ONCE AN EMPIRE, NOW AN EMBARRASSMENT
Politicians at Westminster seem to think the Commonwealth is now of little political or
IT WAS a perfect Central African after- noon. Vast white clouds were building up above the jacarandas, a welcome, cooling breeze stirred the edges of the crisp white table-cloth. Waiters in starched uniforms moved silently around with silver chafing- dishes. In the garden, security men in dark glasses kept watch, but here in the centre of the superbly kept lawn all was peaceful. The President was entertaining us to lunch. `You see, John,' he began, hav- ing found that journalists loved this flattering touch of intimacy, `while the British Government refuses to impose economic sanc- tions on South Africa, every African country, and mine in par- ticular, continues to suffer.' At my elbow, a respectful waiter inclined his head: 'More wine, sir?' I nod- ded. As the cool golden liquid poured into the glass, the impecca- ble cloth around the bottle fell back a little and revealed the name on the label: KWV, one of the bet- ter South African vineyards. There was something very Com- monwealth about that. It was always Britain's links with South Africa, not those of other coun- tries, which were to be blamed and punished. At Commonwealth con- ferences throughout the 1980s, Mrs Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv criticised Britain's refusal to agree to serious sanctions against South Africa, yet India's profitable trade in South African gold contin- ued. From 1961 until the last Com- monwealth conference, two years ago, Commonwealth politics were almost exclu- sively about Britain's approach to the white regimes of Southern Africa.
In 1988 Margaret Thatcher visited Nige- ria. Power there had been assumed by General Ibrahim Babangida in a process that had nothing whatever to do with one- person-one-vote. The general's officials had put the word out to the volatile and highly enjoyable Nigerian press that Mrs Thatcher could expect a rough reception. Privately, though, they assured the British High Commission that everything would pass off in friendly fashion. It did, of course, and those of us who travelled the streets looking for the promised trouble found none whatever; though we were, as is usual in Lagos, arrested several times for trying to film secret installations such as the city's fruit and vegetable market. Like most Commonwealth countries, Nigeria had more important business to transact with Britain than berating Mrs Thatcher over South Africa, but it was this that always went down well with the voters; or in Nigeria's case the non-voters. Now, of course, everything is different. There may be the sound of shouting from old supporters of Eoka terrorism outside, but this week's Commonwealth conference is the first non-contentious occasion of its type since the days, 30 years ago, when such events lasted a fortnight. Nowadays they last barely a week, and since F.W. de Klerk has won the Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela, there is nothing much left to criticise Britain about; and no doubt the others will be too polite, now, to mention how spectacularly wrong Mrs Thatcher was in insisting that sanctions against South Africa would merely entrench apartheid. It was precisely the threat of greater sanc- tions that brought about the changes in South Africa, though I seem to have missed Mrs Thatcher's characteristically generous acknowledgment of this.
While the arguments droned on, the Commonwealth built up a con- siderable life of its own, which had less and less to do with Britain. It became something that the great majority of member countries were actively proud of. For what we used to call the white domin- ions, it provides a ready link to the Third World; if you go to the English-speaking countries of Africa or Asia you are as likely nowadays to find Australians, New Zealanders or Canadians working there as British people. It is also a matter of considerable prestige to be a member. Angola and Mozam- bique, though former Portuguese possessions, are both seeking to join: it represents security for them, and a way back from the utter despair they have endured. For the small islands of the Caribbean, many of them increas- ingly threatened by the cocaine trade from South America to the United States, the Commonwealth is their only realistic hope of out- side support. For distant, poor or under- populated places in Africa and Asia it is a valuable tie to a wider world, which can give them an alternative to the political or cultural domination of some often unattractive regional power.
As for us, we have chosen to separate ourselves from it all, like a father who has left home and is inclined to forget the birthdays of his children. The British Gov- ernment's only emotion towards the Com- monwealth at the moment is a sense of relief that the regular biennial nagging we used to get from the Commonwealth is over. Aside from that there is nothing: not the slightest hint that we might now con- struct a new relationship with it which would be useful to ourselves and to the other 49 members. 'The Commonwealth,' said Douglas Hurd the other day, in pre- cisely the terms his precedessors have used for 30 years now, 'is a way in which people can discuss and argue across the ordinary lines of division, whether politically or eco- nomically, in a good human way and understand each other's view.' In other words, it doesn't really matter; our national future is irrevocably bounded by western Europe and the United States, and we can forget these other, more tedious places. Last month the Foreign Office announced it would soon cut the funding of the Com- monwealth Institute in London by £3 mil- lion. That, effectively, is that.
There is nowadays no political support for the Commonwealth at Westminster. Labour, having felt a powerful sense of unease about the Empire for years, used rather to like the notion of the Common- wealth. People like Nehru, Kaunda, Keny- atta and even the dreadful Dom Mintoff of Malta all had close links with Labour politicians and policies. In the heyday of the Non-Aligned Movement it seemed to make sense. But the Non-Aligned Move- ment became increasingly a club for aging heads of one-party states to visit each other, hand out expensive presents from the national exchequer, and outline strate- gies for staying in power. Most of its early members have died off; Kenneth Kaunda has accepted with some grace the verdict of the electorate and gone into retirement. The Non-Aligned Movement is now as dis- credited as the Organisation of African States and all the other ways of spending a Third World country's scarce resources, and Labour's interest in the Common- wealth has faded accordingly.
