How the Commonwealth reacted to the Queen’s death

10 September 2022, 2:01pm

Yuan Yi Zhu

Without Queen Elizabeth II, Head of the Commonwealth, there would be no Commonwealth today at all. […] [The] Queen carried on championing it, sometimes against her own British prime ministers.

But it is impossible if not reckless to speak of a unified Commonwealth reaction to her death. The association’s motley members¹ range from countries where the Queen was head of state, to former British colonies which have adopted other forms of government, to newcomers such as Togo and Gabon, which have never spent a day under British rule. The varied reactions to the Queen’s death in the Commonwealth shows the ambiguity of an organisation originally established to shore up British power, but which has since branched off into other directions.

In the older realms² such as Canada and Australia the reaction to the Queen’s death has been similar, albeit less intense, to that in Britain. Though Australia and New Zealand are both led by republican premiers, both Anthony Albanese (who recently appointed a minister for the republic) and Jacinda Ardern gave heartfelt tributes, and neither made any immediate nods to their republicanism. Justin Trudeau, who only a few months ago refused to sanction a medal to commemorate the Platinum Jubilee, seemed to be on the verge of tears when he spoke of his past conversations with the Queen. […]

It is important to not read too much into those expressions of grief, just as it is a mistake to treat colonial nostalgia as a genuine yearning for return to the days of empire. This was powerfully illustrated by Narendra Modi’s reaction to the Queen’s death. As he offered his condolences and announced a day’s official mourning in India, he also unveiled a sculpture of Subhas Chandra Bose³. […]

For now, the medium-term future of the Crown’s association with the Commonwealth seems reasonably certain. At the 2018 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, the Queen used her considerable personal prestige to secure an agreement that Charles should succeed her as Head of Commonwealth, a non-hereditary title.

As someone who was brought up to believe that the British political community did not end at Dover but Cape Town, the Queen was in many ways the perfect fit for her Commonwealth role. […]

The Queen was able to reconcile her role as British head of state with her role as head of a large and disparate Commonwealth, even when the two roles occasionally conflicted with each other. Will her heirs and successors follow her lead? There is simply no way to tell.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-the-commonwealth-reacted-to-the-queen-s-death/

Yuan Yi Zhu is a researcher based at Nuffield College, Oxford

¹ motley: varied, mismatched   ² realms: kingdoms   ³Subhas Chandra Bose: (1897-1945) was an Indian nationalist who opposed British authority in India but he was also allied with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.