Cousins
At first sight, the cosy gathering assembled in Downing Street in April 1949 in the bleak post-war years seemed only slightly different from the club of the old, predominantly white Dominions which had come together many times before and whose men and women had fought alongside their British cousins in two World Wars.
Yet meeting with Prime Minister Clement Attlee, of the United Kingdom, and his counterparts from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa, were the leaders of three newly emergent nations – India, Pakistan and Ceylon – which had themselves (along with countless others in Asia, in Africa, in the Pacific and the Caribbean) contributed to the cause of freedom in two world wars.
Between 1939 and 1945, the Indian sub-continent contributed forces of some 3 million under arms, the largest volunteer army ever raised. It was, however, more than gratitude and sentiment which led Commonwealth leaders to search for a way of allowing newly-independent republics to retain their membership of the association. Prompted by India’s Premier, Jawaharlal Nehru, a formula was agreed which drew a distinction between, on the one hand, the oath of allegiance to the Crown as Head of State and, on the other, the recognition of the British monarch as ‘the symbol of the free association of its independent member nations and as such the Head of the Commonwealth’.
If there is truth in the story that George VI, when told of the Nehru formula, exclaimed that he had been reduced to an ‘as such’, this was not apparent when he received Commonwealth leaders at Buckingham Palace, heard of their unanimous agreement and thanked them for their wisdom and tolerance.
A few years were to pass before Princess Elizabeth, once again in Africa (but in Kenya) was to hear the untimely news of her father’s death in his sleep at Sandringham on 6 February 1952, and from that moment the United Kingdom had a new Queen – and the Commonwealth its second Head.
