This post, and the one before it about the monarchy, were originally written in 2021 as ‘how it IS because’ posts, but now, in 2025, they are ‘how it was’ and could use an update to reflect some recent changes. This time we address the Commonwealth, which has a new Head, one less Realm, and two new members.
Growing up in Canada, and subsequently living in the UK, I learned and encountered very little 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 my school sports day was ‘Commonwealth themed’. That was really about it, though, and I have found that even otherwise well-informed people still don’t have the full picture of what the Commonwealth actually does, and is, and what it isn’t.
This post 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.
But first, here is some very brief context. Since the mid-nineteenth century the British Empire had started to evolve: some of the colonies, like Canada, were granted a certain degree of independence from Britain and became dominions. This mix of colonies and dominions, and ex-colonies that didn’t want to be dominions (like India) all crystallised into the modern Commonwealth in 1949. Please note that it was the ‘British’ Commonwealth prior to this, but it is not ‘British’ now, and all of the member countries are equal in status.
I’ll organise the rest of this post around a few common objections/misconceptions I’ve heard (and these are all genuine things that real people have actually said):
‘It’s just a holdover from the British Empire’: its origins lie with the British Empire, yes. Most member states have some connection to Britain, often as former colonies, but it has grown far beyond the British Empire, in a more positive direction. Also, some countries have joined that never had any connection to Britain, namely Mozambique and Rwanda, which joined in 1995 and 2009, respectively, as well as Togo and Gabon, who both joined in 2022, after I wrote the original version of this post.
‘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 is true: the Commonwealth is a voluntary and non-political association of 56 countries. In theory any country can join, or leave, so no one’s stuck there. More countries have joined than left, while some have left and re-joined, or even had their membership suspended for not adhering to the principles of development, democracy, and peace. Ultimately the Commonwealth 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, gender equality, and protection of the environment, all of which are meant to improve the lives of people who live in the Commonwealth.
‘No one even knows what the Commonwealth does’: this one, alas, 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 stages of trying to uphold its principles, so it is difficult to pin down what it’s for and the degree to which it is able to carry out its role. The Commonwealth is far from perfect, when you look at what still happens in certain member states, but the idea behind a voluntary association of diverse countries that want to bring about positive change is surely no bad thing.
I actually delivered a course on this topic at the end of 2021, all about what the Commonwealth actually is (and isn’t) and what it actually does, and it went down very well. Of all of the courses I have designed and delivered for the University of York’s Centre for Lifelong Learning, that one got the best feedback because people learned so much from it, from what was really just an introduction to the Commonwealth; they came away thinking, rightly, that knowledge of the Commonwealth should be more widespread.
‘The Commonwealth countries are all under the leadership of the King’: the way some people assert this, they make it sound like this is somehow a bad thing, which it is not. It is also not entirely true: only 15 Commonwealth countries have the King 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, 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.
In the original version of this post, Barbados was on that list of Realms. Barbados has been part of the Commonwealth since 1966, when it gained independence. Republics aren’t new within the Commonwealth; India was one as early as 1950, and that fact that it wanted to be a republic but still remain part of the Commonwealth post-independence set an important precedent for how the Commonwealth subsequently evolved; i.e. into a mix of realms and republics. The government of Barbados, however, announced in 2020 that they were going to be a republic by 30 November 2021(that date being the 55th anniversary of its independence). A bill making an amendment to their existing constitution went through the Barbadian parliament very quickly. Their Governor General was nominated by their Prime Minister to become the first president. The Queen congratulated them, and that was that.
However…a survey conducted shortly before 30 November 2021 by the University of the West Indies showed that there was no overwhelming public support for this action. 34% were in favour of a republic, 30% were indifferent; it seems like 12% were opposed to the change and wanted to keep being a constitutional monarchy, so there was no overwhelming opposition either. There was simply more indifference than genuine republican feeling. Just over half of those surveyed wanted an elected head of state (yet didn’t overwhelmingly support a republic…??), but it appears that there was, ultimately, a significant lack of understanding of what being a republic would actually mean.
Here is where the assertion that becoming a republic is somehow democratic falls flat. This was not ‘something the people wanted’, this was ‘something the government did’. Only in 2022 did a ‘Constitutional Review Commission’ consult the public about the change and about what a new constitution should look like. I remember talking to some otherwise very intelligent people about this subject, and they predictably thought that becoming a republic was democratic and therefore a Good Thing, and I said that actually, this hadn’t been undertaken because the people wanted it and were able to consent to it, so it wasn’t really that democratic, was it? That made them pause and think.
(https://web.archive.org/web/20211221200757/https://barbadostoday.bb/2021/12/21/survey-shows-support-for-republic/ is where the above statistics came from. Note that that headline doesn’t specify the amount of support for a republic, and this support was, in fact, not very substantial. )
Two final things to note: the first is that the King is the Head of the Commonwealth for all 56 countries, but this is completely separate from his role as Head of State, which he only holds in the 15 realms. ‘Head of the Commonwealth’ is a separate, more symbolic role, and it is also not a hereditary one: the Commonwealth heads of government, in 2018, chose the then Prince Charles as the next Head to succeed Elizabeth II, but they could have chosen a different person. We do not know, and cannot speculate, who might succeed Charles III as the next Head.
The second thing is that you might hear the Commonwealth described as having ‘grown up with’ the Queen, i.e. with Elizabeth II (or that the Queen grew up with the Commonwealth: both are true). She has lived through the creation of the modern Commonwealth and seen it develop into what it is today, and has always seen the value in it, even if her ministers did not. Many member states which became republics nonetheless felt a great respect for, and attachment to, the Queen because of this. The Commonwealth is still its valuable self under the headship of Charles III, who is an ideal Head because the aims of the Commonwealth align so closely with the causes he has championed throughout his own long life, particularly environmental protection, improving opportunities for young people, and international cooperation and understanding.
So that’s my Commonwealth post, updated for 2025. I hope, as with anything that I write here, that it has made you think, and that next time you hear someone saying something ignorant about the Commonwealth, you can correct them.
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 the Realms, etc.
https://www.royal.uk/commonwealth-and-overseas This is a similarly helpful overview of what the Commonwealth does and how the King’s role fits into it, as is https://www.royalcwsociety.org describing the work of the Royal Commonwealth Society.
How It Was Because 