Mr Cornish
Planning Staff
COVERING CONFIDENTIAL
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• RES
ccr Rushford
Legal Advisers 1. (with encll..
DECOLONOSATION OR WHAT?
1. in groping our way towards new ideas on how to move our reluctant starters towards independence we have been wondering in the department whether it is right. to accept, without further examination, the received opinion in the FCO's former Caribbean Department that associated statehood was a thoroughly bad thing. It occurs that no relationship could be more trying or full of risk than the one we have today with the Turks and Caicos Islands. I therefore asked Mr Cockerham, who has been dealing with the Associated States for the last three years, to try to identify what were the real disadvantages of this relationship and I attach a copy of his paper.
2. It would be very helpful to have Planning Staff's comments on the general idea that associated statehood might be an alternative port of call on the way to independence and this might just fit in with ideas taking shape in the office of seeking to persuade the UN Committee of 24 that a choice of status short of independence could be a satisfactory act of self-determination in UN eyes.
3. Since I believe that the Planners were closely involved in the conception of associated statehood they may have some tribal memory on this and they may be able to comment on the suggestion at the bottom of paragraph 5 that the stiff hurdle of the referendum procedure under Section 10 (1) of the West Indies Act was deliberate.
lf, as I suspect, the reason for our dislike of this relationship stems from the Anguilla syndrome than perhaps
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we would be right to look again at its merits. Another Angui l ! seems for straight geographical reasons to be out of the question in the Caribbean.
PCD.
PC Duff
Wes
16 May 1978
Indian and Atlantic Department
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