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medium sized English village
and there is no sign that such states
are proving any less responsible members of the international
community than many that are a good deal bigger and longer esta-
blished. So lack of size or numbers can no longer be said to be a
bar to independence.
Nor is economic viability now regarded as a prerequisite
of political independence. We live in an interdependent world, where
it is generally recognised that the wealthier countries have not only
a moral obligation but also clear self-interest in supporting the
poorer. Bankrupt countries cannot provide the export markets on
which the industrial countries depend. They also tend to be unstable,
and thus threaten the wider interests of the exporting countries as
well. There are all too many independent countries, some of them
relatively advanced, that are not economically self-sufficient. So
why should we insist that small, dependent states should be able to
pay their way before they are left in control of their own affairs?
Indeed, independence could well give them access to sources of
economic assistance for which they are not eligible as dependent
territories.
So if the population of a territory opts for independence,
we are nowadays unlikely to delay the granting of it on purely
practical or economic grounds.
But what if the people of a territory insist that they want
to remain dependent, even though the territory is clearly capable of
sustaining independence? Must we inevitably agree? Should the
people of the Cayman Islands or Bermuda be able to decide that they
want to continue with a constitutional relationship which some
people at least might regard as a handicap to Britain?
The answer,
I suggest, must depend to some extent at least on an assessment of
/Britain's