ABSTRACT
Studies have appeared on a great variety of the economic and political implications of British support for a free trade treaty approach, under article 24 of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, to the further liberalisation of world trade. This chapter discusses the one aspect of the problem: the Commonwealth. In considering the issues which the Commonwealth raises, it seemed necessary to look in a general way at the objective and purpose of the Commonwealth itself and at the kind of future it might have. Recognition of the Commonwealth as an organising element in the confusion of an order containing over 130 sovereign entities has declined in favour of continental and regional groupings: the Latin Americans, Africans, Arabs, Europeans, sometimes Afro-Asians. Faced with the disastrous consequences of the American Smoot-Hawley tariff, the association fought back with its preferential system, which has survived for more than 35 years through remarkably changing circumstances.
