TNAG-0213-FCO40-249-Appointments-of-membership-to-Executive-Council-of-Hong-Kong-1970 — Page 181

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Registry No.

ECURITY CLASSIFICATION

DRAFT

Top Secret.

Secret.

Confidential

Restricted.

Unclassified.

PRIVACY MARKING

In Confidence

To:-

HE Sir D Trench GCMG MC

Government House

Hong Kong

Type 1 +

From

Sir L Monson

Telephone No. & Ext.

Department

You will remember the consideration we gave last

summer to the composition of the Exective and

Unofficial Legislative Councils. We then agreed that "all appoint-

^ ments should terminate on 31 December, 1971, thus

allowing Murray MacLehose a period of two months or

so after his arrival in Hong Kong in which to make

up his own mind about the membership from 1 January

1972.

2.

Since then, we have of course decided that you

should make the Address at the opening meeting of the

new Session of the Legislative Council in October and

that MacLehose should postpone his arrival until mid-

November.

With this change in plan, we feel that it

is more important than ever that we should do what we

can to help MacLehose before he takes up his appoint-

ment.

I propose therefore to set out in this letter

the considerations as we here see them. If you could

then let us have your further views by, say, the end

of April, we could include them in a paper for discus-

both sion with you and MacLehose when you are here next June.

^

in

3. To begin with, I am sure that both you and

MacLehose will agree that he cannot be expected to

form a view of his own until he has been in Hong Kong

for some time and has had a chance of sounding local

opinion for himself. We are clear therefore that

there will have to be a further holding operation for

1