Less
Empire
and
More
Commonwealth
913
several
executive
departments,
has
spurred
the Labor demand for full
responsible
government.
From
the
early
twenties the
Colonial
Office had
put
out feelers to
explore
the
possibility
of
a
British
West Indian
federation,
19
but
the
result was
not
encouraging
until Labor
became
politically
conscious
and
caught
the
vision
of a
British
Caribbean
nation
pulling together
in a
new
dominion after
the
pattern
of
the
old
ones. In
September
1947
delegates
of the
various
legislatures
held a
conference
at
Montego
Bay,
Jamaica,
with
the
colonial
secretary
himself
in
the
chair,
and set
up
a
standing
committee to
devise a
suitable
scheme of
federation.
The
committee's
report,
published
in
1950,
was
approved by
most
of
the
legislatures
and
became the
basis of
a
more finished
draft
constitu-
tion
prepared
in
1953
by
a
London
conference of
delegates meeting
with the
home
government.
British
Guiana
and British
Honduras,
both
fearing
a
flood of
surplus population
from the
islands,
have turned
thumbs down
on the
project.
But it
is
doubtful if
their
rejection
will
deter the
other colonies from
combining
to
form a federal
dominion
that
may help
its members
over the stile
to
full
responsible
government
and would
bring
mutual
support
to all.
Of
the
senior
dominions,
tie
youngest
had
already
departed
from
the Commonwealth.
"We
stand
unequivocally
for
membership
of the
British
Commonwealth,"
John
Costello assured
the
voters in the
general
election
campaign
of
early
1948,
which
ended
by
his
replacing
de Valera
as
prime
minister. Later
in
the
year
he ate
these
words and
got
the Dail to
pass
an act
repealing
the
External
Relations
Act
of 1936
and
transforming
Eire into the
Republic
of
Ireland.
This
measure,
which
came
into
operation
in
April
1949 on the
anniversary
of the
Easter
Rebellion,
was a surrender to the extremist
minority,
a move
to
outflank
de
Valera,
and
a
blind blow at Partition
which it
only
reinforced.
The
British
government responded by
passing
the
Ireland
Act
of
1949,
which
gave legal
sanction to
the
secession
of
"the
part
of
Ireland
formerly
known
as Eire and thenceforth
as the
Republic
of
Ireland,"
and
declared
that
"in
no
event"
would
any
part
of
Northern
Ireland
be severed
from
"the United
Kingdom
without the
consent
of
the
parliament
of
Northern
Ireland." As
a
gesture
of
good
will
to
the
departing
member
of
the
Commonwealth,
die
same act
also
declared
that
in the
United
Kingdom
and the
colonial territories
the
eyes
of
19
A small and
loose
federation,
that of the
Leeward
Islands,
had been in
existence
since
1871,
and its
operation
did not
inspire
much
hope
of a
bigger
and
closer
one.