Page 79 - SARB: 100-Year Journey

Dominion premiers and delegates assembled at 10 Downing Street in London for the Imperial Conference. Left to right: Canadian statesman Mackenzie King (1874–1950), Stanley Baldwin (1867– 1847), Australian politician Stanley Bruce (1883–1967), Arthur Balfour (1848–1930) and South African James Hertzog (1866–1942), 21 October 1926. /Topical Press Agency/Getty Images
“The ... statute was passed to give effect to the resolutions of the Imperial Conferences of 1926 and 1930. The Reports of these Conferences, and of the Conference on the Operation of Dominion Legislation, 1929, which forms part of the Report of the Imperial Conference of 1930, state that the United Kingdom 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’,” states Steibel (1933, p 32).
That was the basis upon which “... [in] South Africa the Statute was approved by the Lower House on April 22nd and by the Senate on May 8th, 1931, but the discussion which took place in the House of Assembly disclosed a considerable measure of apprehension lest the terms of the Statute might derogate from the validity of the ‘entrenched’ clauses of the South Africa Act of 1909, particularly clause 152. This provides for the amendment of the Act and the procedure to be followed in the repeal or alteration of, among others, the clauses affecting the non-European voters in the Cape Provinces and the use of English and Dutch as the official languages of the Union.” (Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1931, p 4).
Extract from the Statute of Westminster. /monarchistnb
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