‘Move HK folk to N. Ireland’

Suggestion thrown around before UK handed over financial hub to China

LONDON: Weighed down by the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland, British officials jokily discussed the possible benefits of relocating the entire population of Hong Kong to the province, newly released documents showed.

Government archives reveal how a proposal by an English academic to set up a new city state for Hong Kong’s 5.5 million inhabitants prompted some creative correspondence between ministry officials.

In the Belfast News Letter in October 1983, a lecturer at the University of Reading, Christie Davies, warned that when Britain handed over control of Hong Kong back to China in 1997, its residents’ future would be in doubt.

He suggested they should be resettled in a new city state to be established between Coleraine and Londonderry, saying the move could revitalise the economy in the British-controlled province.

After seeing the article, Northern Ireland ministry official George Fergusson wrote a memorandum to a colleague in the Foreign Office, declaring: “At this stage we see real advantages in taking the proposal seriously.”

He said it could help convince the pro-British population in Northern Ireland of London’s commitment to the province, which was locked in a sectarian conflict between Catholic Republicans and pro-UK Protestants.

“If the plantation were undertaken it would have evident advantages in reassuring Unionist opinion of the open-ended nature of the Union,” wrote Fergusson.

“There would be corresponding disadvantages in relation to the minority community (and Dublin),” he said.

He received a response two weeks later from David Snoxell, an official at the Foreign Office, suggesting it might send Northern Ireland residents heading in the opposite direction.

Snoxell, now retired, said he was surprised the exchange had been preserved in the National Archives, saying it was “a spoof between colleagues who had a sense of humour”. — AFP