}
J
}
proposals are, at the end of which mention is made
of the point to which attention is drawn above.
A good deal of water has flowed under the bridges since the 1st June when that note was written.
Whereas then the apprehended enemy was the Kuomintang, it seems possible now that the enemy might be a more dangerous one Communism.
-
3. The danger to which elections in Hong Kong would give rise did not pass unappreciated when the constitutional proposals were approved (see
Sir Mark Young's Confidential despatch of the 22nd October 1946 at 70 on the 1946 file - · particularly paragraph 6 thereof). But the international
-
situation and particularly the Chinese situation is very different today from what it was when Sir Mark Young wrote that despatch, or when the proposals were approved. Sir Mark Young could hardly today have written what he did, adding the words "or of the Chinese Communists" to the words "tools of the Kuomintang" in paragraph 6, and preserved the intention to go through with the proposals.
it
4. To this note of the positive objection to going forward with the proposals at present, should be added on the negative side that there is no local demand for them, either in the press or otherwise. Apathy, where it has not merged into apprehension, seems to be as it was when Sir Mark Young wrote (70).
5. The position so far reached in introducing the proposals is:-
(i) Municipal Council - Legislation.
Three draft
bills prepared in Hong Kong are here (with Mr. McPetrie) for preliminary study. These are not the final Hong Kong drafts, which we still await before sending our comments to Hong Kong. Hong Kong's final drafts will contain amendments necessitated. by our despatch on the financial side of the proposals (which in March this year followed, after a considerable. interval, our despatch according general approval to the proposals). See (11) (the genesis of which is explained in my minute of 3/6) and the reply to it at (14). We have heard no more from Hong Kong. One gets the impression that they are not rushing matters.
(ii) Municipal Council - Town Clerk.
Meanwhile we
have been attempting to recruit a Town Clerk in this country "to advise on and be responsible for the preliminary work involved in setting up the Municipal Council and to act as Town Clerk for the remainder of his term of employment of two years" (6 on 54393/48). The names of several candidates are now before us see paragraph 6 below.
-
(iii) Legislative Council. The intention is that
the change in the constitution of the
Legislative