Empire Lost - Andrew Stewart [126]
and 'Dominion status' would likely cease at some future point as 'they may be held to imply that there is some difference in status between the United Kingdom and the other Dominions'. His conclusion was that some other phrase would be required such as 'nations of the Commonwealth' or 'Member States of the Commonwealth'. This prediction came to pass with the London Declaration, the result of the April 1949 gathering of Heads of State from the Commonwealth, which has been said to have marked the birth of the modern organization and formally changed the name from 'British Commonwealth' to 'Commonwealth of Nations'.30 This was a collapse that, with hindsight, some saw as being inevitable. One post-war view held that the 'white' commonwealth had always represented 'a triumph of sentiment over strategy'.31 Many years later the same author argued that with British armed forces reduced during the inter-war years to operational impotence, realpolitik should actually have dictated that the Dominions were told that they would need to defend themselves. Instead sentiment intervened and the result was that 'strategic overstretch of Empire ended in strategic collapse, and Australia and New Zealand passed under American protection'. Of the many factors that kept it together so long, the most enduring was the idea that these distant people, while not always faithful to the idea that they owed some sort of fealty to the parliament in Westminster, were prepared to defend their monarch who lived a few streets away. This point was illustrated in a lengthy and effusive March 1944 portrait of King George VI published in Time which referred to a recent speech by Richard Law given to the American Chamber of Commerce in London in which he talked of 'the British Commonwealth'. As the widely read American publication put it, 'what Statesman Law calls "Commonwealth" practically all Britons call, without shame, "Empire"'. The war had 'at once tightened and loosened the bonds of Empire' and the link that undeniably held it together was 'the King-Emperor'.32 Even Churchill, speaking post-war as the Leader of the Opposition, was prepared to agree with this assessment. He argued that the Statute of Westminster had swept away what he termed 'constitutional safeguards' and left the unity and cohesion of the British Empire reliant solely on the link to the Crown. What he did not go on to say was the degree to which he thought this still existed.33
Speaking a few months after the article referred to above was published in a Westminster debate Lord Cranborne had taken the opportunity to praise the British Commonwealth: 'that strange, unprecedented combination of self-governing nations, bound, not by visible bonds, but by ties of spirit is in a unique position at the present time'. He saw a great future as while there were bigger nations there was no other Power of a similar nature. 'Sprawled over the whole world, the British Commonwealth partakes of the qualities both of the Old and of the New World. It is firmly based in the past by its traditions and Constitutions, and it looks out fearlessly into the future.'34 The reality was that at the war's start the Dominions had still been relatively inexperienced in diplomacy but their international recognition, self-confidence and connections had all quickly grown in the years that followed. Their active participation in various wartime theatres had been accompanied by marked signs of British military weakness. By the time church bells were rung throughout Britain, for the first time since the summer of 1940, to celebrate the final victory at El Alamein in November 1942, the alliance had already altered beyond any hope of repair.35 For the most part at this point British leadership was still accepted, but on occasions even this was qualified or more obviously carried overt reluctance. The establishment of the United Nations organization effectively signalled political emancipation and the DO warned that in the post-war system the ideal policy for dealings with the Dominion governments would be based on 'private