John Lennon once returned his MBE as a way to protest Britain’s involvement in war and called the accolade a “daft” honour that was thrown at The Beatles.
Lennon, who was handed a Member of the Order of the British Empire as part of the veteran rock group in 1965, returned his award just a few years later. The Imagine hitmaker returned his MBE in November 1969. Speaking of his decision to return the honour, Lennon said it was simply down to not wanting to play the game that came with the accolade any longer. Even when he accepted the award, Lennon appeared somewhat indifferent to it. He said at the time he couldn’t remember what the band were up to when prompted to answer by Queen Elizabeth II.
He said: “We thought being offered the MBE was as funny as everyone else thought it was. We all met and agreed it was daft…then it all just seemed part of the game we’d agreed to play. She said to me, ‘Have you been working hard lately?’ And I couldn’t think what we had been doing so I said, ‘No, we’ve been having a holiday,’ We’d been recording, but I couldn’t remember.”
When later asked why he was returning his honour, Lennon replied: “As a protest against violence and war, especially Britain’s involvement in Biafra, which most of the British public aren’t aware of. All the press, TV and radios, slant all the news on Biafra. All the stuff I learned on Biafra from journalists, off the cuff, folks, is a different story and I began to be ashamed to be British. I’m a patriotic nationalist, Yoko can vouch for that — I’m always talking about Britain invented radar and all the things we’ve done.
“But, every day, I began to worry a bit more about it. I was gonna send the MBE back anyway, I could’ve done it privately but the press would have found out anyway, you would’ve been here a week later, instead. Less impact.”
In a letter to the Queen sent on November 25, 1969, Lennon outlined his reasons for returning the award further. He wrote: “I am returning my MBE as a protest against Britain’s involvement in the Nigeria-Biafra thing, against our support of America in Vietnam and against ‘Cold Turkey’ slipping down the charts.”
The letter was sent at the time when Lennon and Yoko Ono were performing a “bed-in” in protest of the Vietnam war, though the former Beatles member had time to protest the British-involved civil war.
Despite renouncing the MBE and even sending back the medal which sat on his Aunt Mimi’s mantelpiece in Bournemouth, Lennon’s MBE was not dropped. According to Gov.UK: “An individual may decide to renounce their honour voluntarily [but] would still hold the honour unless or until HM Queen annulled it.”
Lennon is not the only person to reject or return an MBE award. David Bowie, Paul Weller, and Brian Eno all rejected, refused, or returned the offered award, while Danny Boyle, director of Trainspotting, also rejected the honour.
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