XN000022-1980-07-16 — Page 14

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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............