Editing Imperial Conference (section)

== Notable meetings ==
Originally instituted to emphasise imperial unity, as time went on, the conferences became a key forum for dominion governments to assert the desire for removing the remaining vestiges of their colonial status.<ref name="Seminars for Statesmen">{{cite journal |last=Mole |first=Stuart |date=September 2004 |title=Seminars for statesmen': the evolution of the Commonwealth summit  |journal=[[The Round Table Journal|The Round Table]] |volume=93 |issue=376 |pages=533–546 |doi=10.1080/0035853042000289128 |s2cid=154616079 |doi-access=free }}</ref> The conference of 1926 agreed to the [[Balfour Declaration 1926|Balfour Declaration]], which acknowledged that the dominions would henceforth rank as equals to the United Kingdom, as members of the '[[British Commonwealth of Nations]]'.

The conference of 1930 decided to abolish the legislative supremacy of the [[Parliament of the United Kingdom|British Parliament]] as it was expressed through the [[Colonial Laws Validity Act]] and other [[Imperial Acts]]. The statesmen recommended that a declaratory enactment of Parliament, which became the [[Statute of Westminster 1931]], be passed with the consent of the dominions, but some dominions did not ratify the statute until some years afterwards. The 1930 conference was notable, too, for the attendance of [[Southern Rhodesia]], despite it being a self-governing colony, not a dominion.<ref>{{cite journal |date=April 1980 |title=The Lessons of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia |journal=[[International Security]] |volume=4 |issue=4 |pages=177–84 |jstor= 2626673|doi=10.2307/2626673|last1=Brides |first1=Saint }}</ref>