ADMINISTRATION IN CONFIDENCE
Diplomatic Service transients, and with the support of adjacent embassies. We also took over the administra- tion of the British Diplomatic Service Mail Office (BDSMO) and the British Civil Aviation Representative Far East (BCARFE) though our connections with the latter are still fairly tenuous. In addition we absorbed the administra- tion of the language students stationed in Hong Kong (but not direction of their actual studies which remains with the Political Adviser's office). All this in time gradually brought us more to the notice of the Diplomatic Service authorities, and by the end of 1966 the position was eventually reached where we more or less regarded D.S.A.O. itself as our father and rear link with Whitehall.
In 1968, when the merger between the Commonwealth and Foreign Offices took place and D.S.A.O. was dissolved, I received instructions that I was to regard the Hong Kong Department in the merged office as our geographical Department. This is the position today. You will see from the private files that Bunny Carter, the Head of the Hong Kong Department, and I have been experimenting in an attempt to be useful to each other. But I guess that he would agree with me that we have not quite found the proper solution yet if there is one. The first difficulty is that his department really exists to service the Hong Kong Colonial Government and not to service us. The second is that our work is mainly commercial, and therefore a little outside the bounds of a normal geographical department in the F.C.O. But there is plenty of goodwill, and I have no doubt a useful modus vivendi will emerge in time.
Left to itself
This may all seem rather legalistic. the post would no doubt carry on as a sort of overseas branch of E.S.B. and E.C.G.D. who are the two department s in the Board of Trade with whom we are in daily contact. I have always felt, however, that we have a more useful role to play in the rather strange atmosphere of Anglo- Hong Kong relations. This is particularly so now that the Hong Kong Government Service is so concerned at the disappearance of the continuity enshrined in the old Colonial Office system, and at the prospect of their being subject to an F.C.0. manned by peripatetic Diplomatic Service staff who are suspected of not appreciating the difficulties of day to day administration of a complex society like Hong Kong.
For fear of arousing mainland Chinese suspicions nothing must be done which would appear to be preparing
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ADMINISTRATION IN CONFIDENCE
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