PERSONAL
&
CONFIDENTI AL
10 November 1977
1176
Sir Murray MacLehose GBE KCMG KCVO
RECE:
HONG KONG
HKG 38071
DES..
INDEX
No
11 NOV 1977
3. 51
REGISTRY Action Taken
EL
1. You will remember that in our telegram no. Personal 76 to Belmopan of 9 August we rehearsed the possibility that the "Creech-Jones" doctrine be abolished and that the Secretary of State should be unfettered in his recommendations to The Queen on petitions for mercy received from prisoners sentenced to death in dependent territories. Consideration of this recommendation has been made more urgent recently by the existence in Bermuda of two men sentenced to death, one of whom had, inter alia, been convicted of the murder of the late Governor, Sir Richard Sharples.
2.
A Cabinet Committee has recently considered this case and has concluded that it would be wrong to interfere with the "Creech-Jones" doctrine at this time when any change would be linked with the Bermuda case and would almost certainly create a political row in the United Kingdom. Accordingly, the Secretary of State has recommended to The Queen that she should not accept a petition on behalf of the two convicted prisoners and that the law should be allowed to take its course.
3. During the whole of this affair the position in Hong Kong was well to the forefront of everyone's minds. Particularly the possibility that if the two in Bermuda are executed you might find it more difficult to maintain the policy that you have pursued since 1973 of commuting the death sentence in every case. Dr Owen, when deciding to advise The Queen that the law should take its course in the Bermuda case, minuted "The position in Hong Kong must be held. There is no question about this".
•
4. Ministers, when considering the general question of the policy towards capital punishment in dependent overseas territories, agreed on the desirability of changing the policy and we shall be approaching them again in January, after the Bermuda case has settled down, with a proposal that the "Creech-Jones" doctrine be abrogated.
96
JAB Stewart