cc Mrs Hedley-Miller
Mr St Clair 4
Mr A Stuart (FCO)
254)
W/284
MR MIDDLETON
SUNDAY TIMES ARTICLE ON HONG KONG
Mr Haddon-Cave, Hong Kong Financial Secretary is suggesting
in the attached telegram that it would be useful to send a
letter to the Editor of the Sunday Times on the lines indicated,
in repost to last Sunday's article. We need to send a reply
with our views to Hong Kong before close of play. Perhaps you
and Mrs Hedley-Miller, to whom I am copying the draft, could
think about this: we might then have a word later in the
afternoon. My own feeling, fortified by the raft of PQs that
have emerged following the recent publicity on Hong Kong, is
that a letter on the lines proposed would tend merely to protract
the present phase of public interest in HMG's relations with
Hong Kong, and that probably the best course is to let sleeping
dogs lie and not send the letter.
2.
I will contact you on this letter in the afternoon.
(D. A. WALKER)
18 December 1973