NATIONAL UNION OF JOURNALISTS
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20th August 1974
21/8
Rt. Hon. L. James Callaghan, MP,
Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs,
Foreign and Commonwealth Office,
Downing Street,
LONDON SW1A 2AL.
Dear Foreign Secretary,
Hong Kong: Closure of the "China
Mail"
28A
NXK13/13
I am sure you will appreciate the concern of British journalists at the closure on economic grounds of the "China Mail", Hong Kong's oldest English language newspaper. After a life of 129 years, it appeared for the last time on August 17th.
The NUJ's concern at the paper's death is heightened by the difficulty being experienced by our colleagues in the Hong Kong Journalists' Association in negotiating fair severance terms for over forty journalists some of them British, and members of ours thrown out of work by the closure. Their position is a peculiarly difficult one: employment opportunities for journalists used to working in English are very restricted in Hong Kong where there remain three English newspapers compared with 97 Chinese newspapers since the closure of the "China Mail". Your office will be aware that it was only following a multi-racial "sit in" by the staff of the paper that its management agreed to open negotiations about severance terms.
I realise that, although Hong Kong is a British colony, this industrial and social problem is not directly the concern of HM Government. However, on behalf of our National Executive Council, I hope the good offices and influence of Britain's representatives in Hong Kong may be used to encourage a just settlement of the problem.
May I ask you, or your Office, to urge this?
Yours sincerely,
Kemmeras Torgun.
General Secretary
General Secretary: Kenneth Morgan Deputy General Secretary: Eric Blott
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