To their credit, many British entertainers and such have turned down the offers of OBE’s or whatever - some medal from the Crown.
I’ve no problem with Paul McCartney conspicuously wearing the OBE as a member on Sgt. Pepper album.
I appreciate that George Harrison, when he was offered the ‘second best to a knight’ medal turned it all down because Paul was getting a knighthood. The Crown is the ultimate reviewer of good and not so good music. And Paul had written “Her Majesty”.
Being Irish, may I say “darn you to heck” to Bob “FeedTheWorld” Geldof for accepting a pseudo-lmighthood and Bono if he ever accepted anything more than a “U2 is a band the Crown appreciates” compliment.
All that said, I recently read Phil Lynott, the primary songwriter and guitarist for the Dublin band “Thin Lizzy” was born in the West Midlands UK. Alas, heroin sucks.
Could he have been, alive or posthumously knighted (were the Crown so inclined)? He was black so that might count against him. Thin Lizzy had no particular protests against the UK (as U2 certainly did).
Your question is a muddle of the objective and subjective.
Objectively I think it would have been possible based on him having been born in the UK and therefore I think entitled to citizenship on that basis. I haven’t researched that very carefully however.
Subjectively there is no FQ answer as to whether he would be deemed worthy although given his relatively minor influence in popular music my view is hell no.
He was born in England so would have been eligible for an OBE if he’d been given one and accepted it (non citizens can only get honorary ones IIRC)
If his career had continued he would have got a :“gong” of some kind IMO. Elton John and Rod Stewart both have knighthoods, I can see him being of a similar stature if he hadn’t died young.
No idea of his politics and if he’d have accepted it (and even if he would have refused at 27 he would not necessarily have done so as a pop music grandee at 67)
Indeed, IIRC from the Jimmy Saville saga, the calls for posthumously revoking his knighthood were answered with the simple statement that it no longer existed - knighthood ends when the knight expires. Therefore, I concur - there could be no such thing as a posthumous knighthood.
Phil Lynott and the band are/were from the Republic of Ireland, not Northern Ireland. I think that means that any Royal honor bestowed on them would have been strictly honorary, much the same as when former U.S. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger was knighted.
But the real question is whether Thin Lizzy’s music has anywhere near the quality and importance to garner a knighthood compared to that of other performers who actually have been honored. I don’t think they were terribly successful or popular in America, and to me their output sounded like filler music, nothing really innovative. But then, I’ve only heard the one or two songs that get played on FM radio, so maybe I haven’t heard the good stuff yet.
I don’t think this would have been a factor; I’m not saying that racism doesn’t exist or anything, but I would say that the primary factors preventing black people from attaining knighthoods are things like socioeconomic factors (including racism) that might act to stifle general achievement of success, not so much refusal by the crown to recognise achievement when it does happen.
[Moderating]
The question of who’s deserving of various honors is certainly not a Factual Question, and would (for entertainers, at least) perhaps be better suited for Cafe Society.
The question of who’s eligible for various honors, however, is fully appropriate for FQ. It might lead to a short thread that runs its course quickly, but there’s no need to close it.
Well, we don’t have automatic birthright citizenship in the UK so it isn’t certain that he did hold UK citizenship… Isn’t one of Trump’s beefs that the US is an outlier on this? Irish citizens don’t need a visa to reside in the UK so he wouldn’t have needed to acquire it.
So that’s the question that would need answering in order to answer the OP.
Trump and other’s issue is what are called “anchor babies”. (Foreign) Pregnant woman enters the USA and the child is born there and is a US citizen. Even if the mother did not enter the country legally. She will have a much stronger claim to remain in the USA with her child.
In a slightly related law, a group of immigrants coming in by boat: If the boat is stopped before anyone has set foot on American soil, the boat can be sent back. If everyone jumps out and swims ashore - they may still have no guarantee of not being deported yet that is a time consuming process and they have a chance to remain.
