IOR/L/PS/10/856/2

This item comprises: correspondence; deciphered telegrams; India Office Political Department registry forms with subject and notes; India Office draft telegrams, draft letters and notes; and covering letters of the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to the Under-Secretary of State for India.

The papers relate to the nomination of British representatives to serve on the Joint Anglo-Persian [Iranian] Committee for the examination and revision of the [Anglo]-Persian Customs Tariff, including:

• The recommendation by Sir Percy Cox [Acting Minister] in Tehran, of C R Watkins, CIE, Indian Civil Service, then Chief Collector of Customs, Mesopotamia [Iraq]
• The recommendation by the Board of Trade of Sir Hubert Llewellyn Smith (then in India) and his assistant Thomas Martland Ainscough, and the agreement of the Foreign Office and Cox
• Candidates suggested by the Government of India, including James Algernon Stevens, Collector of Customs, Rangoon [Yangon], Arthur Herbert Ley, Secretary to Government of India, Commerce and Industry Department, and Arthur Cecil McWatters, Secretary to the Secretariat Committee, Indian Civil Service (only McWatters was appointed)
• Candidates suggested by the Civil Commissioner Baghdad, including M M S Gubbay, Controller of Currency India, S S B Dantur, Collector of Customs (then on the Currency Commission in London), and Major Reader William Bullard, CIE, Levant Consular Service (only Bullard was appointed)
• Discussion regarding the apportionment of the costs of the British delegation
• The salaries and allowances of Committee appointees Watkins, Bullard and McWatters.

The principal correspondents are: the Board of Trade, Commercial Relations and Treaties Department; the Foreign Office; Sir Percy Cox; the India Office; the Civil Commissioner Baghdad; and the Viceroy of India. Note that there is some overlap of early correspondence with IOR/L/PS/10/856/1.