An honour, from a knighthood to an MBE, is often the pinnacle of the recipient’s life — an award in recognition of years of service to a sector or community.
But there is always someone or something that wants to bring people back down to earth. Over the weekend, the Free Speech Union exposed the true nature of a shadowy cabal operating at the heart of Whitehall — the Forfeiture Committee — thanks to a Freedom of Information request sent by member Nick Buckley MBE.
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Secret guidance obtained through the FOI request revealed the Forfeiture Committee, based in the bowels of the Cabinet Office and chaired by Dame Sarah Healey DCB CVO, can remove people’s honours for their perfectly lawful comments posted on social media.
Those who have served their communities, supported charities, or done something remarkable with their lives now face the potential public vilification and humiliation of having their proudest achievement stripped from them by a handful of Westminster mandarins who form a little-known committee.
The committee itself says the quiet part out loud. The guidance states so-called “hate incidents” — lawful comments — which “cannot be prosecuted” could very well result in someone having their honour removed. This revelation comes as Big Brother Watch’s new report exposes 62,199 people have been arrested over the course of the last five years for “speech offences”, including viewing TikToks.
These incidents include cases where “the victim or anyone else thinks (the incident) was motivated by hostility or prejudice based on one of five prescribed characteristics — disability, race, religion, transgender identity or sexual orientation.” In short, you could have your honour taken away because a group of unelected officials do not like your lawful expressions of your worldview.
The threshold for stripping someone of their honour is supposed to be extremely high, with the Government’s own guidance stating it is generally only appropriate to remove an honour should the individual have been convicted of a criminal offence resulting in a custodial sentence of more than three months, convicted of a sexual offence, or struck off by a regulator or professional body for conduct directly related to the honour bestowed upon them.
However, it is now clear this is not the case. Mr Buckley was awarded an MBE for services to charity in his home city of Manchester — particularly for his work with the homeless. Last December, Mr Buckley received notice his MBE was to be stripped from him as a result of comments he had made online which had allegedly brought the honours system “into disrepute”. They stated his online comments had gone “beyond political comment” and branded them as “homophobic” and “racist”. Most alarmingly, the committee had held a secret meeting about Mr Buckley of which he had no prior knowledge.
With the help of the FSU — including a letter from Lord Young of Acton, the union’s General Secretary, to the Head of the Honours and Memorialisation Secretariats at the Cabinet Office — Mr Buckley retained his honour.
Whatever you may think of Mr Buckley’s comments, they did not meet the strict guidance in place for stripping someone of their title.
Lord Young has warned that these sinister, censorious criteria would make people “think twice” before they accept an honour, because it could impede their ability to speak and think freely.
An honour should not be used as a stick to beat people into subscribing to prevailing progressive orthodoxies, or indeed as a muzzle. It should not be weaponised to punish those on the political right — because it is always targeted against the right — who wish to speak out on mainstream hot-button topics.
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It is for this reason we should also be alarmed at the Removal of Peerages Bill, introduced in the last King’s Speech in response to the revelation of the true extent of Lord Peter Mandelson’s close personal relationship with the prolific paedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
It is inevitable this legislation will be used not just to strip peers who do not deserve to sit on the red benches due to their sickening relationships with sinister figures, but also to silence figures who fall out of favour with the government of the day or who do not subscribe to the same political doctrine — and dare to speak out.
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