Confidential
Hong Kong Department,
HK K 5/3
22 October, 1970.
29
Labour questions
You were good enough to send a full and detailed reply to my letter to Hugh Norman-Walker of 6 May and I much regret that I am only now able to get down to answering it.
Since you wrote I have of course had my first visit to Hong Kong and I do not propose therefore to inflict a further long letter on you. I think the best think I can do is to follow the headings used by you and to make my comments as short as possible.
Labour condi tions
The flurry here over night-work for women which gave us so much to do shortly after I joined the Department seems to have died down. Since the introduction of night shift working for women has in fact made little headway (your industrialists seem to have misjudged the readiness of local women to work at night), we do not expect to hear much more on this subject. It may of course come up again when Parliament reassembles, but when Mr. Gibson saw Mr. Royle shortly before the latter left on his tour of the Far East he did not mention the matter.
You asked whether we assessed the Trade Unionists' views as stemming from ignorance of the economic realities in Hong Kong or from self-interest. It is of course difficult to generalise in a matter of this kind but my view, for what it is worth, is that Mr. Gibson, at any rate, is an idealist. I think he really does want to see better working conditions in Hong Kong for labour generally and that the effect in the UK or elsewhere of low cost imports from Hong Kong is very much a secondary con- sideration as far as he is concerned. For one thing he has just been to the United States to discuss with his American trade union friends the effects on our limited exports to the USA of legislative action currently under consideration there. For another he is a firm believer in the UK knitwear industry sticking to the high quality end of the trade.
D. R. Holmes, Esq, CMG, CBE, MC,
Acting Colonial Secretary,
HONG KONG,
'Non-Communist Trade Unions
PA 28/18
Confidential
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.