Clarifying the Commonwealth

This post, and the one which will shortly follow it, are more ‘how it is because’ posts rather than ‘how it was’, because these are two closely related topics which are very current. I’m talking about the Commonwealth and the monarchy.

For context, I live in the UK but am from Canada, and have family in both countries. I have always felt loyal to the Queen as both Canada’s and the UK’s head of state, and it aways just felt ‘right’ being part of the Commonwealth. I will admit, however, that growing up in Canada I learned very little about the monarchy or about the Commonwealth: when the Commonwealth Games were held in my home town, my curious six-year-old self memorised the flags of the participating countries, and later on we must have learned a little bit in school about how in Canada the head of state and the head of government were separate people, but that was probably about it for much of my life. The point I am trying to make here is that people in Canada, and in the UK, seem not to know very much about either the monarchy or the Commonwealth. They know they’re there, but there is a lot of misinformation out there, or just simply lack of information, so that even otherwise well-informed people still don’t have the full picture of what the monarchy and Commonwealth actually do and what they are for. I am still learning more about them both, and the more I learn, the more I support both institutions.

These posts are not meant to give you all the information; I’ll link some sources at the bottom of the page which will do a more thorough job with that than I can. What they are meant to do is give you some things to think upon, as well as to reflect on why people hold the views they do about the Commonwealth and the monarchy.

Let’s start with the Commonwealth. I’ll organise this around a few common objections/misconceptions I’ve heard:

‘It’s just a holdover from the British Empire’ : that’s where its origins lie, yes. Most member states have some connection to Britain, often as former colonies, but it has grown far beyond the British Empire, in a much more positive direction. Also, some countries have joined that never had any connection to Britain, namely Rwanda and Mozambique, which joined in 2009 and 1995, respectively.

‘It’s something that countries are stuck in and it holds them back from achieving their potential’ : I think this is closely related to the ‘it’s a holdover from the Empire’ objection, but quite the opposite it true: the Commonwealth is a voluntary organisation of 54 countries. Any country can join, or leave, so no one’s stuck there. More countries have joined than left, while some have left and later re-joined, or even had their membership suspended for not adhering to the Commonwealth’s principles of development, democracy, and peace. Ultimately it is intended as a force for good in the world, upholding, or trying to help its members uphold, peace and democracy (which are conditions for membership), and encourages things like education, equality, and protection of the environment, all of which are meant to improve the lives of the people who live in the Commonwealth.

‘No one even knows what the Commonwealth does’ : this one has some truth in it. Certainly from my Canada/UK-based perspective, people still have a very unclear picture of what the Commonwealth actually does and what it’s for. This is partially because there is a lack of education on the subject, and it is also partially because the Commonwealth just kind of gets on with its work quietly, without a lot of fuss, so it isn’t as well publicised as it might be. Its member countries are also at varying states of trying to uphold its principles, so it is difficult to pin down what it’s for and the degree to which is it able to carry out it role.

‘The Commonwealth countries are all under the leadership of the Queen’ : The way some people assert this, they make it sound like this is somehow a bad thing, which it is not (more on that in the next post). It is also not entirely true: only 16 Commonwealth countries have the Queen as their head of state (these are the Commonwealth Realms), while the others are either republics or have their own monarch. The Realms are Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Barbados, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Grenada, the Solomon Islands, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Papua New Guinea, St Lucia, Tuvalu, Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, St Kitts and Nevis, and the United Kingdom.

The Queen is the Head of the Commonwealth for all 54 countries, but this is completely separate from her role as Head of State, which she only holds in the 16 Realms. ‘Head of the Commonwealth’ is a separate, more symbolic role, and it is also not a hereditary one: the Commonwealth Heads of Government chose Prince Charles as the next head, but they could have chosen a different person.

This leads us nicely on to the monarchy itself, a similarly under-understood institution, which we’ll explore in the next post.

Further Reading

https://thecommonwealth.org/member-countries This is an excellent source of information on the various Commonwealth countries, including which countries are members, when they joined, which ones are Realms, etc.

https://www.royal.uk/commonwealth-and-overseas This is a similarly helpful overview of what the Commonwealth does and how the Queen’s role fits into it, as is https://www.royalcwsociety.org , describing the work of the Royal Commonwealth Society.

For a more specific perspective on four Commonwealth Realms in particular, see https://www.canzukinternational.com , an organisation which champions freedom of movement between Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. This is an issue I wholeheartedly support: we share a head of state, so we are not exactly ‘foreign’ countries to each other, so why shouldn’t movement between these four places be made easier?