Secession - Australia, Czechoslovakia, Canada, Norway and Scotland

Firstly I cited Jack Peacock’s argument (History Today, Sept 2016) about Western Australia’s desire to secede being undermined by Britain’s new attitude towards in Empire. Then I argued that seces­sion debates are still going on across the world today, so the issues are much broader than the end of the mighty British Empire in the 1930s.

Secession referred to a political community withdrawing from the jurisdiction of the larger federation, to end up with full self-government. But the Australian Constitution made no provis­ion for existing states to secede. The Act of Federation, 1st January 1901, made the union indissoluble!

Largely the Australian federation has been stable since it commenced in 1901. Western Australia’s most famous attempt to exit the feder­ation oc­curred in April 1933 when, after a successful referendum, the WA government wanted to secede. So if Western Australians voted in favour of seceding from the Australian Common­wealth, why is it still part of the Australian federation today? What allowed the democratically expressed will of the people to be ignored? And what did it mean for Australia’s relationship with the British Empire?

Calling on West Australians to complete the union by voting yes, 

this Australian poster noted that Newfoundland did NOT join Federated Canada 

and went bankrupt. 

Printed in 1900

Talk of federation originally began across Australia in 1889. And Western Aus­t­ral­ia became a self-governing state in 1890. Although there was no connection between these two events, Western Australia’s independent spirit appeared the moment it gained self-government. Not wishing to give up its newly acquired sovereignty, WA did not even attend the 1891 Constitutional Convention in Sydney (3,300 ks apart).

Perhaps Western Australia was cajoled into federating. Gold Rush settlers flocked in from the east, bringing with them pro-federal opinions. When they heard that the Western Australian government was against federation, they started their own separatist movements. Thus Western Australia had a choice: refuse to federate and potentially see its gold-rich lands break away, or fed­erate and maintain its territorial integrity. They opted for feder­at­ion on the 1/1/1901.

Yet the Australian parliament was soon hearing the first calls for secession. The Sunday Times in WA had taken an openly secessionist stance and public demonstrations were held, with rousing political rhetoric, poems and songs. And when the West­ern Australian elect­orate went to the polls in 1933, they voted 68% in favour of secession. It was not even close.

But secession never came. In Western Australia’s state elections of the same year (1933), the elect­orate voted to re-elect the anti-secession Labour Party and oust the pro-secessionist conservatives. It didn’t matter - in response to the referendum, the Labour Parliament still had to go ahead with a secession plan.

The Dominion League of Western Australia, 1933 

Westralia would eventually be FREE and they would celebrate victory


After secession, the flag for the new country of Westralia
would be the Union Jack with a WA black swan in the centre

A large petition, filled with maps, arguments and the democratically expressed will of the people was prepared, to be delivered to the British Parliament which would pass a bill granting WA independ­ence. Co-founder (1930) and later chairman of the Dominion League of Western Australia, Sir Keith Watson, was a central figure in the 1933 referendum campaign. He led the optimistic WA delegation to London.

The petition was presented to both Houses of Parliament in London in December 1934 and a joint committee was formed to determine whether or not the British Parliament had any right to receive the petition. This is where the West Aust­ralian secessionists had misjudged Britain’s attitude to its Empire. The 1931 Statute of Westminster declared: “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...” The Dom­inions were on their own. Western Aust­ralia would have to negotiate with its own parliament in Canberra.

‘History will record this as the greatest and most despicable abdic­ation of all time’, Sir Keith Watson replied. The dispirited Dominion League delegation returned to Aust­ral­ia and vowed to continue the struggle, but the mood in Western Australia had shifted. An economic recovery had begun. In 1935 the Dominion League introduced a bill into the Western Australian parliament calling for unilateral separation, but interest was waning. And the Sunday Times saw a change of ownership, meaning the secession movement dwindled.

It was Western Australia’s loyalty to Britain and the Empire that ended its move to independence. Had the Dominion League taken a stronger stance, perhaps issuing a unilateral declaration of independence in 1933, the outcome might well have been different. As it turned out, the secessionists’ faith in the British Empire was shattered and their movement had crumbled.

**

Jack Peacock suggested that Scotland’s 2014 independence vote and the 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union were similar events. While Scotland resembled Quebec (1995) in voting for the status quo, others such as Norway (1905)  achieved separation from Sweden. Following a potential war between the two unified nations, a Norwegian plebiscite overwhelmingly backed dissolution (99.95%). Negotiations between the two governments led to Sweden's recognition of Norway as an independent constitutional monarchy in Oct 1905.

But I would argue that it was Czechoslovakia’s proposed referendum that was most telling. In a country consisting of two nations of unequal size, their secession referendum would have had to be on a federal level only, or in each of the two regions separately. But what if one voted for secession and the other voted against it? As it happened, the Slovak Parliament unilaterally declared independence in 1992 and no referendum was held.

So the question remains: do all referenda result in the outcome that the voters voted for? And if not, what do the voters do next?

Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia 

1992

The demand to secede may be an end in itself eg the protagonists want to dissolve the union they are living under. Or seces­s­ionist claims may constitute part of a strategic bargaining process to force the central government’s hand eg to repair Australia’s “unfair” mining tax.

Where could the secessionists go next? A state could petition the Commonwealth parliament to hold a referendum and get every citizen in the nation to vote (a la Czechoslovakia 1993). Or the vote would only be for citizens in the state that wants to secede (a la Quebec 1995 and Montenegro 2006)? Or it could secede unilaterally. Would the Commonwealth use the military to force the seceding state to re­m­ain in the Australian fed­eration against its will? I would hope not.

Federations allow smaller states to share the financial burden of running their territory. Secession cost Slovakian citizens who are now a great deal poorer than they were as part of Czechoslovakia. Quebec, had it seceded, would have had to pay for its own army, police, embassies, taxation systems, border control, public service and mints! For small states to break away and become fully self-supporting would hardly be worth­while on financial grounds. WA must have realised this. Only from the moment that WA became a net contributor to the Federal Treasury in Canberra.. were the costs of staying in the Federation a hot issue.

Two years after the 2014 referendum,
thousands of Scots are still marching for independence
Glasgow, 2016, Huffington Post

A final question. How many times can an independence referendum be held, before secession is finally achieved? The cost of staging 2014's Scottish independence referendum came to a staggering £15.8m, so who would pay for a second referendum? or a third? The British PM said that the 2014 referendum result was "'irreversible and binding" but now the Scottish First Minister is planning for a second referendum across the UK in 2018 or 2019. In Canada, Parti Québécois already held a second referendum in 1995 and that time the results were so close (49.4% for secession), a third referendum is still a distinct possibility.