CAPÍTULO I. DISEÑO TEÓRICO
1.5 Hipótesis
1.5.2 Objeto de estudio
Closely related to the use of linguistic tropes for the maintenance of influence is the use of hospitality as a key Commonwealth ritual. As the work of Ruth Craggs showed, hospitality is a ubiquitous part of diplomatic life. Through a study of post-war Commonwealth relations, Craggs demonstrated that “the idea of hospitality and its material practice and circulation can become a powerful geopolitical performance and ideological
trope”83. Hospitality was an important feature of the ‘modern’ Commonwealth and
performance of elite Commonwealth geopolitics. The various entities surveyed above dealt with this Empire–Commonwealth hospitality question in various ways. According to Eliza Riedi, the Victoria League which was given renewed impetus by the Boer War, turned its attention to hospitality and education shortly thereafter. There was a widespread feeling among those involved in imperial affairs that the hospitality offered to British visitors in the colonies was not reciprocated adequately in Britain. Riedi wrote that there were fears that “such negligence might have political consequences in an age of rising colonial
81 Brysk et al., op cit., p. 274.
82 Mark Crinson, ‘Imperial Story-lands: Architecture and Display at the Imperial and Commonwealth Institutes’,
Art History, Vol. 22.1 (March 1999), p. 120.
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nationalism”84. Since there was no possibility of financial help from the British government,
“the task of ‘imperial hospitality’ devolved upon the ladies of the Victoria League”85. The
Victoria League had a Ladies’ Empire Club ostensibly for such social purposes. The Spectator urged the formation of a corresponding club for men, arguing that “A club, a first- class club . . . to which all good Colonial clubs should be affiliated” would provide a “genuine social meeting-ground of Englishmen and Colonials” to enable the colonial visitor to see that “behind the stolidity of the average Briton there is a real and Imperial
brotherhood”86. Nicholas White observed of the imperial–Commonwealth businesses that
“frequent dinners and receptions were a feature of ‘gentlemanly capitalist’ society”87. David
McIntyre described that the Unofficial Commonwealth Relations Conferences opened with “some ceremony and wide-ranging key-note speeches” with the 1938 (Australia) and 1959 (New Zealand) delegates welcomed by the respective Prime Ministers, and the message of the Prime Minister in the 1954 UCRC (Pakistan) delivered by the Foreign Minister. The London UCRC, held at Chatham House on the eve of victory in 1945 amidst the rubble, ruins and reminders of WWII, saw some of the “grandest socialising”. Chatham House “managed to lay on some of the old imperial ‘duchessing’” in spite of the “occasional noise of an exploding rocket bomb”. McIntyre discovered that the “delegates had a dinner at Claridges, hosted by Lord Kemsley and addressed by Viscount Cranbourne [sic], the secretary of state for Dominions affairs [sic]. A reception at the Dorchester was hosted by the Dominions Office. Each night there were dinners at Chatham House addressed by British political leaders Oliver Lyttleton, Ernest Bevin, Oliver Stanley, Leo Amery and Richard Law, as well as the Dutch, French and Belgian ambassadors. Towards the end, the delegation leaders were
received by the King at Buckingham Palace”88. Boking-Welch’s research on the RCS,
discussed in Chapter 2, showed that the RCS also attached importance to hospitality and tried to create a comfortable space through its bars, restaurants, lectures and receptions for interaction between visitors from Britain and the multi-racial Commonwealth. Craggs also noted that “it became important for the [RCS] to highlight the multiracial, as well as multinational, character of its membership and events” and “[a]lthough relatively few
84 Eliza Riedi, ‘Women, Gender, and the Promotion of Empire: the Victoria League, 1901-1914’, The Historical
Journal, Vol 45.3 (September 2002), p. 582.
85 Ibid. 86 Ibid., p. 583.
87 Nicholas J. White, ‘The business and the politics of decolonization: the British experience in the twentieth
century’, Economic History Review, Vol. LIII.3 (2000), p. 545.
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Africans frequented the Society until the end of the 1950s, their presence was vital in the
performance of good Commonwealth relations”89.
