CONFIDENTIAL
2.
confidence amongst the inner core of the population would be such an asset. All our programmes of social and economic development have been timed with this in view as well as undertaken on their merits. is a thousand pities that their effect is to be undermined in this way.
5.
It
For all these reasons you must be prepared for an outburst whose sincerity should not be under- rated because of the emotional way in which it may be presented.
6.
When the Green Paper was discussed in Ex. Co. I faced a real storm. Members not only felt let down but they felt I had let them down, though I was able to persuade them not to make things worse by public controversy. They realise the political pressures on HMG, and the practical impossibility of allowing unrestricted immigration by former British Colonial subjects who have not found citizenship within the Commonwealth, though large exceptions have been made. Nevertheless they feel outraged that in the special position of Hong Kong some exception could not be made. No doubt people in Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands will feel the same.
7.
IT
For my part, in my exchanges with the Department, I have accepted that in this transitional period something of the sort proposed was inevitable, but advised very strongly that the psychological impact should be minimised ly not changing the nomenclature of
Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies", even if this continued to carry no right of entry to the UK. However I was overruled. But in the longer term it does seem to me entily wrong in principle not to differentiate over right of entry between the comparatively small numbers who are subject to the Crown, and whose subjection is the result of his.orical acts HMG are unable to unscramble so as to allow self- government, and the very large numbers who have already been cut adrift from the relationship which dependence on HMG implies. The failure to differentiate is
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