TNAG-0533-FCO40-628-Personal-correspondence-between-Sir-Murray-MacLehose--Govern-1975 — Page 11

香港總督府

SECRET

Des Duncan

GOVERNMENT HOUSE

HONG KONG

18th August 1975

4

REPRESENTATIONS BY THE NATIONAL EXECUTIVE

COMMITTEE OF THE LABOUR PARTY

Thank you for your letter of 8th August

about Hong Kong and the NEC.

2.

I

I have remitted the various items for study by Departments and will be replying in due course. But I will find it difficult to do so without some guidance from you. After all this is primarily a Whitehall political problem, as your Para. 8 makes clear. You and the Department already broadly know the answers to the questions put. am sure it is not the Secretary of State's intention to press me on these issues against my better judgement, or in seeking to damp down the sniping from the NEC and TUC (they cannot be stopped) to risk the broad objectives of this Government; but your letter merely passes on the record and dumps it on my plate. Meanwhile I do hope that until you have my considered views you will not expose the Secretary of State by sending too positive an interim reply to the NEC.

3.

Your Para. 6 mentions that the Secretary of State wishes to discuss in Peking the desirability of more active communist trades union interest in the processes of government in Hong Kong. In UK union terms the suggestion is a natural one, but in the circumstances of Hong Kong it would be considered by Peking and by all concerned in Hong Kong as an invitation to the CPG itself to participate in the processes of government in Hong Kong, and that HMG had decided to achieve this through union representation rather than through CPG official representatives in the NCNA. The Secretary of State's idea therefore could have the most far- reaching consequences and should not be broached in Peking unless HMG had decided that this was the right time to make a studied move towards the involvement of the CPG in the administration of Hong Kong, and that the communist unions were the right medium to use. But quite apart from the fact that I should be amazed if this was the considered view of HMG at this time, I cannot believe that this was what the Secretary of State had in mind at all. I do not know how much of this

Sir Duncan Watson, KCMG