(118281) Dd. 391599 1,500M 2/69 Hw,
NOTHING TO BE WRITTEN IN THIS MARGIN
Registry
No. HKK 10/9
SECURITY CLASSIFICATION
Top Secret.
Secret.
Confidential.
Restricted.
SECRET
Unclassified.
PRIVACY MARKING
DRAFT
LETTER
To:-
A F Thorp Esq OBE Head of Fl(Air)
CONFIDENTIAL viring SECRET
Ministry of Defence Main Building Whitehall SW 1
Type 1 +
From
Mr Wilford
Telephone No. & Ext.
Department
10
D
In Confidence
THE BUILDING OF THE SNAKE FENCE IN HONG KONG
Thank you for your letter of 3 March.
grateful for the clarification of the phrase
I am
in Curzon's earlier letter, but paragraph 4 of your
letter recording the FCO view of 1969 seems to make
Curzon's remark academic.
2.
Before commenting on Curzon's proposal for
arbitration I must revert to the body of his letter
which misinterprets completely the substance of the
Governor of Hong Kong's telegram No. 1320 by
quoting only from its penultimate paragraph where a
subsidiary advantage of the building of the fence was
mentioned that is its contingent use against
refugees.
I cannot do better in seeking to
сбо
describe the conditions of 1967 than to let you read
for yourself ch 8 of the Hong Kong Government's
confidential report on the disturbances. This,
I attach. It nowhere describes the building of the
Snake fence, but it gives a graphic description of
the situation which faced the military and the police
on the border with China. After reading it I doubt
if the Ministry of Defence will wish to describe what
the troops were dealing with as "illegal immigration".
3. Secondly I must ask you to look again at my
letter of 14 February in which I too dealt with the
/exchange