We are a private organisation and lobby group which exists to promote closer economic and cultural relationships between members of the Commonwealth of Nations.
Our primary goal is the pursuit of closer co-operation between the core Commonwealth countries of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK (CANZUK)1.
In addition we believe the Commonwealth as a whole should work more closely together to promote democracy and free and fair trade and to argue for our shared interests on the world stage.
We also believe there is room to extend the membership of the Commonwealth beyond its current borders.
A United CANZUK
The countries of CANZUK are drawn together by a common past, culture, language, institutions, political processes and ideals. Of course we all have our own unique circumstances and identities, but we also share an overwhelming amount in common.
We are all successful Westminster Democracies. Most of our laws and customs but also our beliefs and values are the same. We are also wealthy Western countries with very similar levels of national income per head and many common insitutions binding us together. We share not only membership of the Commonwealth but also a number of defence pacts, embassies, a common Head of State and Commander in Chief, and other impromptu areas of cooperation such as AUKMIN and the CANZ group at the UN.
A Changing World
The rise of the new economy, changes in technology and new ways of life are changing the world in radical and fundamental ways. China and India are generally recognised as being the next super powers that, together with the United States will form the dominant forces in the world. The nature of business has changed with borderless selling, instant transfer of information and growing reliance on intangibles.
A united CANZUK would be the third largest economy in the Western world, with global reach, a high standard of living and a powerful position in almost every geographical region and sector of the global economy. A common voice would allow us once more to project our influence on world events and to protect our own interests and identity outside regional trade blocs or the orbits of other superpowers, current or emerging.
CANZUK unity, once taken for granted, has been significantly undermined in recent decades by the pull of regional trade and the reasonable desire on the part of all former British colonies to establish their own sovereignty. However, this has now reached a point where our common values, laws, business practices and ideas are in danger of meaning nothing as we subsume ourselves into new alliances and blocs with partners with whom we share a lot less in common.
Should we continue to act autonomously and ignore or deny our common roots and interests, the CANZUK countries are statistically not strong enough to retain their influence and protect our ways of life without being incorporated into other transnational structures, be they the orbits of superpowers or power-hungry regional blocs like the EU. If this is the fate of CANZUK, then it makes sense to pursue closer union between countries that are similar to each other to a degree that is not possible in any other association.
Solutions
The UCS does not propose a return to a Commonwealth or CANZUK dominated by British decision-making, but an alliance of equals in which governments dedicated to democracy and good governance co-operate and perhaps, in the case of a future CANZUK union, sovereignty might be pooled by the creation of co-operative councils or a common parliament to be directly elected by the people of the member countries.
We would expect a united CANZUK to develop a single voice on the world stage in order to better argue for our beliefs and interests, pursuing, for example, a common trade, defence and foreign policy, while leaving autonomy squarely in local hands on local issues. We would not suggest an isolationist approach, but an engagement with other trade blocs and the rest of the Commonwealth to promote and pursue free and fair trade wherever possible. Priorities would be bilateral agreements with or amended membership of NAFTA, the EU, ASEAN and the creation of a Commonwealth Free Trade Area.
Of course radical ideas face radical hurdles, and there are therefore a number of different forms closer union might take – from close integration of a handful of countries to broad co-operation across many. A more detailed idea of the possibilities is given on our Proposals page.
But at the heart of what we propose is a belief that the Commonwealth family of democratic equals envisaged by the Statute of Westminster in 1931 is neither an irrelevant relic of the past nor adequately represented by the modern Commonwealth of Nations. Both the wider Commonwealth and CANZUK need to stand high and retake their role in the world, for the interests of their own people and the rest of humanity.
Please take your time to look around this website and learn more.
1 CANZUK includes the Commonwealth of Australia, Canada, the Realm of New Zealand, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and also potentially the Crown Dependencies of Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man, British Overseas Territories of Anguilla, Bermuda, British Antarctic Territory, British Indian Ocean Territory, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Montserrat, Pitcairn, St. Helena, South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands, Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia, Turks and Caicos Islands, Australian Dependent Territories of Ashmore and Cartier Islands, Australian Antarctic Territory, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Island, Coral Sea Islands, Heard & McDonald Islands, Norfolk Island, New Zealand Associated States of Cook Islands and Niue, New Zealand Dependencies of Tokelau and Ross Dependency, and other independent Commonwealth realms which may express an interest in association.
