1990, and over the new airport. He concludes with a passage on the Governor's proposals. As you Would expect, he takes the line tha there has been a radical change in British policy, gives a Leng justification of his own approach, and is highly critical of the present approach.
5. The Department's advice, having studied the manuscript and discussed the position with the Legal Advisers, is that there is nothing in it which contravenes the requirements of national security. They conclude however that Sir P Cradock's account of his activities on issues which remain under discussion with the Chinese (the question of political development and the airport) could be injurious to our relations with the Chinese Government, particularly given the strong criticism in the closing section of the book of the Government's current policy. They also believe that a general case could be made that publication of these sections would be destructive of confidential relationships given that a number of officials still dealing with the Hong Kong problem are identified in the manuscript as previously associated with Sir P Cradock's views. But they recommend that we should concentrate, in the advice we offer the Cabinet Secretary, on the potential damage to relations with China.
5.
Subject to your views, we propose that Sir J Coles should take the Governor through this background and explain that we propose to proceed as follows, subject to his views:
We do not see any scope for legal remedies. The damaging passages are not so much revelation of specific information, as critical comment on the Government's current policy. Any attempt to suppress this in the courts would almost certainly rebound against us.
We propose to advise the Cabinet Secretary that he should ask Sir Percy Cradock either (i) to delay the publication of his book until the controversial matters he covers at the end are no Longer matters of negotiation with the Chinese Government or (ii) that he should remove the chapters dealing with issues which are still under discussion with China.
- We should make the case for doing so on general political grounds and seek to avoid being drawn into a detailed textual analysis. It is (predictably) difficult to pin-point individual sentences which could be held to breach the Radcliffe rules as amended. But if Sir P Cradock insists on chapter and verse, we could point to a number of cases where disclosure of information which has so far remained confidential would be injurious to our relations with China.
- We are consulting you before responding to the Cabinet Secretary. We believe that the approach set out above offers the best prospect of persuading Sir P Cradock to remove the most damaging material from his manuscript.
The following is additional material which may be useful if the Governor presses Sir J Coles on specific points:
1.
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Nature of legal remedies? The ultimate eapon is of course the Official Secrets Act. But it could not be used to suppress critical comment: the most damaging aspect of the book. The only other remedy would be to use the civil law duty of an employee to maintain the confidentiality of information gained in is employment. It has never been used in a case similar to the present one. It is very hard to imagine bringing a successful case against Sir P Cradock on these grounds.
CONFIDENTIAL/DEDIP