The Commonwealth is a legacy of Empire, but not as Netflix has portrayed it

The former British possessions have become a successful voluntary association thanks to the late Queen’s efforts to take forward the good aspects of our shared history

MShe really did believe that the imperial past, despite its numerous wrongs, had left a common heritage worth fostering

ost of the Sussexes’ Netflix drama so far (this is only half-time) has been about themselves, their great love story, their hatred of publicity and their atrocious sufferings at the hands of a heartless and racist Royal family. Given their modes of thought, one can expect those themes to fill up 99 per cent of the remaining three hours as well. Remember, they have a great mission: “We hope it helps others to heal, and to feel inspired.”

With relief, I leave it to my fellow commentators to explain how the series heals and inspires. If they convince me, I promise to teach our own half-british, half-american grandchildren how this magical Anglo-american couple are doing so much more good for the Special Relationship and for the whole world than that stuffy nonagenarian granny of Harry’s. Gosh, isn’t it funny, darlings, when Meghan, on air, imitates the humiliation of being forced to curtsy to her! What did that old trout do during her 70 years on the throne, after all? Just sat around reigning.

In the meantime, I propose to concentrate on a wider point of which Netflix wishes to persuade us. This is that, in the words of the writer Afua Hirsch, speaking in the series, the Commonwealth is really “Empire 2.0”.

This remark is certainly not one of the Sussex revelatory “truth bombs” with which viewers had been threatened. No such bombs have so far exploded. But I am interested in Ms Hirsch’s assertion about the Commonwealth, because I think it will become a growing part of the narrative used not only by Harry and Meghan (who held Commonwealth roles to which they never objected at the time), but also by many “anti-racist” critics of Britain and its monarchy.

Indeed, it is already used by those Caribbean leaders – in Barbados last year, and others, perhaps, later – who wish to jettison the British Crown (though not necessarily Commonwealth membership) and become republics. It cannot be long, surely, before it becomes settled doctrine in teaching materials sent out to schools. The Caribbean is said to be Britain’s “Deep South” – a comparison which will increasingly foment grievance among the West Indian population of this country.

The thing is, Afua Hirsch is not flat wrong about the continuity between Empire and Commonwealth. Its greatest exemplar was Elizabeth II. Her famous vow on her 21st birthday in 1947 was made in Africa, and she promised to serve not only Britain, but also the Commonwealth and the “great imperial family to which we all belong”.

As with all her promises, she was faithful. One of her last acts of high policy was to persuade Commonwealth leaders that her heir – then Prince of Wales, now the King – should succeed her as Head of the Commonwealth.

Indeed, the late Queen’s devotion to her Commonwealth role did sometimes produce tensions with the British government, because the interests of the one can clash with those of the other.

The classic example was the row about sanctions against apartheid South Africa in the 1980s. The then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, firmly believed that sanctions would hurt the wrong people and harden the whites against majority rule. Commonwealth leaders equally vehemently disagreed. The Queen, while expressing no view about sanctions, was worried Commonwealth unity might crack. She put Mrs Thatcher under some pressure to give in. In the end, everyone muddled through.

At the time, I wrote a piece called “How she keeps her Empire” in which I complained about this tension and argued that the Queen’s clear duty was to her primary nation, the United Kingdom. The Commonwealth was a distraction, I wrote, almost a fiction, which maintained imperial grandeur at the expense of British interests.

I still think this position is constitutionally correct: no British monarch could have any standing if she/he were not British monarch. All other roles are derivative. But over the years, I have come to see more point in the Queen’s devotion to the Commonwealth, and to understand why it invariably featured in her Christmas broadcasts and why she visited Commonwealth countries more than 200 times in her reign. It is interesting that apartheid South Africa left the Commonwealth in 1961 because of its racial policies, and then was proudly readmitted in 1994 when it had repudiated them. Playing her long game, Elizabeth II lived to witness both events.

As a young woman, she faced a choice. The Empire was passing. When she came to the throne, no British possessions in Africa had yet become independent of the Crown, but everything was changing. (By 1980, all of them would be gone.) Should she therefore repudiate the Empire and all its works, or should she jettison its authority but seek to preserve its good aspects? Could a structure built, at least in part, by force, have a successful afterlife as a voluntary association?

Because of her father’s example, her own conciliatory temperament and her Christian beliefs about the common good of humanity, she chose the latter course. She really did believe that the imperial past, despite numerous wrongs, had left a common heritage worth fostering. All the evidence suggests that her elder son and his heir think the same. Her elder son’s younger son – the “spare” – thinks differently; but, as we now see all too clearly, thinking is not his strong point.

The following, in no particular order, are aspects of our Commonwealth heritage – the English language as the second tongue of most member states and the first of many; common-law jurisdictions; study links and scholarships, mainly through universities; military traditions; parliamentary systems (though many have failed); parallel structures coming from the same root, notably the Anglican Communion; banking firms and trading companies; clubs; cricket; rugby; and, in the case of the 14 “other realms”, our monarchy.

The Commonwealth is a very different model to that of decolonised French possessions, where France still tries, intermittently, to use hard power, or of Portugal, where the government scuttled from its African colonies overnight in the mid-1970s, provoking sudden collapse.

Queen Elizabeth instinctively understood that the Commonwealth works only if it is not pushed too hard. In every member country which emerged from colonial rule (a handful have later joined without that background), resentments against the British persist. Even in countries like Canada and Australia, where “kith and kin” ties of settlement mean a lot, that is true. But what is also true is that no other European country – with the partial exception of Spain – has anything like the depth and reach of the British connection.

The late Queen saw how good that connection can be, both ways; but she also saw that if Britain tries to command, everyone else will rebel. Her mental model of the relationship was, at most, as first among equals, and friendly, not transactional – almost exactly the way that most politicians do not think about international relations. It closely reflected her attitude as Supreme Governor of the Church of England: she should never tell anyone what to do, but what her Church could offer was “holy hospitality” for all mainstream denominations and faiths in an often hostile culture.

That notion of hospitality is a beautiful one. When it is rejected, both sides get hurt, as the misunderstanding last week between Lady Susan Hussey and Ngozi Fulani illustrated in miniature. It is very hard when militants positively wish to misunderstand, but it is worth persisting with. The Commonwealth is frequently weak, but it is a serious project for a more hospitable world.