[ { "id": 213938, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 8, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "CONTENTS\n\nPage\n\nPRESIDENT'S REPORT\n\nxi\n\nHON. AUDITOR'S REPORT\n\nXXV\n\nHON. LIBRARIAN'S REPORT\n\nxxxiii\n\nARTICLES\n\nA.Trevor Clark - The Dickinson Report: An Account of the Background to, and Preparation of, the 1966 Report of the Working Party on Local Administration\n\n1\n\nDan Waters - The Craft of the Bamboo Scaffolder\n\n19\n\nKeith Stevens and Jennifer Welch - The Yang Family of Generals\n\n39\n\nKwok-shing CHAN - Negotiating the Transfer Practice of Housing in a Chinese Lineage Village\n\n63\n\nC. Michael Guilford - A Look Back: Civil Engineering in Hong Kong, 1841-1941\n\n81\n\nSPECIAL FEATURE\n\nA Collection of Rare Photographs of Early Civil Engineering Projects in Hong Kong\n\n103\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nThomas Kvan and Justyna Karakiewicz - A Brief History of Reclamation in Macau\n\n137\n\nDan Waters - The Royal Asiatic Society and Heritage Education\n\n149\n\nKeith Stevens - Are the Tanka People Descendants of Mongol Soldiers?\n\n161\n\nvii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213967, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 36, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "ARTICLES\n\nTHE DICKINSON REPORT: AN ACCOUNT OF THE BACKGROUND TO, AND PREPARATION OF, THE 1966 WORKING GROUP REPORT ON LOCAL ADMINISTRATION\n\nTREVOR CLARK\n\nMuch commentary on Hong Kong's internal affairs before its return to China focused on the alleged anomaly of having delayed the introduction of a wider franchise until the very last years of a century-and-a-half's span of power. There was also dispute over whether the evident split of faith among the indigenous Hong Kong leadership was in reality between those openly \"pro-China\" and those supposedly \"anti-China\"; or whether it was not more truly between those who are \"pro-Hong Kong's people\" and those simply (and more pragmatically) \"pro-business.\" It is in this context that the death of William Vivian Dickinson MBE(Mil) reminded his past colleagues of 'The Dickinson Report', otherwise known as Report of the Working Party on Local Administration'. The recent discussion and controversy over institutional changes make a backward glance at this document and its provenance a matter for poignant reflection.\n\nIt will be remembered that Britain's immediately post-war Labour Secretaries of State for the Colonies had required all Governors to accelerate the long-accepted progress towards dominion status, as independence with full membership of the Commonwealth had been known: pressures from the United States of America and the new institutions of the United Nations had demanded no less. Attlee's government was happy to require action, by way primarily of building upwards from local government reform, coupled with improved labour and trades union legislation, and attention to education - all this backed by development and welfare plans funded by acts of parliament, which had started with the ground-breaking Colonial Development & Welfare Act passed in the dark wartime year of 1940.\n\nHong Kong had been treated no differently, and Sir Mark Young had returned as Governor after the Pacific War with plans for appropriate initiatives. These included a Municipal Council, with Mayor, 30", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213972, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 41, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "6\n\nordinary people could play a greater part in their own local affairs without \"rocking the boat,\" and so strengthen what was still in the 1960s a nebulous sense of identity with Hong Kong as something more than a dependent entrepôt.\n\nBill Dickinson had come to Hong Kong from West Africa as a man of good report with capacity for high office, widely experienced in local government and as right-hand man to the deputy governor of the Gold Coast (now Ghana). It may be thought that he made insufficient effort to affect the outward manners of a society that regarded itself as more sophisticated than an officer who preferred to wear khaki shorts in summer; he was generally seen as a stranger from a dark continent, and though well-liked did not move in élite circles. As Clerk of Councils and a Principal Assistant Colonial Secretary, he had held positions which gave knowledge but little power. Sir David Trench found in him an appropriate officer to assist in solving his dilemma. On 29 April 1966, he appointed Dickinson to chair a working party with the following (typically for Hong Kong detailed) terms of reference:\n\nTo explore and advise on practicable alternatives for the development of an effective and convenient system of local administration in Hong Kong which will take account of the size and complexity of the existing Urban Areas, the planned creation of new towns in the New Territories, and the different stages and development in the rural areas, with particular regard to—\n\n(a) the types of local authority which might be established and the criteria which might govern their establishment;\n\n(b) their possible composition, and the various methods of selection and tenure of office of members which might be considered;\n\n(c) the powers and functions they might have;\n\n(d) possible sources of revenue and financial powers;\n\n(e) their staff and the means by which their functions might be carried out;", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213981, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 50, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "The effective block was however contained in the Dickinson Report itself which, although signed unanimously, contained two Notes of Reservation by four of the six signatories. An undogmatic report in which only the chairman and one other seemed wholeheartedly to believe was easily left on one side.\n\nThe officer who admired the Urban Council subscribed to the spirit of the report but was unhappy with the possible division of the colony into as many as nine council areas within a single command span, without an intervening tier, in that tier he saw a future for a widened Urban Council, in the oversight of the fledglings. He preferred a gentle step by step evolution, taking into account Hong Kong's present lack of talent and expertise in administration, the need not to offend traditional institutions and loyalties, Chinese unfamiliarity with elections, and public suspicion of all uncharted changes. He did not co-ordinate his note with the other semi-dissenters.