All for the love of the Commonwealth
Thanks to decades of deft steerage by the Queen, the league of 53 nations still thrives in an unsettled world, says George Alagiah
In three weeks’ time, when the Queen opens the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, she will do so safe in the knowledge that no one listening will have attended as many of these summits as she has. Her Majesty has been Head of the Commonwealth for more than six decades, bringing to the task her own particular brand of behind-the-scenes diplomacy. Understated it may be, but time and time again in the making of The Queen: Her Commonwealth Story, a BBC documentary I have fronted about her relationship to that organisation, I was told that it might not have survived without her, at least not in its current form – 53 nations, 2.4billion people, a third of humankind.
And yet out on the streets of UK, in Bolton or Belfast, if you asked people what the Queen does, I doubt there’d be many who would mention the Commonwealth. I hesitate to imagine what Her Majesty might think of that, but my guess is she would be miffed. We know how much the Queen values the Commonwealth. She’s praised its achievements on countless occasions; and in 2015 she remarked that it had all happened “within my lifetime”.
And what a lifetime. The Queen has presided over Britain’s transition from a colonial power to what this country is today: an island nation in the process of reinventing its place in the world. India, once the jewel in the crown, may have won its freedom before she came to the throne, but there was plenty more going on elsewhere in the former empire – not least the “winds of change” blowing through Africa.
From the late Fifties onwards, whether it was Malaysia in 1957, Nigeria in 1960, or St Kitts and Nevis in 1983, Britain’s former empire began shrinking like a deflating balloon. You might think that what historians used to call Britain’s “sphere of influence” would have gone the same way, but her governments had a trump card: their extraordinary head of state. Throughout this period, the Queen was deployed to the far corners of the world, giving Britain’s diplomacy a multiplier effect that its rivals simply could not match.
To watch the archive of this period – and there’s plenty of it in our film
– is to witness the transformation of a young and apparently diffident woman into one who learnt to play her hand deftly and to great effect. And remember, she has done so as a woman in a man’s world.
Talking to us for the film, Princess Anne describes the Queen playing the role of an “honorary man”. I know what she means, but I’m not so sure it’s accurate. On a number of occasions I was told that it was precisely because she was a woman that Commonwealth politicians came to trust her. She has commanded the respect of leaders around the world even when they had little respect for what her government at the time was doing.
The most obvious case in point was the ferocious debate within the Commonwealth in the Eighties about apartheid in South Africa. Virtually every member, including powerful states like India, Canada and Australia, was in favour of sanctions; they were opposed by Margaret Thatcher. It was an issue that threatened to split the Commonwealth. Like a mother in defence of her family, though, the Queen sprung into action.
At a gathering of key leaders in London in 1986, she broke with convention and hosted what her courtiers called a “working dinner” at Buckingham Palace on the night before the official meeting. There were eight guests at the table; seven were in favour of sanctions and one – Mrs Thatcher – was not. At some point during the meal, the Queen is said to have made it clear that she wanted her beloved Commonwealth to arrive at a consensus. Sir Shridath Ramphal, the organisation’s Secretary General at the time, told me everyone around that table understood to whom that message was directed. He says Mrs Thatcher looked grim. It’s a view