XN000022-1995-10-23 — Page 6

Governor's Q&A session at the University of Buckingham

Following is the transcript of the Governor, the Rt Hon Christopher Patten's question-and-answer session after his speech at the University of Buckingham in London today (Monday):

Question: Can I prefix my question with a small illustration? You mentioned the Chinese attacks upon you. I am reminded of another governor who equally suffered from Chinese attacks. In January 1857 in the dead of night, the Chinese agents stole into the cell bakery and put a large quantity of arsenic into the dough. The following day, the Governor, then Sir John Bowring, and his family sat down to breakfast and devoured the bread. Fortunately, the assassin mde one fundamental error. In his anti- British enthusiasm, he put too much arsenic into the dough and as a consequence, the moment the bread hit the governatorial stomach wall, it was unceremoniously rejected!

To what extent have the attacks made on you by the current Chinese government on you been overdosed, and what has been the effect on you and your family of these attacks?

Governor: If you have taken part in the cut and thrust of debate at Westminster, if you have been (and I won't weary you with my entire obituary) not only Chairman of the Conservative Party, but also the Minister responsible (poor fellow!) for the introduction of the poll tax, all these things are relative! I have been called some extraordinary things in the past. I have been called a whore and a prostitute; it has been said that I am condemned for a 1000 years; for reasons which now escape me, I have been called a tango dancer and once I was called a sly lawyer, which, as I pointed out at the time, was short for an oxymoron!

I think there is something else that one learns from the cut and thrust of political debate in an open society, and that is that when you have the better of the argument, others abuse you rather than connect with the arguments that you are putting forward. All that is now, thank heavens, in the past.

There is a more serious element that I might just mention. It was sometimes said that the purpose of the attacks was to put the wind up the people of Hong Kong. In 1991, they voted very substantially for pro-Democracy candidates in the elections. Flush in the pan? Four years later, all those verbals, and they still vote in the same sort of proportions for pro-Democracy candidates. If that was the intention, it has certainly has not worked, but I look forward to the day when only compliments rain down, which perhaps suggests that I should not do anything political after this!