God Save the Queen: The Strange Persistence of Monarchies by Dennis Altman

Author:Dennis Altman [Altman, Dennis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: POL022000, HIS037000, POL007000, POL010000, POL045000, POL047000
ISBN: 9781922310569
Google: 2EY0zgEACAAJ
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2021-08-03T23:22:17.487953+00:00

The Commonwealth

The most significant contribution of the Queen may well be as head of the Commonwealth, a term first employed after World War I to replace what had been called the Empire. The Commonwealth is a loose alliance of fifty-three former British colonies, plus several small African countries that have subsequently joined. The Commonwealth engages in a range of low-key initiatives, but also brings together a unique gathering of heads of government every two years, the largest such gathering outside United Nations meetings.

Ever since her royal tour with her parents to South Africa in 1947, Queen Elizabeth has made the Commonwealth a personal priority, and it is possible it might not have survived without her personal commitment. She has been an assiduous champion of Commonwealth links, visiting almost every member state, in several cases against the wishes of the British government. Most controversial was her visit to Ghana in 1961 after Kwame Nkrumah declared the country a republic. The left was shocked by his crackdown on dissent, the right by anti-British sentiments, and there was considerable pressure to cancel the visit. The memoirs of then prime minister Harold Macmillan make it clear that the Queen was determined to go, and that she saw the visit as marking a necessary evolution of the Commonwealth.

As Pimlott demonstrates, the Queen has played a key role in developing the Commonwealth, often having access to political leaders independent of advice from the British government. There was veiled disagreement with Margaret Thatcher over attitudes towards the white government of Southern Rhodesia, and to sanctions against South Africa — the Queen being more sympathetic to African nationalism.1 In the case of Rhodesia, the position of the Queen had been critical, as the white-settler government pledged their allegiance to her even as they declared unilateral independence, which Britain — and the Queen — did not recognise. The renamed Zimbabwe finally became independent under majority rule in 1980, after a long and bitter struggle, and two decades later withdrew from the Commonwealth after its membership was suspended in 2002 for its failure to ensure basic democratic rights.

Precisely because she was not seen as the effective ruler of Great Britain, former colonies could accept the Queen as the symbol of the Commonwealth. And her support for certain Commonwealth initiatives has at times caused friction with her British government, as in remarks in 1983 that the greatest problem facing the world was ‘the gap between rich and poor countries’ — not the primary concern of the Thatcher government. At a heads-of-government meeting in 2018, the Queen ensured that, on his accession, Prince Charles would also become head of the Commonwealth, and the royal family still invest considerable effort in building ties across the Commonwealth. Whether the institution would survive a collapse of the British monarchy is hard to estimate; for the small island states of the Caribbean and the Pacific, the Commonwealth is a useful forum a and source of technical assistance.

Few international institutions are as badly understood as the Commonwealth.

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