The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises six classes of appointments across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two of which make the recipient either a knight if male or a dame if female.
The order was established on 4 June 1917 by King George V, who created the order to recognise "such persons, male or female, as may have rendered or shall hereafter render important services to Our Empire". Equal recognition was to be given for services rendered in the UK and overseas. The order was retained after the decline of the British Empire in the second half of the 20th century. The majority of recipients are UK citizens, though a number of Commonwealth realms outside the UK continue to make appointments to the order. Honorary appointments may be made to citizens of other nations of which the order's sovereign is not the head of state.
Appointments are announced in The Gazette.
Classes The six classes of appointment to the order are, from highest to lowest: Knight Grand Cross or Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE); Knight Commander or Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE or DBE); Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE); Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE); Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE); Recipient of the British Empire Medal (BEM).
The two highest ranks, Knight or Dame Grand Cross and Knight or Dame Commander, entitle the holder to use the title Sir or Dame before their forename, except in the case of honorary appointments.
History King George V founded the order to fill gaps in the British honours system: The Orders of the Garter, the Thistle and St Patrick honoured royals, peers, statesmen and eminent military commanders; The Order of the Bath honoured senior military officers and civil servants; The Order of St Michael and St George honoured diplomats and colonial officials; The Order of the Star of India and the Order of the Indian Empire honoured Indian rulers and British and Indian officials of the British Indian Empire; and The Royal Victorian Order, in the personal gift of the monarch, honoured those who had personally served the royal family.
In particular, George V wished to create an order to honour the many thousands of individuals from across the Empire who had served in a variety of non-combat roles during the First World War.
From its foundation the order consisted of five classes (GBE, KBE/DBE, CBE, OBE and MBE) and was open to both men and women; provision was also made for conferring honorary appointments on foreign recipients. At the same time, alongside the order, the Medal of the Order of the British Empire was instituted, to serve as a lower appointment granting recipients affiliation but not membership. The first investiture took place at Ibrox Stadium, as part of a royal visit to the Glasgow shipyards, with the appointment of Alexander Ure, 1st Baron Strathclyde as a GBE (in recognition of his role as chairman of the Scottish War Savings Committee) and the conferral of medal of the order to Lizzie Robinson, a munitions worker.
The order had been established primarily as being for civilians; in August 1918, however, not long after its foundation, a number of appointments were made to serving naval and military personnel. Four months later, a 'Military Division' was added to the order, to which serving personnel would in future be appointed. The classes were the same as for the Civil Division (as it was now termed), but military awards were distinguished by the addition of a central vertical red stripe to the purple riband of the civil awards. In 1920, appointment as an MBE "for an act of gallantry" was granted for the first time, to Sydney Frank Blanck Esq, who had rescued an injured man from a burning building containing explosives.
In December 1922, the statutes of the order were amended; there having been a large number of awards for war work prior to this date, these amended statutes placed the order on more of a peacetime footing. For the first time numbers of appointments were limited, with the stipulation that senior awards in the Civil Division were to outnumber those in the Military Division by a proportion of six to one. Furthermore appointments in the civil division were to be divided equally between UK and overseas awards.
With regard to the Medal of the Order (but not the order itself), a distinction was made in 1922 between awards "for gallantry" and awards "for meritorious service" (each being appropriately inscribed, and the former having laurel leaves decorating the clasp, the latter oak leaves). In 1933, holders of the medal "for gallantry", which had come to be known as the Empire Gallantry Medal, were given permission to use the postnominal letters EGM (and at the same time to add a laurel branch emblem to the ribbon of the medal); however, in 1940, awards of the EGM ceased and all holders of the medal were instructed to exchange it for a new and more prestigious gallantry award: the George Cross. In 1941, the medal of the order "for meritorious service" was renamed the British Empire Medal, and the following year its recipients were granted the right to use the postnominal letters BEM. During the war, the BEM came to be used to recognise acts of bravery which did not merit the conferral of the George Cross or the George Medal, a use which continued until the introduction of the Queen's Gallantry Medal in 1974.
The designs of insignia of the order and medal were altered in 1937, prior to the coronation of King George VI, 'in commemoration of the reign of King George V and Queen Mary, during which the Order was founded'. The figure of Britannia at the centre of the badge of the order was replaced with an image of the crowned heads of the late King and Queen Mary, and the words 'Instituted by King George V' were added to the reverse of the medal. The colour of the riband was also changed: twenty years earlier, prior to the order's establishment, Queen Mary had made it known that pink would be her preferred colour for the riband of the proposed new order, but, in the event, purple was chosen. Following her appointment as Grand Master of the order in 1936 a change was duly made and since 9 March 1937 the riband of the order has been 'rose pink edged with pearl grey' (with the addition of a vertical pearl grey stripe in the centre for awards in the military division).