John McCain, who ran for President in 2012, was born in the Panama Canal Zone where his Admiral father was stationed. Yet because one of his parents was an American Citizen, he could have been born anywhere and considered, as per the Constitution rules for President/VP, “a naturalized citizen”. Madeleine Albright, born in Prague, was the Secretary of State under Clinton. Ordinarily Sec State would be third in line for the Presidency yet she was ineligible and I think the Sec of Defence is next.
I am not sure if the same thing as John McCain would apply to Paul McCartney if his mother went back to Ireland when he was born. Both UK citizens of Irish descent and I’ll assume not NI as that is as much UK as Liverpool.
Boris Johnson was born in NYC and held dual citizenship till 2016 when I presume to be an MP one must only be a UK citizen. He will be knighted at some point as all PMs do? The notion of swearing fealty to the monarch is why Sinn Fein does not attend Parliament.
So I was just idly wondering about Phil Lynott in the same way as Bob Geldof or Bono, both born near Dublin. Geldof and Bono received their honorary knighthoods for humanitarian reasons. Dunno about Paul or the other Beatles starting off (and at times giving it back) the OBE yet it would seem in the case of knighthood, Paul was more famous than George.
So I can run for office, vote (and have) in the USA, ROI, and UK. I could run for MP in the UK yet that swearing fealty thing just ain’t gonna happen. And you have to be in NI to join Sinn Fein.
Dual citizenship is not a barrier to becoming an MP (and in fact anyone from a Commonwealth country or Ireland can stand). Boris has fumbled over his reasons, vowing his commitment to Britain, though a quick search reveals many articles about his tussle with the US IRS over a sale of his London home likely being a driving reason.
I remember seeing a Graham Norton clip when a guest asked if he had an OBE or something similar. He made some quip about how he would never get one but never said why. The joking way he said it made me wonder. Was it because he’s gay? No that can’t be it. Didn’t stop Sir Elton. It was bouncing around my head until I had a head slap moment. He’s Irish.
McCain’s situation is actually more complicated. At the time he was born, there was a loophole in the laws that would have meant that he wasn’t a citizen. Anyone who’s born (to any parents) inside the territory and jurisdiction of the US is a citizen. And under the law at the time, anyone born outside of the territory and jurisdiction of the US, to US citizen parents (with a few other qualifiers, irrelevant here) is also a citizen. So what’s the catch? McCain was born outside of the territory of the US, but inside of the jurisdiction of the US, and so neither law applied to him.
The law was changed a few years later to retroactively grant citizenship to people in McCain’s situation. Prevailing legal theory is that this does in fact make McCain a “natural born citizen”, because he was a citizen by virtue of the circumstances of his birth. However, one might argue that that’s not actually what “natural born citizen” means, and that he wasn’t one, because he wasn’t a citizen at the time of his birth. Which interpretation is actually correct? No court has ever decided, and they aren’t likely to ever do so.
Yes, thanks for that. I suppose some interpretation of what Jefferson might have considered about the USA having a long-term military presence outside the original 13 colonies. Dunno how much he wrote about contemporaries who may have been born abroad. So far, every President has been born in the USA proper, if you will, including Obama in Hawaii just two years after it became a state so anarchy avoided.
I suppose my OP was as much about “could Phil Lynottt” have been knighted as he was born in the UK - as “Why Paul but not George” yet that leads to speculation and no real answer.
You’re not wrong, but “British” can be a slippery concept. Lynott was born in the 1940s in England, to a British-or-Irish Mother, and a Commonwealth father. Your first guess should be that that that makes him as English as the King. Of course, he would have had other options, including citizenship of the Republic.
But that comes back to my original point - he wasn’t necessarily a citizen just because he was born in the UK. If he was, (and he very might have been) then of course he could have been knighted if the people that make such nominations thought him worthy of the honour. ‘Paul and not George’ was presumably because it was felt his contribution to music was greater, as one of the primary song writers.
