Here in Perth, Western Australia, we have just had the Queen and
a number of Commonwealth leaders assembled for the Commonwealth
Heads of Government Meeting, or CHOGM (which, as has been
irreverently pointed out, also stands for “Cannibals Holidaying On
Government Money”).
My daughter received an invitation to the Royal Garden
Party at Government House and kindly took me as her escort. The
weather was perfect, and there was plenty to eat and the champagne
and punch were flowing freely. It was a good chance to do a bit of
networking. The Labor Party politicians, whose party is bound to a
republican platform and the abolition of the monarchy, aroused some
amusement as they clambered over each other like alligators in a
pit hoping for a Royal handshake, and the females asked one another
if they intended to curtsy to Her Majesty.
The garden party was pleasant and fun and the Queen’s
visit was greeted as always with great enthusiasm by the local
people, who turned out in thousands to catch a glimpse of her, but
what, apart from that, is the purpose of these Commonwealth Heads
of Government Meetings? These bean-feasts are held about every two
years in a different Commonwealth Country. This one cost the
Australian taxpayer about $55 million. There have been more than 20
so far, and I would be interested to know if any readers can name a
single achievement arising from any of them.
Armed police clamped a lock-down on much of the city,
while the Wesley Methodist church hoisted banners sporting possibly
the most wet and ineffectual political slogan I have ever
encountered: “Pray for CHOGM!” I wondered, not for the first time,
what some of people can take CHOGM seriously enough to sit up
making such a banner.
Can any among the students of international politics who
read this, tell me anything any of the previous CHOGMs
have achieved, apart from luxurious holidays for those of the
political class who get international trips with all the trimmings
and a few glasses of champagne for me?
The Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, blathered
away to the effect that it was the purpose of the meeting to come
to a joint position on a range of issues, and then to take these
positions forward to other international bodies. In fact, on major
and important matters such as control of carbon-dioxide emissions,
some Commonwealth countries have wildly differing positions and
there is not the slightest chance of them reaching
agreement.
The Commonwealth remains as a sort of ghost of the British
Empire, although Britain has no special measure of control over its
members and some of these, such as India, are republics which do
not even recognize the Queen as their head. True, it can bring
disapproval to bear on lunatocracies such as Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, and
even invoke the dread sanction of suspending their membership, but
this is a very feeble stick to wave at tyrants, even when agreement
to do as much as that can be reached. But it was all amiable enough
this time apparently. If the Commonwealth is the ghost of the
British Empire, in Perth it was a sort of Casper the Friendly
Ghost, decaying away in a peaceful if rather sad and quite futile
half-life.
The old British Commonwealth of Nations arguably made some
sense: In the two world wars and the Korean War, Britain, Canada,
Australia, and New Zealand, plus a few smaller players, lined up on
the same side. They didn’t need Heads of Government Conferences to
tell them that when the chips were down they were kin. In 1939
Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies said: “Britain is at war.
Therefore Australia is at war.” The bare, Spartan simplicity of the
words was moving in itself. Other former Imperial colonies have
also kept British institutions to varying degrees.
The great problem of the Commonwealth, however, is that it
became so large and diverse as to be impotent and purposeless. It
may do some good work round the fringes of international life, such
as providing scholarships, but if so, hardly any one hears about
them.
As it grew larger it became more and more impossible for
it to speak with a single voice on any issue, while shibboleths of
“equality” meant that gimcrack dictatorships which no one really
took seriously were treated on an equal footing with the major
Angloform democracies, replicating one of the most inane features
of the United Nations. Some of its members — including two if the
biggest, India and Pakistan — have fought full-scale wars with
each other. The appointment, during the Rhodesia/Zimbabwe crisis of
a so-called “Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group” to solve the
situation never lost its comic-opera air and “Eminent Person”
became a term of political ridicule.
Meanwhile, it seemed the biggest piece of business the
Perth conference had to deal with was whether the first-born child
of the British monarch, whether male or female, could succeed to
the throne (until now a woman has only come to the throne when
there has not been a male heir) and whether the British Monarch
could marry a Catholic. One wonders how the situation could
possibly have arisen in which African dictators are voting on these
vital subjects, for which unanimity is necessary.
I did not get a chance to put my views to Her Majesty, but
if I been invited to had I would have suggested that a small, tight
Commonwealth could be formed out of the real democracies. If this
group had some strong formalized political link with America, in
addition to the various existing treaties and defense links, such
as ANZUS, that too might be no bad thing.
The Queen, at 85, and the Duke of Edinburgh, at 90, looked
cool and marvelous on the hot West Australian afternoon.