From time to time the order was expanded: there was an increase in the maximum permitted number of recipients in 1933, and a further increase in 1937. During the Second World War, as had been the case during and after World War I, the number of military awards was greatly increased; between 1939 and 1946 there were more than 33,000 appointments to the Military Division of the order from the UK and across the Empire. Recommendations for all appointments to the Order of the British Empire were originally made on the nomination of the King's United Kingdom ministers (recommendations for overseas awards were made by the Foreign Office, the Colonial Office, the India Office and the Dominions Office); but in the early 1940s the system was changed to enable the governments of overseas dominions to make their own nominations; Canada and South Africa began doing so in 1942, followed by Australia, New Zealand and other Commonwealth realms.
In May 1957, forty years after the foundation of the order, it was announced that St Paul's Cathedral was to serve as the church of the order, and in 1960 a chapel was dedicated for its use within the crypt of the cathedral. That year, Commonwealth awards made up 40% of all OBEs and MBEs appointed (and 35% of all living recipients of the higher awards). Gradually that proportion reduced as independent states within the Commonwealth established their own systems of honours. The last Canadian recommendation for the Order of the British Empire was an MBE for gallantry gazetted in 1966, a year before the creation of the Order of Canada. On the other hand, the Australian Honours System unilaterally created in 1975 did not achieve bi-partisan support until 1992, which was when Australian federal and state governments agreed to cease Australian recommendations for British honours; the last Australian recommended Order of the British Empire appointments were in the 1989 Queen's Birthday Honours. New Zealand continued to use the order alongside its own honours until the establishment of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 1996. Other Commonwealth realms have continued to use the Order of the British Empire alongside their own honours.
In 1993, the Prime Minister, John Major, instituted a reform of the honours system with the aim 'that exceptional service or achievement will be more widely recognised; that greater importance will be given to voluntary service; that automatic honours will end; that the distinction between ranks in military operational gallantry awards will cease'. The reforms affected the order at various levels: for example the automatic appointment each year of a GBE to the Lord Mayor of London ceased; appointment as OBE replaced the Imperial Service Order for civil servants, and the number of MBEs appointed each year was significantly increased. As part of these reforms, the British Empire Medal stopped being awarded by the United Kingdom; those who would formerly have met the criteria for the medal were instead made eligible for appointment as MBE.
In 2004, a report entitled A Matter of Honour: Reforming Our Honours System by a Commons select committee recommended phasing out the Order of the British Empire, as its title was "now considered to be unacceptable, being thought to embody values that are no longer shared by many of the country's population". The committee further suggested changing the name of the order to the Order of British Excellence, and changing the rank of Commander to Companion (as the former was said to have a "militaristic ring"), as well as advocating for the abolition of knighthoods and damehoods;"Honours system outdated, say MPs", BBC News, 13 July 2004, Retrieved 28 February 2007 the government, however, was not of the opinion that a case for change had been made, and the aforementioned suggestions and recommendations were not, therefore, pursued.
In the 21st century quotas were introduced to ensure consistent representation among recipients across nine categories of eligibility: Arts and media Community, voluntary and local Economy Education Health Parliamentary and political Science and technology Sport State with the largest proportion of awards being reserved for community, voluntary and local service.
Non-military awards of the British Empire Medal resumed in 2012, starting with 293 BEMs awarded for Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee.
In 2017, the centenary of the order was celebrated with a service at St Paul's Cathedral.
Composition The order is limited to 300 Knights and Dames Grand Cross, 845 Knights and Dames Commander, and 8,960 Commanders. There are no limits applied to the total number of members of the fourth and fifth classes, but no more than 858 officers and 1,464 members may be appointed per year. Foreign appointees, as honorary members, do not contribute to the numbers restricted to the order as full members do. Although the Order of the British Empire has by far the highest number of members of the British orders of chivalry, with more than 100,000 living members worldwide, there are fewer appointments to knighthoods than in other orders.
From time to time, individuals may be promoted to a higher grade within the Order, thereby ceasing usage of the junior post-nominal letters.
Sovereign and Grand Master