TNAG-1341-FCO40-17721-Visit-by-Margaret-Thatcher--UK-Prime-Minister--to-Beijing-fo-1985 — Page 127

1

DSR (Revised)

DRAFT:

minute/letter/teleletter/despatch/note

FROM:

Private Secretary

DEPARTMENT:

TEL. NO:

TYPE: Draft/Final 1+

Reference

SECURITY CLASSIFICATION

TO:

Your Reference

Top Secret

FER Butler Esq

Secret

Confidential

Principal Private Secretary

No.10

Copies to:

Restricted

Unclassified

PRIVACY MARKING

SUBJECT:

.In Confidence

CAVEAT....

Enclosures-flag(s).............

We are

Thank you for your letter of 24 December.

sorry that delays occurred to three telegrams during the

Prime Minister's tour before Christmas.

2. Since it is clearly important that arrangements for

getting telegrams to the Prime Minister and Foreign

Secretary when abroad work reliably, we have checked on

the handling of each telegram to see whether there are

lessons to be learned. All three telegrams were trans-

mitted and received well in advance of the Deskby times.

3. In Peking the Prime Minister's telegrams received

during the visit have already been destroyed so the Post

cannot be precise about what happened; but Peking have a

record of the telegram, which was Deskby 0700 local time on

20 December, being received at 0545 hours. The last

courier from the Embassy to the guest house left at 0610

hours with all the telegrams which had been received by

then and handed them in when she arrived at the guest house

at 0640 local time. Since the Private Office was then

starting to be packed up, we cannot be sure whether the

telegram was missed at the Embassy or during the packing up..