TNAG-0461-FCO40-526-Exchange-of-newsletters-between-Foreign-and-Commonwealth-Off-1974 — Page 35

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comment alike is virtually unanimous in doubting whether the Japanese can do the job up to specifications for

Moreover,

HK$5,000 million and in suspecting that they will pull an undetected fast one during the contract negotiations. almost all the feed back from European and Chinese opinion is a mixture of surprise and near resentment that the Japanese have been given free run of the field. So much so that one wonders who it was who supported the decision in the first place and how all this retrospective doubt failed to block it at the time.

4.

Perhaps the negotiations with the Japanese will yet fail - although despite Philip Haddon-Cave's assertions to the contrary I do not think either side can now afford to let them.

If they do, perhaps we shall be dusting all those files off again later in the year.

But I would'nt put money on it (unless more is happening than I know about which is now virtually nothing again).

J

5. As a postscript to the year's experience I recall Philip Haddon-Cave once saying to someone else in my hearing (it was in the context of the Sterling negotiations) that in his view the essence of good negotiations was "to screw all you can out of the other side with every trick you know - there must be no give, when they are down you kick them; a good negotiation does not necessarily produce a good result". I offer no comment.

6. The topic leads me, in no sense of sour grapes I assure you, to two others in a sense correlated - the Image of Britain and the Japanese Presence.

IMAGE OF BRITAIN

7. I fear that this has been more often dull than bright in the public view here. At present you will not be surprised to hear it is very dull. The ex-patriates in particular but many of the thinking Chinese also, I believe, sincerely hope that we will pull through. But the prevailing attitude is a sceptical, if sad, reconviction that Britain is going down the economic drain. The media - and the dinner party conversat- ions are full of the black news from Britain and relatively little from elsewhere; little or nothing is seen of such state- ments as that by the Chancellor trying to restore perspective. Increasingly I and my BTC colleagues are being asked what is happening and how do we see the prospects, as if we were the spokesmen for Britain, and with the guidances, verbatims, "good news" etc we receive, we are doing our best to help preserve some perspective.

8. This, of course, leads straight back on to what is no doubt regarded as my hobby horse of who speaks for Britain.

/But I

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2.

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