r Cortazzi
PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL
Ak not! ST
Rev
$1
HONG KONG THE NEXT GOVERNOR
INDER
OFFICER
PL
PA
Action Taken
15
1.
During my recent visit to Hong Kong I was subjected, naturally enough, to a good deal of questioning about what would happen after August next year when Sir Murray MacLehose's term of office is due to expire. This was easy enough to deal with - I simply said that as far as I knew no decision had been made but it may be worth recording some of the points made.
-
2. A number of senior people in Government, and one or two outside it expressed concern that the next Governor should be someone who would maintain the momentum of development in the territory, partic- ularly in the social field. Several of them made the point that Sir Murray MacLehose had been a "political" Governor in the sense that he had identified himself with, and committed his prestige to those programmes to which he attached the highest priority eg the housing programme.
Views were divided as to whether this was
a good thing. But there was general acknowledgement that the Governor had been the driving force behind the rapid expansion of Government activity in recent years, and corresponding concern about what might happen when his foot was removed from the acceler-
ator.
3. I noticed some tendency to assume that Sir Murray MacLehose would be given a further extension following the postponement of a General Election in this country. A report to that effect quoting "British political sources" appeared in the South China Morning Post while I was in Hong Kong. Some people welcomed this idea. But it was put to me more than once that the worst solution would be another short extension of Sir Murray Mack hose's Governorship, announced very late in the day. The argument ran that if this happened, Hong Kong opinion would interpret it as an indication that the extension had been decided only because no other suitable candidate could be
found.
R J T McLaren
2 November 1978
Hong Kong and General Department
cc:
Mr Murray o/r