I suppose I must now call it).
When Mr Goodlad and the present
Ambassador were before this Committee a few months ago, Mr Joplin who sadly cannot be here this morning because of urgent business put to Sir Robin McLaren the previous visit of this Committee (o£ which I was not then a member) to Peking when you were there, to the experience that the Committee had in seeing what was going on in Tiananmen Square. They put it to the Embassy at the time that this was a serious matter, and were told that was not the case, this was a normal feature of Chinese life, and no account should be taken of it. Despite being pressed on that at the time, that view was reinforced and Mr Joplin put that view to Sir Robin who came to your defence, as you probably know, and said 'No, this is not true. I was then working at the Foreign Office in London and we were getting advice saying these are serious matters; we are not complacent; we are aware it is going on and they are significant'. Now I have to put it to you Sir Alan that the advice that you then gave the Committee was not only wrong in the sense that these events were obviously significant, but I am troubled by the different interpretation that was taken at the Foreign Office. It would appear either that the advice which you gave to the Committee was wrong or alternatively conflicting advice was being given to the Foreign Office; I wonder whether you would like to take the opportunity of setting the record straight so far as you are concerned?
Sir Alan Donald: Thank you very much, Mr Sumberg. I was puzzled by that reference, and I do not have a very clear recollection of being questioned closely about what was going on. I suspect there may have been a a number of obiter dicta from members of the Embassy who may have been asked at social functions, or outside the meeting which we had, but I do not think we were well into that situation. If I remember the Committee came at about the beginning of May, and the situation degenerated quite rapidly in the last four or five weeks. I do not myself recall the form of words or what was said, but it is possible that people were referring back to the incidents of the Democracy Wall which had happened before, and the incidents when Zhou EnLai died when a number of people gathered at the Martyrs'
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