The Commonwealth and Britain East of Suez

Abstract

rT HERE are now 22 members of the Commonwealth. For 21, the transition from Empire is complete. They are free and independent. They make their own policies. They are republics or monarchies as they choose. They belong or do not belong to alliances. They can be more intimate with fellow North Americans or fellow Africans than with their sister states of the Commonwealth without an eyebrow being raised. The 22nd state, the odd one out, is Britain herself. Britain has still not quite lost her nostalgia for the old days of Empire. Nothing shows this more clearly that the continuing British presence east of Suez. In its heyday, the Empire was the'means by which Britain fulfilled a unique role in the world. North America, Africa, Asia have been changed for all foreseeable time by Britain's imperial achievements. Naturally, the British people hope for some survival of that unique position; naturally, they hanker after some continuing recognition that their place in the world is not quite as that of others. Naturally, therefore, they are willing to let consideration for their Commonwealth duties influence their actions in a way none of the others do. For a time they put much faith in their special relationship with that ex-member of the Empire, the United States. Many have always tended to see the United States, like Ireland, as a natural member of the Commonwealth whose failure to belong is only explicable by historical events better forgotten. This special link with the United States does, of course, exist in sentimental terms. The people of the British Isles are more at home with Americans than with Frenchmen or Germans; the language is the same, the ways of behaviour are mutually comprehensible, even the class structures are becoming more and more alike. But politically, in terms of Britain's position in the world, the special relationship is a myth-the Americans were providing President Nasser with free food at the very moment when he was trying to subvert the Aden base the Americans were urging Britain to keep. The British are very loyal allies; their bases in the Indian Ocean lighten an American load or two. They are not the vital allies; it is the Germans who are on the Russian border. Nor are they the difficult allies who must nevertheless be lived with; that is de Gaulle. And they cannot be' the enemy. So they fill the role that the abler Maharajahs,