THE COMMONWEALTH AND THE CROWN
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
[Correspondents are requested to keep their letters as brief as is reasonably possible. The most suitaVe length is that of one of our " News of the Week" paragraphs. Signed letters are given a preference over those bearing a pseudonym, and the latter must- be accompanied by the name and address of the author, which will be treated as confidential.—Ed. TIIE Sercraroa.] [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,-I should have thought that the essential bond between the members of any voluntary association—and the British Commonwealth is a voluntary association—could only be their intention to stay together for the purposes of the association. Where, as in the British Commonwealth, the purposes of the association are indefinite and variable, that intention is best described by a non-committal metaphor or symbol. The Imperial Conference report of 1926, in defining the mutual relation of its " autonomous communities," coupled the literal statement that they are " freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations " with the metaphorical statement that they are " united by a common allegiance to the Crown," a not infelicitous reference to the unique symbol of the association. It is probably open to each member, subject to any particular restrictions expressly accepted, to interpret this metaphor at its pleasure in its application to itself, so long as the identity of the symbol—the Crown—is maintained. In any event, the allegiance here referred to is an allegiance of political units, whatever that may mean or be made to mean, not that allegiance of individuals, to a sovereign which is a long- established metaphor of constitutional law. Already in 1926 not only were the duties and privileges of the persons conceived to owe that allegiance radically different in the different.parts of the Commonwealth, but the classes of persons upon whom it was imposed in different Dominions were not coterminous. To describe a personal status which has Commonwealth-wide consequences for its possessors subsequent Imperial Conferences have spoken not of " common allegiance " but of " the common status of British subject." The abolition in 1935 of this status as a source of rights and duties in the Free State was therefore not a severance of the common allegiance referred to in the 1926 report.
The grave practical consequences which Professor Keith anticipates from the separate oath to be taken by the King may likewise be doubted. It is difficult to see how the treatment of the people of the South African High Commission Pro- tectoratei can be affected by the form of the Coronation ceremony, or indeed by the Coronation taking place at all. At any time since the War, if the Protectorates had been transferred to the Union, the Union Parliament would have had complete power in law and in convention to govern or misgovern them at its pleasure, subject to any contractual arrangement that might be made at the time of handing over. Any interference by the King in Union legislative or admint- stratie measures touching them would have been then, as now, unconstitutional. He cannot enjoy less power under any other style, nor the Union Government more.
Nor will 'the new oath bring the Union into line with Free State citizenship law in the respect described above ; on the co' ntrary, it will not change by one iota the law of nationality and citizenship in any part of the Commonwealth.
Much evil springs from the continued use of the word " allegiance " as if it signified something precise in law or polities. It was once a precise name for a fairly well-defined feudal relation ; after the renaissance it was pressed into the service of the sovereign State, in which it became a mis- leading metaphor. It is now merely an epithet which is used to make things appear related which are in fact unrelated, and to attach emotive value to any status to which it is arbitrarily applied.
In the Comnionwealth, common citizenship and the common Crown are no longer correlatives ; let us recognise it, and treat each according to its nature. The Crown is a simple and potent symbol ; mutual citizenship rights emerge every day more uncertainly from a complex mass of juristic facts. Lawyers cannot shape the meaning of symbols. The forthcoming Imperial Conference would do well to set its hand to the more feasible task of bringing order and enlighten- ment into the chaos of Commonwealth nationality and citizenship law. It is a civilised thing that the major rights of a man should not depend on the accident of local birth or parentage. Only the institution of war necessitates mutually- exclusive loyalties. The Commonwealth inherited from the old centralised Empire a considerable measure of civilisation in this respect. War is not now contemplated or prepared for between members of the Commonwealth ; yet the barriers between their citizens are steadily rising. Comparatively unimportant administrative and diplomatic exigencies have necessitated the creation of categories of dominion citizenship ; but there is nothing in the tenor of dominion nationalism in the forms now dominant which is really inconsistent with the maintenance or even the extension of the large measure of common citizenship which existed in the Commonwealth until recently. But the cause of common citizenship has been compromised in the eyes of nationalists through being always associated with the status of " British subject." They are annoyed by the implication of subjection in the name, and by the dogmatism of lawyers who insist that they do not enjoy the freedom of their own soil because it is their soil, but indirectly in virtue of their being British subjects.
It is in any event infelicitous to regard the rights of common citizenship, such as they now are, as derived from an inalienable status necessarily superior to dominion categories, for they exist in fact at the sufferance of the parliaments of the Dominions and the United Kingdom, which arc now in effect competent to repeal any of them. Fortunately, there is an alternative theory upon which common citizenship can be based. The Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act, 1935, contains a provision which enables the Free State to make conventions extending to nationals of another country all or any of the rights of Free State citizenship. (At present British subjects are technically aliens in the Free State, but are exempted from some of the consequences of that status by executive order.) In the negotiations for that settlement with the Free State which is so earnestly desired on both sides of the Irish Channel, Commonwealth Govern- ments, and especially the Government of the United Kingdom, would do well to take up this offer in good faith, and establish the present, and if possible a wider, common citizenship on a firm contractual basis. Such a policy would be both more worth while and more likely to succeed than any attempt to foist upon the Free State some interpretation of the Commonwealth symbol which, since it has not the sympathy of the Irish people, would be an empty hypocrisy.—Yours faithfully, All Souls College, Oxford.
H. T. E. LATHAM.
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