TNAG-0647-FCO40-795-Study-of-labour-relations-in-Hong-Kong-by-Professor-H-A-Turn-1977 — Page 115

34

-

movement should have emerged; where there is no cultural or sociological

obstacle to its emergence and where the legal obstacles are now (or

will be shortly) trivial; but where the dominant trade union organisa-

tion is unwilling at present to take up that role, and the minority one

(in the private sector) politically and otherwise incapable of doing so.

And where, in the absence of such a labour movement, official agencies

have been more or less obliged, to supply of necessity very

incompletely its place.

74. One question in sequitur, and reasonably, might be: why do anything

at all beyond the presently-projected sequence of minor improvements

to the labour legislation, etc, which the administration envisages?

this, there are several answers: for instance:

(a) While the present membership of the FTU is low, its

potential influence is enormous. If Peking decided the

time had come to take Hong Kong over formally (it

already regards the territory as legally part of China,

I gather) nothing could stop it, any way. But that is

unlikely while the present situation conveys such

considerable advantages to Peking: we have, in fact, an

implicit conspiracy between a communist and a socialist

government, to maintain what is the modern world's

nearest equivalent to the ideal of nineteenth-century

laissez-faire capitalism, to the mutual advantage of

both. But a new idiological crisis in Peking of the

"cultural revolution" order, say might very well

-

overflow into disturbances in Hong Kong which would be

equally embarrassing to both governments.

To

(b) The 1974 recession clearly had rather traumatic

but

fortunately brief - effects in Hong Kong. But it is not

necessarily a unique event; the world economic outlook

is increasingly uncertain, and the economy of Hong Kong

is (as I noted in my introduction) unbalanced and

vulnerable. A sharper and more enduring recession than

that of 1974 might very well, in view of the apparent

preoccupation of Hong Kong employees with security, set

off a spontaneous or alternative radical labour and

political movement, which would be quite capable of

producing an autonomous industrial and political crisis.

/Despite