Note of a meeting held in H.344 on 20th September, 1950
Present:
Sir A. Grantham (Governor of Hong Kong) Mr. Paskin
Mr. Sidebotham
Mr. Hall
44
1.
Mr. Nicoll's letter of the 6th September at (43) was considered.
Faragraph 2. The Executive Council would like to see the number of
unofficial members increased by one. There should be no difficulty about
this as Sir A. Grantham had already mentioned at the earlier meetings here
that Sir A. Mouse had suggested that the Social welfare Associations should
also have a member (para. 1 of (25) and page 2 of (27)) and that he agreed
that three, instead of two, members of the Legislative Council might come
from the Urban Council (p. 2 of (24)). These points had not, however, been
included in the letter to Mr. Nicoll at (38).
2.
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Sir A. Grantham said he would prefer the increase to be limited to one
further unofficial member. After discussion it was thought that the
Secretary of State would probably prefer the additional member to come
from the Social Welfare Associations, if this was practicable, or failing
this from the Urban Council. Sir A. Grantham thought the Governor should
retain a casting vote but agreed that he should not have an original vote.
These, however, were details which could be left to come out in the wash.
It was agreed that the main point for consideration was the criticism
of para. 5 of the draft despatch at (38) which proposed an extension of the
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Urban Council franchise.
Reference was made to Mr. Cook's letter to
Sir A. Grantham at (32) in which it was made clear that the Secretary of
State "was anxious to see whether some means could be devised for ensuring
that all persons who would have been able to vote under the 1949 proposals
would still be able to do so under any new proposals".
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4.
Paragraph 4 of Mr. Nicoll's letter at (43) states that only a relatively
few British subjects would be concerned but the meeting considered that an
important point of principle was involved. Paragraph 3 had suggested that
the extension of the Urban Council franchise would impose considerable delay
/and