As part of a UK Channel 4 series called ‘On Tour with The Queen’, presenter Kwame Kwei-Armah has been retracing the steps that The Queen took on her tour of the Commonwealth in 1953.

This clip, from the first programme in the series, shows how callers to Jamaica’s famous Breakfast Club radio talkshow with host Professor Trevor Munroe view Jamaica’s relationship with the Queen. The question provoked some surprising results! What do you think?

On Tour with The Queen finishes 31st August, 9pm, on Channel 4.

See www.channel4.com for more details.

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Savage, a co-founder of the New Zealand Republican Movement has written the following contribution to the Commonwealth Conversation:

There is a belief perpetuated in Britain and other Commonwealth countries that the British Empire was of benefit to the world. The greed and racism are forgotten. The invasions, wars, political oppression and genocide are downplayed. The poverty and inequality it created are conveniently ignored.

The damage caused by Britain’s imperial project is not something many British people want to accept. The overall approach is a self-deluding calculation. Weighing up the positive and negative, the overall achievements were positive. The empire was a good thing.

This ongoing debate about the Empire’s historical merits is relevant to the commonwealth conversation. It reminds us of the attitudes and values the Commonwealth has been left to deal with. Self-delusion was an integral part of the imperial project. Institutional inequality and a commitment to democracy could only co-exist if elaborate self-delusions were maintained. Without the historical fictions and cultural myths, the contradictions inherent in the whole project would have been exposed. The fa?ade of civility and ‘progress’ would have crumbled.

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‘The Commonwealth without the monarch at its head is inconceivable’, says Professor David Flint, National Convenor of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy.

Just as the Crown was essential to the evolution of the world’s most successful system of governance, the Westminster model, so it has been at the very centre of the long evolution of the Commonwealth.

No one has put The Queen’s personal contribution as Head of the Commonwealth more clearly than did the thirteen year old Australian youth ambassador, Harry White at the opening of the Melbourne Commonwealth Games:

‘Your Majesty, during the past 54 years of your reign you have been the glue that has held us all together in the great Commonwealth of Nations in good times and bad times. The love and great affection that we all hold for you is spread across one third of the world’s population in our Commonwealth.’

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As British television begins showing a series of films, On Tour with the Queen, to mark the 60th anniversary of today’s Commonwealth it is timely to recall the all-important London Declaration that created the association.

The Declaration was agreed in 1949 at a meeting in Ten Downing Street of leaders of the eight Commonwealth countries which were then independent. It enabled India to remain in membership as a republic, creating the title Head of the Commonwealth and conferring it on King George VI.

Hitherto the head of state of all Commonwealth countries was the British monarch and there was no provision for a republic.

The Commonwealth is hugely misunderstood by its peoples, but nothing causes more confusion than this matter of the Headship, as the results of opinion polls commissioned by the Royal Commonwealth Society in seven member countries have just shown.

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Top of the list of must-know Commonwealth words is ‘CHOGM’, the bizarre diplomatic shorthand for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings, which take place every two years. (Pronounced Ch-ogg-um).

There is much more to CHOGM than a leaders get-together. Running alongside are the Commonwealth People’s Forum for civil society organisations, the Business Forum, the Youth Forum and even the People’s Space, which highlights the cultural offerings of the host country. It’s a great time for Commonwealth groupies and hangers-on to ponder whatever is on the agenda that year.

The theme for Trinidad 2009 is partnering for a more equitable and sustainable future. This catch-all language seems as impenetrable as the word CHOGM itself. And more importantly will the average person walking down a street have any idea to what either of these refer? My guess is no.

Uganda in 2007 went ‘CHOGM crazy’, with one Kampala daily running the headline ‘Queen 2,314 miles away’, as Elizabeth II stopped over in Malta en route to the meeting.

The Government certainly went crazy too, spending massively on new roads to take the great and good from the airport to the conference centre.

The BBC reported that the country also got ready by clearing beggars from the capital’s streets:

In the last few weeks, hundreds have been rounded up and taken to a makeshift holding centre outside the capital.

Built as a rehabilitation centre for young offenders, it is now home to almost 900 people, nearly all of them children.

There is not enough room for everyone in the dormitories, so some sleep in the gymnasium.

A report out this week tells us that Uganda?s roads are in dire straights, as if the costly improvements of two years ago never happened. So what are the long-lasting benefits of these meetings for the host country?

But this is a different issue altogether. Back to the name, shouldn’t we just call it a ‘Commonwealth Summit’ and make everything simple? Surely no-one disputes the value of world leaders connected by a shared history and common values holding a Summit every two years to discuss shared solutions to common problems. But to many it will appear a noble idea wrapped up in gobbledygook and alienating jargon.

Dr. Kenneth Kaunda, former President of Zambia and Rt. Hon. Malcolm Fraser, former Prime Minster of Australia, said it was time that the Commonwealth engaged proactively with the new Zimbabwean government and welcomed her back into the Commonwealth family.

Fraser said that ‘if Zimbabwe was one of the Commonwealth’s greatest successes, it is also one of its greatest failures’. Kaunda said that the ‘road to recovery that we are now witnessing in Zimbabwe shows that she belongs to the Commonwealth’. Neither predicted that the country to which the Commonwealth gave birth in 1979 would end up leaving in 2003.

In interviews conducted by the Royal Commonwealth Society, Fraser and Kaunda said that the Commonwealth can achieve great things if only leaders would make better use of it and take it seriously as a forum to enact change.

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These days we are plagued by acronyms. The Commonwealth is no exception. High in its vocabulary is CMAG  the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group. To be CMAGGED is a form of disgrace member countries do not like.

Fiji is currently getting that treatment because it has abrogated its constitution, entrenched authoritarian rule under military ruler Commodore Bainimarama, violated human rights, freedom of speech and assembly, detained opponents, and undermined the judiciary.

The Commonwealth was the first international organisation to create such machinery of self-discipline. Heads of government produced it at their Auckland summit in 1995. A main aim was to prevent power being seized from legally elected governments.

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Considerable rumours circulated worldwide this week about the imminence of Fiji’s full suspension from the Commonwealth at the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) held today, Friday 31^st July, in London. However at the meeting, CMAG’s 9 Foreign Ministers agreed to give the Fijian regime 1 more month to reactivate the President’s Political Dialogue Forum process, facilitated by the Commonwealth and the United Nations.

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Watch Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma explain the Commonwealth’s importance as a value based organisation that must continue working for cohesion and coherence in the global community. Continue reading…