REULIVEU IN REGISTRY
2 6OCT 1989
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INDEX
PUGISTRY
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| Action Tura:
FROM-
“E-TYRER-
DATE: 18 OCTOBER 1989
Сс Miss R Marsden (HK Dept)
Hel"
←
MrWyatt
19.10
CHURCH OF SCOTLAND AND HONG KONG>
1. I recently attended a session of the board of the British Council of Churches' Division of International Affairs, on which I serve as coopted FCO member. This liaison with the BCC was recently the subject of an exchange of letters between the Secretary of State and Dr Philip Morgan, the BCC general secretary.
2. During the board meeting a representative of the Church of Scotland (the Rev Dr Alan McDonald, the minister of St Nicholas, Aberdeen) asked whether I thought that FCO Ministers would be prepared to receive a delegation from his Church in order to discuss the problems of Hong Kong, especially Hong Kong citizenship. I replied that the FCO was always willing to receive delegations from concerned organisations and would certainly, other things being equal, wish to consider the views of the Church of Scotland, adding that while Ministers' diaries were usually very full, the Secretary of State was personally giving a high priority to this major problem. I also added that the Church of Scotland, as the other established church in the kingdom, perhaps had a special claim to be heard, if only because it seldom asked for a meeting of this kind: this is an area which, understandably, touches on Scottish national feelings and it seemed appropriate for an English civil servant to make this point specifically. It was, I think, well taken. The fact is that because of the distance between Edinburgh and London, such approaches from the Church of Scotland are rare: the last, indeed, was probably about five years ago when the then Moderator was visiting South Africa and your predecessor, Mr Barrington, strongly supported his request to call first on Ministers on precisely these grounds.
3
It may be therefore that, in a month or so, the Secretary of State may get a letter suggesting such a call to discuss Hong Kong's problems from the authorities of the Church of Scotland, which historically has strong links with missionary activities in China. Their proposal is likely to involve the visit of three or four representatives of the Church, led by the Moderator (or an ex-Moderator) and probably also including Dr McDonald, who serves on the General Assembly' International Commission, I did not, of course, commit Ministers beyond these general expressions of goodwill, but I did add that I would warn the Office that the possibility of such an approach from the Church of Scotland was in the offing.
Jelynn
(JTyrer)
TOTAL P.02
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