CONFIDENTIAL
Church House,
53
26th April, 1967.
I am sending you separately a formal reply to your letter of 10 April. There are, however, a few additional points which I should like to make on a purely private and confidential basis.
The Commonwealth Secretary, who has recently returned from Hong Kong, and I feel very strongly on humanitarian grounds about the long hours worked by women and young persons in Hong Kong. (This was something which began to exercise my own mind shortly after my move to the Dependent Territories Division in January and before my meeting with you and Ernest Thornton and James Johnson in February.) We are pressing, and have every intention of continuing to press, the Hong Kong Government to bring about an improvement in working hours. We have no illusions that this can be done quickly, although there are already some signs of progress. Indeed we are hopeful that the Government will be able to telescope the time-table mentioned in the fourth paragraph of my other letter.
If it would help you I would have no objection to you using, in your address to the textile workers tomorrow, the information given in the third paragraph of my letter of
(9) 7 April. I appreciate that, so far as you are concerned, the
proposed legislation does not go far enough because in practice it does not extend to garment workers. But it is worth noting that when the legislation has been passed it
/will
J. GREENHALGH, ESQ.
CONFIDENTIAL
LAST AFF.
पी
६