Could the ICC have been far behind? Going further back to the closing years of the nineteenth century, Lord Harris became President of the MCC upon his return from India in 1895 after his stint as Governor of Bombay. James Bradley found that thereafter, Australia and South Africa were incorporated into the MCC’s scheme of things on an equal footing with the English counties. When first-class touring teams from the Empire, in keeping with the long-time custom were invited to dinner at Lord’s, “special guests were now invited,
often the Colonial Secretary or someone with imperial interests”90. Fast-forward to the peak
of decolonisation and Boking-Welch, in her research, came across records of the “1969 Annual General Meeting of the Cambridgeshire branch [of the RCS which] revealed that so much had been spent on a party for the visiting Australian cricket team, in the hope of attracting new members, that it had been impossible to afford much else for the rest of the year.”91
Cricket, then, was clearly an area of Commonwealth relations in which ‘metropolitan’ politicians, imperial–Commonwealth societies and cricketers intersected in the performance of this elaborate ritual of hospitality and ‘good Commonwealth relations’. Court Circulars in newspaper archives abound with announcements of such events: “British Sportsman’s Club: Luncheon in honour of Indian cricket team, Major-General the Earl of Athlone presiding,
Savoy Hotel, 1”92; “Overseas League: Reception to welcome the Indian cricket team, 6-
7.30”93; “London Mosque: Reception to the Indian Cricket Team, 63, Melrose Road, 4.30”94;
“East India Association: Reception to meet the Indian cricket team, Imperial Institute,
4.30”95; an Institute of Journalists luncheon for visiting Australian cricket team96; the
England and Australia teams and members of the ICC presented to the King and Queen at
89 Ruth Craggs, ‘Hospitality in geopolitics and the making of Commonwealth relations’, op cit., p. 11. 90 James Bradley, ‘The MCC, society and empire: a portrait of cricket's ruling body, 1860–1914’, The
International Journal of the History of Sport, Vol 7.1 (1990), p. 19.
91 Boking-Welch, pp. 76-77.
92 The Times, Wednesday, May 01, 1946, p. 5. 93 The Times, Thursday, May 02, 1946, p. 5. 94 The Times, Saturday, May 11, 1946, p. 5. 95 The Times, Wednesday, June 19, 1946, p. 5. 96 The Times, Wednesday, April 21, 1948, p. 5.
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Lord’s during the 1948 Ashes97; “Lord Home, Minister for Commonwealth Relations [and
future Prime Minister of Britain], entertains the Australian cricket tourists at luncheon at
Dorneywood, Buckinghamshire.”98; Joint Empire Societies (Royal Empire Society, Victoria
League, Overseas League, Dominions Fellowships Trust) luncheon for visiting New Zealand
cricketers at Victoria League House, Chesham Place99. A Court Circular in 1961 announced
that “The Joint Commonwealth Societies held a reception last evening at Victoria League House, Chesham Place, S.W., for the members of the Australian cricket test team. The guests were received by Earl de la Warr (chairman, Joint Commonwealth Societies Conference). Those present included: Sir Cuthbert Ackroyd (chairman, Victoria League), Sir Angus Gillan (chairman, Royal Overseas League), Sir John Hobbs, Mr. B.A. Barnett (Australia), Mr. S.C. Griffith (assistant secretary, MCC), Mr. J. Langridge, Mr. R.W.V. Robbins [sic], Mr. H.
Sutcliffe, Mr. E.W. Swanton, and cricketers from English counties.”100 Such gestures in
England were reciprocated by other members as evidenced by the minutes of the 1964 ICC meeting which read: “Chair [Gubby Allen] thanked [His Highness] Maharaj Gaekwad of Baroda and M.A. Chidambaram [ICC representatives of India] for their generous hospitality at the party they had given the previous evening to the representatives attending this
Conference and others.”101 E.W. Swanton’s biography of Gubby Allen reveals that Allen and
his companions benefited from Chidambaram’s hospitality in the form of a luncheon in
Bombay when they stopped there en route to Australia in the winter of 1962-63102.
Hospitality was also considered the high-point of any cricket tour to South Africa (open, of course, only to all-white teams). Colin Cowdrey reportedly described a South African tour as
a “safari by Rolls Royce” with “overwhelming hospitality”103. Hospitality also played an
important role in elevation to test status in some cases, as demonstrated by Sri Lanka’s rise from an Associate Member in 1965 to full test-status in 1981. Michael Roberts traced how a combination of international cricket scandals, suspected racism, internal power struggles within the Board of Control for Cricket in Sri Lanka (hereafter, BCCSL) and ethnic tension constantly thwarted Sri Lanka’s efforts to achieve Test status. Resolving to address this once and for all in 1981, the new BCCSL President Gamini Dissanayake launched a charm
97 The Times, Tuesday, July 20, 1948, p. 4: “They had tea in the committee room, and members of the Imperial
Cricket Conference were presented to them.”
