FED 36/400/01
Page 126 House of Commons,
London, S.W.1
69
15th January 1965.
68
to the overwhelming
Chiese
pezulation/
(see 70)
He is an
a chrner on External
Retations.
Dear Erene,
Brene
I would have replied to your letter of 11th December earlier, but I was hoping for a place in the Christmas Adjournment debates when Hong Kong would have been my topic. However,
I offer a few comments on the subject of your communication.
No one in Hong Kong, to my knowledge, ever regarded the Reform Club or the Civic Association as Political Parties and that includes members, who are my friends, in both organisations. The latter is only ten years old and its founders regarded it as being concerned solely with "social and economical" problems. Although Dr. Peter C.Y.Lee was later to describe it as "a political organisation"; even though it cannot perform the main function of a political party. The Reform Club is an older organisation, equally inhibited like the Association as a political party though pledged to reform the Legislative Council by the appoitment of elected members. Both, of course, contribute to the formation of political thought, but they can go no further so long as Government in Hong Kong is selected, and not elected. And I have yet to discover any person in the colony who justifies a method which assigns a numerical representation equal to that of the small Indian and almost insignificant Portugese population.
This basis of representation is archaic. I accept what you say that political parties have never been prohibited in Hong Kong. Yet it seems strange that the Annual Report of the Governor makes the minimum of reference to the politial evolution which is said to have been taking place in Hong Kong; while the current Report (1963) tells us on page 373 that "the Secretariat includes a Political Advisor seconded from the Foreign Office".
In my view it is not without significance that the Hong Kong Democratic Self-Government Party was not created until 1963. Though its existence in August, 1964 was not
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