LETTER
FROM NAIRNE
TO
GALSWORTHY.
LETTER FROM SIR PATRICK NAIRNE TO MR GALSWORTHY, DATED 27 AUGUST
Dear Tony
concentrated
Your thoughts are
the discussions in Peking. As I
(lucky fellow) tramp across the North Yorkshire Moors,
my thoughts
keep coming back to the subsequent task in Hong Kong. I fully
recognize that I am only one of two Monitors, and that my colleague
knows more of Hong Kong than I can every hope to know; and also that
I am exploring questions about our approach to the Monitoring task
before my serious briefing has taken place. But, notwithstanding these reservations, it may be useful to put something on paper
before we meet on 6th September. I have very much in mind that the
FCO and Westminster will be the judges of the success of my own
assignment.
There are, I think, three fairly distinct parts to the task of
"testing the acceptability in Hong Kong of an Agreement with the
Chinese Government":
(1) The scope, character, and organisation of the consultation;
(2) The discharge or implementation of the consultation;
(3) The collation, summarising, analysis and assessment of the
response.
The Assessment Office
task is confined to (3) clearly an essential
form of mechanism and function in the absence of a head-counting
referendum but its ultimate responsibility for providing an
"overall assessment of the extent of acceptance by the people of
Hong Kong of the draft Agreement" will crucially depend on (1) and
(2) above. The Monitoring Team will be, in effect, in the same
position - with its formal responsibilities confined to "observing
the work of the Assessment Office", and reporting whether the
Assessment Office has "properly, accurately and impartially
discharged its duties", though "free to witness such aspects of the
exercise of consultations" as it may wish. An exacting enough
assignment in itself.
May it
not be, however, that Ministers and Parliament, at the
beginning of December, will be as much concerned about the proper and effective carrying out of the consultation process as a whole as
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.