I agree
Mr Murray
PS/Lord Goronwy-Roberts
Roberts
HONG KONG:
SECRET
Private Secretary 15
AKK 011/3 RECEIVED IN REGISTRY HO. 51
Loc
261
DEC 1978
127711
Li INDEX
PA
Flag A
(GA)
Flag B
السا
LETTER FROM URBAN COUNCILLORS
1. On 16 October, three elected members of the Hong Kong Urban Council wrote to the Secretary of State to press for the introduction of greater democracy in Hong Kong. Unfortunately this letter went astray in the post and has never reached us. However the Councillors also sent copies of the letter to other people in this country who they thought might be sympathetic to their ideas. We have obtained a copy of the letter from one of these, Mr Stan Newens MP.
2. The Urban Council is the only body in Hong Kong which contains an elected element. Its responsibilities are limited to the urban areas of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, where its principal functions are to supervise urban services such as public sanitation, markets, cemeteries, museums, libraries, sports and recreation facilities and cultural activities. Of its 24 members, half are appointed by the Governor and half are elected. The franchise is subject to educational and property qualifications, so that only about 500,000 people are eligible to vote. Of these, about 35,000 have registered as voters but barely 7,000 bothered to turn out at the last elections.
3. Most of the elected members belong to one or other of two organisations which are more like pressure groups than political parties. The authors of the letter to the Secretary of State pride themselves on being "independent" members in the sense that they are not linked to one of these groups. The most prominent of the three is Mrs Elsie Elliott, who has made
a name for herself as a tireless, though somewhat indiscriminate, campaigner for the rights of the little man. The other two Councillors carry very little weight.
4.
The Councillors originally wrote to Lord Goronwy-Roberts on 24 June proposing the same specific reforms as in the last paragraph of their present letter. They are not the first people to remark on the need to give the people of Hong Kong a greater say in the way they are governed and both we and the
Hong Kong Government are conscious of this. Of the four proposals
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