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Hong Kong Department,
14 May, 1969.
I am sorry not to have replied sooner to your letter 3/1/1 of 19 April about the visit to Hong Kong of the two M.Ps. Messrs. Jones and Walden.
Of course we had seen from our own copies of Hong Kong newspapers that all had not gone entirely smoothly with this visit. However, we gathered, as you indicate yourself, that most of the damage was done in the early stages and our impression of the visit as a whole was that in the end even the Hong Kong press felt that they had rather overdone it. David Sellers in the Hong Kong Government Office here thought that the visit had not been unproductive and that the sum total of the impression which Mr. Jones in particular conveyed was not unfavourable.
The pity of it all is that Messrs. Jones and Walden in fact had a rather fuller brief than many M.Ps. are likely to get.
The Board of Trade briefed them in writing, and spon- sored as they were by the Hong Kong Association, the Hong Kong Government Office entertained them before they went and did their best to paint a picture of conditions in the Colony. I appreciate the points you make in your letter and entirely agree that if it could be arranged all such visitors should have a clear idea before they leave that when they get to Hong Kong they will be, as someone has recently put it, "like goldfish in a bowl". But M.Ps, are not necessarily the easiest people to whom to explain these ideas even if we get the chance. We can and will take any suitable opportunities which offer in the future but I am afraid that we cannot undertake to prevent a recurrence.
D. C. Rounthwaite, Esq.,
(H. H. Stewart)
Trade Commissioner (Press Relations),
British Trade Commission in Hong Kong,
7th Floor,
Shell House,
Queen's Road, Central,
HONG KONG,
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