The Commonwealth is liberal, lefty and more needed than ever

Far from being a watered down continuation of Empire, with all the racism, violence and condescension associated with that, it has in fact evolved into rather a liberal, easygoing, multi-racial and multicultural organisation of equals

Valletta's Grand Harbour in Malta (AFP/Getty)

There’s a lady who lives in a big old house just outside Valetta, the capital of Malta, who seems to have had quite a few visitors from the British media these last few days. For she – her identity seems to have eluded Fleet Street’s finest – is the present owner/resident of Villa Guardamangia. The curiosity about the place is because it was once the home of the Queen, when she was a mere princess and newlywed “navy wife”, her future consort stationed on what was then an important British naval base. Without being indelicate, it is likely that Princess Anne began her biological existence there.

Now Her Majesty has been back on the island, accompanied by the press for the Commonwealth Summit, and the house and its occupants promised a story for one enterprising reporter. Well, a bit of one. From an upstairs window the current chatelaine tells her inquisitive British visitors, in polite terms, to sod off. After all, if she doesn’t want Her Majesty the Queen, Head of the Commonwealth and former sovereign lady of Malta, to drop by for tea and a poke about, then a reporter from the Daily Mail hasn’t got much chance of getting his foot in the door.

Taking “shabby genteel” a bit too far, the villa, in the Queen’s words, “looks a bit sad now”. So President Marie Louise Coleiro Prec of Malta presented her with a nice painting of the old place in its heyday, instead. Unlike a lot of the knick-knacks offered to her by her former realms over the years, she seemed personally, sentimentally, pleased with the gift. Another diplomatic triumph.

In rather better shape is the other old structure the Queen has been associated with since she was a girl – the Commonwealth of Nations. It is a remarkable institution, invented as a sort of substitute for the Empire, especially when all the non-white colonies gained their freedom, starting with India in 1947, to Antigua in 1981 (Hong Kong in 1997 probably doesn’t count). The British Empire had a real political and economic point to it. When Britain declared war, so did the old Dominions. Until the 1920s and 1930s there was more or less free trade across the Empire, Joe Chamberlain’s dream of imperial unity challenging the economic power of America made real. And, until 1961, any subject of the Commonwealth had an unfettered right to come and settle in the mother country, Britain. The Crown represented a natural sense of political unity across oceans and continents hard to conceive of today.

But does the Commonwealth – it ceased to be the “British Commonwealth” in 1971 – have much point? Yes, and in a strangely subversive way. So far from being a watered down continuation of Empire, with all the racism, violence and condescension associated with that, it has in fact evolved into rather a liberal, easygoing, multi-racial and multicultural organisation of equals. The principles contained in its 1991 Harare Declaration – no hint of irony there – and the 2013 Commonwealth Charter are impeccably modern and enlightened – human rights, tolerance, green stuff, gender equality, rights of small states, the rule of law and so on. The new Secretary-General, our own Baroness Scotland, has told The Independent on Sunday that she will “absolutely” be fighting for LGBT rights in the majority of Commonwealth states where imperial-era laws against homosexuality persist, and some bigoted attitudes with them. You may be sure the Queen is supportive of this right on agenda.

When she visited Amritsar in 1997 and the Irish rebels cemetery in Dublin in 2011 she signalled an almost Corbynesque renunciation of the old Empire and its worst excesses. Indeed, much of her personal diplomacy, though surrounded by symbols and trappings of imperial grandeur, is a blatant exercise in the repudiation of the Empire built in the names of her forbears. The Commonwealth, and its head, is a slightly lefty enterprise, though unacknowledged as such.

And so it is a small force for good in a fractured world, and its informal, loose, soft diplomacy may well achieve some results. In recent years the Commonwealth has set its bounds wider still and wider, accepting nations with little or no colonial link to Britain – Mozambique, Cameroon and Rwanda and maybe more. Burma, Ireland and Palestine would surely be welcome, too.

The environment and terrorism have given the Commonwealth more to do, with at least two members – the Maldives and Bangladesh – whose very existence is threatened by climate change. Kenya, Nigeria and Malta have found themselves in the front line of Islamist terror and the Syrian refugee crisis. They all deserve international support. Today the British no longer wish to rule a quarter of the world – but to be liked by it. Maybe even that lady with the villa in Valetta will come round to the idea.