Is there much hope for the C’wealth?

Reinvention (of the Commonwealth) in any more effective form would be a huge undertaking, requiring a great feat of imagination and diplomacy

In August 1947, a Ministry of Works carpenter unscrewed the plaque by the door on King Charles Street in London that read “India Office” and replaced it with one that said “Commonwealth Relations Office.” The jewel in Britain’s imperial crown had become independent India and Pakistan. The plaque was supposed to herald a new era of equality and friendship: a family of nations that had once been under British imperial rule but were now — with Britain’s belated blessing — moving into independence.

This family has had its ups and downs over the past 71 years, but the arrangement has been more or less maintained. Last week, the heads of Commonwealth nations met in London for their biennial meeting. But the usual circuit of talking and dining was marred by a scandal over the fate of the “Windrush generation”: a scandal that has its roots back at the beginning of the Commonwealth itself.

After World War II, Britain, facing a labour shortage, invited citizens from around the Commonwealth to help rebuild the country. In 1948, around 500 people from the Caribbean arrived on a ship called the Empire Windrush, which became a symbol of British Caribbean history. These arrivals were not immigrants but citizens. The adults held British passports and their children generally traveled on their parents’. Many of them settled in Britain.

But in 2010, the government began implementing the “hostile environment” policy, requiring employers, landlords, schools, banks and doctors to check people’s immigration status. Some of these postwar arrivals and their children, who were not necessarily able to document their status, have lost jobs and homes, and have been detained and threatened with deportation. The UK Border Agency itself destroyed documents it now requires them to produce.

Though these stories have been coming out for months, in the past few weeks they have coalesced into an almighty scandal. Hostility to immigration in Britain was a significant force driving the vote to leave the European Union, yet prominent Brexiteers are often sensitive to the charge that any part of their movement is inwardlooking, xenophobic or racist. Many of them have recently rushed to condemn the treatment of the Windrush generation.

The Commonwealth comprises 53 nations, mostly once British-ruled, and 2.4 billion people, 94 per cent of whom live in Africa and Asia. Its head is the queen. As Britain prepares to leave the European Union, some Brexiteers have called for the old links of ‘kith and kin’ to replace the European Union as a support for Britain’s international status. That is unlikely. Commonwealth is not a free trade area; converting it into one would be a gargantuan task. Many of its current trade agreements with Britain go through the European Union and cannot be renegotiated until after Brexit takes place.

If Britain wants something out of the Commonwealth, it cannot offer nothing in return. Many Commonwealth nations, notably India, would like more freedom of movement. In 1948, when British nationality was first formalised in law, British citizenship extended to more than 850 million people, either in the category “Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies” or “Commonwealth citizen.” The latter designation included Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India and Pakistan, among others.

For all politicians’ talk about a family of nations, though, the archives of the Commonwealth Relations Office have decades’ worth of papers revealing Britain’s attempts to deter people of its former colonies from coming anywhere near the white cliffs of Dover.

In a radio interview this month, Shashi Tharoor, a member of India’s Parliament, was blunt about the Commonwealth’s prospects: “You really have only two choices now. One is reinvention and the other is burial.” Reinvention in any more effective form would be a huge undertaking, requiring a great feat of imagination and diplomacy as well as cultural and political change — this at a time when British institutions will already be struggling to cope with Brexit. The Commonwealth does not seem minded to reinvent itself, either: Last week it acquiesced to the queen’s “sincere wish” that Prince Charles will one day inherit the nonhereditary position as its head.

The Windrush scandal reveals the complex reality of Britain’s relationships with its former colonies. Those who champion the Commonwealth now might need to reckon with its past before investing too much hope in its future. —NYT Syndicate