TNAG-1438-FCO40-1922-Constitutional-development-in-Hong-Kong-1986 — Page 92

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eginning to speak about the spirit of the law. That is important but it is the letter of the law which we have now which must be preserved.

We cannot expect leadership from the Hong Kong Government and its Civil Servants or from the Consultative Committee on the Basic Law. The former have shown several times in the last twelve months that they will retreat rapidly in the face of Chinese fire power and they cannot be blamed for this because the UK Government has made it quite clear that they have now done the best they can for us and washed their hands of the whole affair. This attitude is exemplified especially in the

nationality issue. The latter is financed mainly by a couple of people, one of whom has already shown how he thinks "democratic consultation" should work, and however much the rest of the members will try to be independent in the end the man who pays the piper calls the tune!

At the moment both the Hong Kong and Beijing Governments try to gauge public opinion by a cumbersome process of "consultation". This cannot possibly take the place of the expression of the will and opinions of the people via political parties and direct elections. It is far easier to manipulate and suppress opinion

via the so called consultative processes now being tried out

here than to do so when you have a political organisation

gathering like-minded citizens together to turn their opinions and ideals into political action and power. The communists certainly recognise this because their political party is the

most important organ of state power in communist countries.

However, the most important consideration must be that autonomy requires the strength to say "No" to directives from the Central Government. This will be difficult enough if there is a strong

political movement supporting our liberties and our economic freedoms. It will be quite impossible if all we have is the present "old boy" consensus system. One hopes it will never

come to a confrontation reinforced by military power, but if it should then having strong independent leadership will make sure

that the rest of the world knows what is going on. Whereas with "democratic consultation" it could all be swept under the carpet

and no-one outside will ever know the difference.

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