Westminister, Status of

Westminister, Status of (1931). The statute, resulting from the new definitions of dominion status negotiated at the imperial conferences of 1926 and 1930 (see Commonwealth), abolished the right of the British parliament to legislate for the dominions under the 1865 Colonial Laws Validity Act. It also declared that the dominions must be consulted in matters affecting the royal succession, a provision of significance during the 1936 abdication crisis. Some Conservative MPs, including Winston Churchill, sought to exclude the Irish Free State from the statute's operation, arguing that it would enable the Irish to repudiate the Anglo‐Irish treaty, despite Irish assurances that this would be altered only by consent. However, their objections were overruled, and the Free State was the first government to ratify the statute. De Valera, coming to power a year later, was reluctant: to acknowledge the statute as a basis for Irish legislation. But when his bill abolishing the right of appeal to the privy council was declared ultra vires by the Irish courts in 1934, the judicial committee of the privy council itself ruled that in British law— though not in Irish—the Statute of Westminster gave the Oireachtas the power to amend or repeal the constitution of the Irish Free State.

Deirdre McMahon