SCOPE OF THE SUBJECT
Comment upon the attainment of independence by those countries which were founder Members of the British Commonwealth (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, the Irish Free State and Newfoundland) would be out of place.
I shall have occasion to refer to them again but they are outside my subject. The gradual progress of the ‘Dominions’, through Imperial Conferences to the Statute of Westminster, from self-government to independence, is a fascinating study. But, far from claiming any credit for it, the machinery which I have to talk about owes much to those who prepared the way for, and constructed, the Statute of Westminster.To set the bounds of the primary purpose of this chapter, I must begin by stating the obvious—to give independence means no more and no less than erasing marks of dependence. We must therefore ask why the country is not independent and having found the answer we shall know the essentials of the major operation we have to perform.
First and foremost one has to deal with the relationship between the dependent territory and the country on which it is dependent. The essence of the situation is that in both municipal law and international law a dependent territory is subject to some sort of external control or supervision which limits its freedom of action and its sovereignty. This must be removed.
In my earlier chapter I presented a general picture of the powers exercised by the United Kingdom in respect of dependent territories. I was not concerned with other Members of the Commonwealth who have dependencies. If I limit myself to the procedure for granting independence to territories formerly within the United Kingdom’s responsibility I shall in fact cover my subject today, with the exception of Western Samoa, where New Zealand’s Trusteeship has just been terminated. I have not yet been able to obtain very much information about the legal steps taken, so I cannot compare the New Zealand procedure with that of the United Kingdom. I am told that Western Samoa does not intend, at least at present, to consider applying for Membership of the Commonwealth, but that there is a Western Samoa Act of 1961 by virtue of which New Zealand law continues to operate in relation to the new State as if it were part of Her Majesty’s dominions and a Member of the Commonwealth. I am also informed that the Act confers no special citizenship status on Western Samoan citizens, but exempts them from registration as
aliens. In this country the only action taken so far is to add Western Samoa to the countries within the Commonwealth Preference Area.