From the Archive: Commonwealth backs regional co-operation between states

Parliamentarians from around the Commonwealth heard how it was in their “common interest” to strengthen regional alliances exactly 40 years ago this week.

Arnold Smith, then Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, addressing members of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association in Port of Spain, in Trinidad and Tobago, on 16 October 1969, told MPs that intergovernmental organisations such as the Commonwealth and Organization of American States could contribute to a “responsible and just world society”.

Greater intimacy and co-operation

He said: “It is in the common interest to strengthen, and where appropriate to enlarge, groupings for regional co-operation. They represent one basis for achieving greater intimacy and co-operation on a manageable scale. No-one will gain if the world became organised into a series of inward-looking, exclusivist, regional blocs."

Giving his backing to emerging regional groupings such the East African Community, Organisation of African Unity [African Union], Organization of American States and European Community, Mr Smith said he was a “strong believer” in the value of “regional co-operation and regional organisation” outside of the Commonwealth.

Mr Smith was speaking just days before attending the signing of the Charter of the Caribbean Regional Development Bank in Jamaica.

Commonwealth and regional alliances

“Just as Commonwealth African members are also members of the Organisation of African Unity, so several Commonwealth countries in this hemisphere are also members of the Organization of American States,” he continued.

“It is important not to conceive of Commonwealth co-operation and regional co-operation as in any sense alternatives. Both can have important contributions to make to a responsible and just world society. It is healthy that countries should not feel they can belong to only one group or grouping.

Birth of the Secretariat

Five years earlier, at the London summit of 1964, Commonwealth Heads of Government had agreed to establish the Commonwealth Secretariat as a central “clearing house” for the Commonwealth to be led by Mr Smith.

Setting out its terms of reference in an ‘Agreed Memorandum’ in 1965, the Heads stated that the Secretariat would “assist member governments, at their request, in advancing and obtaining support for development projects and technical assistance in a variety of fields on a multilateral Commonwealth basis”.

In the intervening years the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-operation was established, allowing member countries to draw on funds donated by Britain, Canada and New Zealand to recruit experts from around the Commonwealth to assist its developing countries.