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APPOINTMENTS TO LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL : QUESTION OF ELECTIONS
1. The brief on Constitutional Change submitted to Lord
Goronwy-Roberts before his December meeting with the
Governor, is attached together with the Governor's letter of 10 December to the Department.
2.
The Governor told Lord Goronwy-Roberts at that meeting that (quite apart from the Chinese dimension) it was not clear that people in Hong Kong were interested in the electoral process. He also confirmed that he did not think
any precipitate action should be taken to introduce a
Member system or to broaden the membership of the Legislative Council. He considers that the most promising means of widening the representation on LegCo might be to appoint, in a few years' time, one or two of the natural leaders who
are already beginning to emerge from the Mutual Aid Committees.
3. Since Lord Goronwy-Roberts's visit there has been further publicity, in Britain and in Hong Kong, about possible constitutional change. This has continued to centre on the
membership of LegCo, and the Secretary of State recently received a letter from the General Secretary of the Labour
Party enquiring about the next appointments. Sir D Watson
had meanwhile written to ask the Governor whether he had
any plans for filling the vacancies which will arise on 30 June when the terms of membership of three of LegCo's
present Unofficial Members expire. It is clear from the Governor's reply that he thinks there is very limited scope for injecting new blood into LegCo during 1975 (Hong Kong telegram number 293). Two of the three expiring appointments are recent ones; and the Governor, understandably, does not want to unsettle the Council with too rapid a turnover of members. Furthermore, one of these two recent appointments is an elected member of Hong Kong's Urban Council, and the Governor is naturally unwilling to lose from LegCo a representative of Hong Kong's only elected body. The Governor does intend to seek a replacement for the third of this year's vacancies. He has already asked Dr Rayson Huang, the (Chinese) Vice-Chancellor of Hong Kong University, whether he would
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