Whose Commonwealth? Negotiating Commonwealth Day in the 1950s and 1960s

Bocking-Welch, Anna

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-41788-8_15

Anna Bocking-Welch⁵

Part of the book series: Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies ((CIPCSS))

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Abstract

This ambivalence over what role the Commonwealth should have and whether Britain should orientate itself instead to Europe are well captured in Anna Bocking-Welch’s chapter on the celebration of ‘Commonwealth Day’ in Britain during the 1950s and 1960s. The transmutation of ‘Empire’ into ‘Commonwealth’ Day brought to the surface mordant introspection about the purpose of commemoration and celebration. Not only was it unclear precisely what was being celebrated, there was also much soul-searching about the forms celebration should take. Bocking-Welch identifies three different phases in the Commonwealth Relations Office’s approach to the question of celebration in this period, highlighting tensions and ambivalence about whether government or voluntary organisations should take the lead, as well as what the message should be. There were competing efforts to promote a ‘People’s Commonwealth’ and significant differences in emphasis between ‘new’ and ‘old’ members. By the mid-1960s, these approaches to Commonwealth celebration began to cohere into a pronounced role for the monarchy, highlighting Queen Elizabeth’s symbolic role as head of the Commonwealth, and an emphasis on multi-cultural and multi-faith inclusivity.

