Accept No Honours From Thieves

The Honours System Is A Corrupt Pay Off

There has been discussion recently regarding Alan Bates (the Sub postmaster who campaigned against his and others’ wrongful convictions for embezzlement) an whether he should be given an MBE or similar honour. Or should he accept one? 

I say no, we should all say no.  

What he did was laudable but should not have been necessary. He, like many others, in many other situations, fought against a system which caused the problems in the first place. To take a gong for clearing his name and fighting for justice against that system is frankly, to become complicit in that system. 

Accepting a gong is an acceptance of the system. One who fights against the system should know this. It is a hard fight and sometimes a hopeless fight. However, those that win against this system are presented in the media as heroes. They are heroes, but they are being called such by the media which props up the establishment they fought against.  

It is devaluing what they did by offering them a trophy, as though they were playing a game or running a race. Someone else will have to run that race again and more gongs will be handed out to those who win. Anyone who falls foul of our establishment, or those it employs, can end up in Bates’ position. Anyone who dies at a football match can be called “hooligan” Anyone who goes on strike can be called ungrateful or lazy. 

What happened to the Sub postmasters (a lot of whom are from South Asian backgrounds), the victims of Hillsborough, the striking miners at Orgreave and to Steven Lawrence’s family have one thing in common. Our governmental and economic system. People fight against it and sometimes win their battles, but the situation stays the same. The system stays the same. Other people, from other walks of life will end up in the situation that those I’ve mentioned ended up in. 

Steven’s mother campaigned to get our judiciary to prosecute the lads who killed him. Then she accepted an OBE, Baroness of Clarendon. She has not changed the system. She and anyone else who has accepted a gong has become *part* of the system. She had to fight because our system, the British Empire of OBE and MBE viewed her as and her family as second class.

To the police, to our government, that was what he was, that was what the Sub postmasters were, that is what a man walking out of work is. No matter our colour, our background, we, the workers of Britain, are seen by that same system as second class citizens of our own country.