TNAG-0719-FCO40-917-Capital-punishment-in-the-Dependent-Territories-1978 — Page 95

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298

HKG 386/1 нка

RECEIVER

16 JAN 1978

DESK OFFIC

INDEX

10. 51

PA

REGISTRY Action Taken

No

&

For the

af attention of

Dr. David Owen,

Foreign Secretary,

Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London, SW1A 2AH.

Dear Dr. Owen,

10 Lennox Gardens,

Croydon,

Surrey.

December 20th, 1977.

1)ps. Ach-fitter /aply som 2) HUGD faduce + draft

ply fun!

Mi Inda

In reply to my recent telegram about the executions in Bermuda, I have received a letter from W. E. Quantrill (your ref. HKG 380/1, December 8th) explaining that your intervention in the case was prevented by a lack of evidence to suggest that a miscarriage of justice had occurred.

The only course of action that "à convinced abolitionist" (as you later described yourself to the House of Commons) could square with his conscience would have been to reprieve the two men concerned and to have taken on whatever legal, political or constitutional consequences which might have followed.

In any ensuing controversy you would have had the support of other convinced abolitionists (of whom I am one) and all the middle-of-the road and reasonable people who recognise that the only way out of an absurd and tragic legal/constitutional anomaly of the kind you were faced with is to act according to moral principle and not the letter of the law.

As it is, you seem to me to have ducked your moral responsibility. The statement in the House that you would be willing to review the question of capital punishment in the Dependent Territories did nothing to alter the fact that two men were hanged in Bermuda on December 2nd because of the shame- ful inaction of the British Foreign Secretary.

Yours sincerely,

28/12

See also 1169) another letter

Céli Baquall сбий

See 162

Colin Bagnall.