk about it. Surely publicly refusing honours is one of the clearest and most effective ways of opposing the system.
antirealist 12.22.03 at 7:26 pm
Not all the refuseniks were opposed to honours; they just didn’t like the source. Some refused honours when the Tories were in power, only to accept them from Blair. Others turned down titles, but later were willing to become a Companion of Honour.
John Kozak 12.22.03 at 8:12 pm
The LRB had a good story (can’t find it online) about Oakeshott’s gong being misallocated to another Oakeshott (a research assistant in a poly geography department or suchlike) because the flunkey TBW instructed to Make It So was too scared of her to elicit clarification of who this was beyond “The academic, boy!”.
Spose this means that it’s false, which is a shame. Mind you, it is the Sunday Times, isn’t it?
Mikhel 12.23.03 at 3:30 am
Andrew Sullivan wrote something to the effect that the refusals were intended to oppose a system with class-divisive roots. Or, that is,
the British honors system, whereby ordinary people of extraordinary ability or achievement are turned into pseudo-lords and ladies or given some medal of honor by the “British Empire” is a horrifying instance of the hold that class snobbery still has on Britain. In my view, the whole system should be abolished.
Is this how many Brits feel about it? Sullivan is by his own account a conservative — is this a liberal/conservative issue?
Sometimes I get the impression that railing against a system is just-for-kicks. Does it ever stop being about class-snobbery and begin being about National recognition, or does class snobbery really have such a hold over Britain?
Zizka 12.23.03 at 3:37 am
Until Keith Richard is given a chance to refuse the OBE he so richly deserves, I will firmly reject any and all honors sent my way by the Hanoverian regime.
Thlayli 12.23.03 at 5:47 am
… the most successful manager in English football history …
Herbert Chapman? Bill Shankly? Bob Paisley?
Chris Bertram 12.23.03 at 7:55 am
Paisley. Paisley died in Feb 1996. When the BBC did their review of the year in sport that year, he didn’t even warrant a mention but they went on and on about Chelsea boss Matthew Harding who was killed in a helicopter crash in October that year.
dave heasman 12.23.03 at 9:02 am
I’d say Clough was as successful as Paisley. Like Chapman he built two Championship-winning teams, and unlike Chapman he did it from two very small towns. Keith Richards is now an American, so he won’t get a gong.
Chris Bertram 12.23.03 at 9:08 am
Bob Paisley: six League Championships, three European Cups, one UEFA Cup and three League Cups. No-one else gets close. You can argue about whether Clough’s achievement given his resources is comparable I suppose (and if that’s the test then Shankly comes into the equation for what he did with a 2nd division team) – but then Clough isn’t Sir Brian either.
Kieran Healy 12.23.03 at 10:46 am
Clough is certainly the most quotable English football manager, though even here Paisley has some good ones. And how does that song about him go again…
Chris Bertram 12.23.03 at 11:07 am
Most quotable? Ok I’m biased. But my all time favourite is from Shankly to a Liverpool trainee:
“The problem with you, son, is that all your brains are in your head”
A remarkably sophisticated position in Phil Mind, in fact.
Kieran Healy 12.23.03 at 11:10 am
“brains are all in your head” I thought it was (which is even better). But I’ll see you and raise you with “If God had wanted football to be played in the air, he would have put grass in the sky.”
Chris Bertram 12.23.03 at 11:16 am
Googling finds “all” in both places – so who knows?
Shankly on Clough: “He’s worse than the rain in Manchester. At least the rain in Manchester stops occasionally.”
Keith 12.23.03 at 3:47 pm
Anyone know why Humphrey Lyttleton turned down a K?
Danny 12.24.03 at 11:03 am
So why are Liverpool managers discriminated against? Does the Queen support Man United? Who does she support?
dave heasman 12.24.03 at 12:24 pm
I missed the bit where Humph turned down the K. It was rumoured for a long time that he had. When would it be? About 1979 I suppose, when Lord Harewood, the aristo jazz fan, was still alive.
Buck Clayton always called him “Sir Humph”, and there’s a 1980 album “Sir Humph’s Delight”.
I’d say he turned it down because he’s an old-fashioned socialist. “A Touch of the Keir Hardies” he calls it.
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