Time to rename British Empire awards?

One of the most anticipated events in the British Royal calendar is the release of the Queen’s Birthday and New Year Honour List. On an annual basis the Queen of the United Kingdom honours deserving individuals for services to the United Kingdom and its former overseas colonies.

One of the most popular honours awarded by the British Monarch is the Order of the British Empire. The Order of the British Empire (The Order) which was established by King George V in 1917 recognises distinguished service to the arts and sciences, public services and work with charitable and welfare organisations of all kinds. The Order’s motto is ‘For God and the Empire’.

The Order comprises of five ranks namely Knight/Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE), Knight/Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE/DBE), Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) and Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE). Over the years a number of individuals such as David Beckham, Trevor McDonald, Baroness Baden-Powell, Baroness Amos, Sebastian Coe, Kelly Holmes, Bill Morris and Kylie Minogue have been appointed to the Order of the British Empire.

As we approach the end of the second year of the second decade of the second millennium it is about time to ask a number of questions relating to the relevance of The Order. Is it morally right to name an award after an Empire that was built on exploitation, oppression and manipulation? Is the Order of the British Empire still a relevant award in the twenty first century? Does it still make sense for an award to be named after an empire that no longer exists? To get the answers to these questions, one needs to examine the history and legacy of the British Empire.

The British Empire has been regarded by a number of commentators as one of the largest empires in history. It comprised of a large number of colonies and territories governed by the United Kingdom. At its peak, the British Empire extended from Australia to Zambia, covered almost a quarter of the earth's total land area and accounted for a third of the world’s population. Its reach was so wide that former Kings and Queens of Britain could boast, “ The sun never sets on our great Empire.” However, despite the size of the length, breadth and height of the British Empire, structurally, the Empire was founded on oppression, decked on repression and roofed on suppression.

The British Empire was a key player in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Britain transported tens of millions of people from Africa to the Americas under very inhumane conditions to work as slaves. The conditions were so bad that a third of the captured Africans never made it to the Americas. Those that survived worked as slaves on the plantations. These Africans were not regarded as human beings and were described as “'two-legged beasts' or 'savages' that were not quite beasts but were certainly not human either.”

British colonial rule involved the exploitation of the human, natural and economic resources of the colonies. This often resulted in the extraction of raw materials at cheap prices and the use of cheap labour. The exploitation of these resources sowed the seeds for poverty in a number of African and Asian countries.

Another legacy of the British Empire is the consequences of its balkanization policies. British colonial rule resulted in the breakup of large territories into smaller territories. Furthermore, territories that shared similar cultures were divided and areas with different cultures were joined together. This has resulted in a number of disputes in areas such as Kashmir, Iraq and Nigeria.

The British Empire played a significant role in the Tasmanian genocide, which nearly resulted in the extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines, whose population was reduced from fifteen thousand as at the time of contact with the British Colonialist in 1803 to forty-seven Aborigines by 1850.

Another tragic aspect of the British Empire was the death resulting from the famine policy of the British Raj. To recap, in 1876 there was an intense drought in Southern India, which resulted in the 1876-78 Madras famine. As a consequence, millions of Indians faced starvation. At the time of the drought, there was a sizeable reserve of rice and wheat in India, which could have been used to alleviate the starvation crisis. However, the Viceroy at the time, Lord Lytton insisted that the surplus food should be exported to England rather than used to feed the millions of starving Indians. As the famine situation worsened, some concerned individuals decided to send relief donations to the victims. Unfortunately, in order to discourage these private relief donations, the British Colonial administration implemented The Anti-Charitable Contributions Act of 1877, which banned any form of private relief donations that potentially interfered with the market fixing of grain prices.

Any individual who made charitable donations to the starving people faced imprisonment. It is estimated that around ten million people died as a result of the famine. William Digby the British writer once said "When the part played by the British Empire in the 19th century is regarded by the historian 50 years hence, the unnecessary deaths of millions of Indians would be its principal and most notorious monument.”

