TNAG-1983-FCO40-2816-Presentation-of-UK-policy-on-Hong-Kong-to-the-media-1989 — Page 4

47

Mr McLaren

3/in.

HKD

Mko 30199NFIDENTIAL

нко

CRY

MAR 1989

RM 272

Miss Marouay

W28/

FROM: D H Gillmore

CC:

W37 270 2156

28 February 1989 PS

PS/Lord Glenarthur PS/PUS

Mr Boyd

Head of News Dept

Head of Information Dept Head of HKD

HONG KONG AND THE BRITISH PRESS

As you know, I had lunch today with Mr Peter Jenkins, Associate Editor of The Independent.

1.

2. My agreed objective was to try to focus Mr Jenkins on the Hong Kong issue in the light of the highly critical press comments which we have been receiving in recent weeks. I judged it wise with Mr Jenkins not to tackle this problem head-on. I hope I managed to slip into the subject with reasonable discretion.

3. I began by saying that I found the situation perplexing. I was not a Sinologist nor an expert on the subject of Hong Kong; I had not, for example, been involved in the negotiations leading to the Joint Delcaration nor in the early work of the Joint Liaison Group. But, as something of a Johnny-come-lately to the subject, I was struck by the huge disparity between, on the one hand, the real achievement over years of negotiations and, on the other, the disparaging (and often ill-informed) comment in the press. Anyone who would have predicted in 1984 that we would achieve in the Basic Law a document which made universal suffrage an ultimate objective would have been considered wildly optimistic. Yet this was now the position in the latest draft. But, as far as I was aware, not one single editor had commented on this point.

4.

Mr Jenkins was sympathetic. We speculated on the reasons for this state of affairs. Mr Jenkins agreed with me that, in the absence of much coherent contribution from the Opposition in Parliament on foreign policy issues, the press increasingly tended to take up the role of loyal opposition to the government in office. He said also that he thought, following the euphoria which had surrounded the signature of the Joint Declaration, things were bound to go downhill thereafter, at least for a period of time. There were also, he said, a variety of lobbies representing conflicting interests. He himself had been tackled by the Keswicks, riding their familiar hobby horse of lack of support for British commercial and industrial interests. And now the problem of passports had to some extent smothered the central issue of the Basic Law.

/5.