Independence and a new partnership of people
Sir Milton Margai, the first Prime Minister of independent Sierra Leone, and Dr W. M. Fitzjohn arriving at Marlborough House, London, for the opening of the 1962 Commonwealth Prime Ministers Meeting (Crown copyright: COI ref. R8110 KU12)
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London was a key site of political negotiation over decolonisation and provided the backdrop for meetings in which new independent political relationships were performed. Commonwealth Staff Correspondent for the Times Bill Kirkman, remembers London as ‘a frenzy of activity’ in the early 1960s, with Constitutional Conferences about independence going on every few weeks at Lancaster House. In 1965, the Commonwealth Secretariat was set up with its Headquarters at Marlborough House on Pall Mall.
In 1958 Prime Minister Harold Macmillan spoke to the Royal Empire Society about his vision for the Commonwealth and highlighted themes of optimism, independence, and friendship. Over the space of twelve years, he said, ‘we have seen it change from the old Commonwealth of peoples of the same racial origin and traditions, into a different diverse, partnership’ (Macmillan, 1958, p54-5). He looked to counter negative attitudes that saw the end of empire in declinist terms. The Commonwealth, he declared, was a new concept, ‘a partnership of people varying among each other in almost every respect that it is possible to imagine: different origins, different in race, speaking countless different languages... [with] an immense diversity of religion’ (ibid. p52). Though his words still drew on older paternalist ideas and problematic assumptions about progress, this speech to the Royal Empire Society highlighted new narratives of the ‘modern’ independent Commonwealth which were coming to the fore through the 1950s.
Prime Minister Harold Macmillan addressing an audience at the Royal Empire Society after returning from a Commonwealth tour, March 1958
(Crown copyright: COI. Ref. D90148)
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Prime Minister Harold Macmillan chatting informally to Commonwealth representatives at the Royal Empire Society after a recent tour of the Commonwealth. Pictured are Mohamed Sopiee (High Commissioner for Malaya), Mr Epton (representative of Ghana) and Mr G.A. Fagbure (representative of Nigeria), March 1958 (Crown copyright: COI ref. D90150)
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