The announcement of Tony Blair’s knighthood has provoked a huge backlash that is not confined to the fringes. A million people have called for the honour to be rescinded and a recent poll showed only 14% of the British public thought it was deserved. There is a widespread feeling in the UK that the title should be withdrawn.
The reason for people’s anger is not hard to discern: the British public has not forgotten the Iraq war. This was a dark period in British history, where the government of the time knowingly misled the public, telling us Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction when there was no good evidence to support that claim. It also failed to correct untrue stories in the press, including one that ‘revealed’ how Hussein had weapons that could hit a British military base in Cyprus in 45 minutes. The government wanted to go to war and it didn’t let the facts stand in its way.
Those lies provoked some of the largest demonstrations the towns and cities of this country have ever seen. But they were ignored by a government that sent troops into Iraq and was consequently responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Millions in this country had no desire for war but the British government’s subservience to the American war machine and hubris meant pushing ahead anyway. Blair has never sought absolution for these crimes. It is easy to see why so many are inflamed by him now being honoured when there has been no accountability for the Iraq war and all the misery it caused.
