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But all is not always sweetness and light. The Government here
has great problems of its own and in solving them we often think we get
the rough end. .So we fight like mad
decorously on the surface like
Mr Callaghan's swan but hammer and tongs out of sight.
Why do we quarrel? On nationality law, and the sharing of costs
for defence forces, we are currently having discussions; that is to say
first class arguments, Other issues on which we have had discussions
:
recently were- the London-Hong Kong air route, and the matter of university
students fees.
But it is on trade that we have our toughest arguments centred
round the textile and clothing industry. We can make good clothes which
you want to buy but the textile lobby says that is dreadful for the UK.
Protectionism is justified by the most respectable people in two cases.
:
One is the case of unfair trade which we in Hong Kong ere not
accused of. The other is that where floods of imports make rapid industrial
adjustment necessary, short-term protection for adjustment is then justified.
I would challenge this. First there is nothing short-term about
Our exports to the UK have been under restraint for
textile restrictions.
over 20 years which I would call a long time.
Each time a short-term
agreement expires a new and tougher one is imposed. It just gets worse
and worse and it doesn't solve the problems anyway.
Second, we are told that in prosperous times calls for
protectionism would be muted. The last time Britain was propsperous,
so I am told, was in 1973 before the first oil crisis. Yet it was in that
very year that restrictions reached a new level of intensity in
negotiations for the first MFA.
/Again many............