The Empire of Make-Believe
SIR,--A most pernicious lobby is at work in London—and the SPECTATOR seems to be one of its leaders. This lobby argues not just that the Commonwealth is a useless institution, but that it is a millstone round Britain's neck. Just before the Prime Ministers' conference, Malcolm Rutherford exulted in the possibility that the Commonwealth was about to break up. Well, the Commonwealth is still with us. None the less, the SPECTATOR is now at it again.
Your arguments are full of holes. It simply is not true, for example, to say that 'Britain has little influence herself on Commonwealth members; she merely allows herself to be influenced.' This very month the UN has passed resolutions on Rhodesia which are considerably milder than the Africans wanted simply because Britain used her influence at the PMs' conference and in New York.
Of course, it is a fact that Britain would have given independence to a European government in Rhodesia long ago if there had been no Common- wealth. That may be an argument against the Commonwealth for some people; for those who have any regard for Britain's good name in the world it is the complete argument for the existence of the Commonwealth.
I have this year visited fourteen Commonwealth countries, talking to ministers (in some cases Prime Ministers), officials, journalists and many others, and the conclusion one reaches is that only in Britain is there this downright hostility to the Common- wealth. In one or two countries there are cer- tainly some doubts about its future and these are a direct result of the disruptive thinking bubbling up in London. When are we in Britain going to cease to have the death-wish about everything and be constructive for a change?
The people who want to destroy the Common- wealth are the same people who persistently denigrate the United Nations. Just as they do not take into account all the work going on round the world in non-political UN fields, so they do not bother to look at all the inter-Commonwealth activities going on every day of the year in agri- culture, education, medicine and many other fields. Most writers of 'the Commonwealth is falling to pieces' school never do their homework and find out what is going on. If they did, they would dis- cover that this inter-Commonwealth activity is grow- ing all the time, not diminishing. There are only two world organisations of states—the UN and the Commonwealth. Why try to destroy one of them?
Why not be constructive for a change and see the Commonwealth in its proper light—a group of nations groping experimentally towards something we all want: greater co-operation between states? If the world is to be a better place, we all have to influence each other to a certain degree. No one should expect quick results. We have to look ahead to the possibilities of this new-type Commonwealth over the next fifty years, not expect instant good- will and co-operation this year or next. Let us take a global and historic view of the Commonwealth, not a mean Little Englander view like that of the
SPECTATOR. DEREK INGRAM
Flat 1, 58 Upper Montagu Street, London WI
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