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Notes

1.
Yorkshire Post, 24 May 1961.
2.
Jim English, ‘Empire Day in Britain, 1904–1958,’ The Historical Journal 49, no. 1 (2006): 254.
3.
Lord Glandayon to Commonwealth Relations Office (hereafter CRO), c. 1965, The National Archives, Kew (hereafter TNA), DO 163/72.
4.
English, ‘Empire Day’; John Springhall, ‘Lord Meath, Youth, and Empire,’ Journal of Contemporary History 5, no. 4 (1970): 97–111; John Mackenzie, Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion, 1810–1960 (Manchester, 1984).
5.
Daily Express, 25 May 1965.
6.
English, ‘Empire Day,’ 274.
7.
Peter Hansen, ‘Coronation Everest: The Empire and Commonwealth in the “second Elizabethan age,”’ in Stuart Ward (ed.), British Culture and the End of Empire (Manchester, 2001); Wendy Webster, Englishness and Empire, 1939–1965 (Oxford, 2005); Elizabeth Buettner, Europe after Empire: Decolonization, Society, and Culture (Cambridge, 2016).
8.
On the symbolism of independence ceremonies, see David Cannadine ‘Introduction: Independence Day ceremonials in historical perspective,’ The Round Table 97, no. 398 (2008): 651.
9.
Guy Arnold, Towards Peace and a Multiracial Commonwealth (London, 1964), p. 24.
10.
Observer, 22 May 1960.
11.
Buettner, Europe After Empire, p. 51.
12.
Anna Bocking-Welch, British Civic Society at the End of Empire (Manchester, 2019), pp. 92, 134.
13.
For further discussion of this in relation to Commonwealth promotion, see: Radhika Natarajan, ‘Performing Multiculturalism: The Commonwealth Arts Festival of 1965,’ Journal of British Studies 53, no. 3 (2014): 705–33.
14.
Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination, 1830–1867 (Cambridge, 2002); Catherine Hall and Sonya O. Rose (eds.), At Home with Empire: Metropolitan Cultures and the Imperial World (Cambridge, 2006); John MacKenzie (ed.), Imperialism and Popular Culture (Manchester, 1986); MacKenzie, Propaganda and Empire; Bernard Porter, The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain (Oxford, 2004).
15.
Duke of Devonshire in Harry Miller (ed.), Royal Commonwealth Society Centenary, 1868–1968 (London, 1968), p. 25.
16.
Commonwealth Journal 10, no. 3 (1967): 118.
17.
Summary of Report of an Interdepartmental Working Party on the Projection of the Commonwealth in the United Kingdom, no date, c. 1958, TNA, DO 35/8232
18.
Gail Low, ‘At home? Discoursing on the Commonwealth at the 1965 Commonwealth Arts Festival,’ Journal of Commonwealth Literature 48, no. 1 (2013), 97–111; Natarajan, ‘Performing multiculturalism’; Ruth Craggs, ‘The Commonwealth Institute and the Commonwealth Arts Festival: architecture, performance and multiculturalism in late-imperial London,’ The London Journal 36, no. 3 (2011): 247–68.
19.
The Times, 10 June 1966.
20.
Bocking-Welch, British Civic Society, pp. 21–51; Craggs, ‘Cultural Geographies’.
21.
Projection of the Commonwealth in the United Kingdom, 12 December 1958 Cabinet Memorandum TNA, CAB 129/95.
22.
Commonwealth Day BBC Broadcast, Victor Goddard, to be delivered 21 May 1959, TNA, DO 35/8232.
23.
1960 Commonwealth Day Message, TNA, DO 35/8232.
24.
Memo, Commonwealth Day, D.W.S Hunt, c.1961, TNA, DO 191/149.
25.
John Chadwick, ‘A Very Lively Corpse,’ Commonwealth Journal 6, 1 (1968): 18.
26.
Memo ‘Commonwealth Day, c.1963, TNA, DO 191/149.
27.
Seymour, ‘The British Council and the Commonwealth’, 782.
28.
Ruth Craggs, ‘Cultural Geographies of the Modern Commonwealth from 1947 to 1973’ (PhD dissertation, University of Nottingham, 2009), p. 17.
29.
N. Pritchard to Secretary of State, 21 June 1961, TNA, DO 191/149.
30.
‘Summit Collapse “A Reminder” for Church’ Coventry Evening Telegraph, 25 May 1960.
31.
Evening Standard, 24 May 1961.
32.
Evening Standard, 24 May 1961.
33.
John Darwin, ‘The fear of falling: British politics and imperial decline since 1900,’Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 36 (1986): 42; Buettner, Europe After Empire, pp. 67–77.
34.
Mr Crook, Minute, 31 January 1961 TNA, DO 191/149.
35.
Memorandum Commander Carrow, 4 March 1961, TNA, DO 191/149.
36.
H. Smedley to Mr Cockram, 19 March 1962, TNA, DO 191/149.
37.
Daily Express, 15 May 1964.
38.
JCSC Commonwealth Day 1964 Report, TNA, DO 191/150.
39.
Beaven and Griffiths, ‘The City and Imperial Propaganda: A Comparative Study of Empire Day in England, Australia and New Zealand, c.1903–1914,’ Journal of Urban History 42, no. 2 (2016): 384.
40.
D.K. Daniels, JCSC Report on 1962 Commonwealth Day Message, 2 July 1962, TNA, DO 191/149.
