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THE EMPIRE’S NEW CLOTHES
‘A brilliant demolition of the myth of Commonwealth and of the power of
imperial nostalgia that leaves one unsure whether to laugh or cry at the
cynicism of those who pretend to believe in it, or the naivety of those who
condemn its malevolent power. The brutal reality, it shows, is that Brexit
will reduce the long tiny UK Commonwealth trade. A timely and neces-
sary book.’ — David Edgerton, Hans Rausing Professor of the History of
Science and Technology and Professor of Modern British History at King’s
College London, and author of The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A
Twentieth-Century History
‘Mercurial, maverick and mischievous, Murphy writes as an outsider-

insider, having been head of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies for a
number of years. This is going to shake the tree. And about time.’
— Joanna Lewis, author of Empire of Sentiment: Livingstone and Myth of
Victorian imperialism
‘A brilliant and unique book. At times witty, always insightful and disarm-
ingly honest, it is also brave. Many won’t like the message Murphy has to
convey, despite his position of almost unassailable authority.’ — Ashley
Jackson, Professor of Imperial and Military History at King’s College
London, and author of The British Empire: A Very Short Introduction
‘In this skilful, witty and deeply-informed book, Philip Murphy has punc-
tured the mythology that still hangs over the Commonwealth. He shows
convincingly that inertia rather than shared values or common interests
has been its main “glue”. … A brilliant, thought-provoking, and highly
readable study that should be essential reading for those who now guide
our affairs.’ — John Darwin, Nuffield College, University of Oxford, and
author of Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain
PHILIP MURPHY
The Empire’s New Clothes
The Myth of the Commonwealth
1
1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
© Oxford University Press 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
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rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Philip Murphy.
Title: The Empire’s New Clothes: The Myth of the Commonwealth /
Philip Murphy.
Description: Oxford [UK]; New York: Oxford University Press, [2018]
ISBN 9780190911157 (print)

ISBN 9780190934781 (updf)
ISBN 9780190935009 (epub)
To my family
CONTENTS
Preface ix
1. “What Does the Commonwealth Mean to You?” 1

2. Meet the Family 19
3. “What Is It Good For?” 55
4. Long to Reign Over Us? 81
5. Guilt 105
6. Values 137
7. The Road to Colombo 163
8. Empire 2.0? 193
Conclusion: Shattering the Myth 225
Notes 233
Index 253
vii
PREFACE
We are all familiar with the kind of news item that begins, ‘A
major academic study has just found…’ It’s the sort of thing that
always produces a warm glow among senior university adminis-
trators, regularly called upon to show their institution making an
‘impact’ in wider society. And, occasionally, it provides harmless
amusement for everyone else. This generally occurs when the
research findings appear to be things that one could easily intuit
without the benefit of hundreds of thousands of pounds of
Research Council funding: ‘eating yoghurt and fruit for breakfast
produces better health results than waffles and cigarettes’; ‘own-
ers of cats tend to have lower blood pressure than owners of
Rottweilers’; ‘photocopiers really are more likely to break down
when you’re in a hurry’.
The main argument of this book, which itself draws heavily
on a fairly hefty piece of externally-funded academic research,
risks provoking a similarly wry smile. It is, essentially, that the
Commonwealth has lost almost all of the limited significance it
once possessed, and has become something of a mirage in the
field of British foreign policy. To which the informed reader
might respond, “And?”, while the slightly less well-informed
might confess, “I didn’t know the Commonwealth still existed”.
Yet there are a number of reasons why this book still seemed
worth writing. I began work on it shortly after the June 2016
ix
PREFACE
referendum on British membership of the European Union. As

we shall see, in this vote the issue of the Commonwealth was a
significant although not pivotal one. Typical of the magical
thinking surrounding the Leave campaign, it was sometimes
suggested that the Commonwealth had the potential to repre-
sent, for a free-trading UK, an alternative market to the EU. And
once the result was announced—a victory for Leave—even some
Commonwealth enthusiasts who had remained relatively quiet in
the run-up to the vote now announced that this was a wonderful
opportunity for the UK to revive the organization.
Many of those who presented the contemporary Commonwealth
as an alternative destination for British trade ahead of the refer-
endum seemed to have only the vaguest sense of its reality. The
lack of a really penetrating, critical analysis of the organization
became painfully apparent, and at the risk of closing the stable
door after the horse had bolted, I set out to write one. In any
case, as the British prime minister prepares to become the
Commonwealth’s chair-in-office following the April 2018
Commonwealth summit in London, the project remains timely.
The gap in the literature about the Commonwealth is easy to
explain. In the way of marginal organizations that attract devoted
followers, it tends to be supporters who feel that it is actually
worthy of study. A case in point is one of the most recent books,
published in 2008 by Tim Shaw, a predecessor of mine as direc-
tor of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies.1 Its political sci-
ence approach is a veritable alphabet soup of serious-sounding
acronyms relating to serious-sounding bodies and committees,
giving an overall impression of extreme seriousness. Yet anyone
who is actually familiar with the contemporary Commonwealth
might suspect that there is a certain mismatch here between the
analytical tools and the object of study. It is reminiscent of the
calculation made by the seventeenth-century Biblical scholar,
James Ussher, that the act of Creation began at around 6pm on
x
PREFACE
22 October 4,004 BCE. In a similarly incongruous application of

precision, Shaw’s book sees an attempt to chart, in the clear-cut
language of international relations, a phenomenon probably bet-
ter described in terms of collective imagination, not to say fan-
tasy. It gives a misleading sense of solidity to something strik-
ingly impalpable.
A glance through social media—an area where the Common
wealth has upped its game considerably since 2016—might prove
equally misleading. The Twitter feeds of the Secretariat and its
associated bodies give the impression that they are performing
good works across an astonishingly wide spectrum of public policy.
Indeed, if the measure of an institution’s worth were its ability to
generate a blizzard of laudable hashtags, the Commonwealth
would be an unparalleled success. Let’s hear it for #peace, #tech-
nicalassistance, #youth, #humanrights, #education, #trade, #gen-
derequality, #smallstates. What’s not to like? Yet one does not
have to spend very long observing the organization at close quar-
ters before a nagging question begins to form in the back of one’s
mind. Eventually, out of bemusement, frustration or simple
curiosity, one finds oneself enquiring, ‘So, what has the
Commonwealth actually achieved?’ Like the little boy who asks
in all innocence why the emperor has no clothes, one is likely to
encounter an embarrassed, even shocked silence.
This brings me to the main reason for wanting to write the
book. Since becoming director of the Institute of Commonwealth
Studies at the University of London’s School of Advanced Study
in 2009, I have had an ideally close but detached vantage point
from which to observe the Commonwealth in action. The tale of
‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’, to which the title of this book
alludes, is essentially an outrageous comic parable. It asks why a
group of people should collude in the fantasy that something
completely insubstantial is in fact real and magnificent. The
answer the fable offers is that people are drawn into such collec-
xi
PREFACE
tive illusions by a range of human frailties—prominent among

them greed, gullibility and insecurity. The gap between fantasy
and reality that the tale exposes is the very stuff of comedy.
In the same way, I hope this book—which examines the gulf
between the Commonwealth’s lofty rhetoric and its actual
achievements—will provide readers with some amusement. But
it should also be acknowledged that many of the principles that
the Commonwealth espouses are, indeed, laudable ones. Over the
years it has secured the loyal support of many good people,
whose backing for it is based on the very best of motives.
Nothing in what follows is intended to belittle them or their
ideals. Rather, this book suggests that the current state of the
organization has left it vulnerable to exploitation by those whose
motives are far less enlightened.
The Empire’s New Clothes draws heavily on material generated
by a project run out of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies,
on which I served as principal investigator. Entitled ‘An Oral
History of the Modern Commonwealth’, this was generously
funded by two separate grants from the UK Arts and Humanities
Research Council (AHRC), the first (AH/J006548/1) supporting
the main phase of the research from 2012 to 2015 and the sec-
ond (AH/N003934/1) supporting the broader dissemination of
the findings.
In the course of the project, we interviewed over seventy lead-
ing figures in the development of the organization since 1965,
including prime ministers, foreign ministers, heads of Common
wealth-related organizations, and senior officials in the Secre
tariat, including all of the surviving former Secretaries-General.
The vast majority of the interviews were conducted with con-
summate skill by my colleague, Sue Onslow, who acted as lead
researcher on the project. They have been transcribed and made
freely available via a unique online archive, at https://common-
wealthoralhistories.org/. Unlike this book, which represents my
xii
PREFACE
own very personal view of the Commonwealth, the project

sought to present a wide variety of perspectives on and experi-
ences of the organization. Nevertheless, the study that follows
would have been impossible without it. So my warmest thanks
to all our distinguished interviewees, and the academic co-inves-
tigators and other researchers who worked on the project: Sue
herself and Leo Zeilig, Ruth Craggs, Eva Namusoke, Chris
Moffat and Vanessa Rockel. This book draws not only on the
interview materials themselves, but also on Eva and Sue’s blog
articles for the Commonwealth Oral History Project. The site
also offers a useful chronology of the modern Commonwealth
and some key documents charting its development. Paul Sullivan
and Chloe Pieters provided invaluable administrative support
during the inception and execution of the project, and Chloe
deserves particular thanks for giving this book its title.
It has been my immense privilege during my time at the
Institute to work closely with and have access to the insights of
people whose knowledge of the Commonwealth far surpassed my
own. I would mention in this context Daisy Cooper, Richard
Bourne, David McIntyre, Derek Ingram, James Manor and James
Mayall. They bear absolutely no responsibility for the views that
follow, many of which they may well disagree with. But they all
played a significant part in inducting me into the legend and lore
of the Commonwealth. It has also been my great pleasure to
supervise the excellent doctoral theses of Matthew Battey and
Charles Rukwengye, which have deepened my knowledge,
respectively, of the Commonwealth’s role in the field of develop-
ment and of its relations with the Idi Amin regime in Uganda.
David Laven kindly commented on an early draft of Chapter
One. My partner, Christina Britzolakis, has always been a wise and
insightful sounding board for my thoughts on the Commonwealth
and has supported me emotionally and intellectually throughout
the writing of this book. My warm thanks to Michael Dwyer of
xiii
PREFACE
Hurst for the confidence he has shown in this project, and to the
two anonymous readers of the book for providing such useful
suggestions on how it might be strengthened. I have been
blessed by having as my copy editor, Lara Weisweiller-Wu,
whose work has been invaluable. All remaining imperfections
are, of course, entirely down to me.
PVM, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 1 January 2018
xiv
1
“WHAT DOES THE COMMONWEALTH MEAN

