BRITAIN COLONIES

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 12750, 4 January 1936, Page 5

BRITAIN COLONIES

“SYSTEM NEEDS OVERHAUL.”

NEW BASIS Op GOVERNMENT,

LQND.QN, December 16.

Britain’s trade with her Dominions and polonies touches £500,000,000 a year. The €Q,COO,COO people in these territories buy more British goods than India’s 350,000,000. How Britain must face up to the changed situation .lias become a very live question here in view of the growing ambitions of European Powers to recover or extend their overseas miSsessions.

It ii expected that the affairs of Cyprus, the West Indies, Ceylon, Malta, Newfoundland and Palestine—.will occupy a large part of Parliament's time in the immediate future.

The Morning Post says; “Britain’s attitude that she will not surrender an inch of territory to anyone is not easily maintainable when confronted with the retort that Britain seems to care little, about her colonies until claims of others are mooted. The whole colonial'system needs overhaul. If the new Parliament shirks its task it will be unworthy of stewardship. Tlie system is archaic in working.

Only Kenya and Northern Rhodesia. of the African Colonies, elect members of the legislature, adds the paper. They are getting restless because they are in perm’anent minority to the Government obligarcliy. There is no real obstacle to a new basis of rul's, wix-h degrees of local internal self-government and Imperial external control, whereby young and virile immigrant communities will be able to use their own knowledge and experienee to manage their own affairs.