A fairly dishonourable conceit

The usual suspects are disqualified from our sansculotte sport. There are no points for guessing that the average Tory politician will fall upon a knighthood like a fat man upon the dessert trolley. They believe in this stuff. It's part of their world, the natural order of things. Were it not for the uses to which headed notepaper can be put, you'd hardly grudge them their shiny ornaments.

No, high scores can only be achieved by spotting those with severe cases of socially useful amnesia, the ones capable of forgetting every outraged thing they ever said about elitism, equality, social divisions or hierarchies. Bonus points are awarded for the nominees who then attempt to justify themselves.

In a former phase in my so-called career I once had dinner with the playwright David Hare. He seemed then, as perhaps he was, impeccably "progressive" and properly outraged by Tory this, Tory that, and the bad old habits of the British establishment. Would such a man ever have had any truck with the honours system? Silly question. He became Sir David Hare in 1998.

A couple of years later, the novelist JG Ballard turned down a CBE – who knew the monarch was a fan of dystopian fiction? – saying: "I think it's deplorable when left-wing playwrights like David Hare, who have worn their socialist colours on both sleeves for so many years, should accept a knighthood. God almighty, this man actually knelt down in front of the Queen." A fair point, but apparently a minority view.

After all, people have their reasons. I met Lord Puttnam a couple of times when he was plain, film-producing David Puttnam, with plenty to say about politics and what the country needed. His donation to New Labour and his subsequent peerage were not on the list. Lord Attenborough was merely Sir Dickie when he was fixating on Gandhi, human rights and the iniquities of imperial power. Those did not deter him from the ermine.

Most of us have heard Lord Melvyn Bragg claim that he only agreed to enter the Upper House, as you do, to ensure its reform. He and Joan Bakewell – Lady Bakewell to you – probably talk of nothing else. They may even take advice from Lord Prescott, formerly the Labour man of the people who never missed a chance to excoriate the peerage. He was forced, poor soul, to accept his elevation – the excuse is a multi-faceted insult – because of "the wife".

It's nothing new. In fact, it's an old joke on the left that former tribunes of the people are first in the queue for a gong. Trade unionists who have spent years babbling about the needs of ordinary folk separate themselves from those folk at the first opportunity. Artists who have explored the human condition place themselves far beyond the human herd without a second thought. Knighthoods and imperial tinsel blind them to every contradiction. Hypocrisy helps, though.

Peerages are no longer technically part of the honours system – not that you'd notice – but the thinking endures. Titles, badges and baubles are awarded by the state "for exceptional achievement or service". Get one and you are, by definition, better than the rest. To leaven this indigestible proposition, those who do the picking these days throw in a few "ordinary" candidates to justify the others. The OBE, not the good works themselves, is their reward.

Really? That part, I confess, escapes me. If you have devoted your life to helping others, how does a shuffle along the palace carpet help the work? The honour can have no relevance. The knighthood did not make Hare a better playwright. If anything, it probably persuaded some fans of his radical dramas that he no longer deserved to be taken seriously. He dishonoured his own work, if you like, by subscribing to the system he had once attacked. He joined the other side.

It's fascinating, then, finally to see a partial list of all of those who refused the state's blandishments. For decades, bizarrely, this was one of Whitehall's top secrets: at all costs we were not to know the names of the people who had told government or monarch where they could stick their gong. It has taken a year-long battle between the BBC and the Cabinet Office just to extract a 277-strong list of the safely dead.

As dissidents, the writers and painters did well. Old LS Lowry declined honours no fewer than five times. Roald Dahl wasn't interested. Philip Larkin – though this isn't news – decided he could live without an honour, as did Robert Graves, Francis Bacon, Aldous Huxley, Henry Moore, Lucien Freud, CS Lewis, and others besides. You can add them to the still-longer list of those who, over the years, have outed themselves as honours refuseniks.

Their attitude was not, in the strict sense, political or moral. Larkin was a reactionary with some of the most unpleasant attitudes you are ever likely to encounter. Freud was a sinister and manipulative toff. Dahl was not exactly a flaming red. But at the very least each thought that honours were absurd. Some probably believed it was beneath them.

That's probably true in any walk of life. It is also true that in accepting the state's approval you risk keeping bad company. What's a knighthood worth when the world knows that Fred Goodwin got one, and that the former master of the Royal Bank is not the only captain of industry ever to have been honoured while wrecking the company? If the honours system speaks of "merit", why is Britain such a shambles?

It resembles the old paradox of the "Oxbridge elite", the shorthand for the self-selecting class that has run the country for decades. If the word means anything, you wouldn't wish that elite on any nation, given their matchless record of failure. One large problem with the honours system is that it misrepresents the idea of merit. Real merit requires no spurious reward.

Try telling that, though, to the less than good and not so great as they jostle for preferment. In Britain, honours equal status. The little people get their little medals while the rest tell themselves that the gong is no more than they deserve. Objectively, this can't be true. But that's why the refuseniks' list was a secret for so long: the churlish types, geniuses and otherwise, give the game away.

I've quoted Flaubert on this topic before, but I can't improve on his pronouncement. "Honours dishonour," he said, "and titles degrade." Great deeds are insulted by the establishment's self-regard, and by its endless attempts to claim credit for human worth.

It would be nice to think that an independent Scotland would have no truck with any of this, but that's about as likely as my peerage. Honours appeal to the worst in us, not the best.