TNAG-0429-FCO40-494-Programme-Analysis-and-Review-(PAR)-Future-of-Dependent-Terr-1974 — Page 48

CONFIDENTIAL

B.I.O.T..and Hong Kong. Apart from British Honduras and the Falkland Islands, there the position is complicated by international disputes, the United States would certainly oppose our withdrawing from any of our territories in the Western Hemisphere, while the Australians as well as the Americans are strongly averse from the

grant of independence to any of the Pacific territories. Seychelles,

St. Helena, and several of the smaller Caribbean and Pacific

territories are so heavily dependent on us that for them our with- drawal would mean economic collapse.

Diminished importance

4. The territories are so small, scattered and, except for Hong

Kong, so insignificant that their joint interests cannot command

anything like the weight that the interests of 'the Colonics'

once did. 'Colonial policy' cannot now raise its voice in the

company of foreign and defence policy. Paradoxically enough, the same is true of any general policy of 'decolonization'. Such a policy could only be carried out alongside, and as a relatively minor feature of, general withdrawals of British power from 'east of Sucz1 and the Caribbean and South Atlantic. An illustration of this was provided when the British Indian Ocean Territory was created de novo at a time when Colonial Office Ministers were considering a draft White Paper on decolonization.

Smell size

5. A further limitation is imposed by the small size of the territories. There is growing international anxiety about the proliferation of mini-states, which are a potential threat to the security of their neighbours and distort the balance of voting power in international organisations. The alternative 'final statuses'

are largely hypothetical. The Associated States in the Caribbean and the Pacific are still in the experimental stage, and few if any conclusions can be drawn from what has so far been achieved. Other possibilities are considered bolo”, but we owe it to the territories themselves to approach these possibilities with great caution. Opinion in the territories

6. A prior consideration in every case is the wishes of the

people concerned. By definition a post-colonial status cannot be imposed, but in nearly every territory the majority are strongly against an early British withdrawal. The main exceptions are those already on the road to independence, but the Indian community in Fiji also favour independence, the sins of the new Bahamas Government are

-2-

/still

CONEIDENTIALI