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RM 19/
SECRETARY OF STATE'S MEETING WITH CONSERVATIVE BACKBENCHERS, THURSDAY 11 JANUARY 1990
Secretary of State
Mr Yeo
Mr Lidington
Present:
HKD 340/11
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RECEIVED
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REGISTRY
26 JUN 1990
DESK OFFICER
INDEX
Sir John Stanley
Mrs Maureen Hicks Mr Jonathan Aitken Mr Donald Thompson Mr John Greenway Mr Mark Wolfson
Mr Christopher Butler
Sir Fergus Montgomery Mr Alan Amos
PA
REGISTRY Action Taken
Mr Roger King
Sir Geoffrey Pattie
1. Defence
The Secretary of State said that the changes in Eastern Europe should cause us to do some serious thinking about our defence policies. What were the members views? Sir John Stanley said that the abiding objective had to be to preserve deterrence in order to avoid nuclear blackmail. John Greenway feared that budgetary pressures would loom ever larger in US politics. At the same time there was a danger of moving too fast lest we alienate "many of our silent supporters" who would loyally stand by Conservative policies in controversial times. Chris Butler said that we should cut the BAOR in order to save some money. John Greenway said that he had been shocked, on a recent visit to RAF bases in Germany, by the animosity of local people towards the British forces. He added that demographic trends make it very difficult for Britain's armed forces to recruit up to their full strength during the 1990s. We would not be able to keep our forces at their present levels for long anyway. So surely a political initiative to withdraw one division from the BAOR would be a sensible way of gaining political credit for doing what was inevitable.
2.
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German unification
Mark Wolfson said that although older people still feared German unity, people born since the War did not. Donald Thompson expected that unity would come about at local level before it received the blessing of some formal international treaty arrangement. Sir John Stanley wondered if the Federal Republic would choose unity if the price for that was leaving NATO. [The Secretary of State commented that the collapse of authority in the GDR meant that the FRG was in an extremely strong position and should have no reason to accept such a choice.1
3. Hong Kong
Sir Fergus Montgomery was concerned about the Indians in Hong