Andrew Roberts: The obscenity of giving Ted Kennedy a knighthood
[Andrew Roberts is a British historian.]
The decision to award an honorary knighthood to Senator Edward Kennedy shows Britain at its most masochistic, New Labour at its most cynical and - if he accepts it - Kennedy at his most hypocritical.
To bestow such a distinction on a man who has spent almost all his adult life profoundly opposed to the United Kingdom's best interests also makes a mockery of the honours system.
Ever since Patrick Kennedy (Ted's Irish great-grandfather) set foot on Noddle Island, Boston, on April 21, 1849, the family has nursed a deep resentment against the country that they blame for forcing them out of County Wexford during the Great Potato Famine.
Ted Kennedy's father, Joe, who had made his money from bootlegging in the Prohibition era, became American ambassador to London from 1938 to 1940. As the U.S. envoy, he was an unrelenting appeaser and as unhelpful to Britain as it was possible to be in those perilous days, believing that Adolf Hitler was going to win the war.
Derided as a coward and known as 'Jittery Joe' for panicking when bombs were falling, his term as ambassador ended abruptly, along with his political ambitions, during the Blitz in November 1940 when he remarked: 'Democracy is finished in England.' Within a month he was forced to resign.
Over all matters concerning Ireland, the Kennedys have taken a pro-Nationalist line that has been deeply antagonistic to the Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. That is why it is absurd for Gordon Brown to make this award, in the words of its official citation, 'for services to U.S.-UK relations and to Northern Ireland'...
Read entire article at Daily Mail (UK)
The decision to award an honorary knighthood to Senator Edward Kennedy shows Britain at its most masochistic, New Labour at its most cynical and - if he accepts it - Kennedy at his most hypocritical.
To bestow such a distinction on a man who has spent almost all his adult life profoundly opposed to the United Kingdom's best interests also makes a mockery of the honours system.
Ever since Patrick Kennedy (Ted's Irish great-grandfather) set foot on Noddle Island, Boston, on April 21, 1849, the family has nursed a deep resentment against the country that they blame for forcing them out of County Wexford during the Great Potato Famine.
Ted Kennedy's father, Joe, who had made his money from bootlegging in the Prohibition era, became American ambassador to London from 1938 to 1940. As the U.S. envoy, he was an unrelenting appeaser and as unhelpful to Britain as it was possible to be in those perilous days, believing that Adolf Hitler was going to win the war.
Derided as a coward and known as 'Jittery Joe' for panicking when bombs were falling, his term as ambassador ended abruptly, along with his political ambitions, during the Blitz in November 1940 when he remarked: 'Democracy is finished in England.' Within a month he was forced to resign.
Over all matters concerning Ireland, the Kennedys have taken a pro-Nationalist line that has been deeply antagonistic to the Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. That is why it is absurd for Gordon Brown to make this award, in the words of its official citation, 'for services to U.S.-UK relations and to Northern Ireland'...