TNAG-0722-FCO40-920-Capital-punishment-in-the-Dependent-Territories-1978 — Page 73

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20. 51 8 JUN 1973

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Reply at 253

Telephone: 01-580 0916

School of Oriental and African Studies University of London

Malet Street London WCIE 7HP

General Secretary: Greg Lee

Dear Dr. Gwen,

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Honorary President:Rt. Hon. Tony Benn MP

29.5.73

The members of the Labour Club have asked no to take up the issue of the

Bermuda executions with you again.

217 Your Political Adviser, David Stephen, rote to us (19/4/73) giving a not very

satisfactory reply to our letter of 4 April.Several points arise from his letter, however.

Ir. Stephen thought that the itish Government should not interfere in

a democratic decision of the Bermuda House of Assembly to retain the death penalty. However

we do not believe that a legislative elected by a racially discriminate electoral system,

where constituencies in black areas contain four times as many voters as those in white

residential areas, deserves to be called 'democratic',So although Fr.Stephen's statement

which spoke of "a body democratically elected by the entire adult population" is technically

I correct, it is also derisible.

He totally omitted to reply to our question concerning your statement in

the House of Commons on 5 December when you said you were prepared to review the question

of capital punishment in the Dependent Territories. Are we to take ir.Stephens silence to

you are not intending to review the issue 2

We also requested any further information on this topic, yet Fr.Stephen also

1 to inform us that a Royal Co.sssion has been set up, under the Chairmanship of

bord litt, to investigate the "troubled' in Bermuda last December.Will this Commission also

be repo ting and making recommendations, on the death penalty, as this was obviously a

bot core of the discont. n of the non- rropean population?