Church House,
26th April, 1967.
I am very sorry indeed that I have not been able to reply earlier to your letter of 10 April about hours of work for women and young persons in Hong Kong.
I am also dismayed that you were bitterly disappointed with the contents of my letter of 7 April but I can assure you that neither I nor Fred Lee had any intention whatsoever of misleading you in this matter. Obviously there have been misunderstandings. In the second paragraph of my letter of 7 April, which you have since accepted as a substantially accurate account of what I told you at our meeting on
16 February, I said that the relevant memorandum would probably be put to the Hong Kong Executive Council in about two weeks' time. In the event it was put to Executive Council on 7 March less than three weeks from the date of our meeting. Also, you have rightly pointed out that the proposed amending legislation does not apparently extend to garment workers. But the subject we were, in fact, discussing at our meeting was the hours of work for women and young persons in industry generally. Indeed at that meeting George Foggon emphasised the limited scope of the new legislation and he also explained that in the first stages, at least, the new regulations would probably do little more than confirm the existing situation: that is to say, they would probably apply to such industries and occupations as were already predominantly observing an 8 hour day and that their extension to other industries where the 8 hour day is observed by a minority would take time. Obviously both of these points have given rise to misconceptions.
LAST
ACF
J. GREENHALGH, ESQ.
MEAT
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/The first