Mr Broadley, PPL
REPRESENTATION IN SMALL STATES
RECE
DES INDEX
No
HKG.025/4
- 3 OCT 1979
13.51
EGISTRY
Action Tok
1831201 120
130
1. At a seminar on the future of our remaining Dependent Territories, which I attended earlier this week at the Institute of Development Studies, I had a discussion with Professor David Murray of the Open University, on the question of British representation in micro-States. Professor Murray, a constitu- tional expert, has spent a lot of time in the small island territories of the Pacific.
2. He suggested that it was inappropriate for Britain to be represented in tiny, poor communities by resident diplomats, who would clearly never have enough to do simply as diplomats and who would inevitably seem much too grand and sophisticated for the context. He proposed that, rather than simply settle for non-resident accreditation, we might consider appointing Technical Cooperation Officers supplied under the aid programme as our official representatives. He was thinking of something a little more substantial than just Honorary Consul style appoint- ments - the people appointed would be properly accredited and would spend part of their time carrying out the normal functions of High Commissioners/Ambassadors. But the rest of their time (and there should be plenty of it) would be spent doing genuine jobs of work as TCOs." This would give our representatives an image that was more appropriate to the environment in which they would be working, as well as providing them with a valuable means of developing contacts within their countries.
3. Professor Murray thought that such posts could be filled either by suitable experts who had been given a crash course in diplomacy, or by DS officers with special skills which would enable them to do a useful technical cooperation job (e.g. as economists or even as advisers on public administration/ management).
4.
This idea seems so obvious that it is difficult to believe that it has not been thought of before. Clearly there would be problems over divided loyalties (though these should not be insoluble if the question were approached pragmatically), and in any case I suspect that, in practice, a scheme of this sort would turn out to be so complicated to administer that it would simply not be worth it for the amount of benefit (insignificant in the scale of our world-wide activities) that it might bring. But I promised Professor Murray that I would pass his suggestion on to the appropriate department in the DS Administration, so that it could be considered seriously.
28 September 1979
WE Quantrill
Hong Kong and General Department K247
233 4381