The Commonwealth At Work

156 Pages·1969·3.724 MB·English

by  Derek Ingram, Kenneth Bradley and D. Taylor (Auth.)

THE COMMONWEALTH AND INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY
Joint Chairmen of the Honorary Editorial Advisory Board:
SIR ROBERT ROBINSON, O.M., F.R.S., LONDON
DEAN ATHELSTAN SPILHAUS, MINNESOTA
Publisher: ROBERT MAXWELL, M.C, M.P.
COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS DIVISION
General Editors: SIR KENNETH BRADLEY, D. TAYLOR
The Commonwealth
at Work
The Commonwealth
at Work
by
DEREK INGRAM
1 ·· ·
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Copyright © 1969 Pergamon Press Ltd.
First edition 1969
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 70-79464
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Preface
THE conception of the Commonwealth—a major group of nations
strung across the world co-operating voluntarily on an equal non-
racial basis—is one with which no sensible person can possibly
quarrel.
Many may see its complete fulfilment as idealistic, but I see no
reason why idealistic aims should not be used to motivate severely
practical work.
Yet, for a variety of reasons, the Commonwealth has become in
the last few years a controversial subject. It has been constantly
maligned, widely misunderstood.
Much of the criticism springs from ignorance; much, too, from
a sad lack of perspective and a failure by people who should know
better to do some homework and to discover what the Common
wealth is all about.
In this volume I have tried to do a little of this homework and
to expose the working parts of the machinery of the Common
wealth which member-countries are using. Not all of it works, but
a lot of it does.
The book is by no means comprehensive; a broad outline, how
ever, is perhaps what most of us want. If these chapters contribute
to our knowledge of the reality of the Commonwealth as it exists
today they will have done their job.
DEREK INGRAM
vii
Acknowledgements
I SHOULD like to acknowledge the considerable help given to me
during the preparation of this book by officials of the Common
wealth Secretariat, the British Government Commonwealth Office
and many other official and non-official Commonwealth bodies.
My thanks must also go to Mrs. Gillian Mawrey and Mrs. Anne
Surtees who helped a great deal in the research and secretarial
work involved.
vin
CHAPTER 1
So Many Strands
The tie of language—Regional groupings
in Africa, the Caribbean and Asia—
Political links—Problems of the Heads of
Government conferences
THE object of this book is to be informative and forward-looking.
It is intended to set out in some detail the nature of the widely
varied machinery which is at work within the Commonwealth
trying to further relations between the member-countries on all
levels and in many different spheres.
The task is formidable, and within the compass of these pages
I shall not be able to give anything like complete chapter and verse.
Volumes of reference already list the ever-growing number of
official and unofficial Commonwealth organisations. My job is to
get behind the names and addresses and to explain a little how it
all works. Furthermore, it is most important to try to indicate how
the machinery that exists can grow and be more effectively used
for the good of the 800 million people of all our countries.
For that is what the Commonwealth is really all about—people.
It is getting to know each other, working with them more and
trying to understand each other's problems so that solutions can
be found. It is absolutely no use looking at a lot of committees
and boards and societies and saying what a good thing they are
unless we relate them to people—and by that I do not mean the
people on them; I mean the ordinary people whose daily lives
should be improved in one way or another as a result of the
activities of these organisations.
1
2 The Commonwealth at Work
We are all too well aware that a proliferation of committees can
stultify activity. They do not necessarily fertilise and energise, and
indeed they can sometimes duplicate and get in each other's way.
This has happened in Commonwealth affairs. There are to this
day in London too many separate organisations touching on
similar aspects of Commonwealth affairs which insist on going
blindly along their separate paths. Empire-building continues long
after the Empire has gone into the pages of history. What we need
is something totally different—efficient Commonwealth-building.
The foundation is well and truly laid—as I hope this book will
show—and what has to be done now that we are almost at the end
of the long, necessarily frustrating period of transition from
Empire to Commonwealth is to build on that foundation. We have
to try to build across from country to country so that the lattice
work, which already exists in many cases on a larger scale than
the critics are willing to accept, grows denser and more substantial
in its structure.
What this book is concerned with is the arterial system of the
Commonwealth—the day-by-day, hour-by-hour activity across
the world which really is the Commonwealth. These are matters
which so many people who like to snipe ("What is the Common
wealth? Where does it exist? It is only a myth in some people's
minds !") never try to find out about. Yet it really is there if anyone
cares to do a day or two's homework.
In the past two or three years I have visited twenty-two of the
twenty-eight countries of the Commonwealth, and I can testify
that discussion with those men and women near the seat of power,
civil servants and politicians, reveals that their appreciation of the
value of this activity within the Commonwealth is considerable.
These people are involved day by day in matters which require
co-operation on a Commonwealth basis. They find it useful and
they find that it works—though that is not to suggest that in every
way it works ideally.
Not many people are able to do so much travelling, and I am
not suggesting that it is necessary to travel round the world before
you can find the Commonwealth. What I am saying is that a little
So Many Strands 3
consultation of reference books and reading of one or two debates
—maybe in the British Parliament or in the Parliament of another
Commonwealth country—or a perusal of the annual report of the
Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, or a reading of one of
the reports of the annual conference of the Commonwealth Par
liamentary Association can give in a few hours a good idea of some
of the consultation and co-operation in the Commonwealth.
A simple yet telling illustration of the way in which all this
activity works was given by Mr. Paul Hasluck, Australian Minister
for Territories (later Minister for External Affairs), when he
addressed the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association Con
ference at Lagos in November 1962. He said :
It seems to me that one circumstance that really helps to keep the
Commonwealth working and gives it value is a very simple one; and
that is that we can still talk to each other without making a lot of
