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163-5
CONFIDENTIAL
The telegram which the Department drafted for the Secretary of State to send included a first paragraph as follows:
"1. My colleagues and I believe it desirable to change the present policy towards capital punishment in
Dependent Territories, but feel unable to take a decision on the principle while the Burrows-Tacklyn case is unresolved. The general desire here is of course that capital punishment should be abandoned as is currently the case in the United Kingdom.
#1
The Secretary of State decided that this paragraph should be omitted because he did not think it proper to appear to be putting any pressure on the Governor to come to a particular conclusion.
The fact is, therefore, that the Governor replied to the enquiry which was put to him, still under the impression that, whatever he recommended, a reprieve would somehow be contrived. In the light of hindsight I think the Secretary of State's desire not to appear to be influencing the Governor's decision must have been predicated on the reference in the draft to Ministers' wishes to abandon capital punishment. It would therefore still have been open to the Department, at that time, and despite the omission of the first paragraph of the telegram, to inform the Governor that the plan to arrange a reprieve had fallen through.
I asked the Governor whether, if he had been so informed at that time, he would have acted differently. He told me that he found it difficult to answer that question since he had at the time been so convinced that a reprieve would be arranged. He supposed that it would have been difficult for him to do other than confirm the sentences.
But the fact remains that he, and his Government, feel very badly let down between 13 October (when GEN 103 met) and 15 November, when they were informed that the petition had failed. It is also of course the case that, during this period, they continued to assess the risk to law and order in a situation in which reprieves would have been granted rather than a situation in which the executions had taken place.
At the London end, the Secretary of State, on seeing the Governor's telegrams Nos. 32-34 of 27 October, let it be known that he accepted the position as set out by the Governor and directed that the necessary steps should be set in hand to enable him to advise The Queen accordingly .e. that the law should take its course 7. The Department then prepared the necessary papers, including a submission to The Queen and a minute to the Prime Minister and members of GEN 103; but no word of this reached Bermuda.
/Section II
CONFIDENTIAL