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in Hong Kong over the same ten years which would meet some of the more responsible criticisms at home and give the Secretary of State some confidence that his constitutional responsibilities were being adequately discharged.
5.
As the Governor knows, Mr Callaghan had every confidence in his administration of the Colony and appreciated all he has done to give a new impetus to social and other reform. However, Tom McNally had advised that, when he came to focus
his mind on Hong Kong in preparation for his visit, he would almost certainly have concluded that a strategy for internal reform in the longer term was necessary. In Tom McNally's words, he had already concluded that there was a case to answer and that he would wish to use his visit to Hong Kong to acquaint himself with the problems so that a workable strategy could emerge. He would have almost certainly felt that Parliamentary and other political pressures would grow and that he needed a policy which was defensible here and practical in Hong Kong. Tom McNally also said that we were right to try to anticipate the probable pressure points and not merely to respond to pressures as and when the arose.
6. The Planning Paper therefore is an attempt to suggest such a strategy over the next ten years. It was not meant to be the last word. The PUS's request for a view from the Office, in the form of a Planning Paper, and a view from Hong Kong in the form of a Despatch, was to enable him to judge what divergences, if any, existed between prima facie desirable and prima facie practicable; to point up the differences in briefing the Secretary of State for a purely private discussion with the Governor; and to give him the chance to weigh the issues in his own mind before deciding what future policy he wished to pursue.
7. All this would, of course, have been made fully clear in the briefs we would have prepared for Mr Callaghan and
Governor. which we had every intention of clearing with the/
To some /extent
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