ENG-1961 — Page 36

REVIEW

21

the scale remains small. To keep it small, it is necessary first to explain the census to the public so clearly that no sane person will wish to dodge it, and then to spread the net with care so that no person is inadvertently left out.

In a community of three million people there must be some with guilty secrets. How to persuade them that the census officer has no eye for their secrets? How to persuade each of the thirteen thousand census officers themselves that their census duty was to eclipse their ordinary duty as citizens, so that no matter how flagrant the offence accidentally witnessed during their visits, no word of it must be breathed in the ear of authority? This topic was keenly debated at enumerators' training classes and elsewhere. 'What happens' asked one trainee 'if I walk into a house and find the people there are kidnappers, with their captive bound and gagged in the back room?' After discussion it was agreed that the only correct course was to ask the kidnappers politely to un-gag the victim for long enough to enable him to answer the census questions, after which he could be re-gagged! Discussions of this type, no doubt repeated at home and in school, served to spread conviction that the census officers really were to observe without seeing', for while it was unlikely that an enumerator would come face to face with a kidnapped person it was highly probable that enumerators would stumble across evidence of smuggled goods, uncustomed liquor, gambling or dope. It was necessary to ensure that they neither would nor could 'peach'.

An essential part of a census is that it is carried out by a sovereign authority under legislative sanction. The statute govern- ing the census of Hong Kong was brought up to date and re- enacted by Ordinance No 2 of 1960 which received the Governor's assent on 21st January 1960. Together with the usual obligations and penalties were included important safeguards for the public. Every census officer was to be sworn to secrecy and forbidden, under heavy pains, to use information obtained in the census for any extraneous purpose; every census officer was to carry proper identification as a guard against imposture; and as a final safeguard against even inadvertent disclosure of personal details every census form had to be destroyed by fire within nine months of census day. The final sequence in the film about the census showed the bundles of forms going into the incinerator, the smoke emerging