The British Imperial Establishment, Post Imperial Era, and the ‘Churchillian’ World View, 1945-2016. (Adjustments & Challenges in Contemporary British Diplomatic Strategy)

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legislative assembly, quite an early constitutional move in the history
of
decolonisation.”9 Full nationhood was granted in 1962. The Cook
Islands were at
the same time being prepared by New Zealand for as much local control as the
people
wanted. This amounted in 1965 to a grant of full internal self-government,
with a continuing association with
New Zealand; the islanders felt full
independence was not appropriate for their situation. In 1968
independence was
granted to another mandate, Nauru. In Fiji bitter communal differences between
the
immigrant Indian majority and the native Fijian minority slowed down the
process of political development.
Nevertheless, a series of negotiations in the
1960s led Britain to prepare Fiji for independence which was
granted in 1970.
Tonga too gave up its protected state relationship with Britain in the same year.

Papua New
Guinea, the largest of the Pacific territories, had been allowed
to take a very leisurely course of political
development. The reason for this was
that “as late as the 1950s parts of the mountainous hinterland were
still coming
under white control for the first time; so Australian Administrators settled down
to
policies of slow and paternalistic development. The blood-bath of the Belgian
Congo in the early 1960s seemed
to reinforce this point, that a patient and
cautious level of action should be pursued.”10 Therefore Australia tended to
overlook the area and no withdrawal was planned
before the next century.
Nevertheless the elective principle was introduced in 1964. The international
tide
of nationalism suddenly swept over Papua New Guinea in the 1970s, causing the
Australian government
to reverse its policies. Independence was given in 1975,
even before the local leaders asked for it.

The
British territories of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands and the Solomon
Islands Protectorate had very little
regard for western political practice until the
1960s. “Traditional authorities functioned fairly much
in their usual roles,
although a political movement in one of the Solomon Islands, Marching Rule,
had
shown that there was some resentment towards outside rule, even as light as

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