By Ray Cassin
March 28, 2006

The Games are over, but can the Empire continue to rally the faithful?

IN the days when the Commonwealth was known by a a different name, everyone knew what it was.

The British Empire was by far the biggest the world had ever known, and arguably the most benevolent as well.

The latter claim is less impressive when one remembers that Britain's record as an imperial master was being measured against some truly appalling ones, such as that of Spain in Latin America.

But, by and large, the imperial propaganda had a basis in fact. And the sense that the Empire benefited those who lived within it was reflected in, among other things, an article published in The Times in 1891, by the Reverend Astley Cooper, who suggested that athletic Games might be held "every four years as a means of increasing the goodwill and good understanding ... between the Nations of the Empire".

Cooper's vision did not become reality until four decades later, when the first Empire Games, as they were then called, took place in Hamilton, Canada. But by then the future of the Empire, and therefore of what the Games were intended to celebrate, was already in question.

Ireland, the oldest colony, had thrown off British rule, and India, the fabled jewel in the crown, was striving to do the same. And there was a clear division between the socalled dominions, countries such as Australia and Canada that retained an evolving relationship with the Crown but were recognised to be effectively independent, and colonies and "protectorates" such as Kenya, which remained under British rule.

The term "Commonwealth", as in "British Empire and Commonwealth" was adopted to acknowledge the status of the dominions, and in the decades after the Second World War, when the various colonies and protectorates achieved independence too, "Empire" was gradually junked in favour of "Commonwealth of Nations".

But, with each rebranding, the puzzle of just what it is that supposedly unites this extremely disparate group of nations, apart from their receding imperial past, has grown steadily greater.

A common language? Hardly. English is, of course, the Commonwealth's lingua franca, but it is not the vernacular in most Commonwealth states. And, more importantly, its global dominance owes less to the amount of red formerly daubed on world maps than to the cultural sway of the US; it is Hollywood and Silicon Valley, not Oxford and Westminster, that have made English the default international language.

Shared political values and processes? This notion, still sometimes invoked by Commonwealth officials, is scarcely credible. Democracy and the rule of law are just too weak in too many Commonwealth countries, and corruption and civil strife too entrenched for the club of ex-colonies to present itself as a club of staunch defenders of free institutions.

Loyalty to the Queen, who retains the title "Head of the Commonwealth"? This is simply a bad joke, for what can this title without jurisdiction possibly mean? It was coined because few Commonwealth members now recognise her as their head of state; but its chief consequence has been to emphasise that fact, not to give her some new role.

So, although the Games proposed by Astley Cooper have grown ever bigger and better, the "Family of Nations" he intended the Games to celebrate has grown ever more fragmented. Instead of an Empire whose unity is symbolised by the Games, we have a Commonwealth whose unity is in large part an artifice maintained for the Games.

Apart from the Games, and the two-yearly and usually inconclusive political talkfest known as CHOGM, there's not much for the Commonwealth to do.

And that only makes the question of just what the Commonwealth is supposed to be all the more mysterious.

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