1
new revenue earning ideas to the boil with a quick divorce Bill and by offering a home to a private American medical school.
12. Beside the others the Caymans continue to display a splendidly Victorian pattern of self help and seemingly fool proof progress to greater prosperity. Their latest achievement has been to negotiate an oil trans-shipment arrangement which is already netting them $250,000 a year increasing to 20 times that figure in 1990. Their target date for independence is in 1,000 years.
13. As I write, the Report of the Royal Commission under Lord Pitt into the disturbances in Bermuda last year is about to be published. I found it a very good document which, as intended, sets out a time- scale for various stages of localisation and other action to narrow the cap between black and white. The real hot potato, I suspect, will be the conclusion that independence in the fairly near future is essential for Bermuda to be able to tackle her problems effectively on a truly national basis. Most of us reading this letter have served in countries where the black/white mix is 99 to 1 or thereabouts and there was no concentual colour issue. But in Bermude the proportion is 3 to 2; we are on Very different ground and must therefore tread carefully.
14. Finally, a thought for Tristan da Cunha which with a population of 280 turned in revenue last year of £170,000 against recurrent expenditure of £135,000 and all on about 65 working days (those when it was not too rough to venture out fishing). Whenever the Treasury mandarins here press me to consider evacuating the St Helenians to Brixton or Notting Hill I take comfort in this success story.
We may: however, need something more than Stan Trees' valiant effort to get cricket going among a community which has affluence and leisure of a sort that they have not yet got used to handling. I would like to see the brandy and potatoes sweated out in an all-weather squash court.
The emphasis in this letter on questions of general policy does not of course mean that we underrate the work that is put into economic development, with, in the Caribbean, the Development Division's invaluable assistance. Current political problems are inevitably interwoven with questions of aid policy and development policies are an important factor in the consideration of decolonisation. It would however take a separate letter to do justice to the questions of aid and development as such.
Conclusion
16.
I would valus your thoughts on the contents of this letter and the ideas set out in Ted Rowlands' notes. We need to update and bring into shamer focus our attitude to decolonisation, the devolution of powers to dependent territory governments, localisation, training and related
•ssues. Two strands of policy have remained fairly consistent over The past ten years or so: the desire to avoid creating any more Associated States and the necessity of devolving powers only as part of & planned programme leading to independence within a foreseeable i moscale. But we are now reaching a stage in some territories where
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