Influence
At times when disagreement was at its fiercest, the Commonwealth might have broken under the strain, had it not been for the calming and restraining influence of its Head.
Records which were for years kept secret show how, in 1970, the then British Prime Minister prevented the Queen from attending the 1971 Singapore Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). While reluctantly accepting Edward Heath’s advice, the response from Buckingham Palace was clear. ‘It is the Queen’s considered opinion that when there is a meeting of this nature it is desirable and, indeed, it is her duty as Head of the Commonwealth to be present.’ As it was, the Singapore meeting broke up in acrimony at a time when the Queen’s presence and individual contacts with the Heads of Government might have had a unifying influence.
The Queen has not since listened to voices urging her to stay away from Commonwealth meetings, even when the primary concern expressed has been for her personal safety. And, since that time, the Queen has increasingly turned to the Commonwealth Secretary-General (a position only established in 1965) for advice on exclusively Commonwealth matters.
In 1979, as the issue of a Rhodesian settlement came to a head, Mrs Thatcher was among those who urged the Queen not to attend the Commonwealth Summit in Lusaka, citing security considerations.
The then Commonwealth Secretary-General, Sir Shridath Ramphal, took steps to address the security concerns and encouraged the Queen to be present. In the event, her determination to travel to Lusaka was not in doubt and she was widely credited with smoothing over the rifts and helping pave the way for agreement on the Lancaster House constitutional conference, leading to Zimbabwe’s birth as an independent and free nation. As the Chairman of that summit, Dr Kenneth Kaunda (then President of Zambia) remarked afterwards: ‘Queen Elizabeth, as always at these conferences, was a tower of strength for us. First and foremost, leaders in the Commonwealth, of all sorts of different political thought, are agreed on one thing. They can trust her.’
If Mrs Thatcher, then the UK’s Prime Minister, was able to reach an accommodation with Commonwealth leaders over Rhodesia, the issue of apartheid and sanctions proved more intractable. To the dismay of her Commonwealth colleagues, she announced: ‘The African National Congress (ANC) is a typical terrorist organisation. Anyone who says the ANC will ever form the government in South Africa is living in cloud cuckoo land.’
