Hamish Macdonell: If honours are even why isn't she Dame Becky?

Published on Monday 5 January 2009 21:06

'ARISE Sir Chris", championed the headlines as Scotland's most successful Olympian was awarded a knighthood last week. Sir Chris Hoy's three gold medals were seen as more than an adequate qualification for a knighthood.

But what about Becky Adlington and her two gold medals, the first woman to win swimming gold for Britain in 48 years? She was made an OBE, quite an honour for a 19-year-old with the best yet to come in her career, but did she deserve more?

Her team-mate, Cassie Patten, certainly believed so, declaring on live television just after Adlington's second success in Beijing: "If the Queen is watching, this girl should be made dame, Dame Rebecca Adlington. Two Olympic golds is awesome."

Patten had a point. After all, Kelly Holmes was made a dame after her two gold medals in 2004, so why shouldn't the same apply to her friend Becky?

This is where the Labour government has got itself into a mess. Sport is, by its nature, a field of endeavour that is measurable. There are winners and losers, medallists and world record holders, 100-cap winners and top goal scorers. Success can be measured in 100ths of a second or fractions of a millimetre, and it often is.

No-one disputes that Hoy should have been knighted, or that the rower Sir Steve Redgrave deserved his knighthood after winning five gold medals in consecutive Olympic Games.

But the government has managed to get itself into the position where it appears to be awarding specific honours for definable sporting achievements, and this has both caused confusion and undermined the honours system itself.

It all began after the 2003 Rugby World Cup when every member of the England team received an honour. The coach, Clive Woodward, was knighted – he later led one of the worst-performing Lions parties to New Zealand. Danny Grewcock, who was not in Australia at the time of the final because he had flown home injured, was also honoured. So, too, was Simon Shaw, who flew out to replace him and never played a single minute.

The trend continued with England's Ashes- winning cricketers of 2005. The entire team was honoured, including Paul Collingwood, who was made an MBE even though he appeared in only one Test match and scored just 17 runs – that gave the Australians a rich vein to mine whenever Collingwood came to the crease against them after that.

It was said, only half in jest, after Scotland's Calcutta Cup win last year that maybe every member of the Scottish rugby team should be honoured; after all, they had done pretty much what the England cricket side had done in 2005 – surprised everybody, including the bookies, by beating a long-standing and more successful rival.

So, what are the rules? Do you get a gong for a world title, or do you not? Do you get one for your second or your third, or what about your 14th? Phil Taylor, the darts player, has just won his 14th world title but has never been given so much as an MBE.

This is all Tony Blair's fault. He decided to treat the honours system as a populist tool and, like his botched reform of the House of Lords, he started something populist without any idea how he was going to finish it.

So, when the England rugby side won the 2003 World Cup, he saw the advantage of honouring every member, but not what this would do to those who followed.

With the rugby team honoured, it seemed only fair the cricket team should be rewarded for its achievements too, and so on, until we reached the situation where certain achievements carry the expectation of certain honours – hence Cassie Patten's emotional outburst from Beijing.

It is also worth having a look at the other honours announced last week because, hidden under the welter of publicity over Sir Chris Hoy and Becky Adlington was a legion of loyal royal retainers.

A pilot in the Queen's helicopter flight was honoured, as was a "senior painter and decorator in the Royal Household", not to mention an electrician from Sandringham and a fruit farm worker from the same estate. It really does seem as if all you have to do is look after the Queen's leaks for a couple of years to get an honour, showing that large parts of the traditional honours system of royal patronage still exists.

This was the way it was for decades. Civil servants got gongs when they reached a certain position; diplomats got them for certain roles – such as organising a royal visit to a foreign land – and members of the Royal Household got them for just doing their jobs.

That was known and accepted, and although not at all transparent or meritorious, it was the way the system worked. The trouble now is that, by trying to make it more egalitarian and populist – but only in some parts – the Labour government has contrived to fashion the worst of all possible worlds.

There is now an appearance of equity, but it is not real. If it was, there would be set benchmarks laid down by the sports honours committee that would make the rules clear: say, two gold medals equals a knighthood, three a peerage, but only in a single games, not in consecutive events.

What is happening instead is that value judgments are having to be made on empirical sporting achievements, and that leads to bitterness and resentment.

Either we have an honours system that rewards sporting success equally, in which case it would have been "Arise Sir Phil Taylor" many years ago, or we hold off giving honours to sporting stars – merited as they may be – until they have finished their careers.

That would be the point at which their achievements could be measured properly, against both stars in their own sports and those in other fields too.