TO YOU?”
“So, Professor Murphy,” came the voice at the end of the line,
“what does the Commonwealth mean to you?” This was in 2014,
and I had agreed to do a live interview about the organization for
a radio talk show, from my London office in Senate House.
Media interest had been sparked by the staging of the
Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, and while I waited, phone in
hand, for my turn to speak, the presenter was busily soliciting
Commonwealth-related thoughts and anecdotes from anyone he
could find on the Glaswegian streets that morning.
Finally, just as the clock was ticking towards the very end of
the show and the presenter had scared away every sentient being
within range, he turned his attentions to me. But I was stumped
by the question—and slightly affronted. I was all ready to dig into
my little rattle bag of ‘expert’s’ facts, figures and cute analogies.
But what they wanted was some sort of heartfelt personal anec-
dote: “My passionate attachment to the Commonwealth really
began as a small child, hearing the wonderful stories of my grand-
father, who had been a judge in Madras in the 1930s”; “Well, my
1
eyes were really opened to the value of the Commonwealth during

a sponsored cycle-ride across Malawi in my gap year.”
What does the Commonwealth mean to me? It was only since
I had become director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies
(ICwS) that it had ‘meant’ anything much at all. And what was
that meaning? Lots of drinks receptions in the hollowed-out
citadels of Britain’s former imperial power? Endless well-meaning
conferences exploring how the Commonwealth could achieve its
‘true potential’? The reassuring prospect of never again having to
teach the compulsory first-year undergraduate module on the Era
of the Two World Wars at the University of Reading? No—none
of those would do. In the three-and-a-half seconds while all this
was racing through my head, the presenter correctly anticipated
that a cheery anecdote would not be forthcoming, and moved on
to the more concrete question: “What does the Commonwealth
actually do?” I blurted out something spectacularly feeble along
the lines of “Well it doesn’t do very much, but then it doesn’t cost
very much”. I could almost see the patronising grin on the pre-
senter’s face as he thought to himself, “We got more sense out of
the manager of the Buchanan Street Pound Shop.” And that was
it—straight into the ten o’clock news and traffic roundup. Not
my finest hour.
I wasn’t prepared for the question. But it was a variant of
something I’d been asked regularly over the five years since I’d
become director of the ICwS: “How did you become interested
in the Commonwealth?” Behind this was always the implication
that my interest must have been sparked by some element of my
upbringing or family history. But there was nothing I could
really point to. I grew up in Hull. Very occasionally we did go
‘overseas’ on family holidays, but only to the Isle of Man.
There is a lazy assumption implicitly shared by many within
the academic community: that the British are afflicted by a form
of ‘imperial nostalgia’ of which the survival of the Commonwealth
2
“WHAT DOES THE COMMONWEALTH MEAN TO YOU?”
is a prominent symptom. As we shall see later on, this has

informed much of the recent controversy about whether particu-
lar statues or other reminders of Britain’s imperial past should be
banished from the public domain. But the concept is at best a
blunt instrument in understanding how Empire continues to live
in the public imagination and the relationship between this and
the contemporary Commonwealth.
There has been a debate raging for some decades now among
historians of imperialism about the depth and durability of the
imprint made by Empire on British society. Its context was set
in 1978, when Edward Said, a professor of literature at Columbia
University, published one of the most influential academic stud-
ies of the post-war era: Orientalism. In it he traced a process
whereby, from the eighteenth century onwards, a variety of
explorers, missionaries, traders and administrators sought to
make the East explicable to the West by immersing themselves
in ‘Eastern’ cultures, languages and religions. While this might
have seemed a relatively benign objective, Said argued that these
activities represented an essential element of the extension of
Western imperial power. In order to control a society in any
meaningful way, you need to ‘understand’ it. And the Orientalists
provided the imperial conquerors with enough information to
give them the impression that they did.
At the same time, however, the ‘knowledge’ generated by the
Orientalists was essentially flawed. They were not faithfully and
impartially recording some sort of external reality; they were
‘constructing’ identities. And these constructions were filtered
through the distorting mirrors of Western self-interest and self-
perception. ‘Oriental’ societies were defined in opposition to that
self-image, so that if Western society was rational, scientific and
orderly, and imbued with ‘manly values’, the Orient was irratio-
nal, superstitious, despotic and effeminate. The Orient was ‘the
other’. But if Orientalist ‘discourse’ was irredeemably tainted, it
3
did serve an important purpose: to justify the West imposing its

will on the East, the better to cure it of its manifold ills. It
seeped comprehensively into the West’s scholarly and popular
representations of the East: in anthropology, in travel writing, in
political speeches and even in fiction. All of this served to imbue
in Western European populations the sense that the imperial
ambitions of their rulers were part of the natural order of things.
Orientalism and Said’s subsequent magnum opus Culture and
Imperialism were signposts that pointed in strictly one direction:
the reality that Western culture, from top to bottom, was run
through with traces of the imperial project. And if that some-
times wasn’t immediately apparent, it just meant you hadn’t
looked hard enough. This treasure hunt reached the academic
field of British imperial history in a less theoretically encum-
bered guise. It did so initially through the works of John
M. MacKenzie in the 1980s: his monograph, Propaganda and
Empire, and his edited volume, Imperialism and Popular Culture.
MacKenzie wasn’t in any sense an orthodox ‘Saidian’, and he
managed to avoid some of the intellectual contortions that result
from following the various strands of Said’s thought to their logi-
cal conclusions. His essential point was a simpler one: that the
Empire, despite being based thousands of miles from home, was
from the late nineteenth century a daily presence to ordinary
Britons. Indeed, it was wherever they looked: in advertising, in
the music hall and then the cinema, in youth movements, in
popular fiction and in the popular press. So the Empire did
‘mean’ something to them, to such an extent that imperial jingo-
ism became a popular political rallying cry when the time came
to harvest the votes of those eligible to cast one. Again, the
search was on for examples, and another academic cottage indus-
try was duly inaugurated.
Then, in 2004, Bernard Porter published The Absent-Minded
Imperialists: Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain, a deeply
4
heretical cry of dissent. Porter was a highly respected historian of

imperialism. But his new work was certainly not met with uni-
versal acclaim. He argued that what was really interesting about
the Empire was its relatively small impact on British culture and
society. The reason for this wasn’t difficult to explain. The
British, like most other imperial powers throughout history,
liked to do Empire on the cheap. This meant co-opting a variety
of local elites in the occupied countries to do the basic heavy
lifting for them: collecting taxes, raising troops and enforcing
basic law and order. This low-maintenance form of imperialism
allowed inter-war British India—a subcontinent of 350 million
souls—to be ruled by a British administrative cadre of only
around 1,000 officers.
Of course, there were other elements to the flotsam and jetsam
that made up the British presence overseas: missionaries, busi-
nessmen, soldiers and the like. But only a small fraction of the
British population had any real relationship with the imperial
project, and it tended to be drawn heavily from what we might
call the ‘ruling class’. Even then, elite culture in Britain seemed
relatively untouched by Empire. Where were the great late
Victorian canonical novels with explicitly imperial themes?
Where were the great classical buildings of the metropolis recall-
ing the earlier empires of Greece and Rome? At the very point
when the map was turning red, the British were embracing a
Neo-Gothic architectural style that harked back to a pre-imperial
Merrie Olde England.
Porter was not without his supporters. But, generally speak-
ing, his book was received with the sort of opprobrium usually
reserved for someone who turns up in an umbrella-manufactur-
ing town with the patent for a sunshine-generating machine.
This wasn’t just wrong-headed: for hundreds of scholars who
had built their careers in the field of Saidian post-colonial stud-
ies, it was positively bad for business. My own view was that,
5
however imperfectly, Porter had touched on an important truth.

‘Empire’ might indeed have proved a rallying cry on the British
political right, but even in its heyday and even within the
Conservative Party only a small minority of the leading figures
took an active interest in its reality, or thought it should be at
the heart of Britain’s external diplomatic or economic policy.
And it is certainly difficult to think of a single general election
over the century since 1918 in which British imperial or
Commonwealth issues has played a significant role in determin-
ing the outcome.
For the purposes of this discussion, however, the key point is
that notions like popular enthusiasm for Empire—whether con-
temporary or historical—are notoriously difficult to measure or
evaluate. The period under scrutiny in the great MacKenzie-
Porter debate was the turn of the twentieth century, generally
regarded as the zenith of British imperial self-confidence. Yet the
degree to which Empire captured the imagination of the British
people in that period has still been a matter of profound and
closely argued disagreement between two distinguished histori-
ans. A definitive verdict on British attitudes to Empire is even
more elusive when it comes to the following period, when
Empire was formally dissolved and its remnants, legacy and
memory played, at best, a marginal role in British political dis-
course. It is more challenging still to incorporate British atti-
tudes into an argument about the future survival of today’s
Commonwealth, an organization which, in its more radical
incarnation, tried to define itself in terms of virtually everything
the British Empire was not.
Perhaps the key reason for this complexity was that, for the
vast majority of the British population, Empire was not a ‘lived’
experience; at least, not as it was for their compatriots who
crossed the seas to live and work in it. As such, for those grow-
ing up in the ‘decolonizing’ Britain of the post-war decades, the
6
surviving meaning, if any, of the Empire/Commonwealth con-

tinued to be heavily determined by factors such as region, class
and even religion. As such, I don’t pretend that my own experi-
ences were in any way typical, though they might have been
representative in some respects. But they are perhaps worth
sketching out, if only to question some contemporary assump-
tions about the mentalité of the white, middle-aged, male,
Oxbridge-educated British historian of Empire.
I can’t remember my schools in Hull in the 1970s and ’80s
ever marking or even mentioning Commonwealth Day. Had they
been fee-paying public schools, where a good smattering of the
families would probably have had records of imperial ‘service’, the
situation might have been different. But they most decidedly
were not. Nor do I recall any attempt to inculcate in us pride in
the great imperial endeavours of Clive, Stanley or Rhodes. We
were Catholics. Our folk heroes were essentially oppositional
figures, many of whom had actually been executed by the British.
My middle school in Hull—St John Fisher—was actually named
after one of them. Although I’d certainly read a fair amount of
history as a teenager, the story of the British Empire/
Commonwealth didn’t really register. Why should it have done,
when there were all those folks like Catherine the Great,
Napoleon, Disraeli and Hitler to become acquainted with? I only
really became interested in things imperial as an undergraduate,
and by chance had the opportunity to continue my studies at
doctoral level. Even then, they didn’t take me very far afield. My
chosen topic was the way in which the British Conservative Party
reacted to the decolonization of Africa. The party’s papers were
all in the Bodleian Library in Oxford where I was based, and my
longer-haul research trips didn’t tend to take me much further
than the Public Record Office in Kew.
I became familiar with the idea of the Commonwealth as a
great, soothing comfort blanket for the party’s dwindling band
7
of post-war imperial enthusiasts. They could reassure themselves

that the sad business of granting independence to British colo-
nies wasn’t really the end of the line. Like the souls of the faith-
ful departed, these countries would simply join the heavenly
throng of the Commonwealth and live in eternal peace and har-
mony. But mine were essentially the findings of an archive rat
poring over files from the 1950s and ’60s. My personal experience
of the Commonwealth—as something actually ‘out there’ in the
wider world—didn’t really expand by one iota. For the next
twenty years or so, my research into the Commonwealth and its
history remained a largely paper exercise. So, although I came to
the ICwS with a more detailed knowledge of the history of the
Commonwealth than most of my fellow British citizens, I
couldn’t claim to have much greater direct experience of it, either
as an organization or as a collection of countries. I had no gut
feeling of belonging or identification. Insofar as I thought about
the Commonwealth, it was largely as a relatively minor aspect of
British foreign policy in the post-war period, which had briefly
been enlivened in the 1980s by some truly epic struggles between
Mrs Thatcher and the then Commonwealth secretary-general,
Sonny Ramphal, over South Africa.
Porter’s point about so few British people having had direct,
personal experience of Empire might seem obtuse if one thinks
about imperialism as an ideological construct. Seen in those
terms, it would be perfectly possible for the British public to
have been inculcated with pride in ‘Empire’ as an abstract signi-
fier of national power and prestige without the majority of them
ever having strayed far beyond the place of their birth. But at a
deeper level of understanding and personal identification, there
is no substitute for direct contact. I was powerfully reminded of
this a few years ago when my colleague at the ICwS, the distin-
guished Indian politics expert Professor James Manor, learned to
his horror that I had never visited the subcontinent, and thereaf-
8
ter made it his business to ‘educate’ me. And educate me he