\n\nThe Chinese officer and the two with a general Hong Kong administrative background thought that the report provided a sound basis for citizen participation; but because of its reliance on the ballot box they doubted widespread public acceptance and goodwill, and whether it would attract the best candidates instead of unscrupulous or corrupt power-seekers. If the Urban Council could not attract heavy registration or electoral turn-outs, nor substantial numerical following among ordinary citizens (a picture which most of those who had never served with the USD recognised), how much less would the new authorities? They pointed to a recent UK National Association of Local Government Officers (NALGO, in modern times absorbed into the public services trades union UNISON) submission recommending abolition of small local authorities and restriction of British local government to regional councils with policy powers only, thus giving wider executive powers to their officials, the union's members. This was bolstered by the Note of Reservation's confidence in a Chinese pattern of strong bureaucratic control disciplined by strict moral principles. They too therefore sought a step by step approach, through a preliminary more determined tapping and usage of the known valuable reserves of respected, able and public-spirited true community leaders who were, they said, at present rarely found among the government's nominated or appointed councils. They wished to see greater decentralisation of government departments (already implemented in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213982, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 51, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "the Social Welfare Department), co-ordinated by regional generalist officers comparable with NT DOs, leading to advisory Regional Councils which might eventually become the main report's Local Authorities. They pointed up more outspokenly than the emollient main report the shortcomings of an out-of-touch government administering a non-English-speaking population that was only too open to misunderstandings and misconceptions (such as that taxes levied were drained off to the UK Treasury.) Interim steps should concentrate strongly on building up public confidence in the unaccustomed principles and practice of popular elected representation (the ‘political education' mentioned above.) The provisional system of regional advisory councils, coupled with departmental decentralisation and administrative co-ordination, should then lead to full local authorities in about six years. Meanwhile Tsuen Wan was indeed a unique opportunity for immediate action (the new towns to come of Tuen Mun, Sha Tin, Tai Po et al had yet to be envisaged.) These three semi-dissenters did not co-ordinate their Note with the other.\n\nDickinson has been described by one of his working party as “the least understood and worst treated member of the Cadet Service\" (the original title of Hong Kong's Administrative Branch of the HMOCS, which survived in common parlance long after the absorption into the Colonial Service of the pre-war Eastern Cadetships.) He chose to retire early for personal reasons. It is ironic that in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution overspill, when special duties officers in the defence branch of the secretariat, the SCA and the Information Services Department became so active in devising new ways to win hearts and minds, to keep in touch with the people and to encourage the use of Chinese language, so much of what had been adumbrated in the Working Party Report re-appeared; but because the new ideas now came from well-established senior sources, they became respectable and it was to be long before they offered electoral participation in executive decisions. The SCA became the Secretariat for Home Affairs; City District Officers were created in ten urban districts, and found much to do that had not been done before; City District Committees were established in 1972; a Tsuen Wan District Advisory Board was at last set up in 1977, followed by others; in 1980 a new pattern for district administration was at last suggested, with direct elections to District Boards. But in all these and still later developments that affect present history, there was no official backward recognition that the ground", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213983, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 52, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "17\n\nhad already been covered years before with sympathy and understanding and, it may be said, with more courteous cogency than in the often bland later green papers and documents.\n\nIt may be asserted that the time had not been ripe and that circumstances had since changed. Certainly those who in 1967 would have overseen implementation of change were likely to have lacked conviction: they had made way for others a decade later. Speculation is without profit, and it was quite arguable that the breathing space after the 1966-67 troubles was no time for experimentation with public participation as opposed to palliatory public wooing. Yet what Dickinson had hoped to see devolved to Hong Kong's man in the street and paddy field was an involvement in almost every public service that most such men and women cared about, for so long as external interference was avoidable and 1997 seemed distant. Such men and women were too wise to wish to meddle with international affairs; and they believed that trade and commerce benefited from minimal government interference, other than protection from artificial foreign barriers. It is nevertheless tempting to wonder whether a successful introduction of what his working party advised, despite the apparent fault-lines exposed by members' temporising reservations, might not have met every recurrent informed criticism of the unrepresentative nature of what is after all a mighty trading municipality rather than a minor nation state; and have anticipated and forestalled some of what less well-informed or prejudiced observers have seen as hasty and belated attempts to make up for lost time in giving self-respect and a sense of identity to a remarkable and great, but only recently consolidated, community. It must not be forgotten that it has only been in the three decades that have followed Dickinson's Report that the population did become stable, permanently resident, and conscious of its identity. Once Country Two Systems might well have found his foresight admirably appropriate.\n\nI\n\n1\n\nNOTES\n\n· Government Printer, Hong Kong, March 1967\n\n2C/ Local Government Commission Regulations under UK Local Government Act 1958", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 } ]