TNAG-0835-FCO40-1043-Foreign-and-Commonwealth-Office-seminar-on-the-future-of-Bri-1979 — Page 89

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SESSION 4: LESSONS TO BE LEARNED FROM OTHER COLONIAL POWERS

In the context of the earlier discussions with their emphasis on British concern to limit responsibilities for defence, internal security, and aid, Dr Robinson outlined French, US and Dutch arrange- ments which had attempted to provide an alternative to independence.

The French

Five territories had been fully integrated with France as Overseas Departments. Three of them - Martiniqué, Guadeloupe and Reunion were well outside the population range we had been considering, but French Guiana and St Pierre et Miquelon were within it. These arrangements were the outcome of a long historic process, which had reached a fairly advanced stage even before the last war, in which such integrations had long been held out as the objective of French policy. It involved total responsibility for defence and security, full representation in the French/Parliament, full citizenship and high expenditure determined by metropolitan standards. appeared to have no attractions for us.

The US

It thus

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Apart from 'scheduled independence' in the Philippines, not typical, US arrangements had by and large been adaptations of those made in the westward expansion of the US but stopping short of statehood except, and then only after a long interval, Alaska and Hawaii. This model involved full citizenship and federal responsibility, a non-voting Delegate in Congress, elected Governors and legislatures in the territories deriving/their powers from the federal government not, like states, from the Constitution, and high federal expenditure. Such arrangements had been applied in Puerto Rico (with an attempt to give them a more formal status), Guam, the US Virgin Islands and most recently the Northern Marianas. They fell short of statehood towards there had been, in respect of Puerto Rico and the USVI, for many years conflicting pressures both in the territories and at Washington. Again there seemed to be no attraction for us in such arrangements.

The Dutch

The arrangements made in 1954 were the most innovatory of the three. These involved full internal self government for the Netherlands Antilles six territories, four of them very small, and geographic- ally divided between the Venezuelan coast and the Northern Antilles and for Surinam. Surinam and the Netherland Antilles constituted with the Netherlands a "Kingdom" in which defence, foreign affairs, citizenship and nationality etc. were reserved for a government in which the two overseas components were represented by Commissioners added to the Duttch Cabinet when matters concerning the Kingdom were involved. There were other arrangements designed to ensure that the Oversea components could make themselves heard at the executive level of government but no representation in the metropolitan parliament. With the independence of Surinam, these arrangements had broken down and as agreement on plans for the independence in 1981 of the Netherlands Antilles as a whole, which had been offered, seemed most improbable, the Dutch were likely to be left with the It was smaller islands, or have to offer them each independence. ironic that after taking such a different route, the Dutch seemed likely to end up with a similar dilemma to ours.

/Discussion