Commonwealth: Democracy and Development

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, whom I last followed in a debate on Sierra Leone in the other place, which presages some degree of continuity. I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lord Sheikh on celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Declaration of London via the vehicle of this debate. I am grateful to him for causing me in this context to take stock of my own travels. I find that I am short of two or three countries in the European Union to visit. In the United States, I am short of the states of Nebraska and North Dakota. However, in the Commonwealth, I have visited less than 40 per cent of its complement: seven countries out of the eight signatories of the 1949 Declaration of London; seven other African countries besides South Africa, including Mozambique; two islands in the Caribbean; one in the Indian Ocean; an archipelago in the Pacific; and strategic crossroads in Cyprus and Singapore. I have lived and worked twice in the United States, once in the European Union and once in what was then EFTA for a total of six-and-a-half years. I have never worked in the Commonwealth outside this country and have spent at most, in a single visit, a couple of months in Australia, a month in New Zealand, three weeks in South Africa and, in composite terms, six weeks in Canada. Overall, therefore, I have much greater physical familiarity with Europe and the United States, and count myself as a European and an Atlanticist, yet it is within the Commonwealth that I feel most naturally at home. Why? It is the language, for one—and the very terms of my noble friend’s Motion, for another. For the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, one might add the rule of law. Then there are the historical connections, when we were generally on the same side, and what might be termed political wisdom in terms of our elision from imperial power to friendly partner, not least through Her Majesty’s superb response to her role. Never in the Commonwealth have we practised our historic role in Europe of an offshore holder of a balance of power. If political wisdom has been one of our country’s most significant contributions to history, lyric poetry has fulfilled the same role towards civilisation. Those two strands come together in the game of cricket, one of the few games to have Laws with an upper-case "L" rather than rules with a lower-case "r", and one in which lyricism is its essence and joy. It is also one in which generally the rule of law prevails. The epitome of its universality is that it is a game in which temperaments as diverse as the West Indian and the English find common cause. My noble friend on the Front Bench implied the other day that Rwanda’s entry into the Commonwealth from Belgian ancestry might have been lubricated by their newfound attachment to cricket. To echo the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, it seems conceivable that Afghanistan, which has already beaten an MCC side led by Mike Gatting, might apply to join, too. The particular practical contribution that cricket has provided in the Commonwealth is a lexicon of metaphors on which debaters can draw in our mutual councils, which one can rely on to be understood. I made the same point in an alternative way, by saying that as our EU budget Council Minister for four years, I could rely on this same regard only on metaphors from classical mythology, and even that was unfair to the Scandinavians. However, above all, as my noble friend so often and rightly reminds us, it is the Commonwealth’s global reach and universality that is its greatest asset and potentially greatest strength. I say "potentially" because, even after 60 years, which exceeds the average lifespan in too many Commonwealth countries, we have not between us realised that full potential. The Commonwealth has supreme successes in sport and education, both practised multilaterally throughout the Commonwealth and often bilaterally as well. Our mutual capacity to maximise our collective contribution to world equilibrium—and, yes, in the Motion’s terms, to development—has not yet been properly exercised and is already the test and challenge for the next generation. My noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, were wholly correct to emphasise the global importance of the semi-slumbering giant of India developing as it is, but much more patient thought needs to go into how the Commonwealth can exploit our mutual relationships in future and, indeed, as India stretches itself. Batons need to pass; we are not yet pulling our full weight in the world. In the context of the rule of law, the Commonwealth can pride itself on the justice with which expulsions from the Commonwealth have occurred. I am not going to rehearse all the cases, but South Africa and Zimbabwe on one continent and Pakistan on the sub-continent were as much as anything expelled because they had offended against the spirit of the club, and the rest of the club did not want that to be condoned. The spirit is in the same vein a preoccupation of cricketers. In conclusion, I cite a humble career long ago—that of a 19th-century Manchester non-conformist missionary, who spent a lifetime in the Admiralty Islands teaching his congregation the Commandments of God and the laws of cricket. When he died, full of years, his flock were too poor for a permanent monument, but planted his wooden leg upon his grave, and so fruitful was the local soil that the wooden leg took root and flourished and provided them with an inexhaustible supply of cricket bats. That is not a bad symbol for the Commonwealth. It is our responsibility within it to help to make its fertility blossom even more productively, commercially and politically.