Confidential
Telegram from Hong Kong to FCO No.755 of 30 October, 1970.
Your telegram 727.
Personal for Trench.
On your para.2 we will meet the suggested requirements on handing-over briefs. Your successor will have understood that ephemera and mini-crises being a way of life here the topping-up documents will involve substantial reading.
2.
On the question of dates, subject to para.4 below there is no logistic or administrative difficulty in what is proposed. There is however the consideration that October, as you know, has been and is still being repeatedely talked of as the time of your own departure, and the phrase "mid-October" was used when your extension was announced. Disappointment will be voiced that your period of office has been cut short by some six weeks, and that you will not be able to deliver a final opening address to LEGCO albeit one which would be reminiscent rather than forward looking. Other factors are of course that the "1st and 10th" might conceivably be stepped up to underline opposed political attitudes in the presence of a new Governor (though I think that unlikely) and that MacLehose and his draftsman might have some difficulty with the annual addressto LEGCO so so on after arrival - an address which will of course be analysed
down to the last comma.
3.
These are important but not over-riding considerations. If the dates proposed are adhered to I would suggest that they are represented as designed to chime with your own personal wishes and arrangements, to avoid embarrassment to MacLehose. This would obviously help and be sympathetically received. 4. You mentioned the possibility of leaving by ship, and there are obvious advantages in MacLehose arriving by ship, even if only over the final stage. To settle on precise dates would you wish us to look into arrivals/departures here, or (as I would think) could this be done better, without exciting premature speculation, by Michael Wright in London ?
Sir H. Norman-Walker.