TWO NATIONS, TWO DESTINIES: A REFLECTION ON THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE WESTERNAUSTRALLAN SECESSION MOVEMENT TO AUSTRALIA, CANADAAND THE BRITISH EMPIRE CHRISTOPHER W BESANT* Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occa- sional interest may be dissolved at pleasure - but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, callico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primaeval contract of eternal society .... The municipal corporations of that universal kingdom are not morally at liberty at their pleasure, and on their speculations of a contingent improvement, wholly to separate and tear asunder the bands of their suboldinate community ....I Burke in Reflections on the Revolution in France * BA (McMast) ARCT LLB (Toronto) LLM (Cantab). Visiting Lecturer in Law, University of Western Australia. 1. E Burke Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) (Harmondsworth, Eng- land: Penguin Books, 1986) 194-195. 2 10 WESTERN AUSTRALIAN LAW REVlEW Everything has been staked on this single position ... the acts of Parliament must be obeyed. But this general unconditional, unlimited oppression I am far from thinking applicable to every possible case which may arise from the turn of the times. For my part, I conceive that power resulting from trust, arbitrarily exercised, may be lawfully resisted whether the power is lodged in a collective body or in a single person ... whenever the trust is used to the injury of the people, whenever oppression begins, all is unlawfkl and unjust, and resistance becomes of course lawful and right ...2 Lord Carnden speaking on the right of the American colonies to secede in face of the imposition of stamp duties by the Parliament in Great Britain. ... Elhat we insist only upon being treated as freemen, and as the descendants of those British ancestors, whose memory we will not dishonour by our degeneracy, it is reasonable to hope, that they will approve of our conduct, and bestow their loudest applauses on our congenial ardour for liberty ... that the principles on which we have founded our opposition to the late acts of Parliament are the principles of justice and freedom, and of the British constitution ... Can the Americans, who are descended from British ancestors, and inherit all their rights, be blamed - can they be blamed by their brethren in Britain - for claiming still to enjoy those right^?^ James Wilson, 1768 (American colonial activist). 2. Lord Camden's speech was quoted by Wentworth during the agitation over Im- perial taxation in New South Wales in 1850. The incident is discussed in J hngo The Doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty and the Australian Constitution: A Reconsideration of the Orthodox View (unpublished B Juris (Hons) thesis (UWA) 1980) 77. As with the West Australian secessionists, rebel New South Welshmen petitioned for redress of their grievances but were prepared to follow the example of the American colonists if need be. The quote from Camden as used by Wentworth is set out in Longo, 91 n 20. 3. R G McCroskey ied) The Works of James Wilson vol I1 (Cambridge, Mass: Bellknap Press of Harvard Uni Press, 1967) 722, 731. The Commonwealth is not only for today, or for tomorrow, hut for ever. It is indissoluble. We are going to bind ourselves to join and never separate again unless, of course, we are separated by an Ad of the Imperial Parliament. That would he the only thing. An Ad of the Imperial Parliament could sever us as it unites Sir John Forrest introducing the Federal Constitution Bill in the Western Australian T~gislativeAs- sembly on 23 May 1900. I know it is in the minds of those in the Eastern States, as much as in your minds, that this Constitution declares itself to be indissoluble; that it would remain in a sense for ever. But I would remind you that nothing in the world would prevent Western Australia from seceding through the united voice of her pe~ple.~ Sir Winthrop Hackett speaking at the Perth Town Hall in favour of Federation on 14 July 1900. 4. Quoted in Hon A Lovekin MIX "Can We Secede From the Commonwealth?" A paper read before the Dominion League of Western Australia ("DLWA") 23 May 1930, Battye Lihrary, Perth, Western Australia PR 10563136,lO-11. 5. Ibid, 11. Unlike Forrest, Hackett was committed to the federation ideal. Never- theless, he had substantial misgivings about the timing of the federation proposal. He felt that WA should delay entry until it was strong enough to stand on an equal footing with the other States: see Lyall Hunt (ed) Westralian Portraits (Perth: UWA Press, 1979) 95. 212 WESTERN AUSTRALIAN LAW RENEW NOL. 20 PART I INTRODUCTION On 17 December 1934, a crisp London breeze unfurled the flag of the Dominion League of Western Australia, which had been hoisted atop Savoy House, the offices of the State's Agent-General in London. The League, spearhead of the Western Australian secession movement, intended the flag to become the national symbol of the self-governing Dominion of Western Australia upon the favourable reception of the State's Petition to secede from the Commonwealth of Australia. It was a moment of triumph. The secession movement had captured the official headquarters of the State in London; even the Agent-General himself was a secessionist. Their long held dream seemed about to become a waking reality. A deeper line would be drawn through the sea of sand: one continent, two nations, two destinies. The Petition had been delivered on 1 November 1934 by the youthful and impulsive H Keith Watson, Chairman of the Dominion League, to the Dominions Secretary, the Right Honourable J H Tho- mas, PC, one of the architects of the Statute of Westminster 1931, for presentation to His Majesty the Kinge6The occasion for the flying of the flag on 17 December was the formal presentation of the secession Petition in the two Houses of the British Parliament through the secessionists' spokesmen, (in the Commons) Captain Adrian Moreing MP and (in the Lords) the Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair.7The 6. A picture of this moment appears in H K Watson 'Whither Australia? Whither Western Australia?" (Perth: DLWA, 8 November 1935) 2, Battye Library Ar- chives 1801 A Box 2. 7. The First Interim Report of the Delegation on Behalf of the People of Western Australia ("First Interim Report") (Perth: GPS c 9361, 1936) 5, describes the arrival of the delegation and the presentment of the Petition in more detail. The First Interim Report issued on 16 January 1935 and can be found in the Battye Library at PR 10563114. The Report notes that a few days after the arrival of the delegation in London (on 26 October, 1934): ... [A1 sound film was taken by Paramount Films depicting the arrival of the Delegation with the Petitions. The Petitions were displayed and there was also recorded a brief explanation by Sir Hal Colebatch. The "shoot" was included in the News Reel and prominently displayed at the cinemas throughout Britain irnme- diately afterwards. It would be well worth the Battye Library's effort to enquire as to whether this film clip is still extant, and if so, whether it, or at least a copy, could be repatriated. 19901 TWO NATIONS, TWO DESTINIES 213 formal document on that day presented was a 26 foot roll of sheepskin, hand-written and encased in a casket ofjarrahRSimultaneously with the presentation of the Petition, copies were circulated to all members of the House of Commons and to the Peers of The Case of the People of Western Australia in Support of Their Desire to Withdraw from the Commonwealth of Australia Established Under the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act (Imperial), and that Western Australia be restored to its former status as a separate self-governing colony in the British Em~ire.~The Case For Secession was a 489 page document 8. E D Watt "Secession in Western Australia" (1958) 111 (2) Unzuersily Stud~esin Western Australian History 43,73. A copy of the Petition is on microfilm at the Battye Library but,apparently, the original has ended up in the hands of an American Library according to notations on the microfilm. For the cost of the Petition and the caskets, see The William Sotnerville Papers, Battye Library Archives 465A (Clippings file: 24 September 1935). Somerville assembled an extensive file of newspaper and other clippings on succession from which many of the citations in this article were taken. The clippings are usually dated and the paper is sometimes but not always referenced. The source is usually The West Australian, as is apparent from the typeset. However, many citations of newspa- per articles herein do not include page references unless Somemille noted them. On occasion the date of a Perth Newspaper to which information or a quote is attributed rests on my interpretation of Somerville's notes, which may be wrong.