JON McCourt lit a flame of hope last week as news that he turned down membership of the Order of the British Empire reached us.
The British 'honours system' becomes the flavour of the day usually twice a year, with the monarch’s birthday and at New Year. The lists usually fall into a few identifiable categories. The hitherto anonymous few good souls who make genuine differences in the lives of ordinary people. They get the OBEs – ordinary members of the Order of the British Empire. Into this category often fall the Catholics, women, people of colour, ethnic minorities: those who get a quick pic and are often shocked to get such attention.
Then there are the 'celebs' – the arts, sporting and media types whose names are recognisable and whose inclusion makes the list look on-trend.
And then the often-lesser known people who somehow seem to get the highest awards. The Commanders, Knights, and Companions (?!). These punters reside at the top echelons of the British civil service, military and business. We rarely see their pics anywhere, yet they make up the vast majority of this infrastructure of privilege. And year on year this infrastructure grows.
Proud of Jon McCourt 4 refusing a MBE, bec of Bloody Sunday, child migration & propagation of the Brit. empire
— Martina Anderson Sinn Féin💚 (@M_AndersonSF) June 17, 2023
“I remember not that long ago, 1 of the solders involved in BS got a MBE.For me there’s no equivocation, there is nothing at all that would make me want to accept that” pic.twitter.com/lUPQSvxP4y
It is a perpetuation of an illusion of Britishness which maintains the links of present Britain with their past of empire built on slavery and dishonest privilege. It maintains the inherited and cherished network of privilege, despite the nod to the working-class tokens.
This week’s birthday honours list came in the wake of Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list, a list which lays bare for the world to see exactly what the honours system is in its raw state – mates and benefactors to be looked after. That Johnson didn’t bother with the niceties of justification caused a little discomfort for the old boys' network who prefer a façade of self-perpetuating 'merit' to hide behind. Johnson’s only sinew of transparency comes from his utter disregard for manners, norms or pretence that he and the system he is born of is anything other than what it is – modern colonial abuse of power.
When poet Benjamin Zephaniah turned down the gong offered to him his words burned into our souls in his poem Bought and Sold:
It's sick and self-defeating if our dispossessed keep weeping
And we give these awards meaning
But we end up with no voice.
In recent times too few have offered voices of discord to these awards. The absence of objection incongruously sits alongside simultaneous focus on the same Empire’s colonial history and legacy being examined and confronted. But it also sits alongside current British policy in Ireland which disregards the Good Friday Agreement and tears up legal obligations with the Legacy Bill. Empire munificence towards some of our citizens, by a British establishment that every day re-confirms its contempt for those of us living in the last colonial outpost, is not a taboo subject.
Cometh the hour, cometh the Irishman. Jon McCourt has spoken truth to power for so long. A man who witnessed Bloody Sunday and stood up to be counted and who experienced state institutional abuse and again stood up and amplified silenced voices; when offered an OBE he said that his integrity and conscience would not let him accept it.
His stand against Britain’s modern rewards, which perpetuate an illusion of normalcy in a time when Britain is showing contempt to our island, its peace and victims’ suffering, is outstanding and much-needed leadership.
