14
Question:
Death Penalty
You say the British Government doesn't want to interfere with what our Government does. The British Government has
interfered with what our Government does on a matter of internal policy, and it has done so very consistently. . This is the matter of the death penalty. According to
surveys carried out by newspapers in Hong Kong, about 95 per cent of the adult population favoured the death penalty. The British Government has consistently interfered with the Hong Kong Government's desire in this respect. Do you have any comment on this, Sir?
Minister: Yes, indeed. I haven't got a solution on this. But we've
got to be frank. The position is this: We can do no other on this one for this reason, you and we are in relationship, I almost used the term special relationship. This is the constitutional relationship that works. I don't know of an alternative. Perhaps there is one, I can't think of one. I don't think anybody in Hong Kong can think of a preferable alternative to the present somewhat unique relationship which enables you, by and large, to proceed with considerable autonomy. However, the British Government finds itself having abrogated the death penalty for some years now in Britain and having very recently, a few weeks ago, looked at it again, all the question of deterrents and the rest of it in a full dress debate in Parliament; at the end of the day, although that debate was held on the morrow of the Birmingham holocaust when feeling ran very high indeed, as you know, nevertheless, the British Parliament which I will always regard as the greatest deliberative assembly in the world, came to the decision that no useful purpose could be served by restoration; and by a much larger majority than ever before
/15.
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