Dominic Lawson: Compared to Robert Mugabe's knighthood, Salman Rushdie's looks positively virtuous

"I've met the Queen for about ten seconds, and she's a heifer. Don't you think?" No, replied Tony Blair, he didn't. The author of that opinion was Martin Amis, in an interview which that extraordinarily gifted novelist conducted last month with the departing Prime Minister.

I think I can shed some light on this. I was standing next to Martin Amis during those ten seconds. It was during the Queen's Golden Jubilee year and it was the turn of the writers and artists among her subjects to pay their respects - or perhaps for her to thank us, I could never quite understand which.

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Anyway, as I was milling next to Martin, Her Majesty suddenly materialised and the person escorting her indicated that she was in the presence of Martin Amis. She gazed at him in a pleasant sort of way, but said nothing audible. So Martin volunteered the fact that she had bestowed a knighthood upon his father, Kingsley Amis. The Queen did not appear startled by this piece of information, but neither did she acknowledge its truth. After a further few seconds of silent contemplation, she moved on.

I can see why this did not make a favourable impression on Martin Amis. It's quite disconcerting when one tries to make conversation - with anyone - by establishing a common link, and receives blank incomprehension in return. On the other hand it's also unreasonable to expect the Queen, after 50 years and more on the throne, to recall the identity of everyone that she has tapped on the shoulder with her ceremonial sword.

I am sure that she has tried very hard to forget the names of some of those on whom she has been asked to bestow knighthoods. In 1978, allegedly to the Queen's great irritation, the Labour Government insisted that she allow Nicolae Ceausescu a state visit, and award an honorary knighthood to the megalomanic Romanian dictator. Apparently Jim Callaghan and his foreign secretary of the time, David Owen, thought that all this kowtowing would persuade Ceausescu to order a large number of military aircraft from the then state-owned British Aerospace.

Showing the same amazing opportunism and lack of dignity - but in an opposite direction-- the Foreign Office revoked Ceausescu's knighthood on 22 December 1989 just as the dictator was attempting, unsuccessfully, to flee from his rioting subjects. We can confidently predict that the Foreign Office will not revoke Robert Mugabe's honorary knighthood until the day after the brutalised people of Zimbabwe rise up against their oppressor.

It was the Conservative Government of John Major which required the Queen to bestow that honour, in 1994. This was fully 10years after it had become widely accepted that the Zimbabwean leader had been responsible for the massacre of up to 20,000 civilians in Matabeleland.

The Blair Government has from time to time pretended that it will strip Mugabe of his Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath: in March 2003 a member of the Foreign Office told Scotland on Sunday that "it is inconceivable that he will be allowed to remain a knight when his behaviour is so appalling".

It is, of course, not inconceivable at all. In December of that year Mr Blair was asked in the House of Commons by a Tory MP whether he would recommend stripping Mugabe of his knighthood. He replied that "we will certainly look at the issue of the honorary knighthood, although I somehow question what the impact of that might be on him".

Thus the Prime Minister, with his characteristic skill, completely missed the point. It is not to humiliate Robert Mugabe that his knighthood should be revoked: it is to end our own humiliation - and most particularly that of our honours system. Unfortunately, as other events have demonstrated, Mr Blair has a profoundly cynical view of that system. He seems to have seen no merit in it, other than as a means of supporting his own political objectives: as a result he has done far more damage to it than any old Labour socialist, committed on principle to its destruction.

One should not, however, confuse the awarding of peerages with the much less corrupted process which bestows a range of other awards, from MBEs upwards. The latter is much more transparent, and its work is carried out by committees which have a markedly independent spirit. How else can we explain the awards, announced over the weekend, to Salman Rushdie and Oleg Gordievsky? The Russian Government is thought to be furious at the award of a CMG to the former Soviet double agent: last December, in the wake of the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, Gordievsky publicly named President Putin as responsible and called Russia "a terrorist state".

The arts and media honours subcommittee, which recommended a Knighthood for the author of Midnight's Children and The Satanic Verses, has been ridiculed for not anticipating the anti-British demonstrations which the award to Salman Rushdie has allowed politicians to foment in countries such as Pakistan and Iran. It is certainly peculiar that they did not expect such a reaction - and I have it first-hand that they didn't--but it is also, in its way, admirable. After all, these people have been charged with making recommendations based on the talent and artistic contribution of nominees, not on what might be acceptable to Muslim politicians either here or overseas.

It is true that the subcommittees' recommendations then go on to the main honours committee, on which the Foreign Office is represented. It is most unusual, however, for the main committee to reject outright such recommendations. Even if the Foreign Office man had blanched when he saw the name of Salman Rushdie, he would have been very foolish to have attempted a blackball, not least because one or more of the arts and media subcommittee would have resigned - and then all hell would really have broken out.

For what it is worth, here is my advice for any politician or foreign office official under pressure from Muslims at home or abroad over the Rushdie knighthood: point out that only two years ago Iqbal Sacranie, the former chairman of the Muslim Council of Great Britain, was awarded a knighthood. This is the same Iqbal Sacranie who, when the Ayatollah Khomeini declared a fatwa on Rushdie, announced that "death, perhaps, is a bit too easy for him". There were, shamefully, no expressions of outrage when the contemptible Mr Sacranie was made "Sir Iqbal".

On Tuesday night I attended Salman Rushdie's 60th birthday party. There were a number of congratulatory speeches - but while all mentioned his age, none referred to his knighthood. Perhaps that is not so surprising. For a man who had been sentenced to death in the name of an entire religion, to have reached the age of 60 at all is a much greater achievement than any bauble.

d.lawson@independent.co.uk

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