SUNDAY
POST
JUNE 3RD. 73
HERALD
Life D
Jages f rotired Govermors?
If the Hongkong public has viewed previous visits by British MPs with a somewhat cynical lack of interest, let us hope that the latest by Mr Nicholas Ridley. Mr Michael Shaw and Mr Michael Jopling, succeeds where others have failed in relaying some positive expressions of Hongkong opinion to Westminster.
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It is easy enough to pay lip service to these visits as valued opportunities for contact and communication between Hongkong and London, and a chance to enable British MPs to see how Hongkong is running its own affairs.
But to most people the visits seem very one- sided affairs. We do most of the talking. They do most of the listening and little if anything results.
A combination of circumstances, however, are
likely to make this latest visit more fruitful.
The MPs have heard Hongkong opinion both ways
on capital punishment, on what we feel about a Chinese diplomatic official being stationed here, on our trade with Britain and the E.E.C., particularly textiles, and on the way Britain treats us as a trading pawn in her negotiations with foreign countries for air rights and agreements.
Hongkong is now beginning to speak with a voice that demands a fair hearing and for Britain to suppose that in an era when the Commonwealth is dwindling into relative insignificance it can afford to ignore the interests of its overseas citizens is to court trouble.
But it is not enough to rely on the irregular visits of British MPs, with their own constituencies and European affairs to worry about, as the sole channel of communication for Hongkong's views.
We in Hongkong should do something positive about strengthening our representation in London.
One solution would be for the Queen to bestow a life peerage on all retiring governors who would then take a scat in the House of Lords and become effective spokesmen for Hongkong's interests.
If this practice had been adopted before now we would have three former governors in the Lords which would have provided a powerful lobby for our interests.
We could at the same time build up a bigger information secretariat in London who would provide an increased flow of information on local opinion and developments not just to the MPs who are members of the Hongkong Committee but to major British industrial and commercial interests concerned with Hongkong and the Far East.
We have in London a commissioner in the person of Mr Michael Wright, a former Director of Public Works, þut while the policy of appointing a retired departmental head to London makes sense he needs greater backing to be able to make Hongkong's views heard and it is for this reason that we urge the MPs to recommend life peerages for retired Hongkong Governors, representing Britain's biggest and most important surviving colony.
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British interests are still likely to prevail when it comes to a clash between Hongkong and the UK. Nor can we expect the British Government with its present narrow majority, to put its political life at risk if some action we are pro- posing to take leads to a censure motion in the House of Commons.
But this would be an exceptional case, and on many day to day matters it is possible that we could get better results from London by boosting our information network and Our top
representation.
10KK 3/548
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