certainly did. He invited me to a conference he was organizing at
the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies in Shimla, the old sum-
mer capital of the Raj.
On the way, I got my first taste of Delhi. Of course, I knew
the basic story. In 1911, the British announced that they were
going to relocate the main administrative capital of the Indian
Empire there, and commissioned the architects Edward Lutyens
and Herbert Baker to draw up suitably grandiose plans. But
nothing I’d read had prepared me for the sheer, dizzying folly of
the enterprise. My taxi excursion took me past the India Gate
and down the Rajpath, Lutyens’ steroid-fuelled answer to the
Mall, and between the two vast Secretariat buildings. We stopped
by a set of gigantic gates. Directly ahead, shimmering in the
distance, was the 340-room Rashtrapati Bhavan, now the official
residence of the Indian president, but originally the Viceroy’s
Palace. At every stage of this unfolding spectacle, my only
thought was, “Holy shit! What is this?”
In the grey, battle-scarred era between the world wars, the age
of Lowry’s hunched, shadow-like Lancashire factory workers, the
British had constructed a capital city 4,000 miles from home, on
a scale Albert Speer would probably have found intolerably extrav-
agant and bombastic. And only sixteen years after ‘New Delhi’
was formally inaugurated in 1931, the British were gone, sent
packing back to Lowry-land. “And what should they know of
England, who only England know?” asked Rudyard Kipling rhe-
torically. Well, quite; but the differences between England and its
Empire were thanks in no small part to the crazy, megalomaniac
schemes of some of Kipling’s closest friends and allies. Empire, in
its wide variety of manifestations, was too remote from the daily
experience of most people in the UK to be easily imaginable, let
alone an object of nostalgia once it was gone.
So the blanket term ‘imperial nostalgia’ risks missing an
important distinction between those people in Britain who had
9
close personal or family associations with the now Commonwealth

countries, and those who did not. The former group has always
tended to be drawn disproportionately from the upper levels of
British society. It is among those individuals that one senses a
genuine, personal nostalgia for Empire, and in many cases that
feeling of identification translated itself into an enthusiasm for
the Commonwealth. That is not to say that all Commonwealth
enthusiasts share this sense. Many of those most closely engaged
in the activities of London’s tight network of Commonwealth
groups identify instead with the more radical trajectory on which
the organization seemed set in the 1960s and ’70s. Then, the
Commonwealth worked closely with Britain’s former colonies to
deliver their ambitions for a bright, post-independence future.
Yet what such individuals did share with the ‘imperial nostal-
gics’ was direct experience of the member states. As a rule, if
someone effortlessly drops references to the Commonwealth into
their everyday conversation, the chances are they’re either the
head of a Commonwealth ‘civil society’ organization or a member
of the British royal family. The correlation between social class
and Commonwealth awareness only seems to break down when
we come to the UK’s various diaspora communities, many of
which retain close links to particular Commonwealth countries.
For the rest of the British population, ‘Empire’ and ‘Common
wealth’ were what academics sometimes call ‘floating signifiers’,
untethered to personal experience and so changing over time in
line with broader ideological undercurrents. By the time I was
growing up in the ’70s and ’80s, the collective memory of Empire
was heavily infused with a sense of irony, not to say absurdity. I
was reminded of this when I told my friends that I’d been
appointed director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies.
The comic references came thick and fast: ‘Carry on up the
Khyber’; ‘It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum’; ‘Roger of the Raj’; and, of
course, the mandatory “Will you be having tea with the Queen?”
10
As Karl Marx definitely never said, history on the telly always

repeats itself: first as drama and second as parody. ‘Carry on up
the Khyber’ seemed to be on constant repeat during the BBC2
early evening slot in the 1970s, to the extent that by the time we
reached puberty we could recite the script almost word-for-word.
As a kid, you tended to get the parody version of something first,
making it a bit difficult to keep a straight face when the ‘serious’
version came along—and, in the ’60s and ’70s, the parody version
of Empire was generally all there was to be had.
In the aftermath of the rapid liquidation of colonial rule, the
British people were waking up from what seemed like a bizarre,
psychedelic dream. And what stuck in the collective memory was
the kitschy, camp surrealism of those imperial dreamscapes. The
fantastic uniforms of the viceroy and his staff were recycled by
the trendy boutiques of Carnaby Street and sold on to London’s
beautiful people with an added sheen of playful irony. The Kinks
devoted a whole concept album to the theme of ‘Arthur (or the
Decline and Fall of the British Empire)’. And when Sergeant
Pepper first taught the band to play, it was probably in the foot-
hills of the Himalayas, to a restless audience of imperial func-
tionaries retreating from the summer heat of Delhi.
The popular perception of the Commonwealth was also
changing, in a far darker and less playfully ironical sense. From
the mid-1960s onwards, Commonwealth gatherings became the
scenes of pitched battles between Britain and many of its newly
independent former colonies over the latter’s determination to
end white minority rule in Southern Rhodesia and South Africa.
Meanwhile, as Bill Schwarz has noted in The White Man’s World,
Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith was able to deck himself
out in the borrowed robes of the classic imperial hero.1 Here was
the plucky Second World War fighter pilot battling to preserve
‘white civilization’ on a far-flung subtropical frontier.
For much of the Conservative Party and its mouthpieces in
Fleet Street, the old assumption that the Commonwealth would
11
be some sort of ersatz Empire was neatly and swiftly inverted. Its
public enemy number one embodied the true spirit of Empire,
and the Commonwealth itself had become the real threat to
British interests—both in Southern Africa, where it seemed hell-
bent on replacing stable, pro-Western regimes with Marxist
dictatorships, and at home, where it became synonymous with
non-white immigration. As East African Asians were expelled
first from Kenya in 1968 and from Uganda in 1972, the right-
wing press in the UK vilified both victims and perpetrators, and
governments from both major British parties vied with each
other successively to remove the last remaining rights of
Commonwealth citizens to enter the UK. Those who had already
settled in the country found themselves viciously mocked by
popular comedians on primetime national television, a phenom-
enon as redolent of British culture in the 1970s as David Bowie
or the chopper bike.
All this time, the Commonwealth itself was really getting
going as a sensible and serious operation. A Commonwealth
Secretariat, fully independent of the British government, was
established in 1965. Six years later, the first Commonwealth
Heads of Government Meeting in Singapore issued a ringing
condemnation of racial discrimination—something as inextrica-
bly linked to British imperialism as ice cream and jelly. 1971 also
witnessed the establishment of the Commonwealth Fund for
Technical Cooperation (CFTC), a body consciously engineered
to challenge the old North-to-South model of social and eco-
nomic development and to encourage a South-to-South transfer
of expertise. But, set beside the vivid, brightly coloured flash-
backs of the great imperial reverie, very few of these good works
truly resonated in the British collective consciousness. As far as
we know, Jimmy Perry and David Croft never pitched to the
BBC the idea of a sitcom set in the CFTC offices.
There was one notable attempt to capture the public imagina-
tion. This came in the form of the Commonwealth Institute, an
12
unlovely modernist edifice still visible today from Kensington

High Street, which was opened in 1962. The Commonwealth
Institute housed a permanent exhibition intended to serve as a
shop-front for the new, progressive, modernizing Common
wealth—albeit under a roof of copper donated by the then
Northern Rhodesian Chamber of Mines. Until 2000, the
Institute was funded by the UK Foreign Office. It was then
transferred to a trust managed by the Commonwealth’s UK-based
high commissioners (always a recipe for disaster), and only two
years later had closed its doors permanently to the public.
Between then and its reopening in 2016 as a design museum, the
building was unused and uncared for—a great big copper-topped
white elephant. Many people still remember visits to the
Commonwealth Institute as a nice childhood excursion on a wet
Sunday afternoon. But, in general, it’s difficult to arouse passions
about something as painfully well-meaning as the modern
Commonwealth. Against the far-from-well-meaning British
Empire, the contrast is as stark as the architectural one between
inter-war Delhi and post-war Coventry.
The projection of a stable image of the Commonwealth to the
British public has partly been hindered by the fact that Britain’s
rulers have so frequently been unsure precisely what to do with it.
As we shall see in the following chapter, during the post-war
period, the organization moved from being seen as an essential
prop of Britain’s ‘great power’ status to representing a puzzle, then
an irritant, and finally a constant source of disappointment. It has
maintained a loyal band of supporters, mostly concentrated in a
series of London-based affiliated organizations. Yet even they
often seem at a loss to explain the reasons for their enthusiasm.
In recent years, such organizations have found an unlikely
guru in the form of David Howell, or Lord Howell of Guildford,
to give him his full title. Howell had served as a minister in the
early Thatcher administrations and had enjoyed a brief renais-
13
sance under David Cameron as minister of state at the Foreign

and Commonwealth Office in 2010–12. He had long been iden-
tifiable as one of the more thoughtful contributors to the House
of Lords’ periodic debates on the Commonwealth—in that he
occasionally strayed from recalling gap years in Kenya or thank-
ing the Queen for her distinguished service, to make an abstract
point of more general relevance.
In 2013 Howell published Old Links and New Ties: Power and
Persuasion in an Age of Networks. It certainly managed to bottle
some thoughts then very much in the air. Howell drew heavily
on the Harvard professor Joseph Nye’s concept of ‘soft power’,
which, in a post-Cold War world, had furnished the theme for
countless conferences on international diplomacy—and not sur-
prisingly. The cheery assumption of Tony Blair’s New Labour
government—that the armed forces were simply the interna-
tional wing of the British social services—had come somewhat
unstuck in Afghanistan and Iraq. When Howell descended from
his SW1 Mount Sinai with his very own tablets of stone, they
said roughly this: the era of states, super-states and superpowers is
over. Hard power is out and soft power is in. We live in a globalized
world in which people are increasingly connected by global networks.
And, by a unique act of providence, the UK is the inheritor of the
greatest global network of them all: the Commonwealth. Now go
forth and use it! Church bells rang out across London. The capi-
tal’s Commonwealth true-believers finally had the sacred text
they had always lacked.
I remained unconvinced. When, during the Cold War, the
CIA generously poured money into the abstract expressionist
movement, this was undoubtedly ‘soft power’. It served to dem-
onstrate that, in stark contrast to the Soviet Union, where artists
were dragooned, on pain of imprisonment, into churning out
endless socialist realist depictions of sunsets over the collective
farm, in the US—the land of the free—artists were able to go
14
really, splattery-crazy on canvas. It’s far less obvious how the

Commonwealth, composed of countries which display widely
varying attitudes towards things like religious and press freedom,
LGBT rights and the death penalty, can serve as an effective
instrument of British soft power. And when the organization, in
its wisdom, allows a leader with a seriously tarnished interna-
tional reputation to become its chair-in-office, as it did in 2013,
it’s unlikely that the British government will be able to bask in
much reflected glory. In any case, it doesn’t help that the
Commonwealth is seen by many as merely a relic of British
imperialism. As such, it could hinder just as well as help the
UK’s self-projection on the world stage as a modern, liberal,
humane society.
As for networks, one might have thought that an important
sign of belonging to a significant one would be awareness of the
fact. As a child growing up in Hull, I don’t remember anyone
attempting to make us proud of the Commonwealth. But that’s
probably because they were too busy trying to make us intensely
proud of a truly great global network: the Roman Catholic
Church—and intensely proud of it we were. It spanned all parts
of the globe and had a history going back considerably further
than 1949. There was no creative ambiguity about what mem-
bership entailed or who was in control. Unlike the authority of
the head or secretary-general of the Commonwealth, whose
respective remits have always been something of a sacred mys-
tery, the Catholic Church’s order of battle was crystal clear.
Chief of staff was the Pope—the direct descendent of St Peter,
Christ’s representative on earth. And the Pope has the sort of
global influence—soft power—that the Commonwealth secre-
tary-general could only dream of. If I or any of the other
Murphys, O’Neills, O’Connors, O’Rourkes, McNamaras or
Mcquillans at my school had actually stumbled across the
Commonwealth, this pale Protestant replica would hardly have
made much of an impression.
15
One can sense this slight inferiority complex in the way the
modern Commonwealth chooses to present itself on public occa-
sions. It even has a sort of profane version of the Nicene Creed,
rather awkwardly recited by the congregation at the annual
Commonwealth Day Observance service in Westminster Abbey.
It begins:
We affirm that every person possesses unique worth and dignity.
We affirm our respect for nature, and that we will be stewards of the
earth by caring for every part of it, and for it as a whole.
We affirm our belief in justice for everyone, and peace between peoples
and nations.
There may only be 1.2 billion Catholics in the world, com-
pared with 2.4 billion members of the Commonwealth. The dif-
ference is that the vast majority of the former actually know
they’re Catholics. They also know roughly what that entails, and
it’s a significant part of their personal identity. The same cannot
be said for most of the inhabitants of the Commonwealth.
When, in 2010, the Royal Commonwealth Society published a
survey of attitudes across its member states, the level of knowl-
edge and engagement it uncovered was not encouraging. For
example, only half of those questioned knew that the Queen was
head of the Commonwealth. A quarter of Jamaicans thought it
was the US president, Barack Obama, and 10 per cent of South
Africans and Indians thought it was the former UN secretary-
general, Kofi Annan. It’s difficult to get a network to function
effectively if most of its supposed members have only the haziest
notion of its existence.
The irony is that, before being quietly shuffled out of govern-
ment, Lord Howell himself spent two years from 2010 grappling
bravely—but unsuccessfully—with these very conundrums. A
large part of the problem he faced, as countless British policy-
makers had faced before him, was making sense of the byzantine
16
and slightly dysfunctional nature of the ‘Commonwealth net-

