The Unofficial British Royal Family Pages

Sunday 1 January 2006

Fount of honour

The royal family is always guaranteed to be in the news at New Year�s. First there is the release of the New Year�s Honours List on December 31^st. The honours system developed out of the ancient tradition of monarchs granting knighthoods and titles to their subjects. During the nineteenth century, the expansion of the British Empire and of the number of people who made significant contributions to public life resulted in the creation of new categories of honours. The increase in government power and decrease in monarchical power resulted in the government having more say in the awarding of honours, and therefore an increase in the number awarded, as the granting of honours was found to be a useful political tool.

Even though the Prime Minister�s office now makes most of the decisions, the tradition has remained that the monarch is the �fount of honour� (the royal web site uses the more modern �fountain of honour�). For one thing, that means that the Queen is the person who must spend hours handing out medals at investitures. (The Prince of Wales sometimes substitutes, as did the Queen Mother.) The monarch also retains the personal gift of some orders: The Order of the Garter, the Order of the Thistle, the Order of Merit, the Royal Victorian Order and the Royal Victorian Chain, Royal Medals of Honour, and Medals for Long Service. The Royal Victorian Order and Chain are the monarch�s awards to royal staff.

Honours are almost inevitable for people in certain lines of work, particularly the military, civil service and royal service. The award � or withholding � of honours to royal staff is a rare public commentary on their work, and royal watchers do notice. This year it was noticed that the Prince of Wales� former lawyer Fiona Shackleton was appointed a Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order, although she had received some criticism for her handling of a rape allegation against a member of the Prince�s staff. The list of award recipients provides a glimpse into the range of staff required to keep the royal machine going. There are executives of the royals� personal charitable organizations, housekeepers, protection officers, a chief upholsterer, a fruit farm worker, a carpet planner, an organist, a bricklayer, and a fendersmith, among others, all dutifully recorded in The Times.

The title �Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order� certainly has a ring of Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera about it in the twenty-first century. Some potential recipients decline their honours out of irritation at this post-imperial anachronism. The Order of the British Empire particularly offends some minorities, such as the black poet Benjamin Zephaniah, who declined an OBE in 2003. Others refuse the awards because they oppose the monarchy as an undemocratic institution. Still others dislike the feeling that the Establishment has given them its seal of approval, particularly when they have political differences with the government. For example, John Lennon returned his MBE to protest the Vietnam War (and �Britain�s involvement in the Nigeria-Biafra thing�). Also, refusing an honour often gets more publicity than accepting one.

During the last few decades, more ordinary people have received honours than in the past. This is admirable, and yet the recipients are inevitably chosen somewhat randomly, further devaluing the honours. Even the conservative Daily Telegraph had an editorial by Neil Tweedie in their December 31 issue severely criticizing the honours system (�the flummery, the inconsistency, the sheer daftness...�).

Almost as dependable as the honours list is the appearance of a few members of the royal family in the articles that run a day or two after New Year�s. I think of these as the �Thirty Year Rule� articles. The UK has a rule that keeps government documents confidential for thirty years before they are made public. Some documents are kept confidential longer, particularly documents relating to the royal family, for whom decades-old secrets can often still be embarrassing. However, the majority of government documents relating to the royal family are released under the thirty-year rule. The UK National Archives makes these documents available each January 1st , so the 1975 records are being released today.

Finally, a few words about how the royal family spends their New Year�s holiday. They are traditionally at Sandringham, and even when they used to have Christmas at Windsor Castle they would pack up and go to Sandringham for New Year�s. This is partly because New Year�s falls during the shooting season, the New Year�s house party is a shooting party, and Sandringham is their shooting estate.

A Scottish tradition introduced by the Queen Mother is always observed at Sandringham. Called �first footing,� it is good luck for the first person to cross the threshold after the New Year to be a young, dark-haired man. Supposedly this is because the Scots used to be frequently invaded by Vikings, and so blond men were bad luck! The royal family enlist the youngest dark-haired footman to perform the �first footing.� Paul Burrell had to do it on his eleventh day of royal service. At the stroke of midnight he walked into the Sandringham drawing room and threw a log on the fire to the applause of the whole royal family.

- Margaret Weatherford