98 The Times, Saturday, July 21, 1956, p. 7. 99 The Times, Wednesday, April 30, 1958, p. 12. 100 The Times, Wednesday, April 26, 1961, p. 16. 101 ICC Minutes: July 18, 1964.
102 E.W. Swanton, op cit., p. 280.
103 Bruce Murray & Christopher Merrett, Caught Behind: Race and Politics in Springbok Cricket, University of
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offensive. Helpfully, he was extremely well-connected, held political positions and oversaw massive development projects. Roberts wrote that “With the help of a leading Sri Lankan firm, Maharajas, as well as a British company involved in the [Mahaweli Development Board] projects, namely Balfour Beatty, he arranged for a number of impressive functions in London at which ICC and MCC officials were treated royally. Moreover . . . Dissanayake had the social cachet to articulate a strong case when the ICC officials assembled in late July
1981.”104 Sri Lanka went on to secure Test status in a unanimous vote of the ICC delegates
on July 22, 1981. Roberts added further that Joe Solomon, manager of the West Indian squad that toured Sri Lanka in 1979, “was not only impressed by the level of cricket, but also captivated by the conventional forms of homely Sri Lankan hospitality marshalled by the Sri
Lankan officials”105. The corresponding footnote in Roberts’s chapter is also worth
reproduction: “At a relaxed gathering for dinner at Bandula de Silva’s home, Solomon noted that he had never experienced such a moment during their extended stay in India (personal
communication from Bandula de Silva)” [sic]106.
Craggs succinctly summed up the argument implied here that “[t]hese examples should be understood as part of a wider suite of sites and performances of Commonwealth hospitality, from tea parties in private homes for Commonwealth students in London, to
student hostels, royal tours, youth expeditions and exchanges taking place in this period”107.
Taken together, the linguistic tools discussed in the previous section and hospitality discussed here highlights “the formal, staged and visible performances and the informal practices of hospitality through which the geopolitics of Commonwealth relations were made and
maintained”108 at all levels in the Commonwealth. Craggs added further that “these
hospitable occasions are more often mundane, if well provisioned, events at which to
underline status and demonstrate connections”109. They also create an “image of the guests
conversing together work[ing] to present a vision of the Commonwealth as polite, welcoming
and friendly”110, in spite of irreconcilable differences expressed in private and public. These
104 Michael Roberts, ‘Landmarks and Threads in the Cricketing Universe of Sri Lanka’, in Jon Gemmell & Boria
Majumdar, eds., Cricket, race and the 2007 World Cup, Routledge (2008), p. 122. As Roberts noted though, this “devious groundwork” laid to secure Test status must not overshadow achievements of successive Sri Lankan cricket teams in its run-up.
105 Ibid.
106 Ibid., p. 129 (footnote 51).
107 Ruth Craggs, ‘Hospitality in geopolitics and the making of Commonwealth relations’, p. 10. 108 Ibid., p. 15.
109 Ibid., p. 6. 110 Ibid., p. 12.
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gestures could, therefore, indicate genuine or superficial friendliness, intimacy, familiarity; regardless, “these public displays of welcome, and small, informal, gestures of conviviality [were] important in the construction, negotiation and contestation of geopolitical relations”111.
Location was equally important to these ‘performances’. London was the imperial centre and hence in the thick of political, military and economic networks within the Empire. Although they had interests spread over the Empire–Commonwealth, the various imperial– Commonwealth entities discussed at the beginning of this chapter were either run out of or headquartered in London. London was portrayed as a grand cosmopolitan welcoming city that acted as host and epicentre of the Commonwealth.
The ICC was no different. It may be argued that ICC meetings were to the ICC what the Prime Ministers’ Meetings were to the Commonwealth. As discussed in Chapter 3, in 1955 (Pakistan) and in 1958 (India, though withdrawn), suggestions were made towards decentralisation of ICC meetings through a rotation of venues. Pakistan offered itself as a host in 1955. India, after presumably having entered this topic on the agenda for the meeting, withdrew it during the 1958 meeting, conceding Lord’s as the appropriate headquarters in
view of its historical status112. In any case, such attempts never really gained strength. The
unrelenting proselytisation of Lord’s as the ‘home’ and guardian of cricket, its laws and ‘Spirit’, and the unquestioned deference to its history meant that Lord’s, and hence London, remained the headquarters of the ICC and played a vital ceremonial and political role in its scheme of things.
