Confidential report from Frederick H. Boland to Seán Nunan (Dublin)
(Confidential) (Copy)

Since I came to London, it has become increasingly obvious to me that the attitude of mind about the Commonwealth in official circles in this country is very different today from what it was fifteen or twenty years ago. In those days, British policy in regard to the Commonwealth – although it had made great advances – was still based in essence on the imperial idea. Major emphasis was still laid on the Crown as the essential and fundamental link and the notion of the unity of the Commonwealth flowing from the fact of common allegiance was still being sedulously fostered. Efforts were still being made to keep alive the idea of the diplomatic unity of the Commonwealth in the international sphere and, partly with this in view and partly as a means of preserving the primacy of Great Britain herself, the adjective ‘British’ was given the widest possible application. It was the ‘British’ Commonwealth – an association of ‘British’ peoples bound together by a common allegiance to the ‘British’ Crown.

2. In the inter-war period, Ireland did much to undermine these basic conceptions and render them no longer tenable. In the intervening years, other members of the Commonwealth have carried on the work which we begun. Disliking the idea of Commonwealth unity, Canada has done much to push forward the idea of the several kingships which at one stage played some part in our own official thinking about the Commonwealth. The new Asiatic members of the Commonwealth reject the term ‘British’; at least one of them¹ does not accept common allegiance at all and the others don’t like too much stress laid on it. Changes in nationality legislation have made the fiction of an association of ‘British’ peoples impossible to maintain.
3. These and other tendencies in the Commonwealth itself have brought about a change in official thinking in Whitehall which, as I say, is quite perceptible to anyone who remembers the attitude of British ministers and officials in bygone years. No doubt British newspapers like the ‘Daily Express’, and elderly members of the Conservative party, still continue to talk of the Commonwealth in the terms which were usual in the twenties and thirties. But in the government departments dealing with Commonwealth governments, and particularly in the Commonwealth Relations Office, the change of approach is unmistakeable. There is a considerable difference in outlook between Harding² and Stephenson³ and their present successors, Liesching⁴ and Holmes;⁵ and, although Mr. Philip Noel-Baker⁶ suffered from the handicap of having his ideas coloured by the book about the Commonwealth which he himself wrote in the twenties, his successor, Mr. Gordon Walker, did more perhaps than any British minister before or since to steer British policy in relation to the Commonwealth into new and more realistic channels.
4. Although it is not easy to specify in detail the differences between the present policy and that of the pre-war years, the broad outlines may be discerned easily enough. The emphasis on the Crown is nowadays considerably weaker than it was before. It is still referred to – always in terms of the highest respect – as a link between the members of the Commonwealth; but it is no longer the fundamental and essential link to the extent that it was before. Secondly, the deliberate effort to preserve and stress Britain’s position of primus inter pares has to all intents and purposes gone by the board. The term ‘British’ is used as little as possible even by officials of the Commonwealth Relations Office. In fact, in confidential conversation, they deplore as tactless and unrealistic the tendency of Australia and New Zealand to keep harping on it! In the third place, there is a perceptible effort to build up other links in place of the Crown to strengthen and justify the Commonwealth association. This is really Mr. Gordon Walker’s own personal contribution to the new policy. In his speech to the Royal Empire Society on 12th October, 1950 (which I reported at the time)⁷ he specified the factors which seem to him to constitute the true bonds of Commonwealth – similar systems of parliamentary democracy, common systems of law, inter-change of special privileges in the spheres of trade and citizenship and so on. It is on these, he held, ‘and not on any purely formal links’ that the cohesion of the Commonwealth now mainly depends.
5. Of course, what is said above is largely a personal interpretation of a general tendency and, in such a context, one cannot speak with anything like the same definiteness or assurance as is possible in reporting a particular event. I think, however, you will find considerable evidence of the tendency described above in the enclosed pamphlet ‘What is the Commonwealth?’ which has just been issued by the Central Office of Information. The pamphlet was written by Joyce,⁸ the Public Relations Officer of the Commonwealth Relations Office, under the supervision of Sedgwick,⁹ the head of the Constitutional Division. It may be taken, therefore, as stating authoritatively the basic assumptions upon which the Commonwealth Relations Office nowadays proceeds in its dealings with Commonwealth Governments. The pamphlet is worth reading. The Crown is dealt with in the section headed ‘The Sovereign and the Commonwealth’. But no reference at all is made to the Crown elsewhere in the pamphlet and the role of the Crown as the essential link is nowhere asserted. In the final section in which the essential nature of the Commonwealth is stated, under the description ‘The Tested Relationship’, the Crown is not mentioned. On the whole, the pamphlet seems to relegate it to a rather secondary place. Ireland is referred to in the section headed ‘Citizenship and Nationality’. The terms of this reference are obviously chosen advisedly. Having said that citizens of Commonwealth countries, in spite of the separate nationality laws, are ‘all one way or another in the family’, it goes on to say ‘even the Irish Republic which in 1949 ceased to be a member of the Commonwealth is not regarded by the other Commonwealth nations as a foreign country or her citizens as foreigners. She, therefore, is in a special position … her relations with the United Kingdom are conducted, not through the Foreign Office, but through the Commonwealth Relations Office … It is an anomalous position unprecedented in the history of the Commonwealth but it provides a striking illustration of the capacity of the Commonwealth to adjust itself to changing circumstances’! You may be assured, I think, that careful cogitation was given to this description of our position in the Commonwealth Relations Office before the pamphlet was passed for printing. The description is in line, however, with what Sir Percivale Liesching has on more than one occasion given me to understand as being the policy of the Government here in our regard – that no effort should be made to define our position more precisely; that the more open it is left the better; and that the burden of giving it shape and direction should be left primarily to us.
6. It is an interesting speculation – and one on which I would not like to hazard an opinion – to what extent the new conception of the Commonwealth relationship which, I believe, is gradually being hammered out in Whitehall, is being framed with an eye to our particular position.
7. In its final paragraph, the pamphlet sums up the position by saying that ‘it is on the positive ideals and principles of all member nations and not on any purely formal links that the unity of the Commonwealth now rests’. This is the essence of Mr. Gordon Walker’s doctrine. It is also the essence of the argument (‘it is the substance that matters – not the form’) which Dr. Mansergh¹⁰ – largely at our instigation – used in his famous article in ‘International Affairs’ in 1947.¹¹ It is the same argument which we ourselves urged to some advantage in the discussions in connection with the Republic of Ireland Act in 1948. Although it is possible to read too much into the phrase, its use now in a carefully-edited British official document is certainly not without interest. It may suggest an intention to preserve the Commonwealth relationship in future notwithstanding possible radical constitutional changes in the member states. It is a question indeed, whether it does not open the door for the further attenuation of the importance of the Crown – if not its eventual abandonment as a common link of Commonwealth if the need should arise.