Sharma – Fifth in a remarkable line

The father figure, the first Secretary-General, was a Canadian, Arnold Smith. He was one of several contestants for the job at a meeting of leaders in London chaired by the then British Prime Minister Harold Wilson.

Amusingly, as soon as Smith was chosen, the Ugandan leader Milton Obote, walked across, shook hands in congratulation and said: “Now what you must do is have a flag and a logo but whatever you do don’t ask anybody because you will never get agreement – just get on with it.”

A year or two later Smith did just that. He had a flag designed and made and started flying it on his car. He insinuated the logo on the Secretariat notepaper and handouts. And he never asked any government.

By the time of the Ottawa CHOGM in 1973 the flag was flying all over the city and the logo even on the media centre’s lavatory doors. It remains the same today with many variations of design, of course.

And from the start no Commonwealth government ever questioned it. I think they all thought they had approved it. Anyone who knows what bitter quarrels and arguments can take place over logos and design will know that Obote offered most shrewd advice.

Arnold Smith faced a tough task setting up the Secretariat from scratch, not least because, although the British had supported the idea of a Secretariat they still really wanted the Commonwealth to be run their way.

The Commonwealth Relations Office had always organised Commonwealth meetings and now they had to give up all these responsibilities. Arnold was a dogged figure and behind him was the greatly respected Canadian prime minister Lester Pearson.

The Canadians often had a quite different view of the Commonwealth from the British.

Within weeks of Smith’s taking over, India and Pakistan went to war with each other. And five months later Ian Smith of Southern Rhodesia made his unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) and began the long battle that did not end until the emergence of a properly independent Zimbabwe in 1980, five years after Arnold had passed on the SG’s baton to Shridath Ramphal from the Caribbean.

Much of Smith’s time was spent rushing round Africa trying to talk countries out of leaving the Commonwealth. Then he had to cope with the Nigerian civil war and the sudden walkout of Pakistan under prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Amid all this he built the administration of the Secretariat and formed several lasting institutions such as the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-operation. From the day he walked in with one personal assistant he built a world organisation of more than 200 staff.

Smith was a warm man, but without great public charisma. His successor Ramphal had bags of charisma. He built on Arnold’s work and introduced new drive and ideas as well as handling first the seemingly never-ending battle over Zimbabwe and then the arrival of Britain’s battling prime minister Margaret Thatcher and the Lancaster House conference of 1979.

There Smith played a key role, particularly in getting the African leaders, Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, and Samora Machel as well as Michael Manley of Jamaica and Malcolm Fraser of Australia to keep Mugabe at the table and reach a settlement.

The British, and Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary Lord Carrington, in particular, accused Ramphal of meddling, but in fact there might never have been a Lancaster House agreement without his relentless work behind the scenes.

As soon as Zimbabwe was launched the struggle against apartheid hotted up with years of duel stretching over six CHOGMs between Ramphal and Thatcher, who resisted sanctions year after year, but in due course had to give ground.

In 1965 no limit was put on the number of five-year terms an SG should serve. Smith retired after two because of ill-health. Ramphal served three terms. Then it was decided that the limit should be two, and later two of just four years.

The Nigerian, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, was a quite different kind of SG from the others. He had been serving in the Secretariat almost from the beginning, so he was an insider. He was a diplomat by training and nature, warm and tough-minded with firm ideas about where he wanted to take the Commonwealth.

His big idea and lasting achievement was the Commonwealth watch body, the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG), and the Millbrook Declaration which sets down procedures for the suspension and even expulsion of member countries for breaches of governance and human rights.

This is a revolutionary mechanism which no other international body possesses and is setting an example to the world. Sad circumstances enabled the quick passage of CMAG and Millbrook through the Auckland CHOGM - the execution in Nigeria the night before the leaders met of Ken Saro-Wiwa and nine others.

It was a sad personal blow for Anyaoku that the first country to be suspended from the Commonwealth was his own.

Anyaoku’s successor, Don McKinnon, has had his own challenges – several upheavals in his own region, the Pacific (Fiji, Solomons, Tonga), where he has done much repair work. He has made valiant attempts to cope with General Musharraf, who has broken personal promises to him several times.

And once again, Zimbabwe has come back to haunt the Commonwealth and once again it has proved the toughest of nuts to crack. It looks as if, once again, a Commonwealth SG will go to the end of his term wrestling with this matter, with maybe the outcome yet again unresolved.

But McKinnon serves until 30 March and much could happen in the next four months. As Harold Wilson famously said: “A week is a long time in politics.”

DEREK INGRAM

25/11/07

The views and comments in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Key Links:

• Former Commonwealth Secretaries-General