AIR MAIL
CR 169/65.
Sir,
(89)
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COLONIAL SECRETARIAT. HONG KONG
June, 1967.
His Excellency the Governor has directed me to reply to your letters of the 23rd and 30th of May concerning labour conditions in Hong Kong, both in the context of recent disturbances and in general. The answers to the various points which you made are so closely bound up with recent events that a satisfactorily comprehensive reply has not been possible before now.
If I may deal first with the general sense of your letters it seems that, while you deplore the disturbances which have occurred, you consider them to have been fostered by complaisance on the part of the administration towards the reactionary conduct of employers, out-of-date labour legislation and "abnormal working conditions". This, if I understand you correctly, you consider to have engendered an atmosphere of public discontent in which political agitators could readily cultivate open dissension and incite workers to acts of violence. You also assert that the Police Force has been used as a strike-breaking weapon acting in the interests of the employers against their work people, and that the workers despair of obtaining justice.
Events have clearly shown that such views are wholly unwarranted. The stabilisation of the situation, which is now almost normal throughout Hong Kong, could not have been achieved without the support of the overwhelming majority of the people for the Government and the measures it has taken to restore law and order. The conduct of the Police Force during recent events has aroused world-wide admiration particularly on account of its impartiality and restraint.
It may well be that from a distance the extremists have seemed to gain surprisingly large support, but the reason for this is not to be found in general public resentment of the status quo. It is rather that relatively few highly vocal agitators made a clamour out of all proportion to their numbers the more startling against the generally peaceful background of the community as a whole
and that the general public here does not react as one would expect in an Occidental country. Many pressures are exerted on the work people by playing upon their fears and ignorance, and the conclusions which might reasonably be drawn from their behaviour in a European setting are not necessarily valid in the circumstances of Hong Kong.
J. Greenhalgh, Esq.
General Secretary
International Textile and
Garment Workers' Federation,
120, Baker Street,
London, W1,
ENGLAND.
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