TNAG-0153-FCO40-189-Exports-of-cotton-textiles-to-Canada-1969 — Page 87

CONFIDENTIAL

4

-

you without referring the issue to the President

of the Board of Trade personally, who, I need

hardly say, was away on holiday and could not be

contacted. In these circumstances, and given the

time factor involved, I saw no alternative but to

accept the impossibility of getting what we would

have liked and to accept instructions to you in

the form of F.C.O. telegrams Nos. 536 and 537 to

you. I hoped that these would at least give you

enough to enable your representatives to run over

the ground with the Canadians, find out what their

position was to be and achieve a postponement of

decisions to a date still in advance of the

terminal date (30 September) for the restraint

agreements when further talks could be held. I

recognised that this would not be satisfactory to

you, as I said in my personal message, but it was

quite clear that we should not be able to move the

Board of Trade from their position until we saw

what line the Canadians actually took at the

talks in Hong Kong.

4. On receipt of your further telegrams Nos. 647

and 648 we met again at once at the Board of Trade,

late on the Friday evening.

Several points in your

telegram No. 647 the Board of Trade would dispute

but especially paragraph 7

Moreover they were

quite unwilling to concede the authority

that

requested in paragraph 12 of your telegram, No. 647,

but I insisted that they must make some effort in

that case to spell out for you the issues of

principle on which decisions have still to be taken.

CONFIDENTIAL

/Your