Commonwealth. At the time unemployment had risen to 6% and there were fears of discharges from the Naval Arsenal. On 20 August 1962, Dr Borg Olivier presented a formal request for Independence. It was soon made known that the Attorney General Prof John J. Cremona, was working on a draft constitution while it was announced that a Malta Independence Conference was to be held at Marlborough House, London. The Conference started on 16 July 1963. Delegates from all the political parties led by Borg Olivier, Dom Mintoff, Toni Pellegrini, Herbert Ganado and Mabel Strickland attended. The Conference was chaired by Duncan Sandys. Discussions went on right through July. The Maltese Government was asking for a monarchical state with a Governor General representing the Queen. The Secretary of State proposed a referendum about the constitution. Borg Olivier's shrewdness as a politician enabled him to use the ongoing religious conflict between the Labour Party and the Maltese church, headed by Archbishop Mikiel Gonzi, to his advantage. This was a particular achievement given Borg Olivier's relationship with the Bishop were very strained. However, Borg Olivier was still able to gain a reduction in the clerical and episcopal influence on Maltese politics. This was the tail end of the Maltese Politico-religious dispute, comparable in some ways to the questions arising thirty years earlier, in Strickland's time. Although there was a personality clash between Archbishop Gonzi and Mintoff, other issues of power and jurisdiction were clearly becoming evident in the growing tension between the ecclesiastical sphere and the state. Mass hysteria and campaigns of almost sectarian proportions ensued, with Mintoff and several of his Labour Party colleagues being denied the sacraments and demonised. Borg Olivier was no religious fanatic, and took the politically correct side against his main adversary, riding on the wave of religious sentiment. Privately he argued that the Church's efforts to rally third parties to enter the political fray was damaging his chances. This referred in particular to a second, Church-supported right-wing party led by Herbert Ganado, which had returned four MPs in the 1962 elections. Ganado, along with three other 'pro-church' small parties, two of which with returned MPs, were opposed to independence. Gonzi wanted to check both Mintoff and Borġ Olivier, to prevent the loss of the Church's guarded status under a new political system. Both the main political parties, the PN and the MLP, had independence from Britain prominently