COMMONWEALTH MORALISINGS
The Commonwealth, being an institution in no strong position to do anyone any harm, and being rather less incapable than the United Nations organisation, say, in doing in a very minor and obscure way a certain amount of good for some of its least developed members, could easily go on for quite a long time yet. Its principal asset is its English-speaking nature and it is a great pity that the United States of America became independent before the Commonwealth was ever thought of as a kind of club for countries once ruled by British people. It is also unfortunate that several of its members, becoming in- dependent before they had, as it were, learned how to speak English correctly, should seek excessively to demonstrate ah ex-colonial status which is neither in doubt nor in danger—at least from any new imperialist manoeuvres from this country: The Commonwealth of Nations is a motley lot. When the Queen speaks, as is her wont, of a 'family', and when states- men also echo such language, then much confusion may ensue: for there is a per- fectly clear sense in which Australia, Canada, and New Zealand are familial and Nigeria, Ghana or Kenya are not. In this sense the us is more British than the African Commonwealth countries. There is also a sense in which India is, to an al- together greater degree, more a British product than is, say, Tanzania. There are parts of the Commonwealth which zeal- ously seek to preserve what they under- stand to be British traditions of political behaviour, of parliamentary rule, of adz ministration and of law; just as there are other parts which, as zealously, and usually more successfully, seek to sweep away such traditions and install un-British systems of dictatorial or of military rule.
In view of its British connections, as often as not initially made by a character- istic mixture of missionaries and traders, and mainly formulated during the nine- teenth century, the Commonwealth is of all large and amorphous international associations, perhaps the most susceptible to moralising. Certainly it is this moral- ising, largely directed by the most un-Brit- ish members against Britain, which gives to the Commonwealth its most peculiar flavour. Many Commonwealth countries which do not hesitate themselves to apply racialist policies, for example, nevertheless feel themselves perfectly entitled to criticise this country for its allegedly racialist policies.
And hereabouts the moral pre- eminence of Britain, in the estimation of her fellow members, is most clearly to be discerned: for whereas Britain is (quite rightly) criticised on all sides for the Lab- our party's racially discriminatory Kenyan Asians legislation, scarcely any obloquy is directed against the racialist policies of Kenya towards its Asian inhabitants which produced the problem in the first instance. That is, Britain is generally expected by -her fellow members to be holier than they are, to observe higher standards of public morality than they would do themselves. And it is seriously and constantly put for- ward that if Britain were to cease to ob- serve those standards laid down for her by her fellow Commonwealth members very considerately for the good of Britain's soul, then the Commonwealth might cease to exist, or Britain at any rate might be asked to leave.
There is much that is highly flattering in our fellow Commonwealth members' view of our moral superiority, in the ex- pectations they have of us—and as much that is equivalently modest in the corres- ponding views they have of themselves. Also, the Commonwealth view does, at times, seem to infect most of the rest of the world besides, so that nations which would not dream of expecting a partic- ularly scrupulous interpretation of moral obligations from themselves or their allies or neighbours nevertheless expect such an interpretation from us. For this we are, of course, greatly to blame: for we have seldom neglected in the past to claim for our most self-interested activities abroad one or other pretty high-minded kind of moral justification. It is, none- theless, galling that now, when we are tending—thanks to Mr Heath's new Con- servatism—to eschew such justifications and to that extent to clear our policies from the encumbrances with which no other nation, save the United States on occasions, clutters up and obscures the appreciation and pursuit of its true interests, we are still expected, by Mativesitifilends and enemies by, alike, to behave with a kind of special virtue.
It is, of course, quite useless for any Commonwealth Prime Minister, and cer- tainly the British Prime Minister, to say to a meeting of his fellow Commonwealth Prime Ministers that they should mind their own businesses: for one of the busi- nesses of the Commonwealth, and there- fore of Commonwealth Prime Ministers, is indeed minding each other's business, par- ticularly ours. The Commonwealth is an instrument, a device, a machine so that some people may mind other people's businesses better than they could without it. If, therefore, Mr Heath is seriously to advance this particular argument at Singapore, then he should know that he will, in practice, be most certainly advanc- ing the thesis (whether he knows it or not) that the Commonwealth should pack up. The evidence, however, suggests very strongly indeed that his new Conservatism is not yet radical enough to rid itself and this country of this, the largest of all their inherited encumbrances. It is useless for Mr Heath to say at Singapore that the question of arms to South Africa, for ex- ample, or of the new British immigration proposals, or of anything else that this country might do or be thinking of doing is this country's business alone and not the Commonwealth Prime Ministers': for if this is what he thinks, then he should have said so in London and not gone to Singapore.
Also, it is useless, when you get down to it and think about it, to suppose or to expdct that what is sauce for the goose is, so far as the Commonwealth is concerned, also sauce for the gander. Our business is their business; but their business is their own. That is what the Commonwealth has come to be about: that, and money. Otherwise, what is there but a series of special relationships? Each of these Is different, each determined by a particular historical experience, between this country and each other country which at one time or another formed part of that now de- funct but once both magnificent and ter- rible historical institution called the Brit- ish Empire, upon whose peculiar offspring it might be better all round if the sun should presently ,set.
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