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DEPENDENCIES
NATIONALITY BILL:
30 MAR 1981 34011
Hick
RECEIVED A PRZESTRY #O. 51
DESK INDEX
CITIZENSHIP FOR THE
Thank you for your letter of 19th March.
ملا
1 APR 1981
PA
215.4
REOJSTAY Action Taken:
Pis UtY
see
I am glad that the FCO agree
that it would not be desirable to provide for separate citizenships in the Bill.
I consider that we have a defensible line to take on this and that we have a good chance of carrying our supporters with us.
216
I do not have many comments on the Annex. I would have thought that the question mark after point three was unnecessary. It would clearly be inappropriate to establish separate citizenships for, for example, the British Antartic Territory, the British Indian Ocean Territory, or for the Sovereign Base Areas of Cyprus. I think that we may need to say what the Falkland Islands' position is as regards separate citizenship, and St. Helena's.
I think that, having taken the stance that Part II is right in its approach to citizenship of the British Dependent Territories, we should beware of weakening our case. Paragraph 7 of your Annex provides a fallback position should the need arise and I do not see at present why we should go even that far. An enabling clause to be added to the Bill would, it seems to me, weaken our case still further.
If such a clause were introduced, it would be very difficult to deny that it was being put in to meet pressure from the Gibraltar lobby. People would ask why the case for Gibraltar having a separate citizenship cannot be conceded now instead of later. I am not sure that we would have a very satisfactory reply.
Similarly it would be difficult, if not impossible, to say why other dependencies should not be given citizenship now rather than later. A particular difficulty would arise over Hong Kong, in whose case we could be driven to saying that there was no question of separate citizenship ever yet Hong Kong must be the most developed of all our dependent territories.
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I find it very difficult to believe that a separate citizenship for Gibraltar would in fact appease the protesters there. What the Gibraltarians really want is British citizenship. A separate citizenship could only distance them further from Britain. Of course, what is sometimes meant by separate citizenship in this context is something that can be described as British citizenship (Gibraltar), British citizenship (Hong Kong), and so on, but we have made it clear in the course of the Hong Kong negotiations that this is quite unacceptable. I am not at all convinced that Gibraltarians would accept that the appellation "Citizen of the British Dependent Territory of Gibraltar" was a remotely acceptable alternative.
/I do believe
Richard Luce, Esq., M.P.