TNAG-0569-FCO40-702-Planning-paper-on-Hong-Kong-1976 — Page 56

蠱

cannot afford to drop our insistence on economic and social reform.

I conclude that we should therefore drop our insistence on consitutional reform, or at least make sure that it is the minimum and cosmetic only. We should instead seek to force through a programme of economic and social reform, relying where necessary on imposition, and relying on the argument that the present Hong Kong Government is unrepresentative.

I realise that this is scarcely democratic: but I do not believe that circumstances in Hong Kong allow us to be democratic. And the next best thing to democracy is benevolent compulsion.

16 March 1976

A C Galsworthy

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