HKG 025/
*S DEL 1981
Government llouse
Bermuda
Mr. Mc Grade 18/12
A.
24/2
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Sir Edward Youde, KCMG, MBE, Chief Clerk,
abortal trea
Foreign & Commonwealth Office, London, S.W.1.
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8th December, 1981 spoly. (bad. sir .
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For advice, pleasx o'sm
Fr12
In January this year a meeting was held in Barbados of Governors of the Caribbean dependencies. I did not attend and have not seen the record of their discussions. But I have been told that one of the matters discussed concerned the increasing sense of isolation among Governors of small territories and the lack of anybody in the FCO with whom they could correspond or consult on a basis of professional and personal confidence about their problems.
After the Belize independence celebrations Jim Hennessy and his wife came to stay a few days here, and we took the opportunity to discuss this problem, together with Peter Lloyd who will shortly be going to the Cayman Islands. Subsequently I mentioned the matter in the course of a letter to Richard Luce who had recently assumed responsibility for our affairs. Perhaps I may quote here from the letter which I sent to him.
"After six months here I have already been struck' by the
problems of the FCO in seeking to administer the dependent territories. Now that they can no longer call upon the expertise or experience of officers who served in the Colonial Administrative Service, they have to rely upon diplomats posted for short terms to the departments concerned, none or few of whom have any field experience in this kind of work. Hence, with the best will in the world, they are not able to deploy the depth of know how and advice which governors of isolated territories need, nor to provide the avuncular advice and the consultation between equals which is so invaluable (as, for example, in the Diplomatic Service). I can think of several instances where the interests of dependencies have been inadvertently misunderstood or overlooked in the FCO at the cost of distress and sometimes damage to our position."
You may recall that up to the time I was sent to Uganda in 1979 I filled the post of Dependent Territories Advisor with the aim of providing just the kind of liaison and understanding
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