A message from the Chair
Officially the centenary of The Round Table journal (started in the Edwardian era) does not start until 2010. But our preparations, as you can see from our website, are running on apace.
And I thought it would be good to provide a monthly update for readers and supporters of our journal, starting in July 2009 after my re-election for a final year as Chair of the editorial advisory board, (known since the early twentieth century as the Moot).
Richard Bourne
View the messages by selecting any of the links below:
September 2009
The Commonwealth moves in a biennial cycle, and diplomats and lobbyists are now gearing up for the leaders' summit in Port of Spain from 27 to 29 November, 2009. Old-timers regret the cutting back of the length of time that leaders have together, but most of them hate to spend too long away from home, and there are more and more competing international meetings.
This time the meeting, which will be chaired by Patrick Manning, Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, will be taking place under the shadow of the international economic crisis, and the climate summit in Copenhagen in December. It is only the third meeting of Commonwealth Heads in the Caribbean - the last was the confrontational meeting in the Bahamas in 1985, over how to combat South African apartheid. No-one expects this one to be so feisty, but with the Commonwealth you can never tell when a storm may appear out of nowhere, and one must record that the recent summit of the Americas, also in Port of Spain, concluded without an agreed statement.
Prior to the political meeting there will be a series of civil society gatherings in the Commonwealth Peoples Forum, though these will not be on the scale of those in Kampala in 2007. And, for the Round Table, our centenary celebrations will kick off with the launch of a book of essays on the modern Commonwealth, edited by James Mayall of Cambridge. In conjunction with Tim Shaw of the Institute of International Relations at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine's, we will be running a small conference on the issues raised on 27 November. This will be followed by an invitation-only dinner to be addressed by Sir Shridath Ramphal, Commonwealth Secretary-General from 1975-1990, and one of our centenary patrons.
I myself have some experience of lobbying the Commonwealth Heads, and this time have been working with a fellow Round Tabler, Dr Mark Collins, Director of the Commonwealth Foundation, to try and persuade them of the need to safeguard marine fisheries. This is a classic Commonwealth issue, by virtue of expertise and geography. Only six members are landlocked, the majority are islands, and countries like India, Nigeria and Canada have long sea coasts and major fishery interests. In "From Hook to Plate: the State of Marine Fisheries", edited by the two of us (£16 from the Commonwealth Foundation), we argue that depletion is serious, but not irreversible. We are calling for the Commonwealth to take a political and scientific lead. There are not many other issues so obviously suited to cooperative Commonwealth action in the 21st century.
PS I have just heard the worrying news that Samoa has been hit by a tsunami in the Pacific. Prue Scarlett, the Round Tabler who has been Samoan consul in the UK, played a huge role in fundraising for relief after the 1990s hurricane there.
Richard Bourne