Benjamin Zephaniah did it. So did Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. Howard Gayle, the pioneering black footballer, did it without a second thought.
Britain, keen to highlight their achievements as outstanding citizens who have made a notable contribution to how we live, dangled the recognition of a state-backed honour in front of each of them. And each, ultimately unable to reconcile the link between those honours and the misty-eyed evocation in the title of Britain’s brutal empire, said “no thanks”. Or “up yours”, in the case of Zephaniah, who said: “I get angry when I hear that word ‘empire’; it reminds me of slavery.” Many others, without publicising their decision, have rejected honours privately.