This fits in well with what Ruth Craggs also observed of London and the political Commonwealth. “Imperial visions of the city produced practices of hospitality and welcome
through which the idea of the ‘mother country’ could be sustained.”113 Equally, hosting of
important gatherings is a significant function. According to Craggs, “[h]osting a summit provides chairing rights but also many informal opportunities to direct the discussion, and
111 Ibid., p. 25.
112 Whether this withdrawal was in lieu of the perceived ‘climb-down’ by England, Australia and South Africa
on the voting issue in 1958 is something about which one can only speculate in the absence of more evidence.
113 Ruth Craggs, ‘The Commonwealth Institute and the Commonwealth Arts Festival: Architecture,
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leisure opportunities, of guests . . . Hosting international conferences allows not only individual politicians, but also countries and cities to perform their own identities to a global public.”114
Thus, the political geography of the ICC and the Commonwealth conveys much information of interest to the historian. Interestingly, while power in cricket remained centred in London for a very long time, the political Commonwealth moved quicker through the creation of new Commonwealth machinery and CHOGMs. Stuart Mole was of the opinion that “It was not size which proved decisive in moving on from the intimate gatherings in Downing Street but a growing feeling that an association of equal nations must be free to
meet, at least theoretically, in any part of its domain.”115 The specially-convened
Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Meeting in Lagos in 1966 was the first to be held outside
Britain116. This set in motion a pattern of rotating the CHOGM between the five regions of
the Commonwealth, a practice that has since become entrenched in Commonwealth governance. Mole quoted former Commonwealth Secretary-General, Sir Shridath ‘Sonny’ Ramphal that “Nothing would more effectively project the modern Commonwealth as an association of equals than these high-profile gatherings in urban centres across the world. The old Anglocentric Commonwealth had passed into history, replaced by an association with as
many centres as peoples.”117 The UCRCs had already begun such a rotation and moved
between Canada (1933), Australia (1938), the UK (1945), Canada (1949), Pakistan (1954)
and New Zealand (1959)118. The 1961 conference of the Commonwealth Press Union was
hosted by India and Pakistan and a follow-up event in 1965 was held in the West Indies. Remarkably, in the 1961 conference held away from Britain and the white dominions for the first time, the CPU acknowledged the complex and multi-racial nature of the Commonwealth
and the Anglo-centric nature of some notions previously taken for granted119. It had
originally been hoped that the Commonwealth Arts Festival of 1965 would be held outside Britain. Director-General Ian Hunter explained that “we wanted it to grow out of the Commonwealth rather than to be imposed upon it”. In the end, after discussions with eminent
114 Ruth Craggs, ‘Hospitality in geopolitics and the making of Commonwealth relations’, op cit., p. 24. 115 Mole, p. 535.
116 Britain, in any case, would have been an unpopular choice among Afro–Asian members at this point
because of the Rhodesian crisis.
117 Stuart Mole, ‘‘Seminars for statesmen’…’, op cit., p. 536. 118 McIntyre, ‘UCRCs…’, p. 597.
119 Denis Cryle, ‘The Press Union at the End of Empire: Anglo-Australian Perspectives, 1946–1965’, Journalism,
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personalities from the Commonwealth such as Vincent Massey, Indira Gandhi and Robert
Menzies, Britain emerged as the venue of choice for practical reasons120. The Spectator
speculated that “The next Commonwealth Arts Festival will be based somewhere else –
possibly India.”121 Not only did the Empire Press Union change its name to Commonwealth
Press Union as early as 1950, but there was also according to Denis Cryle, “some evidence that the hierarchical nature of the Press Union itself, traditionally dominated by Britain and its press dynasties, diminished, as its regular conferences and forums became less grandiose, and the changing rhetoric of the Commonwealth shifted diplomacy away from London and the centre of empire towards the periphery, where distant centres like Australia and India
assumed renewed importance”122.
Evidently, this was not the case in the ICC. It was only in January 1991 that an ICC
meeting was held away from England for the first time (in Melbourne)123. However, though
rooted in London, the ICC was impacted greatly by developments in the West Indies (felling of the white minority hold over captaincy; the federation and its collapse), South Asia (partition; government policies towards South African cricket) and South Africa (apartheid). Lord’s in London was forced to acknowledge and respond to changes in all of these nodal points in the Empire–Commonwealth. More confusingly for London in general, on the one hand, official hospitality and the idea of a ‘People’s Commonwealth’ were observed as an elaborate ritual and yet on the other hand, the vision of welcome jarred with the increasingly hostile discourse around immigration from the ‘new’ Commonwealth.