Statute of Westminster (1931) established the basic legal framework for the Commonwealth of Nations. It gave effect to the decisions reached at conferences in London in 1926 and 1930. The statute recognized the independence of the major parts of the British Empire: the Commonwealth of Australia, the Dominion of Canada, the Irish Free State, the Dominion of New Zealand, Newfoundland, and the Union of South Africa.
At the Imperial Conference of 1926, the delegates, under pressure from such countries as Canada, defined Commonwealth members as “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, though united by a common allegiance to the crown, and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations.”
The Parliament at Westminster put this agreement into law as the Statute of Westminster. It provided that even the statute itself had no force in Commonwealth countries until their parliaments had ratified it. Canada did so later that year, but Australia waited until 1942 and New Zealand until 1947. Later, as some Commonwealth countries became republics, even “common allegiance to the crown” became a difficult idea to define.
