нка
HKG 386/1
RECEIVE!
1 2 DEC 1977
DESK I
INDEX
No
0.51
REGISTRY
Action Taken
High Jackfield,
Sutton-in-Craven,
KEIGHLEY BD20 7AP,
West Yorkshire.
December 6, 1977.
Dear Dr Owen,
Knowing your unequivocal position on Chile, and
Apartheid, I was all the more shocked and horrified by your refusal
to intervene on behalf of the two black Bermudans who were hanged
last week. I cannot help but compare your justifiable anger at the
foul death of Steve Biko, with your acquiescence in their execution. Of course, they were condemned murderers, and Biko was not. Neverthe- less, hanging is obscene, and, if you have a moral duty to condemn
atrocities in South Africa, a sovereign state, you surely had a
moral duty to try to prevent executions taking place in one of our
on colonies, whatever the legal precedent. The executions were morally
indefensible and politically inept: witness the wholly understandable ★
civil unrest which has followed.
Had the two murderers been white expatriates, I can imagine the atten-
-tion which the British Press would have lavished on them in the days
before their deaths. As it is, they were black, and the lesson will not
have been lost on black men and women, in Bermuda, and elsewhere.
As a socialist, I feel outraged, as a white Englishman, deeply ashamed.
Yours sincerely,
1)Ack. reply to follow
2) нка
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HK & Gen. Dipt to reply 3w8/12
Aloe
Alan Rye
Рус.
(member of Keighley CLP)
310
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