TNAG-0845-FCO40-1055-Visits-of-Foreign-and-Commonwealth-officials-to-Hong-Kong-1979 — Page 26

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SPEECH BY MR. PETER BLAKER, MINISTER OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AND

REGIOTYY NO.

COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS, TO THE HONG KONG GENERALS OCT 1979

CHAMBER OF COMMERCE LUNCHEON. 25.9.29

DESK OPRCLA

INDEX

Mr. Chairman, Your Excellency, ladies and gentlemen.

سلام

N. I This

ม.

1

ISTAY

It is a real pleasure for me to speak to the Hong Kong General

Chamber of Commerce of which, at one time, my father had the honour to

be Chairman. When Sir Winston Churchill was a young man he was on terms

of friendly rivalry with George Bernard Shaw, the playwright, and on one

occasion Shaw wrote to Churchill and said 'Dear Mr. Churchill, I enclose

two tickets for the first performance of my new play. I hope you will

come and bring a friend if you have one.' To which Mr. Churchill replied,

'Dear Mr. Shaw, unfortunately I cannot attend the first performance of

your play but if you will send a ticket I will attend the second perform-

ance if you have one.'

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And it is very good fortune for me to have this second perform-

ance of the role of Foreign Minister in the Foreign Office responsible for

Hong Kong. I had a very brief tenure of the role in January 1964 but unfortunately in February 1974 when a Mr. Heath called an election, the

result of which you are familiar with, I didn't even establish a record

for brevity. They found in the Foreign Office library that somebody in

1790 had only lasted a week.

Now one of the first memories I have of Hong Kong is of a

typhoon which blew a hole in the roof of my parents' house on Barker Road, That sort of makes the place stick in one's memory.

Those were

the days when the punka fulfilled the role of the air-conditioner and the

ice-box, a very unhygenic thing it must have been that took the place of

the refrigerator. And when the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank building was the tallest building in Hong Kong. I am not complaining that I had a

deprived childhood but in fact I think that at the age of seven I rather

looked forward to the next typhoon. But I mentioned these facts just to

show you that I am very well aware myself of the speed at which things

in Hong Kong have developed.

+

/I want....

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