HKG 380/1
Kev
No.
SECURITY CLASSIFICATION
Top Secret,
Secret.
Confidential.
Restricted.
Unclassified.
PRIVACY MARKING
DRAFT MINUTE
To:-
Mr Murray
PS/Lord Goronwy-Roberts
Type 1 +
From
JAB
STEWART Telephone No. Ext.
Department
DSR11
.....In Confidence
LETTER FROM MR ARTHUR LATHAM MP
1. I attach a draft reply for Lord Goronwy-Robert's signature in response to Mr Arthur Latham's letter of 25 January addressed to the Secretary of State.
2. Mr Latham and his correspondent Mr Sutton in Bermuda, have raised a subject about which we would prefer to send as brief a reply as possible.
3. I have purposefully ommitted reference to the Deputy Governor's letter to Lord Fenner Brockway since this exposes a difference of view between the Governor and ourselves. Following his brief visit to Bermuda in December last, Sir A Duff referred to the Bermuda Attorney General's opinion on the position of the Governor to exercise the Prerogative of Mercy. Basically, the Attorney General considered that once Her Majesty, advised by UK Ministers, had declined to grant a reprieve, the Governor would have no power himself to grant a reprieve without further instructions from Her Majesty. The Governor used this argument publically in a letter to Lord Fenner Brockway in which the Deputy Governor wrote:-
"I am to say that the Queen was petitioned on their (Burrows and Tacklyn) behalf. She therefore exercised the Prerogative of Mercy herself. The Governor could not, in the circumstances, subsequently exercise it on her behalf in a different way. He was not empowered to do
So.
11
4. Sir Ian Sinclair has commented that the argument used by
Mr loy in his reply to Lord Brockway
and/
over-states the
powerlessness of the Governor and that the fference of viet between the Berris Attore general and tha
geneval and the FCO Legal Officer
can be resolved by the English Dev Officersnd 198087 400M S&K 1/77
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