1923 Imperial Conference

1923 Imperial Conference Imperial Economic Conference
Host country	United Kingdom
Date	1 October 1923– 8 November 1923
Cities	London
Heads of State or Government	8
Chair	Stanley Baldwin (Prime Minister)
Follows	1921
Precedes	1926
Key points
Dominion autonomy in foreign policy, trade relations

The Imperial Conference of 1923 met in London in the autumn of 1923, the first attended by the new Irish Free State. While named the Imperial Economic Conference, the principal activity concerned the rights of the Dominions in regards to determining their own foreign policy.

Where previous Imperial Conferences were held in public session, the 1923 conference allowing for in camera discussion with a resolution "that at meetings of this nature, where questions of high policy and of the greatest consequence to all parts of the British Commonwealth are surveyed and dealt with, it was of the first importance that the representatives present should feel able to speak among themselves with the utmost freedom and in a spirit of complete confidence."

The conference occurred in the wake of several important developments in Empire diplomacy. The Chanak Crisis of 1922 was a threatened military conflict between the newly formed Republic of Turkey and the United Kingdom. During the crisis, the British cabinet issued a communiqué threatening to declare war against Turkey on behalf of the UK and the Dominions. British Prime Minister David Lloyd George had not consulted the Dominions and Canada disavowed the British ultimatum: when Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King referred the issue to the Canadian parliament, it declared that it alone had the authority to declare war on behalf of Canada. The other Dominion prime ministers failed to support Lloyd George's action. When a new peace treaty, the Treaty of Lausanne, was negotiated with Turkey in 1923, the Dominion governments did not participate in the negotiations or sign and they declared that Britain acted only for itself and not on behalf of the Dominions.

In addition, prior to the Imperial Conference, Canada negotiated the Halibut Treaty with the United States and did so without involving the United Kingdom or allowing the British government to sign on Canada's behalf. This was a departure from earlier practice in which Britain had sole responsible for Imperial foreign affairs and a constitutional right to conduct foreign policy on behalf of the dominions, including signing treaties on their behalf.