GOVERNMENT HOUSE
HONG KONG
RECEIVED IN
REGISTRY NO. 51 €
=7 NOV 1975
Mer 5/28
港總督府
CONFIDENTIAL
Des
几
Neka
how
(HKIOD)
27/10
مال مسل
23rd October 1975
29/10.
24
Cobried
6 wek 1/6
Thank you for your letter of 8th August recording a meeting with the Secretary of State about Hong Kong. In the interim we have been in touch. In your final paragraph you suggested the contents be mulled over and a reply sent in two months. will see there appears to be no difficulty about most of the points.
Legislative Council
As you
2.
Mutual Aid Committees are developing well, and in view of the very short time they have been in existence have become accepted as part of the life of Hong Kong to a remarkable extent. Never the less I would have preferred to wait a little longer before putting any of their members to the Leg. Co. test.
But
in view of the Secretary of State's concern, and after a careful review, I am confident I will be able to recommend 3 people of a rather different type and with a MAC background for membership of Legislative Council next year.
So there should be no difficulty about meeting you on this point.
3.
I thought that people here should be prepared for this development, and therefore included a passage hinting at it in my recent address to Leg. Co. On the whole the passage was well received, but much will depend upon how the new people perform.
4.
I hope you appreciate that Leg. Co. is too small a body in which to hide passengers (incidentally there is continuous television and radio coverage of the chamber), and the work outside the chamber is much too heavy to ask other members to carry them. Moreover after I and my staff have spent so much time and effort
Sir Duncan Watson, KCMG,
Foreign & Commonwealth Office.
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