the period 11th May 1967 to the end of February, 1968,
was 1,044. This would give a daily average of 149
incidents during the week in question were it not for
1044
the fact that out of the total of
incidents, 818 were
due either to false alarms or to hoax bombs. This
reduces the daily tally to 32 genuine bomb incidents
during the week in question: and throughout the whole
period of the disturbances, the daily average of genuine
bomb incidents was five or six.
Perhaps this remark
of Mr. Pettifers is what you had in mind when you said
in your reply to the Governor that "we have all been
given a vivid idea of your situation and the complications
of life in Hong Kong"?
I must stress the point that the Governor made in
the penultimate paragraph of his letter about how much
there is at stake in Hong Kong at the present time.
Situated as the Colony is on the borders of China, a
powerful and unfriendly neighbour, the Colony's
ing
confidence in its own continue existence is vital, but because of the Colony's exposed
that confidence is inevitably a somewhat delicate plant.
It depends substantially on the knowledge that we in
this country will support and sustain the Colony. I
and my Ministerial colleagues have been at pains in
will recent months to stress that H.M. Government do just
this. It does not help that from this country there
has issued from the press and other mass communication
media, a steady volume of ill-informed critical comment
and misrepresentation of events and conditions in the
Colony which is interpreted locally as evidence, not
merely of a lack of sympathy or understanding here,
but of a lack of support. I have heard it said in
Hong Kong that they sometimes wonder who and where
their enemies are!
position
/I have
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