TNAG-0834-FCO40-1042-Foreign-and-Commonwealth-Office-seminar-on-the-future-of-Bri-1979 — Page 160

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Foreign and Commonwealth Office London SW1A 2AH

HKG.025/4

Telephone 01- 233-4377

No 8719 nyz

Your reference

Our reference

HKG 025/4

Date

7 August 1979

SEMINAR ON THE FUTURE OF THE DEPENDENT TERRITORIES

1.

You may recall that at the January conference, Dick Stratton explained the purpose of our proposed seminar.

2.

To keep you fully in the picture, I enclose a copy of the letter to participants with the outline programme and list of those who have so far accepted. In addition we are inviting a Tory and a Labour MP, Bruce Greatbatch, Douglas Williams, Sir George Bishop (Bookers), Peter McCunn (Čable and Wireless) and David Jessop (West Indies Chronicle). Dick Stratton will chair the seminar and Mr Ridley hopes to attend some sessions.

3. Our budget for the exercise is not unlimited and we are not over-anxious to learn of other potential participants - unless some of our invitees fall by the wayside. But if there is a possible candidate from your territory, whom you consider would have a really worthwhile contribution to make and who would be in the UK at the time, please let me have details.

4.

The IDS tell us that Marquiss R McLaughlin of East End PO Box 46, Grand Cayman, is known to them as a mature, though not very senior, student, who could make a lively contribution. If Tom Russell knows anything of him, I should be glad to hear.

5. This letter is addressed to Anguilla, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Montserrat, Turks and Caicos Islands, Bermuda, Pitcairn and St Helena. For the last three, who did not attend the January conference, a letter describing the seminar is also enclosed. Copies go for information to DevDiv, Bridgetown and Belize. (We shall not be discussing the future of Belize, the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar or Hong Kong.)

A E Clarke

Hong Kong and General Department