Mr. Wallace
Mr. Carstairs
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Secretary of State
The long-awaited minute by Mr. Sandys on Hong Kong forces has now arrived, asking for agreement by the Secretary of State so that when Mr. Hare leaves for Hong Kong on the 7th January (arriving on the 9th) this matter will have been cleared up.
2. I cannot agree, however, that we can be overridden on the question of artillery units without putting up a strong fight. My minute of the 19th November on the 1957 version of these papers indicated the latest point we had reached in official discussion, and the only indication that we have had since then of the way Service minds are working has been the minute which arrived this morning, asking for an immediate decision.
Aldinball
(A. Campbell)
3rd January, 1958
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2.
I entirely agree with Mr. Campbell.
I pass this through Mr. Vile, who saw
Mr. Campbell's minute of the 19th November referred to above. I think he would agree that it is quite wrong that the Secretary of State should be asked to agree, almost with a pistol at his head, that Hong Kong should bear this expenditure without there having been any proper opportunity for discussion.
3. Paragraph 9 of the Minister of Defence's draft Defence Committee paper behind (190) says:- "If the Government of Hong Kong do not attach sufficient importance to the two additional units to be prepared to pay the bill, I think that we should stand by our previous décision to limit the garrison to six major units". This leaves out of account the basic question - who ought to pay for the units. The only ground on which we could in propriety expect Hong Kong to pay for these units would be if they were required solely for internal security. Nobody denies that support of the police in the maintenance of internal security is one of the major tasks of the Hong Kong garrison. The point is however that the problem of internal security in Hong Kong is unique, because it depends so much on the policy of an external power- China, which is able to create internal trouble in Hong Kong whenever it wants to. In my own opinion I think, in that of Mr. Campbell also the whole of the cost of these extra units ought to fall on H.M.G., which is knowingly providing external defence for Hong Kong (with or without these units) of a pitifully inadequate nature. It might be that in the end a compromise decision to share the cost because of the internal security element might be come to (though I would not myself think such a decision was right). But what is now
and,
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