CONFIDENTIAL AND PERSONAL
His Excellency
Sir Edward Youde GCMG MBE
Governor and Commander in Chief HONG KONG
FILE
Quber & pa
W
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SW1A 2AH
9 January 1985
IKK 4441
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1
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Dan Tally
HONG KONG: RELEASE OF RECORDS
SJH
We shall be telegraphing in response to your telegram number 28 about the release of sensitive Cabinet records from 1954 relating to the defence of Hong Kong.
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a
We were already on the point of seeking your advice on similar question, namely certain 1948 papers on the Kowloon Walled City currently withdrawn from the PRO. The correspondence on these papers rests with Richard Hoare's letter of 3 September 1982 to Alan Mason.
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Earlier in 1982 you had pointed out to us that a potentially embarrassing legal opinion on the status of the walled city of Kowloon, written by the Law Officers in 1948, was available to the public in the PRO. We took action to have these files administratively withdrawn. We have now been asked to reconsider our position in the light of the view of the Law Officers that papers should not be so withdrawn for more than one year. There has, moreover, been a specific request from a researcher for access to these files. You will see from the earlier papers that we have no legal right to withhold papers once they have been released to the PRO.
4. We have looked at the papers in question. Our conclusion is that given the legal status of "the papers, and in the light of the successful conclusion of the Hong Kong negotiations, we cannot now justify continuing to withhold them. The agreement effectively sets on one side the conflicting positions of the British and Chinese Governments on matters of sovereignty and jurisdiction relating to Hong Kong, and enshrines agreed arrange- ments for the administration of Hong Kong both before and after 1997. In these circumstances we cannot believe that release of the withheld papers, although they are of some historico-legal interest and may receive some attention in the Hong Kong press, would have any practical effect on Chinese behaviour.
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CONFIDENTIAL AND PERSONAL