0·
(a).
I.
Some General Observations.
For the present purpose, I have re-read (hastily) much of the official
and semi-official literature in which this problem of the S.D's has been
deliberated upon, from the Colonial Office Enquiry of 1951 into the
Constitutitional Development of the Smaller Territories, through the
Oxford Conference on the subject of July 1965, to the PAR Enquiry and
since then report of 1973, and the official FCO Papers and minutes (including Mr
Richard's recent despatch from the U.N.). I have also looked at such
of 1946 reports as that of the Royal Commission on the West Indies/(since some of
them remain the real problem territories), and the Report of the All-
Party conference on the possibility of Malta's Integration with the U.K.
of 1958 (since this examined the problem of integration very fully). All
this left me with two impressions; (i) How many more former dependencies
(usually despite their smallness and lack of natural resources), have been
brought to independence, apparently successfully though many still enjoy
aid from us; and (ii) How little further ideas or creative thought can be
given to this problem, simply because all alternatives and possibilities
seem already to have been thought of, and to a large extent thought throu
Looking back therefore from 1978 it seems to me remarkable how
the much foresight has been shown in the matter since/1951 Colonial Office
Committee (and even earlier) and, no less, how fully the whole range of
internal constitutional systems-suited to pack-8+Dis-and forms for these S.ds
relationship with HMG have been thought up and considered. That fact,
plus the very comprehensive study of the PAR Committee in 1973 seems to
me to render it nearly impossible to add anything new to the question.
The only new (in the sense of not lately revived) suggestion that I have
observed in these sources is that of the West Indies Royal Commission
designed 1946, to give those S.D's which we could not dispose of some voice in
their affairs without the expensive and inappropriate apparatus of Parl- or the complexities of their representation at Westminster iamentary democracy, nameya right of a representative of theirs to attend-
ance or audience at a House of Commons Standing Committee on such small
indisposable dependencies.