`HONOURABLE GENTLEMEN' Some British views on the crisis in Hong
Kong and China 'IT IS clear that in the light of recent events, opinion in Hong Kong has been evolving' — [Interruption]' .
Sir Geoffrey Howe, and House of Commons, House of Commons, 6 June.
'THE House will appreciate the reason why we could not easily contemplate a massive new immigration commitment which could — and the possibility can- not be disregarded — more than double the ethnic minority population of the United Kingdom.'
Sir Geoffrey Howe, House of Com- mons, 6 June.
IT'S too soon to say [what a Labour Government would do about the plight of the Hong Kong people]. We won't have an exact policy until 1992, when we are the next government. . . . Sir Geoffrey Howe's remarks are extreme- ly offensive and racist. It's simply a problem of numbers.'
Gerald Kaufman MP, House of Com- mons press conference, 12 June.
TO grass-roots British opinion, the demands are disconcerting: nothing less than the right of abode for 3.2 million people . . . saner politicians argue that if the right of abode or something like it were granted, even in extremis only 100,000 or would would actually want to come to Britain. 'Only a hundred thousand!' Even from here the indig- nant murmur of a great mass of British voters is almost audible. . . A few months ago I myself advocated a policy of selective immigration. But events have moved on from there . . . mass immigration could conceivably help to bring about the calamity it would be designed to insure against.
George Walden, Daily Telegraph, 8 June.
IT WOULD have been better for Chi- na, as well as the students themselves, if they had dispersed voluntarily . . . If China is now in the grip of senilely- demented tyrants, it would be folly to provoke them. . . . Whatever our out- rage it would be foolish to judge the Chinese by Western standards . . . . It may be therefore that we will be able to resume normal relations with Peking quite quickly, as we did after the Cultural Revolution.
Bruce Anderson, Sunday Telegraph, 11 June.
'I THINK it is a little early to come to a final judgment about Deng Xiao-ping and others who have obviously been involved in this behind the scenes. . . . If one looks back over the past three or four weeks, then one can see many errors which were committed. Probably the students ought to have been told to go home before Mr Gorbachev arrived.'
Mr Edward Heath's reaction to the Tiananmen Square massacre, BBC tele- vision, Newsnight, 4 June.
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