special arrangements, whenever we want to do so.
I think in our ordinary human affairs there is so much difference
between the casual and confident approach to another person in the
way of conversation and the need in other cases for extreme formality
before you can even say "good morning". The whole situation in the
Commonwealth looks to me the same as if I can say to a friend in my
own country "Tom, are you going fishing next Saturday, can I have
a place in your boat?" and he says "Yes, come along with me". It is
as easy as that. There are other people, however, with whom one
could not do that. If you wanted to go fishing, you would have to
talk first with a mutual friend, and your mutual friend would have to
drop a word to him, asking would he care to invite you to go fishing,
and then, having engineered the invitation, you would have to write
a letter accepting his invitation to go fishing.
But I hope and believe that what can take place in the Common
wealth is that we can get down to the relationship of "Tom, can I go
fishing with you?" "Certainly, I have plenty of room in my boat."
It is that quality in the Commonwealth—the ability to talk together,
to start conversation without going through extreme formality and
without having to look at each other's credentials—which is one of
the qualities the Commonwealth of today has and no other group in
the world does have.
That perhaps is the whole basis of the consultation and co
operation which I shall set down here in this book.
What co-operation are we talking about?
4 The Commonwealth at Work
In the 1960's the Commonwealth has been looked at too much
in terms of Heads of Government conferences and nothing else.
These have often been stormy and perhaps disappointing in their
political results. In September 1966, at the Heads of Government
conference in London, the Commonwealth came near to breaking
up over the agonising question of Rhodesia. After—indeed, before
—it was all over those who are ever-eager to jump in and criticise
the Commonwealth as an association began to raise the doubts all
over again. Some Prime Ministers certainly went home rather dis
appointed about what had happened at the conference table and
in the corridors and rooms outside. One of these was Mr. Keith
Holyoake, Prime Minister of New Zealand. He did not like the
way the debate had gone nor the manner in which some of the
leaders behaved.
When he returned to Wellington, the New Zealand Parliament,
as is customary, debated the conference and its outcome. In his
report to the nation Mr. Holyoake looked again at the Common
wealth, its failings and its successes, and gave an admirable sum
mary of what he believed the Commonwealth really meant and
what was the heart of the association. He gave an outline of the
consultation and co-operation which this book is all about. Mr.
Holyoake said :
The Commonwealth fabric is made up of many strands and I think
I should remind my colleagues ... of the continuing, substantial,
valuable Commonwealth activities and institutions, each one of which
is a strand in the fabric of the Commonwealth.
Let me remind the House that economic affairs are covered by the
Commonwealth Economic Committee, the Commonwealth Economic
Consultative Council, and the Commonwealth Liaison Committee. 1
These three organisations have the substantial task and responsibility
of considering Commonwealth economic affairs. We have the annual
meeting of Finance Ministers of the Commonwealth. Our own
Minister of Finance is in Montreal for just such a meeting at present.
The Deputy Prime Minister attended the Commonwealth Trade
Ministers' conference in London when he went overseas recently on
trade matters. The Commonwealth Parliamentary Association con
ference was held here in Wellington last year, and our delegates to
this year's meetings are now in Canada and will be meeting at Ottawa
within a week or so.
1 The unit has been integrated with the Secretariat.
So Many Strands 5
Then, throughout the world, there is continuous work in agricul
ture, science, communications, and legal matters. Members will recall
that a few months ago, in Melbourne and Sydney, there was a
conference attended by about 1000 legal people from around the
Commonwealth. The Commonwealth Parliamentary Association has
frequent meetings. We have the Commonwealth Broadcasting Organi
sation, the Commonwealth Education Conference, and the recently
established Commonwealth Medical Conference, the first meeting of
which was held in Edinburgh earlier this year and was attended by
our own Minister of Health. The next one, already arranged, will be
held in Uganda. . . .
There are also numerous schemes for mutual aid organised in and
by the Commonwealth. All of these are very valuable projects. The
Colombo Plan in its original conception of membership was a Com
monwealth initiative. It has spread wider—and we are happy that this
is so—in the years since 1950. There is the Special Commonwealth Aid
to Africa Plan, to which we in this House vote £160,000, I think it
is, and there is also the Commonwealth Education Scheme.
I could go on and on with this quite lengthy and impressive list,
but it by no means exhausts the list of activities that make the Com
monwealth association so valuable to all of its members, and particu
larly to the newer and the developing countries. These are strong and
substantial threads of the fabric of Commonwealth. At the summit,
of course, is the conference of Commonwealth Prime Ministers.
Here we shall always see, as I have seen on this occasion—in some
respects regrettably—the clash of politics and policy in the making,
just as in our Parliament we see the clash of policies, of ideas, of
ideologies. At the same time, once we have hammered out public policy
in this House, the departments and the national activities carry on
in their more or less steady way. We see the clash of politics and poli
cies in the General Assembly and in the Security Council of the United
Nations, but all the time, beneath these clashes, the specialised agencies
of the United Nations are going quietly about their humanitarian
work. So it is with the Commonwealth. . . .
We will see the policies hammered out, but beneath all that, and
going ahead continuously, there will be the valuable and unifying
work of the Commonwealth agencies and activities. . . . And so I am
optimistic about the future of the Commonwealth.
I do remind members that it is a new Commonwealth. I think our
minds usually go back a little to the good old days. The first time this
House sent me to such a Conference, which was only five years ago,
there were eleven members of the Commonwealth; this year there
are twenty-three, and as we approved the membership of three new
countries there will be at least twenty-six next year, and possibly more.
The Commonwealth is changing, but it is vital, it is vigorous, and it is
still very much in the formative stage. We must not close our minds
and think, This is the Commonwealth and here it stops; here are the
lines it has followed in the past and must follow in the future. I say