Commonwealth and the British interest
Yhe visit of Mr Gough Whitlam to London this week offers a timely opportunity, not merely for re-appraising Britain's relations with Australia, but for looking again and afresh at the ch. aracter and raison d'etre of the Commonwealth. In the immediate aftermath of Empire the idea — and to some extent the practice — of Commonwealth relations was based on the revolutionary Possibility that a former Imperial Power, and former subject peoples, might be able to contract a relationship that would be fruitful even after domination and subjection had gone. This ideal began to crack, when it appeared that there were two, or possibly even three — white, black and brown — Commonwealths, all With conflicting interests and views of the world, and with corn-, Plex and possibly explosive emotions beneath their surfaces; and Men then began to speak of this new Commonwealth, meaning only some vague amalgam of past aspirations, present .intractabilities, and future imponderables. Now—and this is symbolised by the problems that have arisen in relations with Austra
lia since British entry into the EEC — the inexorable process of questioning_and redefinition of interest has reached such a point that, if we 4re to speak of the Commonwealth at all, we must Speak of the newer new Commonwealth; or find some new word to describe Britain's relations with former colonies and protectorates; or forget the whole business.
To say that all this is so does not mean that one wishes it so. That It has happened at all is at least in part due to the weak and fuddled minds which British leaders have brought to the questions, What is the Commonwealth, and what does it do? The Duke of Edinburgh, for example, on a recent trip to Canada, exPlained that the Queen would want to remain Sovereign of Canada only as long as the Canadian people found her useful, and no longer. That seemed, at the time, an agreeably liberal and unstuffy gesture. But it gave precious little comfort to those Canadian citizens who were anxious to maintain their country's ties With Britain. It was of a piece with so many nanny-like and indulgent British political orations about the Commonwealth Which suggested that we had now led the former colonial peoples towards the waterhole on the horizon but, feeling faint ourselves, now wanted merely to give them a pat on the back to urge them °n towards their goal, and ourselves slump, exhausted, in the desert sand. If British governments value the Commonwealth at all they must be able to state clearly what it is they value, and
What they will do to enforce policies needed to support the evalUation. Mr Heath's take-it-or-leave-it attitude at the Singapore
LoMmonweal th Prime Minister's conference left a certain amount to be desired, and was justly subjected to a great deal of criticism, but it was much to be preferred to the hortatory inanities which had preceded it.
Now, while Britain is without a policy for the Commonwealth, alr:d without a policy for its own role within the Commonwealth, E ese _basic_problems are-ToinIng-trome to-roost, in the form of practical challenges of an especially embarrassing kind. Australiafederal state, and the state governments have many powers. -`21.nich they enjoy independently of the central government in .uanberra. It seems clear that Mr Whitlam wishes to make certain reforms in the operation of the judicial system, further reforms in the honours system, and still further retorms in the whole relationship between his country and her sovereign. All of these will require legislation at Westminster, and all will be resisted by a number of Liberal Party governments in the Australian states. Which side, if any, will the British Government take? How will it, without a policy on the Commonwealth, tread a path between Mr Whitlam and, say, the Prime Minister of New South Wales? More immediately, Mr Whitlam will be asking in London for British support for his government's stand in opposition to French nuclear tests in the Pacific, and warning Mr Heath that he intends to reduce the Australian military presence in South-East Asia to an insignificant minimum — all this at a time when Britain is strenuously negotiating with the EEC, and particularly with the French, on a matter dear to the hearts both of President Pompidou and the British housewife—agricultural prices and the common agricultural policy. Since Britain is still a Pacific power, hard-headed commonsense would dictate support for Mr Whitlam on nuclear tests in return for a more accommodating. attitude on his part towards the five power force in Malaysia, and hearty defiance of the French over CAP. But it is by no means clear that the British Government has worked out clearly enough its own understanding of priorities to make this or any other equivalently coherent, decision.
Such dilemmas in whiclythe past overlays the present are likely to recur in many parts of the globe. In Africa, for example, practical decisions about Britain's relations with the Smith regime in Rhodesia and, by extension, with South Africa, depend on a variety of interlocking considerations, of which the defence of the Cape trade routes and the capacity of native African governments to make and keep any kind of realistic political agreement are but two. Britain behaved fairly sensibly in the Indian sub-continent during the war between India and Pakistan, but a bolder policy would have brought this country closer to India without suffering any more than we already have in our relations with Pakistan. In the case of Canada British and Canadian investment — and particularly oil — interests are already in conflict with those of the United States, but there is as yet no indication that the two Commonwealth Powers are trying to develop a common policy. And so it will continue to be as long as Britain's grasp on the meaning of the Commonwealth, and the importance British statesmen attach to British interests around the world, is nerveless. It used to be said that the essence of our political history in the post-war world was to maintain occupation of a point of balance in the triad made up of Europe, the United States and the Commonwealth. Such a policy is no longer tenable. We do not have the power, the wealth, or the prestige to continue that policy. Meanwhile, a multitude of practical decisions go-a-begging. In the process of taking these decisions we can hope to discover what the newer Commonwealth means. But they
--cannot be taken until we discover within ourselves an imaginative confidence which can readily eschew sentimentality, without forgetting sentiment; and act on interest rather than become lost in foggy platitude.
Previous page
