CO129-477 - Public Offices - 1922 — Page 276

Extract

275

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Private letter from Sir B. Alston to Sir W. Tyrrell.

regarding the stong kong Strike.

(dated April 10th, 1922)

11

To return to the strike, and the question of the

relations between the Governor and the Consul-General I

cannot do better than quote from a personal letter received

yesterday from Stubbs:-

"At the later stages of the negotiations Jamieson was

quite useful and I think that his presence had a good deal

to do with the final settlement. At the beginning of things

I did not find him a great help as he could not see matters

in the same light. He had a lind belief in Ch'en Chiung-

ming's (Romanized in South China as Chan Kwong lang) good

faith and desire to assist, and also believed that the strike,

was a genuine economic movement. I think he still believes

it was so in the beginning though he realises that it soon

Lecame purely political. Everybody else believes it to

have been political from the start. Chan in my opinion

was playing a double game all the time, till the end when

he realised that the continuance of the strike was going

to make things very unpleasant for him in Canton, Then I

think he really did use his influence to get the matter

settled.

"I am sure that Jamieson did his beat to get Chan to

stop the intimidation which was used to prevent seamen re-

turning from Canton to Hongkong and I do not think it very

likely that anybody else would have been more successful

in making him face the facts.

"I can't help feeling however that a man who saw things

more from our point of view might have persuaded Chan that

his real interests were the same as ours and induced him

to...