work’. For Britain’s administrative elite, the Commonwealth is a
bit like a grandfather clock that has been in the family for gen-
erations. It hasn’t told the right time for decades, but no one has
the heart to take such a treasured heirloom to the tip. All the
same, Britain’s mainstream parties had become increasingly
reluctant in recent years to place significant weight on the
Commonwealth as an instrument of the UK’s diplomatic, eco-
nomic or even overseas aid policy. Then, in June 2016, a seismic
shock was delivered to the UK’s sense of its place in the world
when the majority of voters in that month’s referendum opted to
leave the EU. Suddenly, people started to talk about the
Commonwealth again.
Even more frequently, particularly among disappointed
Remain voters, they spoke of the role in the referendum of
‘imperial nostalgia’. Hull, the city where I grew up, voted to leave
by one of the largest margins in the country: 67.6% to 32.4%
(against a national total of 52% to 48%). Apparently, when
asked to choose between a pan-European identity and one sup-
posedly inflected by imperial nostalgia based on the UK’s identity
at the centre of an inter-continental network, Hull had opted, in
Churchill’s phrase, for the ‘open sea’. This was despite the city’s
strong trading links with major European ports like Zeebrugge
and Rotterdam, and the fact that, as recently as November 2014,
the decision by German manufacturer Siemens to produce North
Sea wind farm blades in Hull had given a huge boost to the local
economy. It was an investment the city—the UK’s third most
deprived local authority—badly needed. So had I been missing
something? Were those subliminal messages about Britain’s
essentially imperial identity more profound and long-lasting than
I had imagined?
The following chapters will attempt to make sense of the
complexities and contradictions of Britain’s relationships both to
17
the Commonwealth and to its own imperial past. They do so by

considering a series of questions: why has the organization
evolved as it has? Why has it survived for so long, and what value
has been attached to membership of it? What has been the role
of the monarchy in holding it together? How does it fit into
debates about the legacy of Empire? How successful has it been
in defining itself as a ‘principles-based’ organization, and how did
someone who appeared not to observe them come to hold its
highest political office? Finally, what role did it play in the Brexit
debate, and where does it stand in the aftermath of that political
earthquake? In seeking to answer these questions, The Empire’s
New Clothes examines how the myth of the Commonwealth has
evolved. Ultimately, it seeks to understand why something as
seemingly insubstantial as an invisible suit, offered to a foolish
fairytale emperor, continues to exert such a hold on the minds of
British policy-makers.
18
2
MEET THE FAMILY
Whose Commonwealth?
A familiar analysis of the failure of the Commonwealth, and a

common accusation made against the UK, is that the British,
having created the organization, simply lost interest in it and
allowed it to fall into disrepair. This is the argument at the heart
of The Rise, Decline and Future of the Commonwealth, a history
of the organization published in 2005 by Krishnan Srinivasan,
who had observed the situation at close quarters as a senior offi-
cial in the Commonwealth Secretariat. Commonwealth ortho-
doxy has it that, some time around 1949, the Commonwealth
ceased to be focused on the UK and instead became an organiza-
tion of which all its members had an equal sense of ownership.
Srinivasan disputes that interpretation, arguing that the
Commonwealth is essentially British in its origins and concep-
tion; and if the UK is not prepared to invest it with a special
sense of ownership then, rather than being ‘Everybody’s
Commonwealth’, its fate is to be ‘Nobody’s Commonwealth’.
Srinivasan was reflecting the frustration of many overseas
observers who have viewed British policy from the vantage point
19
of the Secretariat. David McDowell, a former New Zealand dip-

lomat and special adviser to the first Commonwealth secretary-
general, recalled:
Time and again, I used to think, “What the hell are the British up to?”
I mean, the Indian government was doing this so-called ‘tilt’ towards
Russia at one point, and you’d sit down with a bunch of officials and
Indian diplomats and they were still pretty pro-British under the skin.
They sounded British, their argumentation was British, [and] a lot of
them were British-educated. This was a huge asset, and the British
would ignore them! To me, it’s one of the enduring mysteries of British
foreign policy over those years. Why didn’t they use this institution,
the Commonwealth, much more effectively than they did? And I’ve
got no final answer. We could not understand that.1
One clue to this mystery might lie in the question of whether
and to what extent the Commonwealth really was a British
invention. While this may seem self-evidently the case, there is
another way of looking at the organization’s evolution. One could
argue that it occurred more in spite of British designs than
because of them. In this sense, it is hardly surprising that UK
governments should have found the Commonwealth difficult to
mobilize in its interests, and that the result was a growing sense
of disillusionment.
Breaking this down further, it is possible to identify three
distinct phases in British engagement with the Commonwealth.
The first, which lasted until the mid-1960s, was one in which
the British struggled to contain the centrifugal forces that were
robbing the Commonwealth of much of its practical value. To
put it another way, in seeking to ensure that the Commonwealth
should mean ‘something’, the British were forced to make major
concessions to those members who wished it to mean virtually
‘nothing’.
From the mid-1960s onwards, there was a period of institu-
tion-building within the organization. But in that process the
20
MEET THE FAMILY
British were, at best, grudging participants. It began during a

period of profound dislocation for British foreign policy. On the
one hand, the UK government was beginning to come to terms
with the fact that the Commonwealth had lost much of its for-
mer significance. On the other, however, it was recovering from
the shock of the failure in 1963 to join the European Economic
Community (EEC) at the first attempt. As such, it felt unable to
block developments that might reinvigorate the Commonwealth,
while being uneasy with the form that these took. What fol-
lowed was a period when the Commonwealth agenda was domi-
nated by the related issues of the settler regimes in Southern
Rhodesia and South Africa. While these questions gave the
Commonwealth a sense of mission and purpose, the British gov-
ernment frequently found itself in a small minority opposing
policies proposed by most Commonwealth members.
The final phase saw the British government in the early 1990s
seeking to play an uncharacteristically proactive role in re-orient-
ing the Commonwealth as a vehicle to promote democracy, good
governance and market reforms. Yet this new approach was so at
odds with the nature of the organization’s operation hitherto
that the tangible results were meagre. The government shifted
its focus to other areas and institutions where it could hope to
exert greater influence.
This story begins, as all stories about the Commonwealth
must begin, with the phrase ‘In the beginning was an Empire.’
Having had its fingers badly burned by the fractious colonists of
North America in the 1770s and ’80s, British governments of the
following period realized that trying to maintain direct control
over the remaining settler colonies was likely to be counter-
productive. Instead, they were gradually allowed to develop their
own self-governing institutions. Speaking in Adelaide in 1884,
the British statesman Lord Rosebery recognized this new dis-
pensation when he envisaged the British Empire’s development
21
into a ‘Commonwealth of Nations’. As Mark Mazower has noted,

this notion became a particularly powerful one as political leaders
searched for some basis on which to reconstruct international
order in the wake of the First World War.2 It found a perhaps
unlikely champion in Jan Smuts, who went from being Britain’s
most brilliant adversary during the Second Boer War to a key
member of the British Imperial War Cabinet and a future prime
minister of the Union of South Africa. As the First World War
neared its end, Smuts suggested that the British Commonwealth
model—combining as it did effective cooperation between mem-
bers with the greatest autonomy for each—was one that could be
followed on a larger scale by a future League of Nations, another
idea he championed.
Certainly, during the inter-war period, the Commonwealth
appeared to prove itself capable of both promoting cooperation
and safeguarding the autonomy of its members. Perhaps the
defining moment in the genesis of the modern organization came
with the report of a committee chaired by former British prime
minister Arthur Balfour, presented to the Imperial Conference of
1926. The report offered a definition of the relationship between
Britain and what were then commonly referred to as the
Dominions—the self-governing countries of the Commonwealth.
It identified them as “autonomous communities within the
British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to
another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though
united by a common allegiance to the Crown, and freely associ-
ated in the British Commonwealth of Nations.”
This formulation, which has remained a central tenet of
Commonwealth orthodoxy ever since, found legislative expres-
sion in the 1931 Statute of Westminster, which at that point
related to the governments of the UK, Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, South Africa (which left the Commonwealth in 1961),
the Irish Free State (which left in 1949) and Newfoundland
22
MEET THE FAMILY
(which became a province of Canada in 1949). In particular, it

made clear that the legislative competence of Commonwealth
member states’ parliaments was not restricted by acts of the
British parliament, and that they also had the power to legislate
with extra-territorial effect. The following year, at the 1932
Imperial Economic Conference in Ottawa, there was agreement
for tariff reductions between Commonwealth members—appar-
ently opening the door to the creation of a vast imperial trading
bloc. Yet even in these apparently positive developments one can
already identify the seeds of future problems.
The 1932 Ottawa agreements were far less extensive than
many imperial enthusiasts had hoped. As one recent account of
the Conference notes, the negotiations were characterized “by
intensive, often bad-tempered bilateral deal-making, in a fashion
quite at odds with rhetoric about an underlying commonality of
interests.”3 In a sign of things to come, individual members were
unwilling to subordinate their own individual interests to some
supposedly greater good. As to the Balfour Report’s precise for-
mulations of ‘equality of status’ and ‘free association’, these had
a very specific purpose for British policy-makers in 1926—they
were intended to head off a demand from the South African
prime minister, J.B.M. Hertzog, for formal recognition of his
country’s independence.
The term ‘independence’ was anathema to British policy-
makers well into the 1950s, striking as it did at the cohesion of
the British Empire/Commonwealth. Far from an argument for
independence, then, the notion of equality was an important
means of maintaining what many in Britain saw as an essential
prop of British great-power status. At the same time, however,
‘equality’ suggested at least in theory that member states would
not automatically accept or welcome British leadership of the
organization. As the Commonwealth was augmented from the
1940s by India, Pakistan and Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and thereafter
23
by developing countries from South East Asia, Africa, the

