OUT TELEGRAM (CONT)
DEDIP
Caveat
Precedence. IMMEDIATE
Sir Percy Cradock either (1) to detay the publication-of-his-book-
until the controversial matters he covers at the end are no
くくくく
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Longer matters of negotiation with the Chinese Government or
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(ii) that he should remove the chapters dealing with issues which are still under discussion with China.
We should make the case for doing so on general political grounds and seek to avoid being drawn into a detailed textual analysis. It is (predictably) difficult to pin-point individual sentences which could be held to breach the Radcliffe rules as amended. But if Sir P Cradock insists on chapter and verse, we could point to a number of cases where disclosure of information which has so far remained confidential would be injurious to our relations with China.
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We are consulting you before responding to the Cabinet Secretary. We believe that the approach set out above offers the best prospect of persuading Sir P Cradock to remove the most damaging material from his manuscript.
7. The following is additional material which may be useful if the Governor presses Sir J Coles on specific points:
Nature of legal remedies? The ultimate weapon is of course the Official Secrets Act. But it could not be used to suppress
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The
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critical comment: the most damaging aspect of the book. only other remedy would be to use the civil law duty of an employee to maintain the confidentiality of information gained in his employment. It has never been used in a case similar to the present one. It is very hard to imagine bringing a successful case against Sir P Cradock on these grounds.
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Can the Governor see the manuscript?
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We have looked carefully
at the manuscript here and are under pressure to return an early
For distribution order see Page
Printed in the UK for HMSO 1/91 De FC03275 M 100 CCN 56294
answer
Catchword:
STOCK No. C037C YF87
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