Another legacy of the British Empire was the spread of racism. The conquest of the darker regions of the world such as Asia and Africa created a false sense of white superiority and false sense of black, brown and yellow inferiority. Unfortunately these views are still prevalent today. Lord Lugard, the then Governor General of Nigeria expressed a classic example of this mindset when he asserted “…..In character and temperament, the typical African of this race-type is a happy, thriftless, excitable person. …….. His thoughts are concentrated on the events and feelings of the moment, and he suffers little from the apprehension for the future, or grief for the past. His mind is far nearer to the animal world than that of the European.”

On the other hand, as a consequence of the influence of the British Empire, the people of the colonies benefited from quality education, hospitals, missions, Common Law, democracy and the English Language.

By the end of the Second World War in 1945, the British Empire began to decline. India’s independence and the Suez Crisis dealt a serious blow on the Empire. By the late sixties, many of the colonies under Britain had gained independence. In his ‘Birth of a New Nation’ Speech delivered in 1957, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said “And the power of Great Britain is no more. I looked at Britain and I thought about the Britain that could boast, ‘The sun never sets on our great Empire.’ And I said now she had gone to the level that the sun hardly rises on the British Empire.” Fifty-four years after Martin Luther King made this statement, the British Empire is no longer in existence.

When one considers the history and legacy of the British Empire in addition to the fact that the Empire is no longer in existence, one comes to the conclusion that the issuance of an award that makes reference to the British Empire is no longer relevant in the twenty first century. Admittedly, an honour system that rewards individuals for distinguished service to the arts and sciences, public services and work with charitable and welfare work should and must continue, however any reference to the British Empire in the award must be discontinued.

Perspective people like Benjamin Zephaniah have raised this issue in the past. Nearly eight years ago, Benjamin Zephaniah rejected his appointment as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. In justifying his reason for refusing to accept the appointment he wrote “….Me? I thought, OBE me? …... I get angry when I hear that word "empire"; it reminds me of slavery, it reminds of thousands of years of brutality, it reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalised. It is because of this concept of empire that my British education led me to believe that the history of black people started with slavery and that we were born slaves.”

When Benjamin rejected the OBE in 2003, it generated a lot of debate, however eight years on, The Order is still being referenced to the Empire. We decided to write this paper to bring the issue up again and to provoke further debate on the relevance of this award. We hope that the quest for the removal of the term British Empire from the British Honour list will be stenciled on the mental sheets of succeeding generations until The Order is renamed.

The continued usage of the term British Empire in the Queens Honour list could be analogous to the Italian Prime Minister awarding an Order of the Roman Empire to deserving Italians or the King of Norway awarding a Viking Medal of Honour to deserving Norwegians.

Bearing in mind the legacies of the British Empire and its impact on people in the colonies, we recommend that the name of the Order of the British Empire be changed to something more relevant and less offensive such as The Order of the Commonwealth or The Order of the House of Windsor or The Order of the British Royal.

Is there any precedence? When the first Commonwealth Games was held in 1930, it was called the British Empire Games. In 1954, it was renamed the British Empire and Commonwealth Games and in 1970 the word Empire was removed as it was renamed the British Commonwealth Games. In 1978 the games was renamed the Commonwealth Games (without any reference to the British Empire).

For the Royal Family to be successful in its attempt to modernize and make itself relevant in the twenty first century, it would need to work towards removing any vestige of British pride over the atrocities committed during the British Empire. Renaming the Order of the British Empire to a suitable name and replacing its motto would be a step in the right direction. If the Order of the British Empire continues to be referenced to the British Empire, it will soon lose its authenticity and be dismissed as an irrelevant award, which glorifies a dead, buried and vicious empire with no meaning for the twenty first century.

Ahmed Sule, CFA, suleaos@gmail.com

Akeem Sule, MRCPsych, akeemsule@hotmail.com