Caribbean and the Pacific, it was increasingly important to dis-
avow notions that the Commonwealth was being driven by
British interests. More broadly, the UK wished to avoid a percep-
tion of the organization as driven by Western, white or neo-
colonial interests, however defined.
Certainly the British government was anxious that India
should remain in the organization after independence in 1947,
and was prepared to sanction a radical change to the basis of
Commonwealth membership to that end. It did so in the mis-
taken belief that India’s huge standing army would continue to
underwrite British great-power status. Previously, the defining
feature of Commonwealth members was that all recognized the
sovereignty of a single monarch. India, however, would be
allowed to remain part of the organization on becoming a repub-
lic in 1950. To achieve this, a new, separate and purely personal
role was created for the British monarch, as head of the
Commonwealth. The London Declaration of 1949 acknowledged
India’s “acceptance of the King as the symbol of the free associa-
tion of its independent member nations and as such Head of the
Commonwealth”.
The irony was that, although this concession allowed the
organization to embrace a hugely greater land-mass and popula-
tion than would otherwise have been the case, it was made in
order to accommodate a government determined that the practi-
cal implications of Commonwealth membership should be virtu-
ally nil. It was another step in the direction of ‘nothingness’. In
his regular letters to the chief ministers of India’s provincial
governments, Prime Minister Jawaharal Nehru made a point of
stressing how little membership of the Commonwealth would
actually imply in terms of the obligations upon his country. In
January 1949, he told them, “People who have criticized the pos-
sibility of our having some future relationship with the United
24
MEET THE FAMILY
Kingdom and the Commonwealth must realize now that even if

there is such a relationship it cannot affect our foreign policy.
That would not mean lining up with any particular group of
nations.”4 He continued to reiterate this point after terms had
been agreed for India’s future membership, and as his familiarity
with the organization increased. In June 1952, he told the chief
ministers that India’s association with the Commonwealth posed
no threat to the country’s independence:
It is completely informal and there are no commitments. It brings us
certain advantages and there is no reason whatever, so far as I can see,
why we should give it up … In international affairs our association
with the UK and the Commonwealth has led far more to us influ-
encing them in a particular direction than their influencing us.5
In the years that followed the 1949 London Declaration, the
British government became markedly less enthusiastic about the
Commonwealth expanding further. In the 1950s, Kwame
Nkrumah, leader of the principal nationalist movement in the
Gold Coast (now Ghana), caused some dismay in Whitehall by
demanding dominion status for his country. It was one thing to
accommodate the old Harrovian Nehru. But was the Common
wealth really ready to accept into its councils a radical African
nationalist prime minister?
Even greater hand-wringing was occasioned by the prospect of
Cyprus joining the Commonwealth. Talks in 1959 promised an
end to the brutal armed struggle that had been waged on the
island since 1955, and provided a pathway to full independence.
But would Commonwealth membership be the logical outcome?
Senior British officials initially hoped not. Well aware that the
majority of its existing dependencies were so small as to be barely
viable as independent states, and certainly unlikely to serve the
UK as useful strategic or economic partners, Whitehall had toyed
with devising forms of association short of full Commonwealth
membership.6 But these had largely foundered on the fact that
25
such second-class citizenship was unlikely to be attractive to the

states concerned.
This was certainly the case with Cyprus. But the island raised
other questions about the nature of the Commonwealth associa-
tion. Surely some important components were the shared use of
the English language and at least a residual sense of identifica-
tion with and affection for the UK? Cyprus hardly seemed to
qualify. Indeed, the leader of the Greek Cypriot community and
first prime minister of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios, was widely
believed to have been directing the insurgency devoted, until very
recently, to attempting to eject the British. As Cypriot indepen-
dence neared, British Cabinet Secretary Norman Brook was
hardly alone in suggesting that Cyprus would be “much more of
a liability than an asset to the Commonwealth”.7
As the Commonwealth grew in size, it continued, as Lorna
Lloyd has noted, to lose much of what had previously invested it
with particular value from a British perspective.8 As we have
already seen, with the decision in 1949 to allow India to remain
in the Commonwealth as a republic, common allegiance to the
monarch ceased to be the constitutional bond holding the orga-
nization together. Meanwhile, the notion of a shared Common
wealth citizenship—based on member-state populations’ status
as British subjects—had been shattered by the Canadian
Citizenship Act of 1946. From 1962 onwards, UK legislation
steadily eroded the universal right of all UK and Commonwealth
subjects9 to migrate to Britain.
The idea that the Commonwealth as an important military
resource would automatically take Britain’s side in any major
conflict had already been dealt a blow by the Irish Free State’s
neutrality during the Second World War and the reluctance with
which South Africa joined the conflict. In the post-war era it was
further called into question by lukewarm Indian and Pakistani
support for the British position in the Korean War, and under-
26
MEET THE FAMILY
mined by Indian non-alignment. The death-blow came with the

deep divisions within the Commonwealth caused by the Suez
Crisis of 1956. Similarly, the National Party victory in South
Africa in 1948 and the imposition of military rule in Pakistan in
1958 made it difficult to speak of the Commonwealth as united
by common political characteristics inherited from Britain itself.
Finally, the Sterling Area arrangement, under which most of
the Commonwealth member states had fixed their own exchange
rates to the pound and held their exchange reserves in sterling,
had once seemed a source of strength for the UK. In the post-
war period, however, it increasingly became seen as more of a
millstone, with international confidence in the currency threat-
ened by massive sterling balances outside British control (effec-
tively debts to other Area members accumulated during the
Second World War). Nevertheless, the defence of sterling’s value
and with it the Sterling Area itself was a major British policy
objective until devaluation in 1967 spelled the beginning of the
end for the system. At a special Economic Conference convened
by Churchill’s second administration in 1952, any hopes that
ministers might have entertained of reviving the Commonwealth
as a protected trading bloc were brutally dispelled by other
Commonwealth members.
Faced with these changes, senior British policy-makers natu-
rally began to ask fundamental questions about the utility of a
heterogeneous and rapidly expanding Commonwealth, its num-
bers swelled by rapid decolonization. Submitting to the prime
minister a report by officials on the future of the Commonwealth,
Cabinet Secretary Norman Brook framed the problem in April
1962 in terms that recognized the shifts underway. He asked:
What is the significance and purpose of the Commonwealth in the
years ahead? What function and value will this new Commonwealth
have in the modern world? What are the links that bind its members
together? There was a time when they were united by their allegiance
27
to a common Crown. In the ’thirties after the Ottawa Conference,

there was a period when it seemed possible that they could form an
interdependent economic unit; but this possibility has been progres-
sively eroded, not by the United Kingdom but by the economic devel-
opment of the other members. Later, it could be said for a time that
they all had in common a way of life based on Parliamentary democ-
racy and the common law; but the logic of events in Pakistan and in
Ghana and the possible course of constitutional development else-
where have made it necessary to mute this claim. Now it is difficult to
find any factor common to them all save the use of the English lan-
guage and the fact that all were once parts of the British Empire.10
The British comic song-writing duo, Flanders and Swann,
translated this dilemma into music. They included in their mid-
1960s stage shows a number called ‘Commonwealth Fair’, set to
the tune of the English folk-song ‘Widecombe Fair’. It included
the lines:
The Commonwealth hasn’t much meaning today,
All-about, turn-about, round-about, lee,
Except for the few who’re still willing to play,
Like Australia, New Zealand and Canada:
Well, that’s about the lot, really….
The others may still wear the Commonwealth coat,
Though there’s practically nothing on which we agree,
What does Commonwealth mean, when it comes to the vote…[?]
What indeed?
The Birth of the Secretariat

Ironically, however, as the British government itself was agoniz-
ing about what, if anything, the organization continued to rep-
resent, high-level meetings between Commonwealth leaders
were becoming more frequent, encouraged by improved long-
distance transport and communications. During the first decades
28
MEET THE FAMILY
of the twentieth century, Commonwealth leaders had met

together in London at a number of imperial conferences and
great state occasions. Towards the end of the Second World War,
Commonwealth prime ministers’ conferences were instituted,
and they became regular gatherings in the immediate post-war
period. Thirteen took place between 1944 and 1964. As a result
of these meetings, Commonwealth leaders began to forge their
own agenda, particularly around the issues of development and
the ending of white minority rule in Southern Africa. They also
began to demand the creation of more formal structures to facili-
tate consultation.
Indeed, the present-day administrative architecture of the
Commonwealth was devised as much in spite of the wishes of
London as because of it. There was certainly a brief period in the
1960s when British governments from both major parties suddenly
rediscovered an interest in the Commonwealth. The catalyst seems
to have been General de Gaulle’s decision early in 1963 to veto
Britain’s first application for membership of the EEC. The shock
of having what seemed to be an almost inevitable move towards
Europe stopped in its tracks prompted a renewed interest in the
Commonwealth. As Trevor Reese noted, “For the first time in
three-quarters of a century people in England, besides editors of
the Beaverbrook press and members of certain societies, thought
seriously about the Commonwealth”.11 There was certainly a new
openness in Whitehall to ideas for turning the Commonwealth
into a more effective and meaningful association. Yet ahead of the
Commonwealth prime ministers’ meeting of July 1964, the pro-
posals put forward by London largely were not about political
cohesion but focused instead on development, education and train-
ing. It also proposed an idea, ultimately adopted, for a
Commonwealth Foundation to promote contacts across the non-
governmental Commonwealth.12
At the meeting itself, however, the UK was taken by surprise
when the president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, proposed the
29
creation of a ‘central clearing house’ in London to coordinate the

