TIME TO CURB THE QUEEN

Terence Kealey argues that

the Crown has let Britain down by pretending to rule Fiji

THE Queen of Fiji has lost her crown. Not that she fought very hard for it. When the King of Spain was faced with Colonel Tejero's uprising in 1981, he personally organised the constitutional resistance from his palace in Madrid. He telephoned his Captain Generals and rallied their support. The Queen, faced with Colonel Rabuka, sent a telegram to her Governor General. From Scotland.

That might seem an unfair comparison. Juan Carlos was fighting for the constitu- tion of his own country, whereas the Queen could not live much further away from Fiji. But that is the point. What was the Queen of England doing as head of state of the small far-off archipelago? What, indeed, is she doing as head of state of a further 17 autonomous nations ranging from Antigua to Tuvalu? Those are the Commonwealth countries that opted, on independence, to remain within her realm Those countries' constitutions can be traced, ultimately, to the Durham report of 1839 which introduced the concept of self-governing dominions under the British Crown. Lord Durham had recognised that Canada, the immediate object of his re- port, was ready for self-government; but the British royal link was retained, both for sentimental reasons and for the supposed stability it would confer on the infant state.

That stability, however, was to be con- fered by a tramelled Crown. The effective powers of head of state were to be transfer- red to a governor general whose duties would include the advising of the monarch.

Has this constitutional experiment work- ed? Did Fiji, for example, benefit from its subjection to the House of Windsor? Obviously not. The raison d'etre of the constitutional monarch is the constitutional crisis. Faced with Fiji's, the Queen did nothing. Another sort of head of state might have offered more.

Proper heads of state in a parliamentary system are independent of their govern- ments. That is their whole point. They are either elected or they are monarchs, but either way they promote confidence in the institutions of government by embodying a separation of powers. A governor general, however, is a deracinated thing. He is appointed on the recommendation of the local prime minister, which means that he cannot offer a worried people an indepen- dent buttress against the executive.

It is possible that the Fijian coup might never have happened had the populace been able to trust in a strong president or a traditional tribal chief. Had a coup never- theless occurred, it is also possible that such a figure could have rallied the army against Colonel Rabuka.

But even if the governor general system had offered the best possible model of head of state, what benefit have we British derived from our Queen's involvement in Fijian squabbles? Earlier this year the world watched while Dr Bavadra, the illegally ousted Prime Minister of Fiji, flew at some personal risk (soldiers tried to arrest his aeroplane) to see his Queen in England. She refused to receive him. The governor general had advised against it, so she palmed him off with a secretary. Suddenly, at the very moment Dr Bavan- dra needed her, he was no longer Prime `Coup, what a scorcher!' Minister. What glory did Britain extract from this episode?

The Queen, furthermore, is not consis- tent. After the Prime Minister of Grenada was murdered in the Marxist coup of 1983, the governor general, the sole remaining constitutional authority on the island, appealed for help from his Caribbean neighbours and from the United States. They invaded, and so restored dem- ocracy and the rule of law.

But Britain managed to extract damage from that too. The Queen, apparently, was furious because President Reagan did not ask her permission to invade. The Queen was so cross that Mrs Thatcher had to condemn publicly our closest ally. For some curious reason the doctrine of the governor general's paramountcy did not apply in Grenada, and for some even more curious reason the Queen gets more cross at invasions perpetrated by our democratic friends than at those organised from Cuba.

But Mrs Thatcher's condemnation, which must represent one of her rare foreign policy mistakes, and which was made at the behest of the Queen's divided loyalties, was not even constitutionally regular, because the Queen's role as head of state in Grenada is of no direct concern to the British Prime Minister.

By what right did the Queen get cross? As the unfortunate people of Fiji know, she has no divisions — or at any rate cannot control those that are hers nominally. Her authority is fictitious, but constitutional fictions can prove treacherous.

The disadvantages of a plurality of crowns are the same as those of a plurality of sees or livings: absenteeism, illusory authority and a division of loyalties. A governor general can no more replace an indigenous head of state than a curate can a rector. The drawbacks of curacy are im- mediately obvious but, as Trollope showed, the greater damage is done to the character of the rector or the bishop.

The particular difficulties of a plurality of crowns are subsumed within the greater problem of the Commonwealth. Whatever purpose that body once served has now vanished. It seems to exist for no other function than to condemn Britain regularly for its supposed support for apartheid.

The only agency in Britain which appears to support a plurality of crowns is the Queen. She finds in it an escape from the suburban concerns of a small island. No one would begrudge her the fun of claiming a further 17 or 18 states on her own if it did not harm Britian we do not need the embarrassment of regular accusa- tions or racism, nor do we need an involve- ment in the constitutional crises of Fiji. Gren- ada, Anguilla or Australia. More will come.

Only a nation as insecure as modern Britain would acquiesce in such conflicts of interests in its head of state. A brisk and efficient populace would break obsolete ties and would forbid its monarch the headship of any foreign state.