Accounts and citations of civilian acts of bravery are published in The Gazette, an official journal of record.īy awarding medals sparingly, the HD Committee has maintained the value and respect for these official acknowledgements of valour and heroism. The HD Committee is chaired by Sir Chris Wormald, Permanent Secretary at the Department of Health, and includes the Cabinet Secretary and Chief of Defence Staff among its 14-strong members.
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The responsibility for creating any new official medal and for awarding existing medals lies with the Committee on the Grant of Honours, Decorations and Medals (known as the HD Committee), which must submit its proposals to the Queen for approval.
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The George Cross remains the highest accolade, followed by the George Medal, while the Queen’s Gallantry Medal is the third level for ‘inspiring acts of bravery’, and the Queen’s Commendation for Bravery is the fourth level – presented for acts which involve a risk to life. These days, four medals recognise civilian acts of bravery. In 1997 the Royal Red Cross was extended to include men, although it is still restricted to members of the nursing services of the armed forces. The Royal Red Cross was instituted by Queen Victoria in 1883 for women who showed special devotion while nursing the sick and wounded of the Army and Navy Florence Nightingale was one of the first recipients. More than a century earlier another civilian medal was cast to recognise specifically the service and dedication of medical personnel. ( Related: life amid an Ebola outbreak: combating mistrust – and saving lives.) In a written statement to Parliament at the time, Prime Minister David Cameron said, “The Ebola medal pays tribute to the bravery and selflessness of civilian and military personnel who have taken on great personal risk to support the UK Government’s response to the Ebola crisis in West Africa.” The parallels with the coronavirus crisis seem clear. The Ebola Medal of 2015 paid homage to over 3,000 military and civilian personnel, including NHS doctors and nurses, who left the UK to help stop the spread of the Ebola virus in West Africa.The medal was the first to honour people who tackled a humanitarian crisis, acknowledging the highly dangerous environment in which they had to work. However, there is also a precedent for a medal that recognises bravery in the face of a virus. The George Cross and George Medal were introduced by King George VI in 1940 to reward civilian “acts of the greatest heroism or of the most conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger.” The George Cross has twice been presented collectively – to the island of Malta in 1942 for refusing to capitulate to German forces despite suffering 154 days of consecutive bombing, and to the Royal Ulster Constabulary in 1999 for the collective and sustained bravery of the police force. The businessman and historian Lord Ashcroft, who owns the largest collection of Victoria Crosses, the highest award for military valour, has written to Prime Minister Boris Johnson calling for the Queen to bestow a collective George Cross on the NHS “for the incredible efforts of its staff in treating coronavirus patients.” Some asked for the minting of a ‘Nightingale’ medal for all NHS staff others requested the award of a posthumous medal for NHS staff who lost their lives to COVID-19 and some suggested that the NHS as a whole should receive the George Cross, the highest civilian medal for bravery.
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While the petition’s tally of signatures continues to grow, a further 123 rejected petitions have called for a variety of medal commendations to honour medical workers. Whilst the COVID-19 crisis is an obvious and extreme example, this valiance builds on a foundation of daily selfless commitment and should be formally recognised by the public and state in the form of a medal.” Historically, medals have been largely associated with exceptional courage in the armed forces. Yet it has been striking how much of the language used to describe the campaign against COVID-19 has military overtones – the words 'threat', 'battle', 'fight', 'front line' and 'defeat' featuring regularly in Government bulletins.Ĭontinuing this theme, the NHS medal petition says: “Work in the emergency services is a dangerous profession under normal circumstances, where staff sacrifice personal freedoms to serve the public.