In 1986, when David Ford became chief secretary of Hong Kong — head of the civil service and de facto deputy governor — the handover from Britain to China was a dark cloud on the horizon, and for the next few years he played a crucial role in the increasingly problematic task of keeping the Beijing government at arm’s length.
When Ford had first arrived in Hong Kong, in 1967, on secondment from the army to the Hong Kong government, the place was racked by anti-British riots and bombings, aided by members of the People’s Militia sent by mainland China. More than 8,000 bombs were defused and more than 50 people died.
“People were leaving in very large numbers, confidence was at an all-time low and people said Hong Kong could not survive,” Ford recalled. He helped to restore normality and stem the exodus.
He spent five years there in his first spell, and was Hong Kong commissioner in London before returning in the mid-1980s. One of the first issues that he had to deal with on his return was the Vietnamese boat people, who had been fleeing the country since the end of the Vietnam War. By 1988 there were more than 50,000 in Hong Kong, with little chance of reaching the West.http://www.nytimes.com/1988/05/01/world/new-refugees-crowd-camps-in-hong-kong.html?mcubz=0
The Hong Kong government began to classify most arrivals as illegal immigrants, but the problem lay elsewhere, Ford insisted. “A humanitarian way must be found of stopping these men, women and children from putting to sea in small boats,” he said. He improved detention conditions; some critics said he was going soft. He retorted: “The only policy which is tougher is to refuse to allow these people to land, in fact to push them out to sea.”
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In 1989 Hong Kong began repatriating the refugees. “This is not a role or a responsibility we have sought,” Ford insisted. “It is one which geography and circumstance have thrust upon us. We have responded with humanity and decency. We are entitled, I feel, to ask for the world’s understanding.”
There were more problems that year after the Tiananmen Square massacre. Amid fears that Beijing would forget its commitment to “one country, two systems”, Ford and his new boss, the governor Chris Patten, set about beefing up the legislature. The council became a fully elected body in 1995.
“He took part in early talks with republicans in Northern Ireland
Another response to Tiananmen Square was to step up the construction of a new airport on the island of Chek Lap Kok in the teeth of opposition from Beijing. The Chinese took umbrage over the Tsing Ma bridge that would serve the airport when Ford said it would be built with government rather than private finance — eating into the Hong Kong reserve fund Beijing had its eyes on. Ford stood his ground: “We’ve made very good progress — Hong Kong-type progress, if I might say so — but in areas where we’ve had to have discussions with China, those discussions have been very protracted.”
Ford was a ferocious defender of the Hong Kong government. In 1987 members of the legislature feared the administration was in the pockets of the mainland, and that Ford — rumoured by pro-Beijing newspapers to be in the pay of MI6 — was a mere shill. “The ink has hardly dried on the Sino-British joint declaration and the words ‘one country two systems’ ring in our ears,” one legislator said. “Yet the Hong Kong British government is submitting to China, virtually willing to be a lame duck.”
Ford hit back: “Those who continue to make [allegations] in the misguided belief that they are dealing with a lame duck will discover they have a tiger by the tail — and not a paper tiger, either.”
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David Robert Ford was born in Devizes, Wiltshire. His father, William, was in insurance; his mother, Edna, brought up the family. He attended Taunton’s School in Southampton — he was a junior county tennis champion — then National Service gave him a taste for army life. He was commissioned into the Royal Artillery at 20 and sent to Malta.
There he met Elspeth Muckart, a naval officer’s daughter, and they married in 1958. They moved around the world with his postings. Elspeth once calculated that she had lived in 28 homes in 25 years. They had four children: Mandy is canon chancellor at Southwark Cathedral; Dominic runs a food consultancy business; Camilla is a full-time mother; and Marcus has a wine and restaurant business in Shanghai.
After Malta, Ford served in more than 15 countries, including Aden and Borneo with the commandos. He retired from the army as a major in 1972.
As head of the Hong Kong government’s information department in the early 1970s, part of his brief was to counter Beijing propaganda, but he was also occupied by more day-to-day matters. To combat the colony’s massive litter problem he launched a campaign starring Lap Sap Chung, the “rubbish worm”. A red-spotted green dragon, it was launched as a huge balloon that exploded in Statue Square, where 100 mini-skirted “Miss Super Cleans” appeared to sweep up the debris. The campaign was a great success.
Ford was under-secretary at the Northern Ireland Office (1977-79), becoming involved in early talks between the government and republicans. The family lived on the shores of Belfast Lough, where, according to Mandy, “various significant faces gathered round our dining room table, from both sides — I guess it was a discreet place to meet”.
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He returned to Hong Kong in 1979 as secretary for information, and remained there, apart from a short spell back in London as Hong Kong commissioner, until 1994, when he served as commissioner in London again until the handover. He was appointed KBE in 1988.
He and Elspeth divorced in 1987, and Ford married Gillian Petersen, who lived in Hong Kong. She had three children. Mark works in PR and advertising; Anne-Marie is a nurse in Australia; and Krissie is a clinical psychologist.
Ford retired to Devon after the handover to raise White Park cattle and rare sheep, then in 2003 he became a non-executive director for PCCW, a Hong Kong-based information technology company, and the next year he became chairman of UK Broadband. These jobs tied in with his love of gadgets. He was an expert photographer who collected antique cameras and was a tirelessly early adopter of new technology — “I even remember the first quadraphonic speakers,” Mandy said.
Although he could appear reserved and aloof professionally, with his family he was the opposite. “He was curious about everything,” Mandy said. “Conversation round the breakfast table would be about politics and the events of the day, and he expected us all to have an opinion about everything.”
Ford’s love of tennis endured, and he later discovered real tennis, playing at Hampton Court. He spoke of the art of doubles tennis in words that might have applied to his whole life: “You’ve got to work together on your strategy and tactics. You want to provide a good, solid front. You need lots of energy — and you need to be resilient when you’re winning, and when you’re losing.”
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Sir David Ford, soldier and civil servant, was born on February 22, 1935. He died of a heart attack on September 10, 2017, aged 82