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waw7.17/1/72
EVENTS OF FRIDAY 14/1/72
Mr Wilford told me shortly after 10 a.m. that following a conversation with Mr P. Ridley he was leaving for a meeting at 1030 at which Mr Haddon Cave was to give the Hong Kong reply to the DTI proposals of the night before.
2.
At about 10.20 a.m. Mr Sellers spoke to Miss Cross to
ask if Sir S. Gordon and Sir K.Y. Kan could see me as soon as
possible as "things were going badly". I agreed to see them any time after 11 a.m. and arranged for a message to be passed
to Mr Wilford at the DTI warning him of this development.
5.
Sir S. Gordon and Sir K.Y. Kan when they called said that they felt the delegation had been "given the run-around" by the D.T.I. (they politely excluded the FCO from their criticisms): they made much of the irregular times at which meetings had been held and said that the DTI's offers were so contemptible that they would prefer to go home with no settlement rather than what had been offered. They would say as much to Mr Royle
when they called on him that afternoon and Sir S. Gordon who had decided that there was no point in staying would say on arrival in Hong Kong over the weekend that the negotiations were getting nowhere. They did not wish to discuss the details of the negotiations, despite their criticism of them as "contemptible".
4.
I told them that I did not consider that there had been
any dilatoriness in the negotiations. I had had experience of similar commercial negotiations lasting for several weeks.
I said also that if Sir S. Gordon were to take the line with
the Press in Hong Kong he proposed, this would not help the Hong Kong negotiators or help us to help Hong Kong. I explained the narrow margins within which the UK negotiators had to operate and assured them of our desire within these margins to get special treatment for Hong Kong.
5.
*
Sir S. Gordon said he had his political difficulties Others of the advisers were accusing him and Sir K. Y. Kan
of collusion with Mr Haddon-Cave and British officials "in
too.
•
a frame-up". He must go "on the record" to defend his personal position in Hong Kong. Sir K.Y. Kan also said that there had
/been