Commonwealth’s activities. Proposals for the establishment of
some sort of Commonwealth secretariat had been raised periodi-
cally over the decades, most notably by Australian prime minis-
ters. Indeed, in 1959, it had been announced that the Queen was
making one of her royal palaces, Marlborough House, available
as a venue for Commonwealth activities.13 Yet it was novel to
hear this proposal from one of Africa’s most radical nationalist
leaders. Nkrumah won immediate backing from Uganda’s leader,
Milton Obote, and from Eric Williams of Trinidad. The creation
of a secretariat would, of course, remove from Britain the coor-
dinating role in the Commonwealth, which had been exercised
through the Dominions Office and subsequently the Common
wealth Relations Office. But since Whitehall was already consid-
ering the possibility of merging the Commonwealth and Foreign
Offices, the proposal had an added attraction from the UK’s
perspective. Since the idea seemed to have momentum behind it,
the British government decided not to reject it.14
The British general election of October 1964 was narrowly
won by Harold Wilson’s Labour Party. Under Wilson’s predeces-
sor as Labour leader, the party had fiercely opposed Britain’s first
attempt to join the EEC, and Labour’s manifesto in 1964
included a forthright statement of support for the Commonwealth.
As such, Wilson’s government had no desire to reverse the prog-
ress made under the previous administration. Nevertheless,
senior British officials worried that the secretariat might achieve
too much influence and autonomy. An official committee meet-
ing in January 1965 concluded that it “should not arrogate to
itself executive functions … it should operate on a modest foot-
ing; and its staff and functions should be left to expand prag-
matically in the light of experience, subject always to the approval
of Governments.”15
A determination that any secretariat should remain a relatively
weak body was not confined to Whitehall. Australian Prime
30
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Lacteal engorgement.
Rainard Cellulitis of the udder.
(1845) Acute.
Mammitis
Chronic.
Lafosse
Acute.
(1856)
Mammitis
Trasbot
Chronic.
(1883)
Catarrhal.
Saint Cyr
Phlegmonous or
(1874) Mammitis
interstitial.
Violet (1888)
Parenchymatous.
Galactogenous.
Acute
Primary mammitis (properly so- Lymphogenous.
called) Galactogenous.
Chronic
Lymphogenous.
Lucet (1891)
Hæmatogenous.
Acute
Lymphogenous.
Symptomatic mammitis
Hæmatogenous.
Chronic
Lymphogenous.
All these classifications are justified by the guiding ideas of the
writers, yet, as in every case of attempted systematisation, they have
the disadvantage of not being in entire agreement with clinical
experience.
For instance, the differences between catarrhal and
parenchymatous forms of mammitis are only of degree, and it is
difficult, therefore, to see why they should be divided into two
distinct varieties. The difference is in regard to the prognosis.
Similarly in practice it is difficult and sometimes impossible to
distinguish between an interstitial and a parenchymatous mammitis,
because all the tissues of the gland may be involved at a given
moment. The only factor which allows of differentiation is the
discovery of the point from which infection took place. Finally, it is
sometimes so difficult to distinguish between galactogenous and
lymphogenous mammitis that the attempt has had to be abandoned.
In gangrenous mammitis of milch ewes, for example, the infective
organism is found not only in the sinus and the galactophorous
canals, but also in the serosity of the interstitial tissue and of the
perimammary œdema.
Without doubt the causative agent of mammitis may enter the
gland by three principal channels—the galactophorous sinus, the
lymphatic plexus (after some injury), and the blood circulation. But
from the clinical standpoint it is not at all necessary to identify all the
causes in order to establish the classification.
The symptoms allow of a division only into acute and chronic
mammitis. Careful examination of the general condition of the
patients will afterwards allow cases of primary mammitis to be
distinguished from secondary or symptomatic mammitis such as
occurs in tuberculosis. Finally, consideration of the conditions under
which a particular case of mammitis has appeared, and study of the
symptoms in detail (peculiarities of the milk, local temperature,
hardness of the tissues, œdematous infiltration, etc.) will in most
cases indicate whether the mammitis be parenchymatous or
interstitial.
This system really differs little from that adopted by Lucet in his
work on Mammitis.
The classification adopted in the following pages is as follows:—
Parenchymatous or
Primary galactogenous.
Acute Interstitial or lymphogenous.
Secondary or Hæmatogenous.
symptomatic. Galactogenous.
Mammitis
Simple.
Primary Parenchymatous.
Chronic Interstitial.
Parenchymatous.
Secondary
Interstitial.
We shall leave on one side everything concerning secondary
symptomatic mammitis, the study of which merges into that of the
general diseases from which it arises.
ACUTE MAMMITIS.
Causation. The general cause of acute mammitis, like that of
chronic mammitis, is infection by pathogenic organisms, whether
such organisms enter by the usual natural path, viz., the
galactophorous sinus and excretory apparatus, by the lymphatic
path, owing to some accidental injury, or, again, by the blood
circulation.
Infection of the lymphatics undoubtedly plays a part in superficial
and interstitial inflammations, and it is proved that certain
microorganisms may pass into the milk, as it has been proved that
they pass through the kidney.
But if infection is the determining cause, certain secondary
favouring influences must not be overlooked.
Thus lactation is an almost indispensable condition. It is true that
some cases of mammary inflammation apart from lactation have
been described, but they have been the result of violence, accidental
or mechanical.
Accumulation of milk in the udder (overstocking) has
unquestionably a certain influence in the large milk-yielding
animals, not because it directly produces inflammation, but because
milk then escapes spontaneously; and as the udder cannot be
entirely evacuated without external assistance, the entrance is kept
permanently open for the passage of germs, which are freely
transferred to the teat from the litter and surrounding objects.
Cold, or rather chills, also act in a complex manner, particularly by
disturbing vaso-motor control. Different forms of mechanical
violence, such as blows, crushing strains, wounds, etc., may
immediately and directly set up local or general inflammation.
Bacteriological investigation has proved that numerous and varied
microorganisms can be found in the milk or interstitial exudates in
cases of mammitis, but only a few special forms have been proved to
be specific: streptococcus of contagious mammitis of milch cows, and
micrococcus of contagious gangrenous mammitis of ewes (Nocard).
Pathology. The pathogenic results produced by infective
organisms depend on their number and power of reproduction, and
on the activity of their life products.
The most immediate and regular result of acute mammary
infection is coagulation of the milk within the udder by
decomposition of the lactose, and the formation of lactic or even of
butyric acid. The acini and excretory canals are dilated by coagula,
and can no longer expel their products of secretion, so that the
colonies of microorganisms develop there in full security. The active
epithelial cells undergo granular degeneration and disappear, whilst
the walls of the glands become infiltrated and large numbers of
leucocytes are poured forth around the glandular culs-de-sac.
The tissues being thus affected, the virulent organisms penetrate
from the acini into the interstitial tissue, and from this time onwards
the lesions become mixed.
Inversely, should infection originate in the lymphatic spaces, a
time arrives when the organisms make their way from the interstitial
tissue into the acini, with a similar result in the end.
The development of the lesions may be arrested or may pass on to
suppuration, or even gangrene, of the parenchymatous lobules. Cases
happen in which infection is so rapid and severe that the successive
stages cannot even be identified, and gangrene appears without any
preliminary stages at all. Luckily the commonest forms are less
serious.
Symptoms. Acute mammitis is characterised by its sudden
appearance, more or less acute general symptoms (dulness, fever,
and loss of appetite), and variable local symptoms. When the
practitioner is able to follow the development of the disease
throughout, he may sometimes distinguish well-marked signs, which
permit the two clinical varieties to be distinguished.
A. Interstitial Mammitis.—This form, which might perhaps
also be termed peri-mammitis when it primarily affects the
subcutaneous lymphatic spaces, has also received the names of
phlegmonous and lymphogenous mammitis.
It is characterised by alarming general symptoms, and particularly
by a rise in temperature of 2°, 4°, or even 5° Fahr., with all its
consequences, such as loss of appetite, stoppage of rumination,
acceleration of breathing and circulation, slight tympanites,
constipation, and by the thrusting of the hind limb on the affected
side away from the centre line. The animals groan when forced to
move.
These symptoms sometimes precede by a considerable interval the
appearance of the local changes, which consist in painful swelling of
one or two quarters, rarely of more.
The perimammary subcutaneous tissue is infiltrated, œdematous,
painful on palpation and preserves the imprint of the finger. The teat
is tense, swollen, very tender, and of reddish colour. In the grave
forms the swelling extends forwards under the abdomen in the
direction of the umbilicus, and backwards towards the perineum.
The local temperature is abnormally high, the secretion of milk in the
diseased gland is modified or checked, and sometimes this
phenomenon extends by reflex action to the neighbouring quarters,
although the latter may not themselves be affected. The
inflammation rarely extends from one quarter to another, because
the lymphatic plexuses do not anastomose (Fig. 237).
The animals lose appetite and fall away rapidly.
Resolution may occur after from five to eight days. By degrees all
the symptoms then become less marked. The appetite returns, pain
diminishes, the fever drops, and the lesions gradually disappear, but
the yield of milk rarely regains its former amount.
Suppuration may occur; sometimes a superficial subcutaneous
abscess forms, more rarely, a deep-seated, interstitial abscess,
originating in the connective tissue or lymphatic spaces. With a
superficial abscess, the local symptoms again revive to a slight
extent; these are present in a more marked degree where the abscess
is deep-seated. An extremely sensitive œdematous swelling forms,
the skin covering which is at some point of a deep-red tint, whilst
fluctuation gradually appears.
In cases of deep-seated abscess formation the general condition
becomes alarming; the affected quarter is tense throughout, hard
and very sensitive.
Deep-seated suppuration is difficult to detect, and exploratory
punctures with a fine needle may be necessary before the diagnosis
can be made.
Local or diffuse gangrene forms a rare complication. It is due to
the vessels of one or several glandular lobules becoming obliterated
or thrombosed.
Such a termination is indicated by extreme aggravation of the
general symptoms, feebleness of the heart and great weakness of the
patients, who fall into a condition of coma. Locally the udder
remains œdematous, the skin becomes of a blackish-violet colour,
whilst the local temperature falls and the animals die from
exhaustion and intoxication.
Parenchymatous Mammitis.—Parenchymatous mammitis
when mild is also termed catarrhal mammitis. It is in reality true
primary mammitis; interstitial being primarily and practically
perimammary lymphangitis.
In this case infection occurs through the teat, and may be localised
in the sinus or excretory apparatus, giving rise to galactophoritis, but
it usually extends to the acini. Inflammation of the mammary tissue
is therefore direct and primary. It rapidly extends, however, through
the glandular wall into the interstitial tissue, thus setting up (from
the anatomo-pathological standpoint) a mixed mammitis. Clinical
distinction between this form and interstitial mammitis is at first
easy.
The symptoms usually occur in the following order:—Swelling of
the affected quarter or quarters; appreciable increase in size and
sensitiveness; the presence at first of curdled milk in the
galactophorous sinus, then of clots mixed with slightly red tinged
serosity; complete cessation of the yield of milk, and suppuration in
the secreting portions of the gland.
The general symptoms appear only after the objective signs, and
vary greatly in intensity, according to the case. As in the interstitial
form, there may be marked fever, loss of appetite, cessation of
rumination, groaning, and difficulty in walking.
In some grave forms, where development is peracute, infection
spreads rapidly from the glandular to the interstitial tissue, and
subcutaneous, subabdominal, or perineal interstitial œdema occurs
secondarily.
The udder is turgid, tense, shining, and of reddish-violet colour in
places, as if a deep-seated abscess were developing.
Pressure on the galactophorous sinus causes the flow of reddish-
grey milk, sometimes fœtid or of gangrenous odour. The animals
seem exhausted, show signs of profound intoxication, are unable to
rise, and appear paralysed.
But besides these grave forms are others, in which the patients
seem scarcely to suffer: appetite is preserved and all the vital
functions are in full activity. Only the local signs are of importance.
This variability in the clinical symptoms of acute forms of
mammitis is entirely due to differences in the pathogenic infecting
organisms.
Parenchymatous mammitis may end in resolution in three to four
days, with progressive but slow return to the physiological condition.
This termination is announced by the gradual disappearance of all
the symptoms and the return of milk secretion. It is, however, quite
exceptional for the former condition to be fully restored, and in many
cases the affected quarter must be regarded as lost from the
physiological standpoint.
It gradually becomes hardened, sclerotic and atrophied.
Suppuration is very common. It attacks the galactophorous sinus,
the excretory canals, and even the acini. If obstructions occur in the
course of the collecting vessels, or if evacuation is not artificially
stimulated by milking, the pus collects in the depths of the gland,
and enormous diffuse abscesses may form at the expense of the
mammary tissue.
Circumscribed or diffuse gangrene, as a primary condition, is
rarer. Infective organisms rapidly invade even the depths of the
gland, the interstitial and subcutaneous tissue, and thrombosis due
to infection or intoxication occurs, followed by gangrene. Death
results from infection or intoxication.
Complications such as necrosis of the abdominal tunic, of the
fibrous tissue enveloping the mamma, and of the muscular layers on
the inner surface of the thighs, may occur in the suppurative forms.
Diagnosis. The diagnosis of acute mammitis is easy, and the
interstitial forms (mammary lymphangitis) can be distinguished
from the parenchymatous forms very early in the attack.
Careful examination suffices to differentiate between this
condition and mammary congestion or primary chronic mammitis.
The examination, however, must be much more thorough and
searching when a specific disease (such as tuberculous mammitis) is
in question.
Prognosis. The prognosis of acute mammitis is always grave,
whatever form the disease may assume, for, if the animal’s life is not
invariably endangered, its economic value is always affected.
Moreover, should superficial or deep-seated abscesses form,
prolonged suppuration may follow, resulting in loss of condition and
enormous depreciation.
Lesions. The lesions of interstitial mammitis are similar to those
of ordinary lymphangitis, the condition originating near the teat and
gradually extending to the layers of connective tissue between the
acini, mammæ, etc.
In the parenchymatous form the inflammation may remain partial,
and be localised in particular tracts of glandular tissue. The secreting
epithelium, when infected, exhibits cloudy swelling, becomes
loosened, and disappears; the margin of the gland and the interstitial
divisions become infiltrated with enormous numbers of white blood
corpuscles, and are the seat of suppurative processes which end in
the production of small acinous abscesses. By the union of
neighbouring abscesses large branching collections of pus are
produced, and lead to partial or total destruction of tracts of the
parenchyma, of the connective tissue divisions, vessels and
aponeuroses.
The abscess tends to break through the skin, which becomes
inflamed and ulcerated, or, when the microorganisms are of slight
virulence, the tissues may react, so that the abscess becomes
surrounded with a thick indurated wall, and finally encysted.
Treatment. Very numerous methods of treatment have been
proposed, an admission which, in itself, suggests that no perfect one
has been discovered. No infallible system, in fact, exists of arresting
the disease and restoring the parts to their normal condition.
From a prophylactic standpoint, mammitis can be avoided by
placing the animals under proper hygienic conditions, paying special
attention to cleanliness, avoiding overstocking, and treating
excoriations or injuries to the teat or udder as soon as they appear.
Once acute mammitis has developed, general and local treatment
must both be attempted.
The older practitioners were in the habit of bleeding from the
mammary or jugular vein. Since their time, however, objections have
been made to bleeding because acute mammitis has been proved to
be of an infectious character, and, therefore, it is undesirable to
lower the patients’ resisting power.
This reasoning, however, appears to be erroneous. Little by little
the advantages of bleeding, both in intoxications and infections, have
been recognised, and one thing at least is beyond dispute, namely, its
action on fever. Undoubtedly, it must not be resorted to without
judgment, nor should it be freely employed in debilitated animals;
but in well-nourished patients its effect on fever and on the
accompanying respiratory and circulatory disturbance is immediate.
We, therefore, recommend moderate bleeding from the jugular.
Bleeding from the mammary vein entails too great a risk of
infection to be commendable.
Purgatives and diuretics diminish or prevent accidents such as
intoxication and the complications resulting from temporary
suspension of the digestive function.
Local treatment is more or less efficacious in mammary infection.
To relieve pain and check infection it should be of an emollient and
antiseptic character. Ointments containing 10 per cent. of carbolic
acid, boric acid or iodine, or 12½ per cent. of camphor, opium or
belladonna, are of real service during the first stages, particularly of
mammary lymphangitis and interstitial mammitis.
Repeated applications of 10 per cent. carbolic glycerine have
similar advantages.
In the less acute forms originating in the parenchymatous tissue,
mild ointments of plumbic iodide, Goulard’s extract, or mercury may
also be used if precautions are taken to prevent the animals from
licking, and so poisoning themselves.
When the tendency to suppuration is marked, vesicants hasten the
development of the abscess and facilitate puncture. The most
commonly used are the 33 per cent. tartar emetic ointment or the 10
per cent. biniodide of mercury ointment.
If, on the other hand, the mammitis is of the interstitial type, with
severe subcutaneous œdema, extending over the belly and towards
the perineum, good results often follow deep firing in points over the
swollen region. The points should be widely spaced, venous branches
being avoided. In this way numerous ducts are formed by which the
toxic and septic liquid which causes the œdema is enabled to escape.
This method of treatment can be supplemented by the
simultaneous use of antiseptic ointments.
Finally, in mammitis of the parenchymatous type, where there is
no marked tendency to invade the interstitial tissue, the most
important point is to wash out the interior of the gland, and even the
acini as far as possible, with antiseptic fluids. Practically this is
difficult to effect, because such irrigation must be performed
aseptically, and cannot properly be left to the cowmen.
In current practice, therefore, one often has to be content with
stripping the udder every hour. Milk clots which accumulate in the
sinuses and galactophorous canals are broken down by soft pressure,
and withdrawn with more or less difficulty. By repeated milking they
are prevented from accumulating in the galactophorous sinus and
canals, a very important point. Neglect of this precaution enables the
colonies of microorganisms to develop uninterruptedly in the culs-
de-sac, whereupon the coagula formed of casein obstruct the
excretory channels and complications develop despite all external
treatment.
By repeated friction of the udder as in milking the advantages that
would be produced by washing out the gland from the direction of
the acini are secured, and thus the ascending infection is checked.
The diseased udder must always be emptied before making
antiseptic injections, which would otherwise be useless.
Should the practitioner decide to face the practical difficulties of
injections, he must take care that his instruments are aseptic; that
the solutions employed are always at or about bodily temperature;
that these solutions are incapable of irritating even tissues so tender
as the epithelium of the acini or of the galactophorous canals; and,
finally, that the drugs employed will not coagulate the milk within
the gland.
Bearing in mind these points, the practitioner will do well to
restrict himself to the use either of boiled water, physiological salt
solution (·9 per cent.); alkaline 3 per cent. solution of borate of soda;
or ·05 per cent. of fluoride of sodium. Every precaution having been
taken, from 12 to 20 ounces of liquid can be injected into each
quarter, according to its size. The solutions should be made to
penetrate as far as possible into all portions of the gland by gently
manipulating the parts, and should again be withdrawn in about a
quarter of an hour.
It must always be remembered that failure to observe the above
precautions may make matters worse instead of better, and therefore
that intra-mammary injections can only be of value when carried out
by a skilled person.
In otherwise hopeless cases there remains as a last resort total or
partial ablation of the mamma. This operation is advisable in cases of
diffuse gangrene, or of intense massive suppuration, where there is
imminent danger of death from infection.
Directions for its performance will be found in Möller and Dollar’s
“Regional Surgery” (uniform with the present volume), p. 454.
CONTAGIOUS MAMMITIS IN MILCH COWS.
Although its cause was unknown before the investigations of

