Will Thatcher Melt on S. Africa? : ‘Rift’ With Queen Is Not Issue; Future of Commonwealth Is

Whether Great Britain imposes some further economic sanctions may not have a critical effect on South Africa. But the issue has already had a dramatic effect on Britain. It has brought on a crisis with the Commonwealth and also speculation about the possibility of a constitutional crisis affecting Queen Elizabeth II.

Every other member of the Commonwealth wants more economic sanctions to be imposed than the minuscule measures agreed to by the Commonwealth heads of government last October in Nassau. But Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher believes that sanctions are unlikely to be effective, that if they do work they will hurt most the blacks in South Africa whom they are designed to help, and that it is much better to seek an end to apartheid through negotiation.

So she has persuaded the European community to send the British foreign secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, on a diplomatic mission to seek the release of Nelson Mandela, an end to the banning of the African National Congress and a start to meaningful dialogue in South Africa.

But few people expect Sir Geoffrey to be able to persuade President Pieter W. Botha. If he is unsuccessful, then demands for further sanctions will reach a crescendo at a meeting of seven Commonwealth members in London early next month.

If Britain can neither produce substantial diplomatic progress nor agree to further measures against South Africa, then some countries may withdraw from the Commonwealth. There are fears that the organization could break up, an anxiety that has been sharpened by the numerous withdrawals from the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh.

All this has distressed the queen, who bears the title of “head of the Commonwealth” as well as queen of the United Kingdom and a number of other member countries. She is known to value highly her Commonwealth role, to be sensitive to racial issues and to be concerned that South Africa could be the issue that splits the Commonwealth apart.

This has fed speculation of a rift between her and Thatcher, and there has been much talk of a conflict between her roles as head of the Commonwealth and queen of Britain.

As queen she can express publicly only the views that are acceptable to ministers, and must keep above the political battle. But as head of the Commonwealth she may feel impelled, so it has been said, to use her influence in favor of a course of action that would hold the Commonwealth together.

A report in London’s Sunday Times went further. Quoting unnamed close advisers to the queen, it said that she believed that the Thatcher government lacks compassion toward the less privileged in British society, that she feared that the miners’ strike had damaged the country’s social fabric and that she had misgivings about the decision to allow American bases in Britain to be used for the raid on Libya.

For the queen to hold private views, whatever they may be, presents no constitutional difficulty. The traditional definition of her function includes the right to be consulted, to encourage and to warn, and she could hardly offer warnings if her opinions never differed from those of her prime minister.

But all this must be done in private. The queen is a symbol of unity and continuity, from one prime minister to another and from one set of policies to another. She could not fulfill this role if she were to make political statements, or even to authorize leaks of her political views. She would then be tarnished by controversy.

That applies equally when she is acting as head of the Commonwealth. She may speak publicly of her hopes for unity, but there would soon be complaints from one member and then another if she were to indicate publicly the policies on which she wanted them to unite.

The distinction that needs to be drawn is not between her roles as queen and as head of the Commonwealth but between what she may appropriately say in private and in public. The assumption must be that this was an unauthorized leak, whether accurate or not. Only if that assumption were unfounded would there be any kind of constitutional crisis.

What Thatcher needs to worry about is not a constitutional but a diplomatic challenge. Unless Sir Geoffrey is unexpectedly successful in his diplomatic mission, it is almost certain that Thatcher will be prepared to go along with some further measures against South Africa.

These will stop well short of comprehensive economic sanctions, but at this stage there is no general demand from other Commonwealth members for such measures. There ought to be a basis for compromise.

But Thatcher has spoken so critically of sanctions in general terms that she may find it hard to persuade other Commonwealth leaders that the measures that she would then be prepared to contemplate would be worth having. That would require diplomatic finesse, which is not always Thatcher’s strongest quality. It is the future of the Commonwealth rather than the future of South Africa that is now at the heart of the sanctions debate in Britain.