A MATTER OF HONOUR

A Matter of Honour

I wrote this about ten years ago when Tony Blair was still bright and shiny and words like Iraq and Afghanistan did not cling to him as we now know they will - forever. More to this point ‘cash for honours’ wasn’t yet in the public phrasebook. Of course the bungs that later were alleged to have been made to the Labour Party were for big things, BIG THINGS, such as knighthoods and baronetcies not petty things like OBEs. I guess that the story I tell here is probably about nothing more than bureaucratic sloppiness and has little to do with our slightly tainted former Prime Minister, but he did make the promise about ‘opening up’ the Honours system and I did, silly me, take him seriously.


I didn’t do anything with this piece which I wrote when the outcome of all our efforts was made known. I did it more as a record, something to look back on when I felt like looking back.



AN ACCOUNT OF A FAILED NOMINATION FOR AN HONOUR

One of the many promises made by Tony Blair when he moved into No 10 was that his government would open up the Honours system. It would be more accessible. ‘Ordinary people’ would be encouraged to nominate ‘ordinary people’ for an Honour. The Honours system would no longer be the sole preserve of the famous, those in the know, those who had worked out their lives in the civil service and the armed forces, and those who had friends in government. I made a mental note of this at the time.

About three and a half years ago I began to realise that I was married to a candidate for an Honour. Nothing too grand you understand but, having looked down several of those Honours Lists over recent years, I thought that my wife had made a sufficiently impressive contribution to her profession to merit an OBE. Yes, I am biased. Yes, there would probably be thousands of people doing her job far more successfully than she (I didn’t really believe this).Yes, it was a bit of a bloody cheek even thinking about it. But if you don’t ask you don’t get and I thought this woman could actually be in with a chance. And Mr Blair had said what he had said.

My wife had been doing her job for some 39 years when the OBE idea came to me. She was due to retire in July 2001. It was then around the end of 1999. I thought that if I got the timing right it would make a nice retirement present and she would enjoy going to the Palace for the presentation. Perhaps even a new hat? A fitting end to a brilliant career.

The Nominations Unit of the Ceremonial Branch of the Cabinet Office, located via the internet, sent me some Guidance Notes. Some key points emerged. Consideration of nominations takes at least 12 to 18 months. 18 months would do very nicely on my schedule. Awards are normally made to ‘people who are still active in the area(s) to which the nomination relates’. She was still pretty active if the number of evenings and weekends spent away from the home and meals spoiled by evening telephone calls were anything to go by. Nominations are ‘treated in the strictest confidence’ so the nominee should not be told that they have been nominated – if it was going to be a surprise for her retirement then obviously I wouldn’t let on and I wouldn’t want her to be disappointed anyway.

Later on in the Guidance Notes the Nominations Unit starts to acknowledge that it is operating in a potentially difficult area. Not everyone who gets nominated gets an Honour they tell you. No, they will not enter into correspondence on the merits of your nomination. No – and this came as a surprise – they don’t tell you if your nomination has failed; you have to wait for two years and then ‘you may assume the nomination has lapsed’. That was going to make my surprise celebration Honour and Retirement party rather difficult to plan but I put my faith in the words of Tony Blair and went ahead with the nomination.

There is another aspect to the nominating procedure which contains a hidden snag, the Letters of Support that are very obviously necessary. Who would believe me if I just filled in a form and said that my wife was wonderful? The application form that I downloaded from the internet said that two or more letters of endorsement were needed. The snag? How do you keep a nomination secret if you seek support from people who are working alongside the nominee? All of the people from whom I was to seek support would have to be from her recent or distant past, not her present. That was my conclusion, anyway.

I have always been a supportive husband. I’ve gone along to events involving my wife’s work and I know some of her colleagues and some of her pupils. I don’t know why I am reluctant to reveal to you that my wife was a teacher but teachers don’t usually get a good press and I’m fearful that you might think it a cheek for me to believe that a teacher merits any kind of public distinction. Well, dammit, she did. She taught English and Drama, very well indeed and this implies one hell of a lot of extra work directing plays, taking school parties to the theatre and all that sort of thing. Colleagues and pupils seemed to rate her highly.

I racked my PC for the people in my wife’s professional life whose names and addresses I’d bothered to record. I rummaged through her address book. I came up with one young teacher whose career I know was incredibly influenced for the better by my wife. I found two pupils of some ten years earlier, eight more recent pupils, and a pair of parents. That is a total of eleven people I would ask to support of the nomination. I wrote to them all, explained what I was up to and asked them to send me letters of support.

All of them did what I had asked. I found the letters incredibly moving. I had not realised just how just how much my wife had contributed to their lives. It was like ‘This Is Your Life’. I even cried a bit as I read them. They all went off with the nomination form in March 2000 and I believed, I really believed, that in this new world where ‘ordinary people’ counted for something this rather extraordinary wife of mine would probably get a gong.

The months went by. A year went by. We passed the 18 month deadline then two years went by. My wife’s retirement party took place, attended by many of her covert supporters, none of whom broke the secret. In June of this year I cracked and wrote to the Nominations Unit asking for a progress report. They replied saying that ‘in order to validate your wife’s claims, her papers have been passed to the Department for Education and Skills for initial consideration’. My reaction was threefold. One: my wife was not making any claim for anything and still did not know about the nomination. Two: wasn’t this rather late in the day for initial consideration? Three: why had the Guidance Notes not referred to this extra stage in the process? Do nominations for doctors get sent to the General Medical Council? Or for plumbers to the Guild of Master Craftsmen? Where do they go when they get a nomination for a Lollypop lady?

I wrote to the Department in July 2003 asking if the nomination was still in the running. Their reply said that my wife had been ‘unsuccessful so far against fierce competition for the limited number of awards available’. So far.So far? So there’s still hope? The letter went on to say that ‘as honours are normally awarded to people who are still performing the service for which the recognition is proposed it is unlikely that your wife can be considered again’. Timed out! The nomination was made in March 2000 when she was more than a year away from retirement.

I know that I have no right at all to be bothered by this but I am. Tony Blair made me think that things were changing but I don’t think they have changed much at all. What has happened is of no consequence at all in the wider world but twelve ordinary people had expressed the view that one individual had made a distinguished contribution to their world and they went to some trouble to compile and submit a well supported nomination. It was hardly respectful to just allow it to be overtaken by time. Perhaps no-one ever told them to show respect.

It is odd to discover now that people reject honours. Isn't that a bit discourteous to those who have nominated and supported you? Maybe if you are a big, big star you don't need to be nominated and don't need letters of support and turning down an honour just shows how big you are. But if you are a hardworking teacher on the verge of retirement and that small brown envelope arrives would you turn down what if offers? They want to pat you on the back and tell you, 'Well Done!' And you get to meet the Queen.

What I did then was to type out all those letters I had received in support of my nomination and print them out on nice silvery stiff paper. On top of the pile I put the wording of my nomination on nice goldy stiff paper. I had a designer friend produce a cover that had as its centrepiece a version of the cover of my book, Not Heavy Enough To Win A Prize? that replaced my photo with one of her. The word ‘Heavy’ was italicised to make the meaning ironic. The heading was ‘The nomination of Heather Diggle’ and at the bottom I listed the names of those who had supported my claim. It looked good when I put everything together with a clip binder; at a suitable time I told her what I had been up to and presented her with the slender book.

She took it very well. She was very touched when she read what the supporters had said about her. Those people remain her friends to this day.

I suppose I am the one who felt disappointment most keenly for I really did think she was worthy of the Honour and I know she would have just loved the Buckingham Palace occasion. And the new hat!