THE British Government had provisional plans to send thousands of Ugandan immigrants to Bermuda 30 years ago, according to classified documents released in London yesterday.

In 1972, UK officials were ordered by the government of former Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath to find an "island asylum" for some of the 70,000 people of South Asian origin expelled by Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.

Bermuda was one of the islands asked to take some immigrants, but, according to the British document, refused on the grounds that it had a housing shortage.

Jim Woolridge, the Immigration Minister in the United Bermuda Party administration of that time, said yesterday he had no recollection of Cabinet discussing such a proposal from Britain. "That might have been something that was dealt with by the Governor's Council," said Mr. Woolridge.

"I do not remember having any discussion about taking people from Uganda. But a few years later the British government asked us if we could take some boat people who had fled Vietnam; we took four who had been rescued in the Pacific by a Bermuda-flagged vessel."

Britain had already allowed in 25,000 Ugandan Asians and Mr. Heath feared that a second wave of immigrants from the African nation could have damaged his country's fragile race relations at that time, the document revealed.

The island asylum plans met with little enthusiasm.

The Virgin and Cayman Islands said there were no jobs; in the Seychelles, officials said there was a "strong local prejudice" against East African Asians; and in the Solomon Islands "xenophobic tendencies" among the local population made it an unsuitable choice.

Only the Falkland Islands came up with a "surprise spontaneous offer" to accept displaced Asians in any number, including doctors, teachers, domestic servants and farm workers.

The document, released by the UK Public Records Office yesterday, quotes Mr. Heath as saying to his Cabinet in December, 1972: "There could be little hope of making headway with any aspect of the government's immigration policies until public opinion was reassured that the government would not tolerate a second occasion (influx of Ugandans) of this kind.

"It was for consideration, therefore, whether we should seek to devise, in overseas territories which we still controlled, areas of resettlement to which UK passport holders could, if necessary, be diverted," the minutes of the meeting noted.

"Such places would inevitably acquire something of the unhappy reputation of mere refugee camps; and the expenditure involved would be liable to be formidable. Nevertheless, the scope for action of this kind should perhaps be further explored."

Foreign Secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home noted that, given such a lukewarm response, there was little chance of the plan succeeding.

"The prospect of finding an island asylum which could take significant numbers of Asians for settlement on areas at present undeveloped is remote," he wrote.