Nocard and Mollereau in 1884, this disease is of very common
occurrence in England, in large dairies in the environs of Paris, and
is also seen, though more rarely, in Normandy, in Brie and the
Soissonnais, causing serious losses on account of its transmissibility.
It had been described in Germany by Gerlach as early as 1854, and
Kitt in 1885 recognised it as common, and proposed for it the title of
“contagious catarrhal agalaxia.” It also occurs in Denmark, Italy, and
England.
Contagious streptococcic mammitis of cows always assumes a
chronic form, during the course of which indurated centres appear,
varying in size between that of a hazel-nut and a walnut.
Causation. The cause is always to be found in contagion, the
disease being due to a streptococcus, which has been carefully
studied by Nocard. Its transmission from a diseased to a healthy
udder is explained by the fact that the milkers are careless as to
cleanliness, and thus directly convey the germs to healthy teats and
facilitate infection.
Symptoms. As in chronic mammitis, general symptoms are not
well marked, though some cases are ushered in with cough, slight
nasal discharge, and offensive diarrhœa. The first appreciable
indication is a change in the milk, which diminishes in quantity, and,
although normal to all appearance, coagulates rapidly if left
undisturbed. Infection has already taken place, although nothing can
be detected on examining the udder.
Next appears a nodule of hardened tissue above the teat. This
nodule is of rounded or ovoid shape, ill-defined towards its
periphery, and it becomes progressively enlarged without any sign of
acute inflammation. The milk becomes watery and of a bluish colour.
Microscopical examination reveals numerous streptococci. The
hardening process proceeds slowly. At the end of several months the
sclerosis may only have extended to one-third of the height of the
infected quarter. With the appearance of these lesions the character
of the milk again changes. It becomes yellowish in colour and fœtid,
and contains a fibrous reticulum, whilst its reaction is distinctly acid.
The lesions, which at first had been confined to one quarter,
successively extend to the others unless precautions are taken.
Lesions. The lesions consist in mammary sclerosis, with nodules
which progressively increase in size. This sclerosis originates in the
galactophorous canals, and extends first to the periphery, then to the
interstitial connective tissue; the latter undergoes hyperplasia and
confines within its tracts the true glandular elements, destroying
their secretory power. Locally, catarrhal mammitis exists.
The lesions can easily be recognised on microscopic examination,
and, when the section is suitably stained, numerous streptococci can
be detected in the acini, which are blocked with proliferating
epithelial cells. These lesions are due to the invasion of colonies of
microorganisms, which spread from below upwards.
The streptococcus causing this mammitis colours readily with
thionin and methylene blue. It can be cultivated in liquid and solid
media containing sugar or glycerine, but growth is impeded by the
presence of peptone or common salt. Under ordinary circumstances
the culture dies after some weeks, but if the acidity of the medium is
neutralised by the addition of powdered carbonate of lime, it
preserves its vitality for six or eight months. The culture when
injected into the udder of a healthy cow or she-goat reproduces the
disease. The microorganism is not pathogenic for any of the smaller
animals used for purposes of experiment.
Diagnosis and prognosis. The diagnosis is easy, the presence of
the sclerotic nodules being characteristic, whilst in doubtful cases a
microscopical examination can always be made.
The treatment should be prophylactic and curative.
Prophylactic treatment comprises disinfection of the milkers’
hands, which are the ordinary vehicles of contagion, and disinfection
of the cow’s udder. Diseased animals in a byre should be milked last
of all, and the milk should be destroyed.
Curative treatment is confined to local antiseptic injections. Warm
concentrated boric solution gives good results. The injections may be
repeated three or four times a day after milking, the liquid being left
for a certain time within the udder. In this way animals suffering
only from a slight attack may be cured, but when the disease is
already somewhat advanced injections lose their effect.
Injections of fluoride of sodium (·1 to ·5 per cent. strength) appear
to be much more effectual. Moussu claims to have cured by this
means several old-standing cases where all four quarters of the gland
were diseased.
These injections necessitate the same precautions as those above
indicated for securing perfect asepsis. In grave cases it is very
difficult to prevent the disease from extending in infected stables,
because the necessary precautions cannot be observed.
CHRONIC MAMMITIS.
Chronic inflammation of the udder may form a termination of

ordinary acute mammitis, or it may result from infection with
organisms of a less virulent type.
In cases of acute mammitis, where severe injury of the interstitial
tissue or mammary parenchyma has occurred, its physiological
function is partially destroyed. The circulation is disturbed, the
vessels undergo change, the layers of connective tissue are indurated
and sclerotic, the epithelial tissue is not fully restored, and chronic
inflammation of the udder persists.
Clinically, it is impossible to distinguish all the variations that may
occur, because the constituent tissues are all injured, and the disease
is of a mixed type, with very numerous variations.
Symptoms. When chronic mammitis follows the acute form its
onset is only indicated by gradual diminution in the signs of acute
inflammation. The appetite is regained, and all the important vital
functions are properly performed.
Nevertheless, it is possible to distinguish two different clinical
forms. In one, the secretion of milk is almost entirely suspended, the
udder becomes atrophied, shrivelled and sclerotic; the hardening
gradually continues, and the patients, being useless as milch cows,
can only be fattened for slaughter. The induration may be partial,
nodular, or diffused.
In the other form the udder is large, but the milk is replaced by a
purulent secretion which permeates the acini and galactophorous
canals. Although they eat well, the patients remain thin, and are with
difficulty fattened for slaughter.
The suppuration may be diffuse or local. In rarer cases it is
localised in the form of “cold abscess.”
Treatment. No treatment can perfectly restore the udder after
chronic mammitis with sclerosis and atrophy.
In the suppurating forms of chronic mammitis the morbid
secretion may be checked by internal irrigation of the udder and
antiseptic injections, but, as this treatment necessitates careful and
continued attention, it is usually out of the question.
If only one quarter is diseased the animal may be kept for milking
purposes, but where two or three quarters are attacked it should be
prepared for the butcher.
In cows suffering from chronic purulent mammitis of all four
quarters, Kroon suggests removing the teats in order to facilitate
fattening. The teats are removed with the bistouri or scissors, by
which means a large opening into the galactophorous sinus is
produced, through which the purulent secretion escapes freely and
continuously; the retention of pus and intoxication in consequence of
resorption are prevented and the animal can be fattened, which
would be difficult without the operation.
GANGRENOUS MAMMITIS OF MILCH EWES.
This disease occurs in different parts of France, and has also been
seen in Germany.
Causation. Lafosse in 1856 attributed it to the dark and dirty
condition of the sheep-folds, a cause which certainly contributes to
its propagation, though it is not the determining cause of the disease
itself. The latter is a specific micrococcus discovered in 1875 by
Rivolta, and thoroughly studied by Nocard in 1886 and 1887.
Symptoms. The course of the symptoms offers a certain analogy
to that of septic engorgements and interstitial mammitis or
mammary lymphangitis. As a rule only one gland is infected, but
generally symptoms at once appear, indicating an extremely
dangerous condition, viz., peracute mammitis. The patient suddenly
becomes dull and entirely loses appetite, rumination ceases and
respiration is short and jerky, although the bodily temperature does
not always rise to any marked extent.
Local symptoms soon develop. The udder assumes a violet-red tint
and becomes the seat of an erysipelatous swelling; the local
temperature rises, but as the disease progresses it gradually falls
again. Milk secretion ceases.
All these appearances rapidly become aggravated. The patient lies
down; the œdematous swelling extends to the belly and even to the
chest and thighs; the local temperature falls, indicating the
imminence of gangrene; the teat becomes contracted, and the pulse
is very frequent and almost imperceptible. From time to time the
animal grinds its teeth.
The bodily temperature next falls to 98° or even 96° Fahr. (37° or
36° C.), and the animal shows extreme prostration. The
subcutaneous swelling extends as far as the sternum in one direction
and the quarters and perineum in the other. The udder crackles
under the finger. Death occurs without a struggle.
All these symptoms follow as a rule in barely more than twenty-
four hours. Nevertheless, in certain cases, the disease lasts for three,
four or five days. Cases of spontaneous recovery are exceptional. The
gangrenous part may become delimited and slough away, leaving an
enormous suppurating wound, which slowly cicatrises. Even though
the animals survive, they never recover condition, but remain
weakly, so that, from a monetary standpoint, death would have been
preferable. Moreover, the lambs are starved and require a foster-
mother.
Lesions. Post-mortem examination reveals œdematous
infiltration of the udder and surrounding connective tissue, and
often extensive, diffuse gangrene. The serosity is of a reddish colour,
and sections of the diseased udder of a violet tint. The tissues of the
udder and the serous liquid contain the specific micrococcus.
It is very small, and stains readily by the Gram-Nicolle method. It
grows rapidly in liquid and solid media, liquefies gelatine, and
quickly renders neutral media alkaline.
The injection of a few drops of culture into the udder of a milch
ewe reproduces the typical disease. In any other species it is without
effect. Infection occurs through the open extremity of the teat, or the
medium of a wound, and the microorganism is so virulent that it
rapidly invades all the tissues.
Treatment. No antiseptic treatment appears capable of checking
the course of the disease.
Surgical treatment alone is of any value, and consists in ablation of
the udder, followed by antiseptic dressing. Only a portion of the
gland is removed: an elliptical incision is made, including the
diseased teat, the skin is then dissected free so as to form a flap; the
diseased tissue is isolated; last of all, the vessels are ligatured. The
consequences of operation are less grave than might be expected,
considering the size of the wound, which heals with fair rapidity.
Moussu has frequently practised this radical method of treatment
without losing a single case. The remaining portion of the udder
becomes hypertrophied, and is often quite capable of secreting
sufficient milk for the nourishment of one lamb.
GANGRENOUS MAMMITIS IN GOATS.
Goats suffer from a form of mammitis which presents symptoms

