VII.
Some Conclusions
49
65. We have then (in summary) a situation in which there are good
social, economic and labour market reasons why an effective labour
movement should have emerged; where there is no cultural or sociological
obstacle to its emergence--and where the legal obstacles are now (or will
be shortly) trivial; but where the dominant trade union organisation is
unwilling at present to take up that role, and the minority one (in the
private sector) politically and otherwise incapable of doing so.
i
And where, in the absence of such a
labour movement, official agencies have been more or less obliged, to supply
--of necessity very incompletely--its place.
74
One question in sequitur, and/ reasonably, might be: why do
anything at all-- beyond the presently-projected sequence of minor
improvements to the labour legislation, etc., which the administration
envisages? To this, there are several answers: for instance:
a) While the present membership of the F.T.U. is low, its
potential influence is enormous. If Peking decided the time had come to
take Hong Kong over formally (it already regards the territory as legally
part of China, I gather) nothing could stop it, any way. But that is
unlikely while the present situation conveys such considerable advantages
to Peking: we have, in fact, an implicit conspiracy between a communist and
is the modern world's a socialist government, to maintain what I nearest equivalent to the ideal
of nineteenth-century laissez-faire capitalism, to the mutual advantage of
both. But a new ideological crisis in Peking--of the "cultural revolution"
order, say--might very well overflow into disturbances in Hong Kong which
would we equally embarrassing to both governments.
be