Sir, How sad to see the Commonwealth Institute (Register and letters, June 19) back in the firing line for demolition. I was involved in keeping it going through a crisis a generation ago. Little seems to have changed.
The building itself I leave to the architects, but the institute’s mission is something else. Neither ministers nor the Foreign Office, nor the Commonwealth Secretariat ever “got” it. For generations the institute could have been a centre for British youth to explore the sources of our multicultural Britain, and for maintaining links with the new nations which have emerged from the empire, and from which many of them come.
It never was: the FCO and Treasury saw it as a financial liability, while the education and culture ministries did not recognise it as an asset or a liability — not quite a museum, and no real slot in the curriculum.
In the face of our reluctance, other Commonwealth countries understandably saw no reason to take it on. It did not fit with their trade promotion or tourism agendas. They and the Commonwealth Secretariat rightly saw its prime focus as being the British, but our governments largely found it an embarrassment.
It is a disgrace that London does not have a centre dedicated to explaining and understanding the sources of the complex ethnic and cultural mix that is 21st-century Britain, and supporting the continuing cultural and personal links that will affect our society for at least several generations more.
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The scope should go back beyond the post-imperial era, to the hard history of slavery and the triangular trade, of the East India Company, of the Australian penal colonies. It could include the achievements of the colonial administrators and medical services, the huge contributions of the imperial armed forces and the development of global trade and industrial technology.
It could provide a venue for continuing artistic and cultural exchange: as a location for exchanges between the religious traditions; or as a concert venue for soca, or bhangra, or Aussie country bands; or as a site for the supporters of the four Commonwealth teams now in the World Cup.
If the building has to go, then the site and the mission must be retained and renewed. It could be redeveloped as a modern facility with modern tools to help us and our children to understand our complex past.
A new institute in London, in time for our Olympic visitors, would be an objective worth campaigning for.
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CLIVE STITT
Head,
Commonwealth Co-ordination Department at the FCO, 1989-93
London SE1