TNAG-0619-FCO40-767-Proposed-research-project-on-conditions-in-a-Chinese-village-1977 — Page 21

CONFIDENTIAL

布政司署 BY BAG

香港下亞畢道

*** OUR Ref.: CR L/M 107/77

* Your Ref.:

PERSONAL

D F MILTON ESQ HONG KONG DEPARTMENT F CO

R

RE

26.17

GOVERNMENT SECRETARIAT

LOWER ALBERT ROAD

HONG KONG

22 April 1977

Euler

ли

تھا

du Dulty

Have the spam

See Senk, HKK 093/548/4

UNGERS' RESEARCH PROJECT

been in hauch

about this!

TOMA

2614

Please refer to my letter of 23 March to Miss

IN HRcGee in the O D M about the application for a research

'grant put forward by Mr and Mrs Unger of Sussex University.

2.

Strictly for your own (and Iain Orr's) background information, you may like to know that Unger has been Tobbying me to intervene in support of his project. He wrote me a personal letter dated 30 March saying that he gathered from sources in the O D M (one of the junior staff apparently told an O D M consultant who told him) that the Hong Kong Government had objected to the project and it would therefore be blocked as the O D M rule was not to give grants for research if the governments concerned did not approve.

3.

I was away on local leave from 2 to 17 April and only saw the letter on my return to the office this week. Obviously concerned at having no reply, Unger rang me up from Sussex during the lunch hour (when none of his bosses would be around) on 20 April. I was able to tell him that I had just written him a letter explaining fairly frankly what reply we had given the O D M. Twelve hours later he rang again and asked me not to copy his letter or my reply to the O D M in case it got his informants into trouble, but meanwhile could he show my letter to the OD M as evidence that the Hong Kong Government was not against the project. I agreed not to copy our correspondence, but insisted that he should not in that case show my letter to the OD M. If it was going to be used in the debate, it would be discourteous for me not to tell the OD M. In fact, although my letter to Unger was friendly, it did not differ in line from my letter to the O D M and so even if he does show it to them, I do not think I can be accused of having said one thing to him and another to the OD M.

CONFIDENTIAL

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