4
The Governor is obviously not very anxious to proceed against Mrs. Black. Action taken against her would be under Clause 3 of ordinance No.5 of 1922, under which Ordinance the Governor issued regulations for evacuation. Clause 3 reads :
"Every person who contravenes angregula- tions made under this Ordinance shall, where no other penalty or punishment is provided by such regulation, upon summary conviction, be liable to a fine not exceeding $1,000 and to imprisonment to a term not exceeding one year".
But under the Regulations published in the Gazette on the 29th of June, 1940 (see 236 in 13139/11/40) an order requiring any woman to leave the Colony is sufficient authority to the police, etc., to use such force and restraint as may be necessary to carry out the order.
2.
For the reasons stated at X in my minute of the 5th of June aoove, I cannot see that we have any alternative but to insist on action being taken against Mrs. Black, in accordance with the law. If her refusal to leave was successful, there would be many others who would follow her example with a consequent loss of prestige to the Government, as great, if not greater than would occur if they expelled her from the Colony forthwith.
3.
The Governor has given two reasons for his refusal to proceed against recalcitrants in the past:
(1) that they are likely to resort to
hunger strikes or forcible resistance to arrest and deportation.
I do not think that a hunger strike is necessarily a good weapon to be employed by recalcitrants. In these circumstances, all that the Governor has to do is to deport them as quickly as possible, and they would not gain anything by continuing her hunger strike on the boat or in Manila or Australia. Forcible resistance, on the other hand, is a contin- gency to which we must have regard. In the Governor's view, it would create public scandal, but I do not see why it should also eventually prove unsuccessful if the Government adopts a firm attitude.
refers
(2) The Governor reports to the invidious position which would be created by taking action against Mrs. Black or others such, while the wives of prominent individuals defied the Government last year with impunity. In this connection I would refer to the telegrams at 231A and 232 on 13139/11/40 from which it will be seen that the decision to take no action against these women and their children was reached mainly because it was not thought their numbers (161 persons in all) were sufficient to cause an embarrassment to the defence of the Colony. As I said above, if Mrs. Black wins in her attempt to evade evacuation, these numbers will probably be largely increased. It is obvious though, that's Whe pampan
evadedevacuation are still, in the words
of/