DEPARTMENT OF TRADE
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Telegrams Civilair London
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Telephone Direct Line 01-217
P L Taylor Esq
Home Office
Lunar House
Wellesley Road
CROYDON
CR9 2BY
W153
Your reference IMG/77 72/1313/4
Our reference FSR 3763
Date
W October 1977
Dew Taylor.
`INDO-CHINESE SMALL BOAT REFUGEES
1 Thank you for your letter of 10 October.
2
I copied this over to our Marine Division, who are the experts in matters of registration of ships. On para 6 they did not under- stand the reference to double registration. They say that a vessel is only registered at one port in one country, and that Cardiff usually keeps a record of vessels registered in most ports of British registry. It is therefore proposed that you delete all words in the first sentence of para 6 after "Commonwealth Countries". Additionally to delete the word "only" in the penultimate line of para 6, and to substitute by "at a port" to read ....." which are registered at a port in the United Kingdom". Similarly for Conclusion 1 third line delete "only" and substitute again "at a port".
3
In para 7 it is suggested that you insert the words "UK registered" in front of "British Ships" in the first line, to read "...... refugees rescued by UK registered British Ships ...
4
There are two additional general points on your submission which you might wish to take into consideration:
a)
would it add strength to your submission if mention were made that the Times has now also published a powerful and emotive article on this subject? and
b) while the Home Office may only have heard of 3 cases over the past fifteen months (para 8) if you do want to quote numbers would it be better to ask the General Council of British Shipping how many cases they have had reported to them? (I will do this for you if you require it).
5 Finally one of the cases that has come to the notice of our Marine Department involved a Hong Kong ship where Singapore refused entry to the refugees (I think you are aware of this case). Given that the UK is responsible for the external relations of our Colonies can we deal with
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