Slightly more than sixty years ago while living as a teenager in the South of England, we had seen in the woods, the forests that lie thick in the countryside of Sussex, the great lumbering military wartime tanks hiding among the trees waiting for the call to start their engines later we watched, astonished as wave after wave of war planes, and planes towing gliders flew over as part of the invasion of Europe and signalled the beginning of the end of World War Two.

A few months later I left school and journeyed on a cold winter’s night to join a merchant ship, ten thousand tons, painted in the grey camouflage of war and only a couple of days later, was standing in the black night, cold and wet in the forward gun turret of the ship as it dipped and rolled down the cold waters of the North Sea on its way to London. Suddenly the night was filled with explosions. Our convoy of grey ships moving slowly through the dark night was under attack by German motor torpedo boats.

That is a long time ago but it was a noisy and dramatic introduction to a change of my life which has led me to spend fifty years now in Hong Kong. When I left England our destination was Bombay, or Mumbai as it is now called. Here was a new life for an impressionable young man of 17. I changed to another ship and then another and another as the need of the British India Steam Navigation Company required, traveling around the coast of India, Burma, Malaysia, Thailand and Africa. No holidays, until 4 years later, I returned England, older by four years of rich experience. Older and perhaps wiser? Certainly more knowledgeable! But also with a determination to return if I possible could.

I returned to the Far East serving three years in Malaysia before coming to Hong Kong.

I have been in Hong Kong for fifty years. It is sometimes difficult to remember how Hong Kong has changed. Can it really be true that I was looking for 10,000 tons of mangrove firewood imported from Borneo and stacked in long black lines at Lai Chi Kok Firewood for cooking in 1957 in case the shooting between the Mainland and Taiwan erupted into all out war. Hong Kong was ready for a siege and ready with emergency rations of rice, soya beans and canned beef.

As you know, I worked as one of your “humble and obedient servants” for thirty years; twenty of those years were spent in the New Territories. I became a sort of expert on what goes on out there in the New Territories. It is surprising that even to this day the New Territories are something of a mystery. I wonder looking around you all tonight when were you last in Tuen Mun or Yuen Long?

For me, the most exciting and rewarding of those years, were the “Maclehose years” while the new towns were being built. At that time, few people knew what the team of people building the new towns were doing. Huge tracts of land were bought by the Government in Shatin, Taipo and Tuen Mun, the sea was filled in, villages, factories, temples and ten of thousands of people were moved and compensated. There were no disturbances, no protest marches. We were left alone to get with the job. I think visiting members of parliament from the United Kingdom had a better idea of what happening in New Territories than did the people of Hong Kong!

As Secretary for the New Territories I was appointed to Legislative and Executive Council. Finally, in 1985, I left the New Territories and became Chief Secretary and Deputy to the Governor. Why did I get the job? Principally, I think because I had worked so long closely among, with, and for, Hong Kong people, and secondly I was almost the only civil servant who had had direct knowledge and contact with Chinese Officials and had even traveled to Mainland China.

I retired twenty years ago. After a lengthy period of quarantine I was permitted to become a non-executive Director of a few companies. My wife and I bought a semi-ruined house, which has since been demolished, along the Castle Peak Road, and lived there for 13 happy years.

While in the Government I was already Member, and Chairman and President in some cases, of many voluntary organizations. Among them the World Wide Fund for Nature, Outward Bound, Girl Guides, Scouts and so forth and since then I have become Chairman of some new ones – Operation Smile and I have been Chairman and am now President of the Business & Professionals Federation. As President I am currently responsible for drafting our responses to the Green Paper on Constitutional Development.

First of all the Green Paper is not an easy, or entertaining document to read, it gives you a lot of information but no clear idea of what is in the Government mind. You have to work that out for yourself. My approach to the questions it poses is to ask what are the things we cannot do, what are the double white lines, not to be crossed.

First of all very few democracies, when they have started on the democratic course, have been told you are capitalist and you are to remain so. Everywhere else such questions are left to the voters. For example, India on becoming independent voted to become socialist and is only now moving strongly in the other direction after sixty years of independence.

Secondly, we are unlike the other places and nations which are independent and from which our politicians tend to draw their examples. We are not a nation state, we are a small, albeit important part, of a Nation.

Thirdly, in devising our constitutional form we have been instructed by the Central Government to ensure that all sectors and groups are represented.

Fourthly, any changes require 40 out of sixty votes in the Legislature to succeed. This is a very tall order. We have to devise a system that will attract forty votes and it is no use playing around with all kinds of fancy ideas if they will not attract forty votes.

In this situation, it is fairly obvious that one element, the Functional Constituencies, of our present system is here to stay. Therefore at this stage we should stop arguing about them. Functional Constituencies are with us for the long haul! What we have to do is to make each of their constituent parts and groups more representative.

And to add some groups not yet represented, housewives for example who could be encouraged to join Women’s Groups and be given the vote.

If we went about this process systematically and enthusiastically, we could very nearly achieve in which every citizen had two votes; one in direct elections and one in functional constituencies. That should be the objective. Then we would have universal suffrage.

As for the election of the Chief Executive I would propose that to stand for election each potential candidate should secure 100 votes of the 800 strong election committee and that he or she should have a measure of support from each of the four sectors so that beside being say a former civil servant, businessman or banker, he should also have the votes of some professionals, some from labour and social workers and so forth. This will ensure that we don’t get people, who are just supported by one group, to be elected.

All this grand Green Paper effort has been rather side tracked by the forthcoming contest between the two ladies Regina and Anson. All I can say here is that it is no use either of the two ladies seeking to abolish, water down or otherwise damage the Functional Constituencies because it will not secure forty votes. Secondly, unless we can devise changes in 2012 which conform to the principal of gradual and orderly then we will have to think again. It is no use saying we have been debating these questions for twenty years. So what? It has got us nowhere. The question is that the next step has to be a gradual improvement on 2008; not back dated to some notional point in the past. Is it gradual? Is it orderly? Is it going to produce a sudden shock, is it a big change, or an orderly and gradual change? There are the questions to ask.

I leave the answers to you, and thank you for your patience and hospitality this evening.