For the right wing of the Conservative Party the Commonwealth represented little more than a large extended begging-bowl. There were no imperial echoes in Thatcherism; her view of history came from the old schoolroom classic, Our Island Story, not its companion volume, Our Empire Story. From time to time she would rally to the defence of someone like Presi- dent Daniel Arap Moi of Kenya, on the grounds that it was in Britain's national interest to keep him there. 'Is this the British Broadcasting Corporation speak- ing?' she asked with rhetorical ferocity at an off-the-record briefing in Nairobi, when the local BBC correspondent dared to ask her a question about Kenya's shameful human rights record.
For the most part, though, Margaret Thatcher had little interest in the Com- monwealth, which seemed to her to be a matter of sentiment rather than of serious political or economic interest; and she was never one for sentiment. Perhaps she shared the familiar view on the Right that most countries of the Commonwealth are dictatorships and one-party states; though by my count only nine of the 50 members fall completely into that category, and a slow democratisation is spreading even to them. If the former prime minister of the Bahamas, Sir Lyndon Pindling (the value of whose property amounted to far more than his accumulated salary over the years and who had all sorts of unsuitable friends), can be voted out of office, any- body can. But this has all come far too late for the party which once stood for imperial preference and the maintenance of Empire. Nowadays the only time Thatcherite Conservatives mention the Commonwealth is in connection with some romantic idea of restoring free trade with the old Dominions and the United States. As for the left and centre of the party, they are concerned only with Europe; for them there is no alternative.
Britain has been getting its judgments wrong on its former empire for the best part of 40 years. In 1958, when a friend of mine, then aged 22, went before a Colonial Office selection board in the hope of being made a district officer in Nyasaland, he was assured that it would be a British posses- sion, and he would have a job, until at least the 1990s. Nyasaland received its indepenr dence as Malawi six years later: it was the President, Dr Hastings Banda, who had a job until the 1990s. The rush to indepen- dence did no favours to African countries with too few university graduates and too little economic preparation, and our sud- den discovery of a European destiny was so consuming that we treated our friends and relatives in the old Commonwealth with an unforgivable coldness. In the space of a few years, the Empire we had once prided our- selves on had become a source of embar-
rassment and guilt to us. James Callaghan, when foreign secretary, had to go and apol- ogise in person to Kenneth Kaunda for the fact that British Petroleum had been allowed to break UN sanctions against Rhodesia; Sir Geoffrey Howe meekly underwent the most embarrassing tongue- lashing from Kaunda about South Africa on a stiflingly hot night in Lusaka in 1987, in front of the world's television cameras.
Now, though, all that is over. Except in Cyprus, the old chippiness towards the for- mer colonial power has evaporated; many of the apparent success stories, like Nige- ria, are success stories no longer. Mean- while, the Commonwealth represents a quarter of the world's population, its politi- cal and business leaders speak English and still, in spite of our consistent lack of inter- est, tend to look to Britain for their cultur- al and political links. Together they constitute an opportunity for trade and political influence such as no other country possesses. France, with far less promising materials to work with, does more trade with its former empire than with several of its European partners, and uses its connec- tions quite openly for its own political pur- poses. Some French ex-possessions are of course beyond reach: Algeria, Lebanon and Vietman do not vote France's way at the United Nations, but the bulk of its African colonies do. The French embassies in capitals like Niamey, 'Yaounde and Bamako are centres of real economic and political power, and wise local presidents will keep in with them. The Emperor Bokassa of the Central African Empire, who did not, found himself overthrown in a coup organised from the French embassy. By contrast, France will do its best to help its favoured candidates, and will send in the Foreign Legion at times of trouble. This facility has also been extended to the former Belgian colony of Zaire, where out- bursts of trouble against the appalling Pres- ident Mobutu are regularly put down by ungentle Legionnaires.
These are options Britain does not have, and probably would not want to exercise. We always liked to think of our Empire as being run in the interests of it citizens; an attitude which one French minister for the colonies is said to have described as 'sim- ple-minded, or more probably hypocritical'. The ex-colonies where French influence is strongest today are the poor, backward, underpopulated territories of northern and central Africa. But, unlike Britain, France regards it former empire as a resource which, if properly used, can bring political credit and economic power. Francophone summits are explicitly intended to underpin French cultural and diplomatic interests, and France is the host and the prime mover; not just another member, as Britain, strictly speaking, is of the Com- monwealth. At present French embassies in Francophone countries are working overtime to encourage opposition to the Gatt agreement, and particularly that sec- Lion of it which leaves the French film industry and that of most other countries dangerously vulnerable to American com- petition. We don't have much of a film industry to protect nowadays; but even if we did it is unthinkable that we would ask the Commonwealth for help with it. The loss, in both cases, is ours. Like France, we have a seat on the UN Security Council which others (the Japanese, the Germans and, it seems, the Danes) envy. For once, we have found something to agree on with the French, and both of us are sending soldiers in UN berets to places we have no conceivable interest in, like Bosnia, in order to show how useful we are and how strong our claims are to our respective Security Coun- cil seals. France is also supported strongly in this by large sections of its former empire. There is no sign of any concerted effort by the British Government to can- vass Commonwealth support on this issue, even though the Commonwealth accounts for well over a quarter of all the seats at the United Nations. Our imperial past is something we want to forget so badly that We are prepared to neglect our national interest in order to do so. We have become like a character in a David Hare play, look- ing back on our history with a distaste that almost seems to amount to self-loathing. "There is a danger of a loss of interest here,' said the Foreign Secretary before he left for Cyprus and the Commonwealth Conference. You could put it that way.
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