Denis Feld
15214/2
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COLONIAL OFFICE
The Church House Great Smith Street London SW 1
15 February 1965
I am sorry that there was a slight delay in sending off to you copies of the Hansard of 19 January covering the debate on the 9th Report of the Select Committee on the Estimates (your telegram No. 95 refers).
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2 Carter and I attended the briefing meeting with Mr Mayhew, r Reynolds before the debate, and it was clear to us that, although Defence Ministers had agreed to the text of the Govenment "Observations" they had no enthusiasm for defending the case that Hong Kong was already making a very adequate contribution to its own defence. Indeed, Mr Mayhew said in terms that he felt sure that Hong Kong ought to be paying more. As this remark was made after he had seen our lengthy exposition of the Hong Kong case I judged that that meeting was neither the time nor place to attempt a second conversion of St Paul and felt, rightly or wrongly, that we should concentrate on avoiding Defence Ministers saying anything which would prejudice Hong Kong's case in the future. I therefore advised that Defence Ministers should rest on the case as set out in the Government "Observations".
3 All would, I think, have been well had we been able to advise Mr Reynolds, in closing for the Government, to invite members' attention to the Goverment "Cbservations" (though I realise that you have reservations on the comments regarding land), Unfortunately, Ministry of Defence officials in the Official box during the debate aid Lot (as they had undertaken to do) warn us that Hamilton and others had made misleading statements about Hong Kong and we were accordingly unable to urge Mr Reynolds to at least draw attention to the printed "Observatio.s". I am sorry about this hitch, but I hope that too much harm has not been done.in Hong Kong as a result.
4 In my letter of 11 December I mentioned that a major review of defonce expenditure and commitments was under way. You will be hearing more of this no doubt when Lord Mountbatten visits Hong Kong in about a week's time. I attended a meeting of the Chiefs of staff the other day at which the Far Eastern section of this review wes discussed. The discussion was entirely satisfactory from our point of view. The Chiefs of Staff reaffirmed that their view that any further reduction of the garrison would be fraught with the gravest danger and, that, in a really serious internal security situation, it would be necessary to draw some of the units from the frontier in order to deal with the internal situation until the arrival of reinforcements. I managed to get written into the paper the opinion that, if there were any further reduction, it might well be necessary to send in reinforcements on a far greater scale in order to cope with the situation beyond the means of the reduced garrison. to handle. While the JIC assessment is that China is unlikely to attempt to bring about a basic change in Hong Kong's status at present, the Chiefs of Staff readily accepted the argument that a situation might develop in Hong Kong spontaneously which would get out of hand and which might reach a stage where the Chinese Government could not refrain from intervention.
It was also accepted that China might seek to take action in Hong Kong short of a fundamental change in status in order to "punish" us for our attitude towards Indonesia or our su, port for India, and that this in itself was a strong reason for maintaining an adequate garison.
SIR DAVID TRENCH, KCMG, MC,
Government House,
Hong Kong.
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