London, 12 December 1972
Personal And Confidential
1. It may be helpful if I put on paper what I said yesterday in our talk on immigration. There are really two problems:
(1) The UKPH
(2) How to let in ‘Kith and Kin’ on equal terms with the EEC without disrupting the Commonwealth.
2. The difficulties of dealing with the UKPH problem seem almost insuperable, except possibly in the context of a revision of our nationality law—a lawyer‘s paradise and a slow process.
3. It seems likely, therefore, that we shall find it difficult to meet the Party‘s anxieties on this score, at any rate in the short run.
4. But the immigration Orders come up again in January and we need by then to have a plan for keeping out Blacks and Browns from the Commonwealth while admitting ‘Kith and Kin’ as freely as EEC citizens. The plan, moreover, needs to be one which won’t destroy the concept of a multi-racial Commonwealth.
5. One possible suggestion to achieve this is to announce ‘a right of return’ for persons of British descent. This would divide potential immigrants into four categories:
(a) EEC Citizens who would have the right of entry and employment on a basis of reciprocity, but no civic rights.
(b) Commonwealth Citizens who would have no right of entry, but, if admitted, would have full civic rights.
(c) Persons of British Descent who would have a ‘right of return’ involving:
- EEC rights if they were of foreign nationality, e.g. British (but not Dutch) South Africans;
- free entry plus civic rights if they were of Commonwealth nationality, e.g. British (but not French) Canadians.
(d) Aliens
6. The advantages of the ‘right of return’ concept is [sic] that it could be divorced from the Commonwealth or racial issue. It would be granted to anyone who was of British descent but refused to those not of British descent whatever their colour. But a distinction would continue between Commonwealth British and foreign British, though both would have the automatic right of entry. We might also hope that other countries, e.g. India, might willingly or under pressure, follow our example.
7. The definition of ‘British descent’ would present problems—but ‘grandparents and spouses’ would seem reasonable with a discretionary clause aimed to cover some of the early setters.
8. As I said earlier ‘the right of return’ concept does not solve the UKPH problem but it does take some of the sting out of the whole immigration issue by suggesting a way of keeping out black and brown immigrants, letting in ‘Kith and Kin’ on EEC terms and still preserving the multi-racial image of the Commonwealth.
[UKNA: FCO 24/1318]