STAFF IN CONFIDENCE
PERSONAL
-2-
The
Q
5 Fauley Schchin
6.
For this reason I wnder, before assuming that Diplomatic Service officers are the main answer and with a total of 10 senior staff involved, whether you would not be better advised to make a very careful survey of the residual dependency staff, or persons like Michael Allen in ODM who have already had senior level experience and if necessary induce them financially to take the jobs, whether ex London or Hong Kong. In addition you could possibly defer the main impact of the problem by adancing the notional retiring age for senior staff in dependencies from 55 to 60. It does not really make much sense to have Peter McEntree in Belize with a retiring age of 60 and Wyn Jones in Montserrat with a retiring age of 55. The rule is already honoured in the breach. Secondly why not revert to Governors' tours of five years for future appointments? It is still so described as the normal period in Colonial Regulation 3, although since dependencies came under the FCO Governors' tours have been equated to the normal Diplomatic Service tour abroad of three years, This would mean that if you are successful in identifying the right person you would have slightly more breathing space.
7. If these suggestions are looked on unfavourably and you use Diplomatic Service personnel for the six Governorships, they might benefit from, and it would assist in transition to a new source of staff for the dependencies, to appoint as the French used to do in their Colonial Service, a retired senior Colonial Governor as Inspector General of the calibre of David Trench or Michael Gass, who would have the dual role of touring to advise Diplomatic Service Governors on Colonial Administration procedures and secondly to report back to the Secretary of State in the same way that the Diplomatic Service Inspectorate do at present on Embassies and High Commissions. I do not suggest such a grandiose title as Inspector General but he could be appointed as a member of the Diplomatic Service Inspectorate, with responsibility for the dependencies. If he were stationed in Barbados in the kind of nuclear high level High Commission which I believe you have in mind, he could be responsible directly for BVÏ, Caymans, Montserrat, Turks & Caicos and Anguilla. This would leave St Helena either to be staffed by a Governor with more direct dependency experience or to be inspected less frequently by the same Inspector, or from London using the experience and te uniques developed in Barbados. (I did incidentally discuss with Owen Griffiths, the Diplomatic Service Inspector who visited here, the inadequacy of the Diplomatic Service inspection techniques for a dependency in that it was an office inspection and not designed to evaluate whether the Governor was doing his job properly or not.)
8. I confirm that we shall - unless there were some dramatic constitutional developments before 1980 require an Attorney General and also a Judge after that date. The presence of a British Attorney General is, I believe, sufficient to lay the Monson doctrine to rest (BVI I see may also have one). As far as the handling of papers are concerned I have already worked out a system (my letter N/2/4/126 of 29 December 1976 to Rouse refers) which satisfied the Diplomatic Service Inspectors and Security Department. While I appreciate the thinking behind the doctrine it is not wholly applicable while one has a Chief Secretary and Financial Secretary at post. A Governor can never share his whole range of problems with someone, but there are very few which he cannot discuss with various officials. With British Commissioner of Police, Head of Special Branch, now an Attorney General and two very compatible Caymanian colleagues in the Financial Secretary and the Chief Secretary I have never felt any feeling of isolation. It takes five minutes to put through a telephone call to the FCO and a telex conference could also be set up if required.
STAFF IN CONFIDENCE PERSONAL
19.
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