CO537-4841 — Page 41

-3-

Attorney General.

They expressed anxiety lest the injunctions

obtained by plaintiff's in cases 1, 2 and 3 would not be obeyed

and the assets would be interfered with and dispersed. They

inted out that the 15 employees named as defendants were not

actually any of them the individuals on the airfield who had custody

of the'planes and that they did not know the names of the individuals

who had this custody. They contended that the Hongkong police

had the duty to take such steps as were nece.sary to ́see that the

injunctions were not disobeyed and that the only way to ensure

this was for the police to take the nomes of these individuals and

to supply these names to the plaintiffs in order that the plaintiffs

might on the basis of this information make further applications

to the court alleging that the individuals in actual physical custody

of the 'planes were servants and agents of the defendants against whom

injunctions had been obtained and were in contempt as having already

to some extent disobeyed the injunctions and were likely to disobey

them still more seriously in the future. The Attorney General,

after an interval for reflection, made the following offer, which

the plaintiffs' solicitors accepted. Since it appeared to be probable

that if the plaintiffs went to the airfields to inform the individuals

whom they found in custody of the 'planes of the injunctions they

had obtained and mentioned warnings against disobedience to them

and taking the names of the individuals whom they found there, the

plaimiffa might be met by violence and a breach of the peace might

ensue and since the Hongkong Government did not want such a breach

of the peace, the Attorney General offer d that at a given time

(possibly the same afternoon, possibly the next day) a sufficient

body of police under proper supervision would be present at the

airfield and the plaintiffs could under this protection go to the

airfield, give the warnings and take the names as they wanted to do

80. In fact the police went to the airfield as arranged. Plaintiffs

did not turn up and the plaintiffs' solicitors then explained by

telephone that these Chinese individuals on the Nationalist side had

got cold feet because of what might happen to them later on in

Communist China if they took too active a personal part in this

matter. On this occasion plaintiffs clearly s owed their appreciation

/of the