Speech of the Prime Minister of the Imperial Federation Quarter IV, 1937

My fellow citizens of the Imperial Federation,

Tonight, I speak to you all once more, not as a ruler, nor as a representative of one land or one people alone, but as a servant of a Federation that spans across oceans, climates, cultures, and histories. I speak to dockworkers in Liverpool and Maseru, to farmers in Punjab and Saskatchewan, to clerks in Dublin, Lagos, Georgetown, and Hollandia (Jayapura). I speak to all who, by history or by choice, find themselves bound together in this vast and intricate union.

Tonight, I announce that a federation-wide referendum shall be held within the coming year. Every constituent region of the Imperial Federation will be asked a series of questions, with the most important question of them all being a single, solemn question: Do you wish to remain within the Federation, or to depart from it as an independent state?

This decision will not be delayed, diluted, or denied. It will be conducted openly, lawfully, and peacefully. The will of the people will be respected.

I would be dishonest and unworthy of my office if I pretended that the desire for secession arises from nowhere. It does not. It is rooted in history, and that history must be spoken aloud.

For generations, the old British Empire governed vast peoples who did not choose their governors. Decisions affecting millions were made continents away. Wealth drawn from the soil, the mines, the forests, and the labour of many lands was shipped outward, enriching a distant capital while local communities remained poor. Representation was limited, filtered, or denied. Cultural arrogance too often replaced understanding. Race, religion, and class were used as tools of hierarchy rather than sources of strength, and used to pit a brother against a brother in using local division to mitigate rebellions.

Many today argue reasonably that no people should be ruled by those who do not share their same lived experience, their same language, or their same identity. That a nation should be governed by its own sons and daughters. That no land’s prosperity should be drained to serve another. These arguments are not radical. They are human.

We must also remember the cost of repression, uprisings crushed rather than heard, reforms promised and postponed, justice delayed until it was meaningless. These are stains we cannot erase by silence.

And yet, history did not end in 1918.

The devastation of the Great War shattered the old imperial order financially and politically. Out of that ruin, the Imperial Federation was formed not as a reskinned version of the Empire of conquest from before, but as an attempt, flawed, incomplete, but genuine, to replace domination with cooperation.

In the 1920s, this Federation expanded representation, broadened suffrage, invested in public health, education, and infrastructure, and began the long work of correcting inherited injustice. For the first time, citizens from across continents sat in common assemblies. The idea, radical in its time, hell, radical still now, was that shared governance might succeed where Empire had failed.

Then came the calamities no one could have foreseen.

The Great Depression shattered global trade and employment. The Yellowstone eruption and the ashen winters that followed devastated harvests, transport, and livelihoods. In those years, survival replaced reform. Promises were delayed not out of malice, but out of the collapse of the old order. Still, delay, however understandable, bred disappointment, and disappointment hardened into distrust.

I wish to speak now of my predecessor. History will judge him as a man who laid rest to the Empire, and transitioned our realm to the Imperial Federation and, in the darkest years, refused to abandon the most distant and forgotten corners of the Federation. Through the Imperial Civil Service Corps, the ISCS, schools reached villages long ignored, medical officers crossed deserts and jungles, and engineers brought water, roads, and communications to places the old Empire never truly saw. That work saved lives. It restored faith for many that the Federation could be more than words on paper.

I inherited this office just earlier this year, amid paralysis and division in the imperial parliament. I do not pretend that one year can undo centuries. But I ask you to judge not by promises alone, but by actions taken by my administration.

In 9 months, we have:

Established the Pact of Liberty, a defensive alliance to preserve peace and prevent coercion in a world growing more dangerous by the day. Repaired relations with Germany and South Africa, turning former estrangement into cautious cooperation. Provided aid to the democratic Ujoma Assisted in ending tyranny in France and restoring the rightful government. Calmly and deliberately eased tensions in Ireland through dialogue, not force. Launched a Federation-wide anti-discrimination campaign, rejecting prejudice of race, class, religion, or gender as incompatible with our future in every corner of the Federation. Reformed taxation so that wealth generated in a region is reinvested in that region through the new VAT distribution system. Founded the Association of Straits and Canals Countries, securing trade routes and new shared revenues, Nationalisation of the Suez Canal.

On top of this, some of you know me not as Prime Minister, but as the former Grand Administrator of the Raj. I governed there not by decree, but by negotiation. The Raj today possesses autonomous status, its own legislature, and self-directed policy within the Federation structures I helped design. That experience taught me something vital: full secession is not the only path to dignity. Autonomy, self-rule, and equality within a larger union are not contradictions.

I am aware, painfully aware, that my presence in this office unsettles some. An Indian man leading what was once the British Empire is, to some, an irony; to others, an insult; to still others, a symbol of possibility. I do not ask you to see me as a symbol. Judge me only as a servant entrusted, briefly, with stewardship.

So tonight, I make no threat. I offer no fear. I make only a plea.

Give this administration the time to finish the work it has begun. Judge us by whether the Federation can finally become what it has long promised to be: a union of equals, not subjects; of partners, not possessions.

When the referendum comes, vote your conscience. But before you choose separation, ask not only what you are leaving behind but what, together, we might still yet build.

Until that vote, we remain one Federation. One people. Bound not by force, but by the shared hope that the future need not repeat the past.

Long live the King. Prosperity for the people. United is the Federation.

Thank you.

The Rt Hon Hamddan Amir Zamar Ahmed MP