GREAT BRITAIN: Parliament's Week: Dec. 14, 1931

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The Lords—

¶ Passed the Statute of Westminster confirming the Imperial Conference decisions of 1926 and 1930 that "dominion status" implies among other rights the right of secession (TIME, June 30, 1930); sent the Statute of Westminster to disgruntled King George V for enforced "royal approval.''

The Commons —

¶ Recognized with unerring British Parliamentary instinct that Prime Minister MacDonald's declaration winding up the Second Indian Round Table Conference with vague, conciliatory talk of a Third Conference and greater freedom for India, was in fact a move to keep restive India quiet and hitched to the chariot of Empire as long as possible.

Sensing that Scot MacDonald's "weak" policy is really "strong," the House decisively rejected 369 to 43 last week a die-hard proposal by Winston Churchill specifically to bar India from attaining "dominion status" as defined by the Statute of Westminster (see above). Mr. Churchill argued that "India during the War gained dominion status in rank, honor and ceremony" which, for Indians, he thought, should be enough. Excitedly brandishing a copy of the MacDonald declaration, Alarmist Churchill tried to link with "such weakness" the sharp break in the British pound.*

Approved a Cabinet spanking quietly administered to florid, genial James Henry ("Jim") Thomas, Minister of Dominions, who had planned for himself & family a glorious round-the-world junket, visiting all the dominions preliminary to next year's Imperial Conference at Ottawa.

Joyous Jim, who clings to the coat tails of his great & good friend the Prime Minister (having bolted with him out of the Labor Party), was bluntly told last week (reputedly by Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain) that he could not junket about the world at British taxpayers' expense.

Irrepressible Mr. Thomas soon secured the Cabinet's approval for a consolation junket, to South Africa.