TNAG-0835-FCO40-1043-Foreign-and-Commonwealth-Office-seminar-on-the-future-of-Bri-1979 — Page 34

Summary of Points Made in Session 3: The problems of Small States and Alternatives to Independence

Smallness

Small states have much more open economies, more dependent on external trade and (providing they have good communciations) 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 if two hey people happen not to like each other.

Alternatives to Indpendence

e.g.

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 consideration after independence when the territories can participate on a besis of constitutional equality.

there

Almost any alternative to independence raises the spectre of responsibility without power. Even where reserve powers exist, is such reluctance to use them that it must be questionable whether they really can be said to exist.

For the five Caribbean territories, the only long term possibility must be independence. For Pitcairn, the future must lie in education probably to Australia or New Zealand, 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.