Cabinet minister Barbara Castle recorded
that Labour MPs were unimpressed (‘The reaction was wholly unfavourable, the
word “gimmick” being prominent’), and the artistic establishment was no less
displeased, with Noel Coward noting: ‘Some other decoration should have been
selected to reward them for their talentless but considerable contribution to
the exchequer.’ Meanwhile the Downing Street mailbag revealed that disapproving
letters outnumbered those in support by a ratio of two to one, though since a
good many were from fans of other bands that had somehow been overlooked, that
fact wasn’t perhaps overly significant.
Given
that the same honours list awarded OBEs to singer Frankie Vaughan and to
television actor Jack Warner of Dixon of
Dock Green fame, it wasn’t entirely clear what the fuss was about.
Certainly the Beatles were younger than most recipients, but then their foreign
earnings – which had been what prompted the award – were considerably greater.
A more serious concern was that put by another cabinet minister, Anthony
Wedgwood Benn: ‘The plain truth is that the Beatles have done more for the
royal family by accepting MBEs than the royal family have done for the Beatles
by giving them,’ he wrote in his diary. ‘Nobody goes to see the Beatles because
they’ve got MBEs but the royal family love the idea that the honours list is
popular because it all helps to buttress them, and indirectly their influence
is used to strengthen all the forces of conservatism in society.’
He needn’t
have worried: the award did little to make the establishment fashionable. If
anything the danger was in the other direction, a fear expressed by Elkan
Allan, co-creator of Ready Steady Go!:
‘When the Beatles got the MBE, pop music just became too respectable.’ The
playwright Joe Orton, commissioned to write a screenplay for a Beatles film
that sadly never happened, made the same point, albeit obliquely, to Paul
McCartney: ‘The theatre started going downhill when Queen Victoria knighted
Henry Irving. Too fucking respectable.’
But
even those fears didn’t really materialize. The Beatles managed to carry off
the MBEs episode without seeming to have made any concessions to the
establishment, and subsequently claimed that they’d smoked a joint in the
lavatories while waiting.
Wilson himself was to comment in later years that: ‘They were regarded as clean-living lads during the time they were getting established, whatever may have gone on later.’ Which suggested that perhaps he wasn’t quite as in touch as he liked to appear...
Wilson himself was to comment in later years that: ‘They were regarded as clean-living lads during the time they were getting established, whatever may have gone on later.’ Which suggested that perhaps he wasn’t quite as in touch as he liked to appear...
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