TNAG-0005-FCO40-41-Departmental-briefs-about-Hong-Kong-1968 — Page 129

1

CONFIDENTIAL

No.

R.Sid ANG

oc. ir. Beanett

MI

52

Carter

evell

Kr. JerrOE

3tow

Elain

My

Mr. S.W.E. Martin

C.P & P. Department

Peers from the Dependent Territories in & Reformed House of Lorde

I refer to your minute of 10 June on the above subject.

I agree with your cœclusion that the balance of advantage lies in not pursuing the idea of peers from British dependent territories. I have however a number of comments to make on the matter and on particular points in your draft memorandum whie. I hope may be helpful. These are set out below.

2. It seems to me that at mme point in the de-colonisation process, there is a real possibility that we may have to face up to the prospect of offer. ing integration in some form or other to the remaining dependent territories as a means of de-colonising them; as you know, integration is one of the acceptable ways of de-colonising from the point of view of U.N. Resolution 1541. Clearly we shall not wish to envisage this possible solution, with its many difficult implications, until we are appreciably further down the de-colonising road than se are at present; for example, we would not I imagine vish to envisage integration for such terri- tories as Piji or British Honduras. But (leaving aside Hong Kong which is of course a special case), when we are reduced to a situation in which the only territories for which other satisfactory ultimate statuses have not yet been found are such terri tories as St. Helena, Seychelles, conceivably the 01lbert & Milice Islands Colony, Tristan, Pitcairn, and so forth (and not forgetting of course Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands though these could clearly be awkward), then it seems to me that we might feel it necessary to contemplate integration as sn acceptable means of de-colonising such territories. The relevance of all this to the matter discussed in your minute is the following. At the Oxford Confer- ence which Mr. Greenwood held in 1965 on the future of the smaller dependencies there was naturally some discussion about integration as a possible solution for some territories and about the forms it might

take. These are numerous and Mr. Staepoole, shortly before he left the office, made plain in discussions a few months ago with one of the political leaders from Seychelles that arrangements which could reasonably be called integratich night or night not cover such matters as representation at Westminster, economic equivalence, the direct involvement of U.K. departments in the integrating territory, the dismantling of central government and its conversion to local overmaent in the integrating territory and so forth. Come of these matters were covered in the discussion at the Oxford Conference and I recall clearly that one in particular to which some atten- tion was paid was, naturally enough, the question of representation at Westminster. The view was takon

that there was no necessity in an integration arrangement to envisage (as was envisaged in the Malta integration offer in the 1950s) elected representa- tion in the llouse of Commons. Indeed, particularly in relation to very small territories, there would be many obvious objections and difficulties to such representation. As an alternative the idea w

CONF IDENTI AL

/canvassed