precisely similar as regards development and termination to that of
ewes. The disease occurs in a sporadic form in animals giving milk,
whatever their breed or the conditions under which they are kept. It
has been seen at Alfort, as well as at Lyons.
Moussu has seen it in an enzootic form in herds of milch goats
near Bizerta (Tunis), and considers that contagion results from kids
sucking healthy animals after having been suckled by diseased ones.
Fifty milch goats out of a total of three hundred were affected at the
time of Moussu’s visit, and two had already succumbed.
The diagnosis presents no difficulty.
The prognosis is very grave.
The treatment is precisely similar to that of gangrenous
mammitis of milch ewes, viz., ablation of the diseased udder.
Of the above-mentioned herd, twenty animals were operated on,
and all recovered without accident. Among the others treated by less
radical methods, such as scarifications, incisions, antiseptic
injections, etc., eight died. The only justifiable treatment, therefore,
is ablation.
CYSTS OF THE UDDER.
Cysts of the udder may assume one of two forms, milk or

galactocelous cysts and serous cysts; possibly the latter are only
hydatid cysts.
Both varieties are of the nature of retention cysts, and result from
accidental obliteration of a milk conduit, which has been obstructed
by coagulated casein, or from atresia due to contraction of inflamed
connective tissue. The acini are isolated and become dilated, the milk
undergoes changes in composition, the secretory epithelium
degenerates, and the cyst is produced.
The serous or milk cysts may vary considerably in size, and always
show a rapid tendency to suppuration.
The diagnosis is based on the detection of uniform fluctuation
without excessive sensibility, and can be confirmed by an exploratory
capillary puncture.
The prognosis is grave, for recovery can only occur after the
lining membrane of the cyst has been destroyed.
Treatment. Puncture followed by irrigation is insufficient,
whatever the nature of the cyst.
Free incision, or simple puncture with a bistoury, produces
suppuration within the cystic cavity, which continues until the lining
membrane is completely destroyed; but this takes a very long time.
Removal of the entire cyst, either with the bistoury or by tearing
through the surrounding connective tissue, is the best method of
treatment. The wound thus produced heals regularly and rapidly
under an antiseptic surgical dressing.
TUMOURS OF THE UDDER.
Tumours of the udder have been little studied in the larger

domestic animals, the reason being that immediately animals cease
to yield milk they are fattened and despatched to the butcher.
Clinically, therefore, these tumours are not of great practical
importance.
Without entering into general considerations of a pathological
anatomical character, by which different varieties of these tumours
are differentiated, we may say that they assume one of three different
forms. The first is sharply circumscribed, of clearly defined shape,
and easily separated from neighbouring tissues, to which it adheres
but slightly. Such tumours are benign, and have no tendency to
return after removal.
The second is ill-defined, very adherent, and appears to infiltrate
the surrounding tissue. It is malignant in character, is often
impossible to completely remove, returns after extirpation, and
infects neighbouring lymphatic glands.
Between these two varieties may be placed a third, occupying an
intermediate position as regards both its characteristics and gravity.
Practically a knowledge of the above facts is a sufficient guide in
dealing with lesions of this character.
Canalicular Papillomata.—There exists another variety of
tumours which is of much more frequent occurrence, and which is
apt to cause mistakes. This variety consists of inter-canalicular
papillomata.
These show no sign of their existence on external examination of
the diseased udder, and can be diagnosed only by reasoning based on
the signs observed.
They are of very small size, and grow from the internal wall of the
galactophorous sinus or excretory canal. They increase in length,
finally extending for some distance along the sinus, where they
remain unrecognised until some external manifestation arouses
suspicion as to their existence.
Under the mechanical contraction due to milking they easily
become excoriated, and their existence is then suggested almost
solely by the fact that the milk is tinted with blood, for palpation of
the udder very seldom gives more than negative results.
The diagnosis is always doubtful. The prognosis is grave,
because it is impossible to remove the tumour, which is often deeply
placed within the udder. There is no curative treatment.
VERRUCOUS PAPILLOMATA OF THE UDDER.
In cows suffering from cutaneous papillomata the udder is often

covered with a varying number of little sessile warts, which are
spread over a considerable surface, are very sensitive, and bleed at
the lightest touch. Milking is thus rendered extremely painful and
difficult; the animals struggle, kick, and become dangerous.
The condition is extremely troublesome, and in spite of every
precaution the milk is always soiled.
The best method of treatment consists in removing the warts
individually with fine, sharp-bladed curved scissors.
The animals must be firmly secured, if necessary cast, and the
operator should avoid removing more of the skin covering the udder
than is absolutely necessary. The bleeding which follows is trifling,
and stops of itself. After washing the parts with an antiseptic
solution, the little wounds may be powered with a mixture in equal
proportions of tannin and boric acid.
CHAPTER VI.
DISTURBANCE IN THE MILK SECRETION AND CHANGES IN THE MILK.
Changes in the milk are so common and play so important a part

in the milk industry that it is absolutely necessary to mention the
more important, the country veterinary surgeon being frequently
consulted on this point.
The udder acts as a natural emunctory, just like the kidney, by
which are eliminated, in consequence of special selective properties,
certain natural principles (the active principles contained in the
forage and other food, vegetable alkaloids, etc.), drugs (alcohol), and
poisons (nicotine). This physiological peculiarity explains the
influence of changes of diet on the composition of the milk in
mothers and on the condition of their offspring. In the human
species it also explains congenital alcoholism in children, and a
number of diseases whose cause was formerly unknown.
Agalaxia.—This term implies a temporary or definite arrest of the
milk secretion. In many instances it represents nothing more than a
disturbance in the physiological function of the gland, but in others it
forms a true diseased condition.
Thus it is beyond dispute that psychical influences may produce
disturbance in this respect. Temporary suspension in the secretion as
a consequence of removal of the offspring from its mother, especially
when the young animal has been sucking for several days or weeks, is
a fact very well known to all breeders.
Under ordinary circumstances, however, the reasons are quite
different, and when the secretion of milk is diminished or suppressed
it is due to the ingestion of plants, substances, or drugs which check
the secretion of milk. All the solanaceæ (belladonna, hyoscyamus,
stramonium, woody nightshade, etc.), certain umbelliferæ
(hemlock), colchicum, etc., have this effect.
As to agalaxia of a true pathological character, it occurs in
debilitating and grave diseases, and sometimes follows certain
contagious forms of mammitis complicated with sclerosis of the
udder (infectious agalaxia of goats).
Diagnosis. The diagnosis of agalaxia presents no difficulty.

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The Empire’s New Clothes: The Myth of

the Commonwealth Philip Murphy

New Media and the Artaud Effect Jay Murphy

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The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium Anthony

Violence, Colonialism and Empire in the Modern World

The Favor Nora Murphy

The West Versus the Rest and The Myth of Western

Why? The Purpose of the Universe Philip Goff

The Discursive Construction of Blame: The language of

‘Mercurial, maverick and mischievous, Murphy writes as an outsider-

The Empire’s New Clothes

The Myth of the Commonwealth

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

© Oxford University Press 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

You must not circulate this work in any other form

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ISBN 9780190911157 (print)

1. “What Does the Commonwealth Mean to You?” 1

referendum on British membership of the European Union. As

22 October 4,004 BCE. In a similarly incongruous application of

tive illusions by a range of human frailties—prominent among

own very personal view of the Commonwealth, the project

“WHAT DOES THE COMMONWEALTH MEAN

eyes were really opened to the value of the Commonwealth during

is a prominent symptom. As we shall see later on, this has

did serve an important purpose: to justify the West imposing its

heretical cry of dissent. Porter was a highly respected historian of

however imperfectly, Porter had touched on an important truth.

surviving meaning, if any, of the Empire/Commonwealth con-

of post-war imperial enthusiasts. They could reassure themselves

ter made it his business to ‘educate’ me. And educate me he

close personal or family associations with the now Commonwealth

As Karl Marx definitely never said, history on the telly always

unlovely modernist edifice still visible today from Kensington

sance under David Cameron as minister of state at the Foreign

really, splattery-crazy on canvas. It’s far less obvious how the

and slightly dysfunctional nature of the ‘Commonwealth net-

the Commonwealth and to its own imperial past. They do so by

MEET THE FAMILY

A familiar analysis of the failure of the Commonwealth, and a

of the Secretariat. David McDowell, a former New Zealand dip-

British were, at best, grudging participants. It began during a

into a ‘Commonwealth of Nations’. As Mark Mazower has noted,

(which became a province of Canada in 1949). In particular, it

by developing countries from South East Asia, Africa, the

Kingdom and the Commonwealth must realize now that even if

such second-class citizenship was unlikely to be attractive to the

mined by Indian non-alignment. The death-blow came with the

to a common Crown. In the ’thirties after the Ottawa Conference,

The Birth of the Secretariat

of the twentieth century, Commonwealth leaders had met

creation of a ‘central clearing house’ in London to coordinate the

CONTAGIOUS MAMMITIS IN MILCH COWS.

Although its cause was unknown before the investigations of

Chronic inflammation of the udder may form a termination of

GANGRENOUS MAMMITIS IN GOATS.

Goats suffer from a form of mammitis which presents symptoms

CYSTS OF THE UDDER.

Cysts of the udder may assume one of two forms, milk or

TUMOURS OF THE UDDER.

Tumours of the udder have been little studied in the larger

1. “What Does the Commonwealth Mean to You?” 1