TNAG-0389-FCO40-435-Visit-of-trade-mission-of-the-London-Chamber-of-Commerce-and-1973 — Page 42

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he gave us a lot of time.

The briefing material prepared for the Mission was admirable : and the oral briefing which he gave us could not have been bettered. It was full of useful information and sensible advice, very well put across with a lot of punch. It made a deep impression on the members of the Mission. Towlson and other members of Aston's staff also did a lot for us. The publicity and P.R. work for the Mission was particularly well handled. We got good advance publicity in the press and on T.V. Aston arranged for me to speak at a large Rotary lunch. My speech, which followed closely on the lines he had suggested, was, I was told, quite well received and got fair press and T.V. coverage. We also gave a press conference just before we left, which was well attended. (Inevitably, I suppose, most of the questions were about the sterling balances and hardly any about the Mission !).

In Tokyo the Embassy had evidently thought that there was little that could be usefully done in this field, since we were definitely not News in Japan. No doubt they were right.

9. I was greatly impressed by Aston, whom I had previously known only slightly.

It seemed to me that he was making a very good job of the responsibilities, going much beyond purely commercial work into the politico-economic field, which inevitably fall to him as the senior official in Hong Kong representing purely U.K. interests. He made an excellent short speech at the Rotary lunch. He gave a very good lunch for us himself and he obviously had excellent relations with leading business personalities, both British and Chinese.

10. It was an interesting experience to find British officials and businessmen in Hong Kong entirely identifying themselves with Hong Kong : so that "we" was Hong Kong and "you" was Britain. I got the impression that they were often highly critical of Britain and H.M.G., sometimes indeed almost to the point of being positively anti-British. Someone described the position of Hong Kong as "undeclared UDI". In such a situation it seems paradoxical that there is, as I understand it, virtually no projection-of-Britain Information effort in Hong Kong, other than the Trade Commission's essentially commercial Information work. Certainly I had no feeling of being in a particularly friendly atmosphere there. Indeed in an odd way I felt the whole atmosphere less friendly than that to which I am now used in Nigeria.

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