Mr
GaminMa.
CONFIDENTIAL
8 Angust, 1967
Cross Harbour Tunnel
Forgive me if I am labouring a well appreciated point but I fear that the continued delay in taking a decision on the tunnel is doing nothing but harm to our commercial prospects in Hong Kong, not to mention local confidence in its broader sense.
2.
For better or for worse, the tunnel has become symbol. From the start of what is now locally called 'confrontation" (inaccurately and probably unwisely in my view) people have talked of the starting of the tunnel as something that will indisputably prove two things: Hong Kong's faith in itself because of all the local investment involved, and Britain's steadfastness because of our involvement in financing the contract. It has been further elevated in significance because in
"pre-confrontation" days the Hong Kong Government never
I degree of had the courage publiely to spell out the importance they
really attached to it as a social and communications project. So, when trouble struck they were driven to support the project to a far greater degree, financially, than they had planned; and to give it an importance that was not in accord with their original scale of priorities.
3. The tunnel has become the conversation piece of dinner and cocktail parties and visitors such as Michael Montague and Lord Rhodes have it hammered at them both in and out of context. Kisinterpretation has led Montague to be reported in London În a way that mggests that the tunnel is a certainty and Costains will build it.
Lord Rhodes
helped not at all when he linked the tunnel with the airport runway as Keynesian-type ralief works for the thousands of discharged workers - most of whom are bus drivers and conductors or artisans!
4. We have therefore reached a point where nearly everyone who matters commercially in this Colony, plus a sizeable part of ordinary public opinion, believes that the tunnel is crucial to Hong Kong`aid that failure to reach a decision is the fault of a cowardly, vacillating Britain which is waiting to see which way the wind blows. In well-informed
1. Morris, Esq.,
C.R.R.D..
Board of Trade.
/circles
....
CONFIDENTIAL
1553/67
45
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