HKKI/3
1971
CONFIDENTIAL
HK
དེ་
SCR 2/1136/72
Sir,
GOVERNMENT HOUSE
HONG KONG
RECEIVED IN REGISTRYN 31 - 2 JUN 1972
191001/4
19th May 1972
In your telegram No. 950 of 22nd December 1971 you approved my proposal to renew for six months the appointments of all substantive members of the Legislative and Executive Councils. These appointments all expire on 30th June. I now annex lists of the appointments I would like to make with effect from 1st July 1972, and for which I would be grateful for your approval.
2.
These lists contain no dramatic change, and in submitting them I am conscious of considerable disappointment that I have not been able to find new and suitable people to serve on these Councils from outside the established circle. I am still unconvinced that they do not exist, but certainly I have not found them in six months. Moreover when in response to occasional informal criticism from responsible people I have asked for a list of suitable new names, the result has always been a puzzled negative when once the critic has seriously considered the problem.
3.
One could of course take chances.
But
I do not think that is what I am here for, nor is it the sort of chance that need be taken in Hong Kong. There are many drawbacks to this sort of authoritarian government by consensus which we operate. But it does have the merits of predictability, homogeneity and responsibility in the two Councils, and a high level of comparatively self-effacing but very hard and professional work on the part of the unofficial councillors. I believe that the latter depends largely on their sense of shared stake in Hong Kong and high degree of mutual trust. But it would be very easy to break the system or place it under strain, without substituting anything viable, by one off-key appointment.
4.
At this stage in my governorship, with so many of the personal equations still unknown or not
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
SIR ALEC DOUGLAS-HOME, KT, MP
CONFIDENTIAL
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