[1] It was one of several Anti-Confederation movements which suffered intermittent popularity between 1865 and 1948 as the issue of Confederation between the colonies of Newfoundland and Canada was debated.
In the 19th century, various Anti-Confederates were strengthened in their resolve by outspoken figures such as Charles Fox Bennett who successfully championed Responsible Government's cause in an election on the confederation issue in 1869.
Bennett was opposed to Confederation because he feared the Québécois: he thought that if Newfoundland joined in Confederation with Quebec, then the Canadian Parliament would be dominated by Canada East (Quebec); he feared there would be a whole dynasty of French-Canadian statesmen who would centralize power in Ottawa and ignore the people of Newfoundland; he feared a National Unity Crisis within Canada and believed that Newfoundland would lose control of its natural resources to the new federal government.
The Great Depression hit the Newfoundland economy hard causing the dominion government to collapse in bankruptcy.
The RGL suffered a split on March 20, 1948 when a number of younger delegates and supporters, fearing that the League was poorly run and would lose the referendum, left to form the Party for Economic Union with the United States with Chesley Crosbie as its leader.
The RGL tended to draw its support from The Avalon peninsula, Bonavista South, and from Roman Catholics in Eastern Newfoundland.
The Economic Union Party and Responsible Government League tried to reunite the opposition to Joey Smallwood's Confederate Association but relations between Crosbie and Cashin's parties were tense allowing the Confederate League to benefit from better funding and a united organization.
The petition was ignored and a legal challenge by six members of the pre-1934 House of Assembly that argued that the National Convention Act and the Referendum Act were both unconstitutional was quashed when Justice Dunfield ruled that with the reversion of Newfoundland to Crown Colony status in 1934, the British Parliament was free to do as it saw fit.