· 3-
We must get others to share our burden. (How?) US and Venezuela could do more.
Aid management is an appropriate tool in preparing dependent terri- tories for independence but its success will require unwelcome decisions denying help for many pet schemes.
(by the donor)
Aid should be directed to help create a competent political and economic structure with good quality management. The comparatively small sums involved should not be cut. Ad abound and bride
Subbert in fâabuetur þu imatmant.
(inset) What
handing over tauitines with
The
to a management
about
poor prospects SESSION 3: THE PROBLEMS OF SMALL STATES AND ALTERNATIVES TO
INDEPENDENCE
Smallness
Group
with an
to show i recentive
an annual profit?
Small states have much more open economies, more dependent on external trade and (providing they have good communications) with a relatively high number of people moving in and out. They suffer from dis-economies of smallness: /normal services are relatively much more expensive to provide, and many specialised skills are simply not available in small communities. Certain problems that exist in any society can assume/exaggerated significance in a small country e.g. if two key people happen not to like each other.
Alternatives to Independence
Various possibilities for regional cooperation were discussed, including the possibility of resurrecting the Leeward Islands Federation. But past history of such groupings is not encouraging, and Britain would almost certainly have to make a substantial, and continuing, contribution to the cost of including the dependencies in any such scheme. Federations are therefore best left for consider- ation after independence when the territories can participate on a basis of constitutional equality.
Almost any alternative to independence raises the spectre of respon- sibility without power. Even when reserve powers exist, there is (such] reluctance to use them that it must be questionable whether
they can really be said to exist)
Aist]
For the five Caribbean territories, the only long term solution must be independence, though possibly within a regional framework. For Pitcairn, the future must lie in evacuation probably to Australia or New Zealand. This would then leave us with the problem of what to do with an unpopulated/ territory a question outside the scope of
Ja
the present seminar. Bermuda is clearly capable of becoming independent and the events of 1977 have provided the catalyst that have set it on that path. For St Helena, some sort of integration on the Channel Islands pattern might be feasible, though we should need to be conscious of the effect any such precedent might have on the territories outside the scope of the seminar. We should also then be left with the problem of what to do with Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha.
/SESSION 4: