En Clair
HONG KONG TO COMMONWEALTH OFFICE
Telno 97
INCLASSIFIED
22 January, 1968
248
COM
Addressed to Peking telegram No. 29 of 22 January. Repeated for information to:
C.O.
You will wish to know of an unsatisfactory feature of railway communications between here and Canton.
2. In order to facilitate the movement of rolling stock across the bridge at Lowu we maintain a shunting engine permanently at the border. This engine regularly operates in sidings at Shum Chun and returns to our side every evening. Since early June this engine has been decorated with portraits of Chairman Mao and slogans ranging in content from standard Communist exhortations to crude personal attacks on Police Officers and myself.
3. On 17 January a replacement engine was sent up to the border. On 18 January it returned from working in Shum Chun plastered with slogans which included encouragement to local compatriots to carry on the struggle, a statement that Her Majesty The Queen must bow her head and an exhortation to hang me. I have arranged that the
I am [grp. undec.] objectionabl8f these slogans be obliterated. sending a verbal protest about this interference with Hong Kong Government property to the border authority through the new China News Agency.
4. It has also been the custom for some time to send mail wagons to Canton. These too have been covered in slogans in recent months. We have been sending a statement of the monthly cost of repainting them to the Chinese Railway authorities at Canton.
Sir D. Trench
DEPARTMENTAL DISTRIBUTION
C.O.
F.0.
H.K. Dept.
I. and G. Dept.
News Dept.
F.E.D.
J.I.P.G.D.
J.I.R.D.
O.L.A.
O.P.A.
DIS MOD
uuuuu
249
RECEIVED IN
ARCHIVES No. 63 23 JAN1968
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