The Ingram Column - Saving Time and Keeping the Intimacy
25 November 2005
| Derek Ingram - My View |
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A senior member of the Indian delegation with Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), New Delhi, India, 1983 |
Commonwealth Heads of Government meetings were always regarded as intimate and rather private affairs - and to a certain extent they still are.
In most difficult times, such as during the protracted crises over South Africa and the-then Rhodesia, they were never seen as hard-talking international negotiations but rather as meetings between friends on first-name terms.
Mrs Thatcher was always Margaret, Lee Kuan Yew was Harry and Nyerere was just Julius. The friends often fell out, but they remained on generally good terms.
Back in colonial days, such meetings were held in the British Prime Minister's home in Downing Street. Leaders chatted as a coal fire burned in the grate.
The independence of India and Pakistan in 1947 was a signal for change, but when these leaders came on the scene the intimate atmosphere continued. Jawaharlal Nehru, jailed several times by the Raj and by then prime minister of India, easily slipped into the mode.
Over this period, the word 'British' began to be dropped and it became The Commonwealth, although to this day it is still getting miscalled the British Commonwealth.
When Elizabeth became Queen in 1952 the leaders still numbered only eight, but within a decade they totalled more than 20. Today they are 53.
Yet somehow the meetings retain a measure of that intimacy which marked them from the outset, and that is why the notion of a Retreat was adopted with ease when it was proposed by Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in 1971.
The Retreat enabled presidents and prime ministers to sit around informally in a quiet venue out of town without officials present, and try to thrash out the more intransigent problems.
It worked well. Officials never liked being left outside the door - and still do not today. But the Retreat formula has been copied several times - by the South Pacific Forum, for example, and the other day at Hampton Court by British Prime Minister Tony Blair as President of the European Union.
Could this be a way ahead for meetings of international organisations which are becoming increasingly complex and growing in numbers?
Heads of Government can no longer spare eight days or so for a meeting, or even more than two or three days. It makes sense for much of the work to be passed to meetings of officials or other ministers.
Lately this has been happening in the Commonwealth. For the 2005 CHOGM, officials met well ahead, and even wrote the outline of the communiqué containing the programme of nuts and bolts work for the Commonwealth over the next two years.
For the first time, foreign ministers have been meeting in the two days ahead of the leaders to tackle many outstanding issues before the leaders arrive.
Strangely, in the long history of the Commonwealth, foreign ministers never met on their own until a few years ago when they began to hold an annual one-day meeting on the fringes of the UN General Assembly.
Finance ministers meet every year. Trade ministers, law ministers and education ministers hold regular gatherings. But this week's two-day meeting of foreign ministers was a first.
It went well under the chairmanship of Maltese Foreign Minister Michael Frendo, moving through a wide range of topics, ranging from tolerence, terrorism, trade issues in advance of the World Trade Organisation meeting in Hong Kong, small states, migration and a lot more besides.
It was a good send-off for the new format of Commonwealth summits. Now the presidents arrive with much of the more detailed work done. They hold one executive session in Valletta and then move across the island to their retreat in Golden Bay.
There they can ponder for two and a half days on the wider issues. And hopefully retain something of the intimacy of earlier times that is the essence of the Commonwealth.
* The views and comments in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Commonwealth Secretariat.
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