It was fifty years ago today...

...that the Labour government of Harold Wilson announced the awarding of MBEs to each of the four Beatles. To mark the occasion, here's an extract from my book My Generation:

The awards prompted a wave of outrage and of honours being returned in protest by previous recipients; a former RAF squadron leader who sent back his MBE summed up the mood: ‘I feel that when people like the Beatles are given the MBE the whole thing becomes debased and cheapened.’ 

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...

A Voice from History: Gordon Brown

In memory of the political career of Gordon Brown, who has now left the Commons at the ripe old age of 64, here are some of my favourite quotes from the former prime minister:

1) 'No chancellor until this one has come to the House and said that because he has money available to him, the rich will get the benefits and the poor will make the sacrifices.' (1988)

2) 'I see Labour as the party of small businesses and the self-employed.' (1995)

3) 'They [the Liberal Democrats] are not fit to make their presence felt in this House. They should go back to their constituencies and prepare to adapt to reality.' (1997)

4) 'I want this generation to be remembered as the first generation in history that truly made prosperity possible for the world and its people.' (2001)

5) 'Tony Blair is the best friend I have in politics. We have worked together for many, many years.' (2001)

6) 'I did maths at school and for one year at university, but I don't think I was ever very good at it.' (2007)

7) 'I could never compare myself to Gandhi and all the other heroes of mine, but I do take inspiration from the way they dealt with the challenges they found.' (2007)

8) 'I admire the fact that she [Margaret Thatcher] is a conviction politician. I am a conviction politician like her.' (2007)

9) 'When things go well, people call me Gordon. When they're bad, they call me Mr Brown. At the moment they are calling me Gordon.' (2008)

10) 'She was just a sort of bigoted woman who said she used to be Labour.' (2010)

And now some words about Brown by his friends and admirers:

1) 'He is a happiness Hoover.' - Michael Howard (1993)

2) 'Gordon Brown talks about no return to boom and bust. He is not going to have a boom, but he might have a bust.' - Kenneth Clarke (1998)

3) 'He is silly and I shall keep at him.' - Barbara Castle (2000)

4) 'I'm convinced Gordon Brown bores 99 per cent of any audience. I once interviewed him for thirty-eight minutes and he gave the same answer to every question. And he doesn't care that everyone finds him so boring.' - John Humphreys (2000)

5) 'The sooner he becomes prime minister the better. In the last couple of years, Tony Blair has been a disaster.' - Denis Healey (2005)

6) 'He is somebody I'm liking very much and I think he will certainly do more and more good things if he has a chance.' - Angelina Jolie (2006)

7) 'Allowing Gordon Brown into No.10 would be like letting Mrs Rochester out of the attic.' - Frank Field (2007)

8) 'He has the charisma of a coffin lid.' - Michael Portillo (2007)

9) 'He is like some sherry-crazed old dowager who has lost the family silver at roulette, and who now decides to double-up by betting the house as well.' - Boris Johnson (2008)

10) 'He could be a miserable bugger, Gordon.' - John Prescott (2011)