Imperial Echo

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2018

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

With the closing ceremonial of the 2018 London Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting barely over, BBC radio’s Royal Correspondent Jonny Dymond excavates the Commonwealth of Nation’s 19th Century origins in the British Empire and its formal institution in 1949 as a post-colonial worldwide network of states ‘free and equal’ within the organisation. Some have joked that the long shadow of its colonial origins has made it the ‘after-care service of Empire’. And with Her Majesty the Queen as its Head, the Commonwealth in the 1980s and 1990s became a powerful tool in the pursuit of majority rule in Zimbabwe and South Africa. But since then it has struggled to clearly define itself for the closely interconnected 21st Century. Jonny Dymond samples the colour and the conversation of the London summit, visits the institution’s palatial London home, Marlborough House, and talks to Secretary General Patricia Scotland about the Commonwealth’s value in the modern world. (Photo: Prime Minister Theresa May chairs a meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM) in London, 2018. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	With the Commonwealth heads of government meeting just ended in London,
0:04.0	where is the organisation heading and how can it reinvent itself for the 21st century?
0:09.6	I'm Johnny Diamond and for the next half hour I'll be exploring the venerable institutions history
0:15.2	and it's likely future in Imperial Echo.
0:21.0	The jaunty music you can hear is a little incongruous given the setting.
0:26.4	It's coming out of speakers that have been set into the ballroom of Buckingham Palace.
0:32.4	Dozens of metres high, hung with six vast chandeliers like shining through the crystal.
0:40.4	Tapestries on the walls and up at the front, 50 or so, gilded chairs.
0:46.4	On either side of them the flags of the 53 Commonwealth members a dizzying array of colour.
0:52.4	For the formal opening of the Commonwealth heads of government meeting known commonly as Chogham by its head, the Queen.
1:00.4	And it is, if anywhere is, the centre of this far-flung and disparate organisation, the Commonwealth.
1:08.4	It's the Prime Minister of Republic of Cameroon.
1:14.4	The Prime Minister of the People's Republic of Bangladesh.
1:22.4	This is an organisation that has a glorious past but perhaps a less interesting future.
1:30.4	The history of the Commonwealth and the heritage is something that pulls us together as much as the values.
1:36.4	So I think it's got a great future.
1:39.4	The Commonwealth has been a very useful organisation for Namibia, predating the birth of our nation.
1:46.4	So we have always been campaigning and lobbying Commonwealth member states to play their role in ensuring the independence of Namibia.
1:56.4	I wonder why they should have doubts with the Commonwealth really, because the Commonwealth is one of those bodies that for me represents the future.
2:05.4	It's a grouping where everyone is equal.
2:07.4	I have always felt a Commonwealth citizen. My mother was Dominiken, born in Dominiken as was I, my father is Antigen.
2:23.4	And I grew up in another Commonwealth country, the United Kingdom.
	...

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