ABSTRACT
As we have seen, the issue of imperial union was never far from the centre of the debate over the constitutional form of the United Kingdom. In fact, from the 1870s through to the 1920s, the changing nature of the relationship between the United Kingdom and the white settlement dominions occupied a good deal of the time of politicians and civil servants in London and led to a protracted discussion about the goal to which all should be headed and how rapidly it should be reached. Similarly, the relationships between London and India and the other major dependencies also began to shift and these changes were accelerated by World War I. The debates and the various policy options that resulted preoccupied the attention of various empire-watchers from the early years of the century to the 1930s. At the centre of much of the discussion and involved to a considerable degree in the formulation of policy at particular moments was the Round Table movement. The federal ideas that emerged or the degree to which federalism was discussed as a possible solution to the larger imperial question and to particular colonial problems as well as to the whole issue of world order was primarily a result of Round Table initiative or influence.
