Commonwealth Group
The Commonwealth Group is a British multinational conglomerate primarily involved in the defence, security, aerospace, advanced technology, and motorsport sectors. Headquartered in London, it maintains operations worldwide, and, along with BAE Systems, is one of two major British defence industrial concerns. Ranked amongst the largest defence companies worldwide, it further possesses a significant and historically long-standing, albeit intermittent, presence in the motorsport industry, with the group exercising a direct involvement through the Caterham F1 Team, a wholly-owned subdivision, and indirect links through the supply of software, components, and engineering support to a considerable number of racing teams across multiple disciplines, including close, long-term technical partnerships with Team Penske in IndyCar, Team Macmillan, and the McLaren Group.
History
The Commonwealth Group can track its origins back to the state-sanctioned formation of the British Commonwealth Motorsport Association, ostensibly intended as a showcase to bolster global confidence in a faltering British manufacturing sector; in truth, the arrangement primarily functioned as a facade for the nationalization of struggling industrial concerns Alvis and Armstrong Siddeley. Nevertheless, the team excelled on circuit, albeit dogged by speculation of surreptitious involvement with respect to British espionage abroad. The stewardship of appointed executive Sir Edward Palmerston proved sufficiently successful to compel the government to engineer the merger of six major British defence concerns, Blackburn Aircraft, A.V. Roe and Company, the De Havilland Aircraft Company, Folland Aircraft, the Alvis Car and Engineering Company, and the Hawker Siddeley Group, under the auspices of a new statutory corporation, Commonwealth Defence and Aerospace plc, that would eventually form the structural foundations for the Commonwealth Group. Immediately under pressure from significant declines in British defence spending, Commonwealth abandoned its involvement in Grand Prix racing during the early 1960s, eventually finding stable footing through the successful development of the Buccaneer, Hunter, Harrier, Nimrod and CVR(T) programmes. It additionally maintained a significant presence in civilian manufacturing via the production of trams, railcars, and diesel-electric locomotives. Along with British Aerospace, Commonwealth was an important partner in the development of the SEPECAT Jaguar, the Concorde, the Panavia Tornado, and the Eurofighter Typhoon, and attracted significant controversy over its heavy involvement in the Al-Yamamah arms transaction and its sales of precision-guided munitions, cluster munitions, and advanced arms to states with a poor record of human rights protections. Following its acquisition of Matra Marconi Space in 1995, the company reorganized itself as the Commonwealth Group.
The Commonwealth Group is heavily involved in several major defence projects, including the Eurofighter Typhoon and the Joint Strike Fighter programme, and remains one of the foremost manufacturers of precision-guided munitions, sensor suites, and armoured vehicles. It further maintains a significant presence in the civilian market through the production of commercial turbofan engines, various commercial applications of military technology developed through the Applied Technologies division, and scientific and commercial satellites. Furthermore, after an intermittent and discontinuous history in motorsport following the withdrawal of its initial Grand Prix effort, the Commonwealth Group is presently an important actor in global motorsports, as both a directly involved party through its management of the highly successful Caterham F1 Team, and as a critical node in the global motorsport component supply chain.
