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

Bocking-Welch, Anna ORCID: 0000-0002-7131-4256 (2020) Whose Commonwealth? Negotiating Commonwealth Day in the 1950s and 1960s. In: Commonwealth History in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, Part F . Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 291-309. ISBN 978-3-030-41787-1

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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.

Item Type:	Book Section
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	09 Dec 2019 10:34
Last Modified:	14 Mar 2024 19:00
DOI:	10.1007/978-3-030-41788-8_15
Related URLs:	Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3065001