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CONFIDENTI AL
the Creech-Jones doctrine may still be the accepted policy, the Secretary of State was nevertheless legally empowered to recommend to The Queen a reprieve. There is no doubt that the Secretary of State was legally empowered to recommend to The Queen that she should exercise her Prerogative, but the constitutional practice which has been consistently followed by successive British Governments has been that the Secretary of State should not intervene (there was one case where the Creech-Jones doctrine was breached, that was in the case of Teoi in Hong Kong where Sir Alec Douglas-Home advised The Queen to exercise the Prerogative against the advice of the Governor of Hong Kong. However, in the present case the advice of Ministers and the Prime Minister's decision was clear that the law should take its course.)
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(e) Sir P Ramsbotham maintains that before leaving for Berımıda he had been assured by Mr Cortazzi and later by Mr Rowlands that steps would definitely be taken to abrogate the doctrine in good time to ensure that the petition, when receivad, would be granted. Mr Cortazzi recallo telling Sir P Ramsbotham when he saw him on 4 July that the Office was recommanding to Hinisters that the Creech-Jones doctrine be abrogated and he hoped that the Governor would not be faced with an awkward decision in the Burrows/Tacklyn case but he added that we had so far had difficulty in getting Ministers to grape the nettis. It is unfortunate that while telegram no. Personal 33, as drafted by Mr Murray, gave a clear indication to the Governor that Ministers had decided that they could not take a 1ecision
on the Creech-Jones principle while the Burrows and Tacklyn case was unresolved, the Secretary of State personally deleted this passage "because he does not think it proper to appear to put any pressure on the Governor to come to a particular conclusion". It was slear from the minuting surrounding this submission that the Secretary of State believed that there was little that could be done in the Burrows and Tacklyn case because of the possibility of a major row in the House of
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CONFIDENTIAL
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