THE SPECTATOR
KILLING THE COMMONWEALTH
Leave aside, for a moment, whether you are in favour of sanctions. Are you in favour of boycotts? Even if it is true that sanctions against South Africa are justi- fied, is it right that members of the Commonwealth should boycott the Com- monwealth Games because Britain dis- agrees with them? Boycotts of internation- al sporting competitions are now so com- mon that historians in the distant future, trying to piece together fragmentary bits of evidence about the 20th century, may conclude that the boycott was one of the regular elements of games, like the pole- vault or the marathon. It is assumed that it Is reasonable for governments to tell their athletes that they may not compete in games because of political circumstances with which the athletes have nothing to do. One would like to see this assumption tested by some international authority: might it not be an infringement of a 'basic human right'? Certainly it shows scant respect for human freedom.
And this boycott seems particularly out- rageous. It does not concern the conditions of the games themselves (the cowardly Commonwealth Games Federation has seen to that with its banning of Zola Budd and Annette Cowley). It is not a protest, like the boycott of the Moscow Olympics, at the violent actions of the host nation. It is not even a protest at Britain for breaking a Commonwealth agreement. The Com- monwealth Accord on Southern Africa at the Nassau heads of government meeting last year called for various changes in South Africa and agreed on economic measures against her. It did not commit the signatories to full economic sanctions. The Communique said, 'If in their opinion adequate progress has not been made within this period [six months], we agree to Consider the adoption of further measures. Some of us would, in that event, consider the following steps among others. . .' (our 'tahes). In other words, nothing that the C°Mmoriwealth agreed laid down any compulsory policy for its members after the first spate of measures. So the Com- Monwealth Games are being boycotted because British is exercising its right not to agree with other Commonwealth govern- ments, nothing more. Bearing this in mind, it is absurd to accuse the British Government of being Pig-headed and intransigent. Everything that it is has done has been well within the ,aceepted rules of international diplomatic behaviour. It signed and helped to draft the Nassau communiqué, and has not dishonoured its signature. It has attended the meeting of EEC heads of government and followed that meeting's decision, send- ing Sir Geoffrey Howe to southern Africa as the emissary of the EEC as well as of Britain. Britain's only crime is to have resisted the pressure from the more mili- tant Commonwealth governments and the inaccurate gloss put on the report of the Eminent Persons Group by Sir 'Sonny' Ramphal, the Commonwealth Secretary- General. However strongly others may disagree with British policy, they cannot argue that Britain has behaved disreput- ably. Britain should continue to refuse to be bullied.
Nations so ready to destroy the ganies of an organisation to which they claim to be so much attached show that they regard that organisation frivolously. If the Com- monwealth really does matter, if it is true, as the Declaration of Commonwealth Prin- ciples puts it, that members of the Com- monwealth 'encompass a rich variety of cultures, traditions and institutions' and that 'membership of the Commonwealth is compatible with the freedom of member governments to be non-aligned or to be- long to any other grouping, association or alliance', then the sporting co-operation of the member nations ought to be put before disagreements about precise means to agreed ends (in this case, the ending of apartheid). Sir Sonny ought to be pressed harder on this point. Is he in favour of the breakdown of the Games which his orga- nisation sponsors? The evidence suggests that many of the member countries do not regard the Commonwealth as an institution to which they owe loyalty, but simply as a forum for making political points. If it suits their political game, they will do whatever is necessary to disrupt its processes. It is they, and not Britain, who are working for the break-up of the Commonwealth, they, and not Britain, who are embarrassing the Queen.
Given the frivolity and cynicism of so many Commonwealth members, should Britain be alarmed that the Common- wealth is drifting apart? Only, surely, if it thinks that there is something uniquely precious to be saved. There is not. The Commonwealth performs many agreeable and beneficial functions, the best of which is the assistance which it gives for citizens of one member country to visit or study in another. It maintains amiable, non- political links between highly disparate cultures. But the Commonwealth is basic- ally incoherent and so can survive only if that basis is not too closely examined. Recent events force us to examine it.
The Commonwealth grew out of the British Empire and originated in its more specific form in the Statute of Westminster of 1931. This Commonwealth — of Austra- lia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the Irish Free State — was closely related to Britain by political tradition and by blood. Although it was partly a euphemism for the independence of the countries concerned, it represented a cultural unity, and all its members accepted the British sovereign as their own.
With the independence of India, the Commonwealth became something quite different. The newly independent nations mostly refused to accept the monarch and the Commonwealth was reformed as a still looser association. The British monarch was Head of the whole thing, but only as a `symbol of the free association of the Commonwealth's independent member nations'. This Headship is essentially meaningless and dangerously compromis- ing if it is ever brought into serious politics, however appropriate it might be for an organisation which was no more than a giant international charity.
Since this is an age in which politics soon corrodes international bodies, it was not long before the Commonwealth's more energetic members started to cast around for some sort of active role. In the past 15 years they have found it as the enemies of `racism' and apartheid. There have been the Gleneagles Agreement on sporting contacts with South Africa, the Lusaka Declaration on Racism and Racial Pre- judice and the Melbourne Declaration against global poverty and inequality. Clothed as the expression of views which all right-thinking people must accept, these policies are in fact anti-Western. They are used by the smaller powers of the world, still chippy about the imperial past, still grotesquely unsuccessful in their own domestic policies, to embarrass the better established and richer powers, particularly Britain. There is no value in this, and there is some danger because of the position of the Queen. Britain is no longer an imperial power and it should accept neither the false glory nor the odium of being one. No need for it to kill the Commonwealth, but still less need to strive officiously to keep it alive.
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