41.
Projection of the Commonwealth in the United Kingdom, 12 December 1958 Cabinet Memorandum TNA, CAB/129/95.
42.
Hansard, Mr Biggs-Davison, 22 January 1959, Vol. 598, 45.
43.
Hansard, Mr Swingler, 19 May 1960, Vol. 623, 32.
44.
Natarajan, ‘Performing Multiculturalism’; A.J. Stockwell, ‘Leaders, dissidents and the disappointed: colonial students in Britain as empire ended,’ The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 36, 3 (2008): 487–507; Mark Crinson, ‘Imperial Story-lands: Architecture and display at the Imperial and Commonwealth Institutes,’ Art History 22, 1 (1999): 99–123.
45.
Natarajan, ‘Performing Multiculturalism’, 705.
46.
Alister Chapman, ‘The international context of secularization in England: the end of empire, immigration, and the decline of Christian national identity, 1945–1970,’ Journal of British Studies 54, 1 (2015): 182.
47.
H. Smedley to Mr Cockram, 19 March 1962, TNA, DO 191/149.
48.
See, for example, British High Commission Karachi to General Bishop, 11 February 1963, TNA, DO 191/149.
49.
T.W. Keeble to General Bishop, 5 February 1963, TNA, DO 191/149.
50.
G.D. Anderson to General Bishop, 18 March 1963, TNA, DO 191/149.
51.
‘Commonwealth Day 1965,’ A.S.H. Kemp, 22 July 1964, TNA, DO 191/149.
52.
Cyprus was a notable exception. See British High Commissioner, Cyprus to General Bishop, 12 March 1963, TNA, DO 191/149.
53.
H.S.H. Stanley to General Bishop, 12 March 1963, TNA, DO 191/149.
54.
J.B. Johnston to General Bishop, 1 March 1963, TNA, DO 191/149.
55.
G.D Anderson to General Bishop, 18 March 1963, TNA, DO 191/149.
56.
R.H. Belcher to General Bishop, 22 February 1963, TNA, DO 191/149.
57.
File note, K.R. Crook to Mr Smedley, 24 January 1961, TNA, DO 191/149.
58.
File note to K.R. Crook, 31 January 1961, TNA, DO 191/149.
59.
David Goldsworthy, Losing the Blanket: Australia and the End of Britain’s Empire (Melbourne University Press, 2002), p. 104.
60.
G.D Anderson to General Bishop, 18 March 1963, TNA, DO 191/149.
61.
Ibid.
62.
T.W. Keeble to General Bishop, 5 February 1963, TNA, DO 191/149.
63.
D.W.S. Hunt to General Bishop, 1 February 1963, TNA, DO 191/149.
64.
M.J. Moynihan to General Bishop, 14 March 1963, TNA, DO 191/149.
65.
Coventry Evening Telegraph, 16 March 1961.
66.
Commonwealth Day, notes of a meeting, 18 March 1963, TNA, DO191/149.
67.
Ibid.
68.
Minute from Deputy Chairman, JCSC, c.1965, TNA, DO163/72.
69.
JCSC Minutes, 2 December 1964, TNA, DO191/150.
70.
Memo for Secretary of State Mr Braine, 1962, TNA, DO191/149.
71.
Commonwealth Day, notes of a meeting, 18 March 1963, TNA, DO191/149.
72.
Letter from Lord Glendevon, deputy chairman JCSC, 1965, TNA, DO 163/72.
73.
JCSC Commonwealth Day Future Policy, 26 November 1964, TNA, DO191/150.
74.
Natarajan, ‘Performing Multiculturalism’, 708.
75.
Philip Murphy, Monarchy and the End of Empire: The House of Windsor, the British Government and the Postwar Commonwealth (Oxford, 2013), p. 110.
76.
Letter from Lord Glendevon, deputy chairman JCSC, 1965, TNA, DO 163/72.
77.
JCSC Special Committee on Commonwealth Day Minutes 18 October 1965, TNA, DO 163/76.
78.
Ibid.
79.
Ibid.
80.
D.K. Daniels, Secretary of JCSC, to Anthony Abell, 20 January 1966, TNA, DO 163/76.
81.
Daniel S. Loss, ‘Missionaries, the Monarchy, and the Emergence of Anglican Pluralism in the 1960s and 1970s,’ Journal of British Studies 57, 3 (2018): 551.
82.
Ibid., p. 550.
83.
Donald Simpson, ‘Thirty years of the Commonwealth Day Observance,’ The Round Table 86, no. 341 (1997): 27–36.
84.
Hansard, HoL, Lord Ogmore, 18 December 1958, vol. 213.
85.
Draft Minute, Mr Pritchard to Private Secretary, ‘Commonwealth Day’, c.1962, TNA, DO 191/149.

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University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK
Anna Bocking-Welch

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Magdalene College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Saul Dubow
Department of History, King’s College London, London, UK
Richard Drayton

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Bocking-Welch, A. (2020). Whose Commonwealth? Negotiating Commonwealth Day in the 1950s and 1960s. In: Dubow, S., Drayton, R. (eds) Commonwealth History in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41788-8_15

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41788-8_15
Published: 06 July 2020
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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