Major once said: “The Queen’s relationship with the Commonwealth is intensely personal. You only have to look at Commonwealth heads of government – and especially African Commonwealth heads of government – with the Queen to see what they think of her and the institution of monarchy itself.’ The Commonwealth Secretariat is housed in the faded grandeur of Christopher Wren’s Marlborough House on Pall Mall, and has been run by a succession of secretaries-general of varying quality, but its beating heart has always been the Queen. Indeed, as the years passed and her experience grew, she gradually became more central to the elusive organization than serving British prime ministers, making it the only area of public life where she was considered at least on par with elected politicians. The former Prime Minister of Australia, Bob Hawke, in a seminar on the Commonwealth, even argued that he preferred being the head of the Commonwealth to her duties as “queen-as-you-call”. He said: “In the Commonwealth he is much more than a figurehead. You could talk to her about any of the 51 Commonwealth countries and you could have an intelligent conversation with her about economics, politics. It really sunk into the Commonwealth, even to the point of making the announcement tougher.” David McDowell, a New Zealander who was special assistant to Commonwealth secretary-general Arnold Smith in the early 1970s, was equally impressed by her knowledge. He recalled: “We’d go and update her twice a year – and she’d go right off the list of people. You know, not with notes, I mean right off the top of her head. He would ask, “How is Dr. Banda?”, “What is the internal situation now in Zambia?” or “What do we think about developments in India?”. And he was very knowledgeable, especially about the leaders of the Commonwealth. He knew them all and was fascinated.” Prince Philip described her as a Commonwealth psychotherapist. Her knowledge was supplemented by more than 200 tours, visiting almost every Commonwealth nation, some on multiple occasions. Visiting the Commonwealth has been a staple of the monarchy, along with its support of the Commonwealth Games. Apart from the summit held in Rwanda this year, a summit in Sri Lanka in 2013 and one in Singapore in 1971, when she was advised not to attend by then prime minister Edward Heath because of a dispute over arms sales, she has been present at every summit of the Commonwealth held since 1973. Indeed, she fought against British prime ministers who sought to use her potential non-participation as leverage to extract concessions from Commonwealth members. For example, he announced that he was attending the Lusaka summit in 1979 after discovering that it was being used as a means to leverage black Zimbabwean militants (through the host, Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda) into declaring at least a temporary ceasefire in their liberation war against Ian. the Smith government. The most troubled period for the Commonwealth was in the 1980s, during the end of apartheid, when the UK’s policy on arms sales to South Africa angered many members, notably Kaunda. In this sense, the 1991 Harare summit was a critical healing moment for the Commonwealth as it sought to exorcise the ghosts of Margaret Thatcher and the entire anti-apartheid struggle in terms of rivalries with the British government. It meant a much greater focus on governance, human rights and democracy. It was in the UK’s interest to see some join from what some have described as a binary Commonwealth opened up in the 1980s between the UK and the rest. Whether the Commonwealth should have stuck to this core work of human rights and values, as opposed to wider development issues for which it did not have a budget or much space, is up for debate. At least it gave a platform for small island states to warn about climate change. Initially, the Queen only attended receptions before summits, sometimes hosting guests on a royal yacht, but rarely attended the debates. But beyond the symposium, he ran an exhaustive list of audiences with individual heads of state, his chosen way of keeping up with African politics. It was not until 1997 in Edinburgh, at the urging of the royal Nigerian secretary-general Emeka Anyaoku, that he attended the summit, perhaps a useful intervention in the wake of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and the decline of the monarch. popularity. Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Her greatest pleasure was the sense that the monarchy played a role in uniting these nations, with their supposedly shared beliefs and values. In the words of Commonwealth historian Philip Murphy, ‘her greatest contribution to the Commonwealth myth was to reinforce the impression that it remains a strong and constructive force in the world and that to feel part of that family is natural. and logical feature of British identity’. However, the Queen’s role as head of the Commonwealth has always been little more than a title. It has no constitutional function and is not inherited, a priori, by her successor. This was because after 1949, when India became a republic, the definition of the Commonwealth as a group of countries under a common sovereignty had to be abandoned. It was simply decided that the monarch would become head of the Commonwealth, and in 2013 through her then private secretary, Sir Christopher Geidt, maneuvers began, ending with Prince Charles securing her successor in the role. All was not well, as he sometimes had to suffer the humiliations of New Labour’s modernization, particularly at the Edinburgh summit in 1997. Anji Hunter, Tony Blair’s political secretary, recalled at a seminar in 2018: “I remember that the queen looked very confused during the national anthem in edinburgh because it was a new version of it that no one recognized. No one stood up – that was the embarrassing thing. Foreign Secretary Liz Simons had to get everyone up in the royal box. He got the Secretary of State to stand up. “It was exciting, in a way. There was a new Let’s make it young and edgy, not just about people walking into a room and just chatting, chatting, chatting. We arranged a photo with Nelson Mandela walking the golf course, things like that we knew the media would be interested in, as well as going to St Andrews on the Orient Express. We were hell bent on getting good coverage in those days.” But gradually, as more competitive and, frankly, more relevant summits fill the diplomatic calendar, the caliber of leaders participating has decreased and the duration of the summits has decreased, making the institution increasingly dependent on the monarchy and thus tying the institution together and more to a lost and increasingly tarnished British empire. The question going forward is whether King Charles, try as he might, will be able to provide the same glue as her, or whether instead this unique, multilateral but personal institution will gradually come into being with the Queen herself. She would no doubt be horrified if that happened.
