HKG.380/
28DEC 1977
AKGA
385
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SW1A 2AH
PA
Action Taki
712 DEC 1977
No
349
Thank you for your letter of 12 December enclosing a letter from
your constituent Mr William Franks about the recent executions in
Bermuda.
On Mr Franks' first point, the Government adhered to the long-
standing policy, followed by successive British Governments, known as the Creech-Jones doctrine. This was set out by the then Colonial Secretary, Arthur Creech-Jones, in 1947 (though he was in fact only restating a policy that had already been followed for many years): that the Secretary of State does not intervene or advise the Monarch to intervene in cases of this kind unless he has grounds for believing that a miscarriage of justice has taken place.
On Mr Franks' second point, having satisfied myself that no miscarriage of justice had taken place, I did not, in the light of the Creech-Jones doctrine, consider it would have been right to make representations to the Bermuda Government to stop the executions, particularly given the fact that the Bermudian Assembly, which is democratically elected, has twice voted to retain the death penalty,
Mr Franks contrasts our attitude in this case with our action in
making representations in the case of the mercenaries who were tried in Angola. But in Angola the circumstances were different: we were dealing there with a case involving British citizens on trial in a foreign country and there were strong grounds for the plea for clemency we made to the Angolan Government. For example, the crime of which they were convicted is not a crime in international law, nor was there any provision for appeals to be made by the accused.
As
Mr Franks' further point is essentially the same as that raised by Arthur Latham after my statement in the House of Commons on 5 December. I said then, this is a difficult question of balance whether, particularly
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in the light of recent events in Bermuda we wish to take away from other dependent territories the degree of decision-making that has been delegated to them. As I suggested to the House, I believe that Parliament will wish to reflect on the underlying issues before any changes are made. We remain ready to review the whole complicated question of the death penalty for murder in dependent territories and you will have seen that on
8 December Michael Foot said we should have to look at this after the
Christmas recess.
Miss Joan Lestor MP
/I