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(b) "We did not give the Governor a sight of the
Parliamentary statement of 5 December before it was made.
ig is trea The Head of WIAD instructed the Resident
Clerk to send the draft to the Governor after it had been
completed late on Sunday, 4 December but, unfortunately, : Bermuda's radio son had closed down for the night and
no action was taken the next morning to carry out the
Head of VIAD's instructions;
(c) “Ve failed to take account of the need ... to
disassociate the Governor as far as possible from the decision not to reprieve and This is only true to some
This
extent. An attempt was made to modify the draft of the Secretary of State's parliamentary statement but was rejected by the Secretary of State himself. However, it must be admitted that no attempt was made to modify another part of the statement which clearly associated
Sir P Ramsbotham with the decision not to reprieve;
(a)
we should clear up as quickly as possible the legal disagreements about the Governor's powers to reprieve once The Queen had refused to do so.
Sir Ian Sinclair has commented on this question and I attach
his minute;
(e)
the Governor still does not know whether or
not his reply to the parliamentary communication of
2 December was forwarded to the PLP.
2.
The above represents a sorry catalogue of errors and failures in communication, compounded, of course, by the
facts that the three officials most closely concerned,
Messrs Cortazzi, Stratton and myoci were away from
London at the crucial time and that the Secretary of State at that same crucial time took the affair largely into his own hands and refused to allow the explanation of Ministers' decisions to be send to Bermuda. I recommend that the
PUS should consider that Sir A Duff's enquiry, supplemented by the enquiries that Mr Duff and I have set in hand, have identified all the sources of error and no further enquiry
is called for.
3.
Having said the above, I think I should record my
Flag B
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