PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London S.W.1
His Excellency Sir Murray MacLehose
14 February 1975
HONG KONG
KCMG MBE
6
Rica Thuray
The enclosed letter from Kensington Palace will not, I fear, be welcome news to you. Since I wrote to you on 10 February we have had further discussions with Princess Alexandra's Private Secretary and have also submitted the question to Lord Goronwy- Roberts (as we did the proposal for your own visit). The gist of the problem is that, with the textile trade in the UK in recession, and with Hong Kong imports regarded, however unjustly, as a principal reason for that recession; and finally, as you will have seen from the press, with the Royal Family under attack for alleged extravagance and irrelevance to the present day problems of Britain, there would be some risk of criticism of the Princess if she appeared to be helping to sell Hong Kong textiles in the UK, although we realise that is not the object of the exercise you have in mind. Lord Goronwy-Roberts judgement therefore is that it would be politically inadvisable for her to accept your invitation at the present time.
I am sorry about this. It is in many ways unfair to you to expect you to stand the fire alone and to appear to deprive you of Royal support at the very moment when you are working so hard to prepare for The Queen's Visit. We have made it clear to all concerned that the purpose of your proposal is not only to promote Hong Kong trade but also to prepare the ground for The Queen's Visit in May. But if Lancashire and those MPs who, as I said in my letter of 10 February, regard Hong Kong as a sweat-shop colony, were to mount press criticism of the Princess's presence at your show, I do not think it would help Hong Kong. It certainly would not help the Royal Family. If you had been promoting almost anything except textiles, the position might well have been different; but Hong Kong is unfortunately regarded as such a threat in this field, and is indeed so strong, that the event could hardly hope to pass uncriticised. Your own position is
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