On the Scene: Placing the Blame

THE growth of empires, Winston Churchill once said, is often accompanied by much suffering: their dissolution, always. The chief sufferers from Britain’s loss of its last major imperial possession, Hong Kong, are the Hong Kong Chinese; how bitter their suffering will be is anybody’s guess. Meanwhile, a most entertaining fight (if entertainment is permissible in a tragic affair) has broken out between the last governor of Hong Kong, Christopher Patten, and those representatives of the British Foreign Office, notably Sir Percy Cradock and the then foreign secretary, Geoffrey Howe, who fixed the deal with Peking.

Cradock, now retired, was a professional diplomat of excellent reputation. Patten was, and probably is, an ambitious career politician on the left wing of the Conservative Party; he was one of those who, when the chips were down, failed to support Margaret Thatcher.

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Anthony Lejeune

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THE growth of empires, Winston Churchill once said, is often accompanied by much suffering: their dissolution, always. The chief sufferers from Britain’s loss of its last major imperial possession, Hong Kong, are the Hong Kong Chinese; how bitter their suffering will be is anybody’s guess. Meanwhile, a most entertaining fight (if entertainment is permissible in a tragic affair) has broken out between the last governor of Hong Kong, Christopher Patten, and those representatives of the British Foreign Office, notably Sir Percy Cradock and the then foreign secretary, Geoffrey Howe, who fixed the deal with Peking.

Cradock, now retired, was a professional diplomat of excellent reputation. Patten was, and probably is, an ambitious career politician on the left wing of the Conservative Party; he was one of those who, when the chips were down, failed to support Margaret Thatcher.