22 100 years ago in London
The Balfour Declaration of 1926
The 1926 Imperial Conference was held in London between 23 October and 19 November 1926. It was the fifth Imperial Conference which brought together the prime ministers of the Dominions of the British Empire( at this time Australia, Canada, the Irish Free State, Newfoundland, New Zealand and South Africa)
Allegiance
The conference culminated in the Balfour Declaration( also known as the Balfour Definition but entirely separate from the Balfour Declaration of 1917 which proposed a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine). Named after British statesman and former Prime Minister Arthur Balfour who chaired the conference, the Balfour Declaration established the principle that each Dominion was equal and self-governing. Its key definition stated that Great Britain and the Dominions:“ are autonomous Communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by a common allegiance to the Crown, and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of
Nations”.
King George V( front, centre) with his prime ministers at the 1926 Imperial Conference. Standing( left to right): Monroe( Newfoundland), Coates( New Zealand), Bruce( Australia), Hertzog( South Africa), Cosgrave( Irish Free State). Seated: Baldwin( United Kingdom), King George V, King( Canada).
Autonomous nations
Why and how did the Balfour Declaration of 1926 come into existence? The 1917 Imperial War Conference had adopted a resolution from Canadian prime minister Robert Borden which stated that the Dominions are“ autonomous nations within an Imperial Commonwealth” with rights to be heard on foreign policy and external relations. Confusion reigned over the status of the Dominions at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 where they all signed the Treaty of Versailles as part of the British Empire delegation but were admitted as individual states to the League of Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations.
The situation demanded a formal statement to clarify the Dominions’ relationship with Great Britain and to set it in law.
Approved
During the 1926 Imperial Conference, Balfour spent two weeks negotiating the wording of the document with the Dominions’ prime ministers and their envoys, which included powerful figures such as Leo Amery, the Colonial Secretary. The Inter-Imperial Relations Committee, chaired by Balfour, then finalised the document that would become the Balfour Declaration. It was proposed by South African Prime Minister J. B. M. Hertzog and Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King before being unanimously approved by each Dominion’ s prime minister on 15 November 1926. The Balfour Declaration was then issued by the Imperial Conference.
Independence
What did the Balfour Declaration change? It recognised the increasing political and diplomatic independence of the Dominions after World War I. It also proposed that the governorsgeneral, who had represented the King in each dominion, should no longer be the British government’ s default representative in diplomatic relations between the countries. In the years that followed, high commissioners were appointed instead. As a result, their roles and duties became almost identical to those of an ambassador. The first British high commissioner was appointed to Canada in 1928.
Self-determination
The Balfour Declaration did not end there. What the Imperial Conference of 1926 had agreed was re-stated by the 1930 conference and incorporated into the Statute of Westminster in December 1931. In the statute, the British Parliament guaranteed not to enact a law which applied to a Dominion as part of the law of that Dominion, unless the law explicitly stated that the Dominion government had sought and consented to the enactment of that law. In other words, the statute protected each Dominion’ s right to self-government and selfdetermination as an equal entity, while retaining the ability of the British Government to strengthen – by mutual agreement – what in time became known as the Commonwealth.
100 years ago in London is written and researched by Alexa Michael