XXX SECRET. (2)
را
28
GOVERNMENT HOUSE,
HONG KONG,
7230/1/38
Gen'l. Secret.
'young
X
Sir,
RECEIVED 22 MAY 1939
1st May, 1939.
With reference to correspondence terminating
with my secret despatch of 21st October, 1938, regarding certain emergency regulations under Ordinance No.5 of
1922, I have the honour to inform you that I have been considering an amendment of the Vagrancy Ordinance, 1897, designed to take the place of emergency regulation No.4 in the regulations published by Government Notification No.775 of 7th October, 1938, by which the police are empowered to detain and send away from the Colony any alien who has no regular employment.
2.
Those powers were created and placed in the hands of the police in 1925 as a means of combatting the serious, more or less general, strike which took place in that year.
As an emergency measure they are quite justifiable but not otherwise in my opinion: I have, therefore, caused a bill to be framed amending the Vagrancy Ordinance, 1897, the object of which is to retain the power of sending workless destitutes out of the Colony, but only upon an order of a Court of Justice. If this bill passes into law I shall withdraw the emergency regulation under consideration here.
Should
it again become necessary to place such powers in the hands of the police it will be quite easy to re-create
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
MALCOLM MACDONALD, I.P.,
&C.,
&c., &c.