TNAG-0835-FCO40-1043-Foreign-and-Commonwealth-Office-seminar-on-the-future-of-Bri-1979 — Page 8

SEMINAR ON THE FUTURE OF BRITAIN'S REMAINING DEPENDENT

TERRITORIES

1.

1.1

Introduction

This paper is not an authoritative statement of Government policy towards the remaining dependent territories. It has been produced for the Seminar with a view to pinpointing some of the problems facing us, some of the solutions we and others have tried with varying degrees of success, and some of the points which we hope the Seminar will discuss. Some questions have been asked if we knew all the answers, there would be little point in having a seminar at all, but we hope to get some answers from this exercise.

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1.2 All of the dependencies have different problems, and we fully appreciate that no single solution could be applied to them all. On the assumption that all the participants have considerable knowledge and experience of these territories, we have not attempted an in depth study of individual constitutional backgrounds, which is readily available in standard reference works.

2. Present Policy

2.1 We shall be discussing the future for the following eight territories:

Anguilla

Bermuda

British Virgin Islands

Cayman Islands

Montserrat

Pitcairn

St Helena & Dependencies Turks & Caicos Islands

2.2 Of the remaining dependencies, Belize, Falkland Islands, Gibraltar and Hong Kong all have delicate political problems; neither the British Antarctic Territory nor the British Indian Ocean Territory have resident populations and thus no independent future; and the Anglo-French Condominium of the New Hebrides is already far advanced along the road to independence, which is planned for the first half of 1980. Brief details of the eight territories are given in Annexes 1-8.

2.3 Since 1945, when the UN Charter formally acknowledged the principle of self-determination for colonial peoples, successive British Governments have given every help and encouragement to Dependent Territories wishing to become independent. To this end we are committed to the creation of competent political and economic institutions in our dependencies. At the same time, it has been a consistent part of our policy that, in accordance with the Charter's acknowledgement (Article 73) "the interests of the inhabitants of these territories are paramount", no territory should be forced into independence against the will of its population.

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12.4