CONFIDENTIAL
Miss Brooks Legal Advisers
CATEGORIES OF CITIZENS
1139
Reference..
AKK 340
RECEIVED
INDEX
PA
را
Lützen's bom
in foreign Countries
1. We spoke about your minute of October with particular reference to the so called "constitutional issue". I now enclose a copy of Mr Murray's minute of 4 October and re-attach telegram number 1330 of 25 September from Hong Kong.
2. As I explained when we spoke I can only think that the constitu- tional issue, if it as described in the last 2 sentences of para 2
} of Mr Murray's minute is really another way of expressing criticisms which we had made of the 2 category citizenship proposal using the title British Overseas Citizen for the second category. As you know, our criticisms divides citizens, in effect, into UK-belongers and others, which is naturally objectionable to the others; and in respect of belongers of existing dependencies it fails to meet the requirements of present day citizenship concepts in that it does not indicate the territory of which the person is a citizens. Furthermore, that the present proposal is in reality a 3-category scheme only thinly dis- guised in this unsatisfactory way. If the "constitutional argument" is on much the same lines, meaning that belongers of existing dependen- cies want to see their territorial link reflected in their title, I obviously share that view for the reasons given above. But if that is the argument it seems to me more an argument about title than about numbers of categories of citizenship - though it may amount to the same thing if it is assumed that, however many categories of citizen- ship there are, those non-belongers of the UK or existing dependencies will be called British Overseas Citizens.
5.
Though there is no dispute within the FCO about the desirability of a separate category of citizenship for colonial belongers I would not have thought that the arguments above mean that it is constitu- tionally or legally impossible to put colonial belonbers in the same category as citizens who are non-belongers. They are, of course, in the same category now, together with UK belongers, all sharing the same title of Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies. Presumably the colonial belongers have no objection to that because their own title reflects their territorial link.
4.
Do
I am sorry for the obscurity surrounding this for I suspect that we are all talking about the same thing under different names. But like my predecessor in this Department and other members of the Department I have never been sure exactly what constitutional issue was thought to be involved, and unless it is the one which I have mentioned above I am afraid I am still not sure just what it is. you see any other constitutional issue which provides a more compelling argument in particular a constitutional or legal obstacle/merging, under any title, present colonial belongers with other citizens without the right of abode in the UK or an existing dependency, such as those who derive their status from a great grandfather (or more distant paternal ancestor) born in the UK and citizens who remained CUKCs when other colonies became independent?
5. Perhaps I should add that I do not think that the issue relates
are that it is
* of this 2 -category proposal
Sitely MK - orientated in that it
/to
CODE 18-77
CONFIDENTIAL