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submit a Despatch to the Secretary of State reviewing progress in constitutional advance in their territories. It is also for consideration whether someone should be designated as having special responsibility for monitoring progress towards decoloni- zation this could be the Dependent Territories Adviser.
P
12. I also have a few, mainly drafting, points on your suggested despatch:
a) Para 2: second sentence. I suggest we delete the words or cannot sustain it". The point here is that if a territory wanted independence and was prepared to accept a satisfactory independent constitution I very much doubt whether ministers would resist granting it just because of a, mainly subjective, assessment that it could not sustain it.
b) Para 4: As drafted this suggests that there are only three stages of constitutional status: the existing constitution, full internal self-government and independence. In practice between the first two there is an infinite range of possibilities. I suggest therefore that the first sentence be amended to read
....prefers to remain dependent, further constitutional advance will not normally be granted and there can be
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independence".
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c) Para 5 : I am not sure I agree that there was mis- understanding. As WIAD interpreted the 1975 Despatch we were trying to bring pressure to move to independence more rapidly than local governments wished. I think we would be wrong to suggest otherwise. The new policy that we are feeling our way towards and this will clearly need to be confirmed with other departments concerned and ministers is one of continuing to apply indirect pressure (eg by refusing to agree to the BVI's requests for a local governor, by continuing to control budgets through grant-in-aid, by refusing to allow the Turks and Caicos to have uncontrolled gambling or to "sell" one of their islands to North American businessmen for undisclosed and probably illegal purposes), but not of direct bullying to take the final step. I would like also to add at the end of the fourth sentence after "possible" "and welcome".
d) Para 6: I would be very surprised if the cost of membership of international organisations was a sig- nificant factor in the thinking of the small Caribbean dependencies but I have to acknowledge that it figured, disproportionately in my mind, in the Bermuda Green Paper published in the summer of 1977.
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PC Duff
West Indian and Atlantic Department
30 November 1978
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