GENERAL LABOUR CONVENTIONS
99
industrialisation, this fact should not be regarded as minimising their ultimate practical importance. Moreover, in some instances immediate practical effects have followed, as for instance, in the adoption of workmen's compensation schemes and the establishment of minimum wages. Not infrequently, too, the legislation marks the beginnings of a wide programme of social progress which might possibly have been neglected but for he attention focused on particular aspects of the protection of labour through consideration of the Conventions. The legislation represents in most cases, not the consolidation of achieved labour reform, but the initiation of a new movement and its development towards levels fixed in the Conventions.'
The Committee of Experts, however, has also placed on record observations intended to indicate the limitations with which, in practice, the obligations imposed by the Constitution in this regard are hedged. It has on more than one occasion emphasised the fact' that, whereas a Convention once ratified by Member States is obligatory upon the metropolitan teritory of that State, in the case of colonies, protectorates and other possessions no sucă unconditional obligation exists and the application of the Conven- tion depends upon its applicability to the local conditions there prevailing. In 1936 the Committee went further, in associating itself with two suggestions made in a report to the Governing Body on this question:
The first is that........ [Article 35 of the Constitution]... contemplates that the decision of a Member to exclude a particular Convention from application to its colonies, protectorates and possessions which are not fully self-governing must be a decision taken in good faith after a serious examination of the local condi- tions, and must not be of a purely perfunctory and automatic character; the second is that the local conditions referred to in this article are continually changing with the development of new industries, the increase of local official staff, and so forth, so that it is... in accordance with Se intention of the article that any decision to exclude any Convention on the ground of local conditions requires periodical reconsideration.'
At the 25th (1939) Session of the Conference, the practicability of a special Convention or Conventions designed to adapt the provisions of existing general Conventions to the circumstances of non-self-governing territories was referred to in the report of the Committee on the Application of Conventions in the following
terms:
In view of the lack of uniformity shown in the degree of application of Con- ventions to the various colonies and dependent areas, for measuring which no
1 International Labour Conference, 24th Session, Geneva, 1938: Summary of Annual Reports under Article 22 of the Contitution of the International Labou Organisation (Geneva, 1938), Appendix, p. 5.
* International Labour Conference, 20th Session, Geneva, 1936: Summary of Annual Reports under Article 22 of the Consitution of the International Labow Organisation (Geneva, 1936), Appendix, p. 4.