TRANSCRIPT OF QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
AT MINISTER'S PRESS CONFERENCE
Legislative Council
The unofficial members of the Legislative Council here called for an expansion of their ranks to include represen- tatives of workers and other people. I understand that
Sir Murray MacLehose discussed this with you in his last
visit to London. Can you give us an idea of your Government's
views on this?
We
Minister: Yes, we have discussed and will go on discussing this.
don't expect anybody to move simply because movement is a
good thing, as I said in relation to public expenditure. Constitutional development must be related to all manner of considerations, some very sensitive indeed, as you know. Therefore, it is one of the points on which we think the
impetus, the pace and development must arise from your own
feelings here of what on balance is best to do and how
quickly it should be done. Now the British policy, as you
know, in regard to the Empire is, and has been, for half
a century now, to advance all territories progressively in
stages to self-government and independence. We have done
this very extensively, for instance in Africa. In so doing,
we have suggested, and they have accepted the suggestion
that the pattern of government should be broadly similar to
what we have at home. That is not to say that all African
governments, as you know, have retained that very long after
achieving independence. That is up to them.
We look at each case on its own. Certainly, the advance to elective self-government, as we can see, looking at you from
London, is a good thing. More important than that is that the desire for it, the speed with which it is implemented, should be generated genuinely from among your own community. There is no way in which another government can legitimately
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