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Virginia Maher

From the South China Morning Post this week in 1984

'It would not be realistic to think of an agreement that provides for continued British administration in Hong Kong after 1997.'

With those words, the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe,  issued the first public declaration that Britain would relinquish sovereignty over Hong Kong.

They came in a lengthy statement he made on Hong Kong's future at a press conference in the Legislative Council chamber.

The gist of it was: there would be no British administration when the lease expired.

He said Britain was looking for an arrangement, which would secure 'a high degree of autonomy under Chinese sovereignty'.

And he revealed that the negotiating team was seeking an international agreement based on the Chinese 50-year principle.

'The British government's objectives are clear: a framework of arrangements that will provide for the maintenance of Hong Kong as a flourishing and dynamic society; and an agreement in which these arrangements will be formally recorded,' he declared.

Sir Geoffrey offered Hong Kong an encouraging look at life after 1997 as part of China, but he offered no 'safety net' in Britain for disenchanted Hongkongers who decided they could not live under a communist regime.

And he refused to give any direct pledge that Britain would go back to the negotiating table if Hong Kong was unhappy with the final deal.

Hong Kong reacted calmly to the announcement that Britain would relinquish sovereignty to China after 1997. The forecast of 'a high degree of autonomy' for the territory in the post-British era was greeted with cautious optimism.

Many heaved a sigh of relief that the heavy veil of confidentiality had at least been lifted partially, making clearer the direction in which the talks were headed.

A young policewoman was killed when a gunman sprayed bullets from a window of the Libyan embassy in London.

Witnesses said a burst of 10 shots, apparently from a sub-machinegun, was fired from the embassy window at about 70 Libyan exiles.

Constable Yvonne Fletcher,  25, was standing between the embassy and the group opposed to the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

She was shot in the abdomen. Doctors performed emergency surgery but she died four hours after the shooting. Ten demonstrators were wounded.

The embassy - officially called the People's Bureau - was quickly besieged by armed police, who sealed off the area close to Buckingham Palace.

Later in the afternoon, six men were arrested at Heathrow airport and interrogated by Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist squad.

British Caledonian Airways disclosed that a flight  to Tripoli was recalled over the Mediterranean on the advice of the Foreign Office and the suspects were arrested on board after the plane landed.

The following day police kept the embassy under siege after all-night telephone negotiations failed to break a diplomatic stalemate.

And in Tripoli, the British embassy was surrounded by large numbers of revolutionary guards, who refused to let the ambassador and others leave the building.

The Japanese knew before they entered the second world war that Sir Winston Churchill  had confided that Britain could not resist a Japanese attack in the Far East or defend Singapore.

The Sunday Telegraph said Britain's wartime prime minister sent his conclusions to his allies, the prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand, with other secret papers aboard a British cargo ship, the Automedon.

It was captured by the German surface raider Atlantis in the Indian Ocean in November 1940.

The papers were turned over to the Japanese by the German naval attache in Tokyo.The report said the British Foreign Office believed its former official and Soviet spy Donald Maclean  gave the papers to the Soviets, who gave them to the Germans, who then passed them to the Japanese.



Slice of life