TNAG-0114-FCO40-150-Detainees-and-prisoners-following-19671968-disturbances-1969 — Page 36

By Bag

SECRET

SAVING TELEGRAM

272

OREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE TO HONG KONG

Telno 2 Saving 22 August 1969

SECRET

(H⋅KD)

Addressed to Hong Kong telno 2 Saving of 22 August

Repeated for information Saying to: Peking, Washington and POLAD Singapore.

Abd iii)

Your telegram No. 588: Sino-British Relations.

We have taken careful note of the points in paragraph 3 of your telegram under reference. It would indeed be regrettable if the Chinese were to conclude from your policies over the past few months in Hong Kong that we were susceptible to pressure. Seen from here,

however, the policies have appeared an effective combination of firm- ness and flexibility, indeed a successful balancing act of the kind in which, as you rightly comment in your telegram No. 855 of 5 July, Hwan 1968, the Hong Kong authorities are not inexperienced.

(26)

2. We foresee that we here may well be in for a difficult time

over the other British subjects, who are likely to become a matter for

increasing public concern if the Grey affair is resolved. While it

may be, as you say, that their predicament is connected with Hong

Kong events only in the sense that they are regarded by the Chinese

as a useful lever against us, nevertheless their relatives have

argued that it must be significant that their detention post-dates

the conviction in the Hong Kong courts of large numbers of Communist

offenders. Moreover, the local Communists in Hong Kong must surely

hope that the Peking authorities will use the British subjects as a

means of speeding up the release of the prisoners in Hong Kong. The

degree of support that they will receive from Peking in this remains problematical. In any case you may be assured that we are fully aware of the slippery slope on which we would be starting if in the interests of these British subjects we were to hold out any prospect whatsoever of concessions over convicted prisoners in Hong Kong.

/3. Indeed

No.51

27 AUG 1969

<1/12

HICK

SE CRE T

LAST

RFF

}.EX.

REF.

268/E/iii