of government should be introduced, comprising the provinces of British India and those princely states that were willing to accede to it. However, the division between Congress and Muslim representatives proved to be a major factor in preventing agreement on much of the important detail of how federation would work in practice. The new Conservative-dominated National Government in London decided to go ahead with drafting its own proposals (white paper, March 1933). A joint parliamentary select committee, chaired by Lord Linlithgow, reviewed the white paper proposals for a year and a half between April 1933 and November 1934, amidst much opposition from Winston Churchill and other backbench Conservatives. The House of Commons approved the Joint Select Committee report in December after an emollient speech by Conservative leader Stanley Baldwin, who stated that he respected the principled position of the bill’s opponents and that he did not wish feelings in his own party to become permanently embittered. Based on the white paper, the Government of India Bill was framed. It was immensely long, containing 473 clauses and 16 schedules, and the reports of the debates took up 4,000 pages of Hansard. At the committee stage and later, to appease the diehards, the "safeguards" were strengthened, and indirect elections were reinstated for the Central Legislative Assembly (the central legislature's lower house). The opposition Labour Party opposed the Third Reading of the bill because it contained no specific promise of dominion status for India. It received Royal Assent and was passed into law on 2 August 1935. As a result of this process, although the Government of India Act 1935 was intended to go some way towards meeting Indian demands, both the detail of the bill and the lack of Indian involvement in drafting its contents meant that the Act met with a lukewarm response at best in India, while still proving too radical for a significant element in Britain. Features No preamble: the ambiguity of British commitment to dominion status While it had become uncommon for British Acts of Parliament to contain a preamble, the absence of one from the Government of India Act 1935 contrasts sharply with the 1919 Act, which set out the broad philosophy of that Act's aims to Indian political development. That Act's preamble quoted, and centred on, the statement of the Secretary of State for India, Edwin Montagu, to the House of Commons on 20 August 1917,