Rebel Britannia
Round about now, every year:
JB Priestley, socialist writer and broadcaster, turned down a life peerage in 1965 and a Companion of Honour in 1969. Almost as if to underline his point, in 1979 he accepted the title of Pipe Smoker of the Year.
Some acts of rebellion are very small, but that doesn't mean they don't count. When they read out the New Year Honours List on the news you might enjoy playing this seasonal game: try and guess who said "No, thanks."
Labour MP and peace campaigner Philip Noel-Baker must have had a pretty big mantelpiece on which to keep his Nobel Prize, his Olympic medal, and the decorations for bravery he won from France, the UK and Italy as an ambulance driver in the first world war. Maybe he turned down a Companion of Honour in 1965 because it seemed a trivial trinket alongside his other trophies, though some suggest that he was motivated by opposition to the war against Vietnam.
Many actors avoid laurels, including Albert Finney who felt they helped to perpetuate "one of our diseases in England, which is snobbery." Henry Moore, sculptor and socialist, son of a mineworker, didn't want to be Sir Henry because it would make him part of the Establishment, and cut him off from his fellow artists. Stephen Hawking, scientist and campaigner, whose views were often on the left, is said to have rejected a knighthood in the 1990s because he disagreed with the government's science-funding policies.
A scientific giant of an earlier age, Michael Faraday, repeatedly let it be known that he was unwilling to be knighted (possibly for religious reasons; he was a member of a Christian sect called the Sandemanians) - but as far as anyone knows he was never actually offered a Sir.
The novelist Doris Lessing, who had been a member of the Communist Party in her youth, wouldn't agree to be made a Dame when famous, as “Surely, there is something unlikeable about a person, when old, accepting honours from an institution she attacked when young?” But she eventually took a Companion of Honour, supposedly because it didn't come with a title.
A later writer, Mark Haddon, explained the reasons why he couldn't accept an OBE in a letter to the Cabinet Office which he later published. Pocketing the award would suggest "an uncritical acceptance of the British Empire as a good thing," and besides that he didn't want anything from Sunak's regime: "the least competent, most self-serving and most morally bankrupt government of any I’ve known. They have consistently sought to line their own pockets and the pockets of their friends."
Not all honours refusers are protestors, of course. Some are just plain eccentric, to put it politely. According to his biographer, the great physicist Paul Dirac turned down a knighthood because he couldn't bear to be addressed by his first name; he would rather stick with "Mr Dirac" than risk "Sir Paul." LS Lowry, the painter, had no principled objection to the honours system, according to those who knew him; he was just a very private man. Lowry is believed to hold the British record for number of spurned gongs, having declined an OBE, a CBE, a knighthood and two Companions of Honour between 1955 and 1976. You can't help feeling that by the end the Cabinet Office was just winding him up.
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Sources:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/61126/document2012-01-24-075439.pdf
https://100objectsbradford.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/80-the-fumes-of-latakia-j-b-priestleys-pipes/
www.ministryoftruth.me.uk/2012/01/27/did-paul-dirac-turn-down-a-knighthood/
www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/revealed-why-ls-lowry-turned-down-359520
www.oxforddnb.com
www.sportsjournalists.co.uk/olympics/unique-olympian-for-whom-peace-was-most-important-thing/
www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/what-empire-why-doris-lessing-said-no-to-being-made-a-dame-6823118.html
www.newstatesman.com/comment/2024/07/mark-haddon-why-i-turned-down-an-obe
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v35/n06/richard-barnett/the-immortal-coil
www.rigb.org/explore-science/explore/person/michael-faraday-1791-1867
www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/albert-finney-dead-cinema-icon-13973002