Distributing Status

Jim Hacker: Nobody in their right mind can want honours. They encourage sycophancy, snobbery, jealousy—and civil servants shouldn’t get them all! (J. Lynn and A. Jay, ‘Doing the Honours’, Yes Minister (first broadcast BBC2, 2 March 1981). The provision of state honours to members of the establishment has been a feature of public life since the seventeenth century in Western Europe, and a source of popular discontent since David Lloyd George’s misuse of the system to fund his political career while coalition Prime Minister in the early 1920s. The use of honours as political patronage reached a peak of public opprobrium with scandals such as Harold Wilson’s 1975 resignation ‘Lavender List’ which rewarded cronies, party-funders and personal friends, regardless of their criminal records, and has been subject to critical scrutiny in Britain in the forty-five years since. Yet, despite this, the origins, development and the reasons for the survival of

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