PERSON. L AND CONFIDENTIAL
Ли
12
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P.A you
du Davich
Mu. Prawarror
Dim 14/1
14 January 1977
Sir Murray MacLehose GBE KCMG KCVO HONG KONG
LAST
REF.
79) free
NLXT
REF.
HONG KONG PRESS COMMENTS
1.
John Stewart is away at the moment but Derek Milton hus shown me your letter of 29 December and the enclosed transcript of the press conference you gave before Christmas.
2. I am sorry that you have been havin such a difficult time with the press and public opinion generally. Your press conference, alon with the press reviews for the month of December, certainly gave the impression that the temperature had built up during your absence from Hong Kong. I do hope that your press conference has taken some of the heat out of the situation and, as you said in your letter, the holiday period should have helped in the short term.
Milton
3. I agree that the fuss that has arisen has been the morc regrettable since, to use your phrase, "the essentials are all going very well indeed". I imagine that the announcement you were goin to make last week about the increase in rates reported what you suid in your telephone call on 4 January and Lord Coronwy-koberts agreed that it was entirely up to you to decile the timing of the announcement - will have led to relief that the increase was no where near as high as had been predicted. I hope too that the situation will be eased when it becomes apparent that there are no new significant measures in the immediate offing in the labour field. The forthcoming announcement of the extension of your own appointment, about which we are all very pleased, will remove another uncertainty.
4. But, with you, I am concerned that the recent outcry about British "interference" in the affairs of Hong Kong should have been so manifestly ill-informed. I noticed that there were even allega- tions that it is the UK's intention to turn Hong Kong into a "puppet of the Labour Government" or to transplant "the British system to Hong Kong". The distortion of the facts has been so disturbing that we have been wondering whether there is anything more which could be done to put over a more balanced picture of the
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