The stabilising influence of Murray's long tenure could not have been better timed. The '50s were the truly formative years for Hong Kong, when external factors produced internal pressures that altered the whole course and direction of this former entrepot on the China coast.

On May 18, 1951 Hong Kong's reason for existence vanished at the stroke of a pen, virtually overnight. To comply with a United Nations resolution of that date, arising from China's entry into the Korean War, the Hong Kong government was required to impose a complete embargo on the export of strategic materials to its key trading partner.

The previous year had produced the best trade performance on record - an all-time high of $1,314 million. In the aftermath of the embargo, figures plummeted, and it looked as if Hong Kong was finished as a world trading port. Even the government's official report for the year, not normally given to hyperbole, conceded: "It is no exaggeration to say that the Korean War and the world events following it have put Hong Kong in an economically impossible position."

The tremendous political upheaval on the Mainland towards the close of the '40s had accelerated the flow of refugees into a colony still struggling to fully regain its footing and composure in the aftermath of World War II. Rudimentary social services were also placed under an impossible burden.

Lacking adequate accommodation, even in the ugly, though commercially profitable 'fast buck' residential blocks that escalated around the harbour, the bulk of the population contrived to seek their own housing in makeshift squatter huts scattered wherever the terrain allowed, sometimes up precipitous hillsides.

A series of disastrous fires, culminating in an inferno which swept unchecked through the congested squatter shacks of Shek Kip Mei on Christmas Day 1953, forced the government's hand, and precipitated a major review of its woefully inadequate concessions in the form of temporary 'cottage areas'.

'Resettlement' became the catchword for the new government initiative, and focusing on administrative progress in this field became a preoccupation of PRO Murray, whose still meagre 'one man and a dog' outfit arranged press facilities and conducted tours of the so-called seven-storey 'H-blocks'.

The first of these, completed on a fire site at Tai Hang Tung, north of Boundary Street, became something of a showcase, and an object of almost morbid curiosity to overseas visitors unused to the kind of basic standards Hong Kong was compelled to provide in order to deal with the enormity of the problem.

Compliant families, shoehorned into a single room measuring 12 feet six inches by nine feet six inches, were encouraged to smile bravely for probing cameramen and film makers and to say how much better off they were now they were no longer living under the threat of being swept from soggy hillsides by the next rainstorm. Delegated by Murray to accompany these media teams, escorting officers smiled bravely too.

The more perceptive observer might discern that, viewed from Victoria Peak, the Kowloon promontory is a pestle descending into the concave mortar of the Hong Kong island coastline. The alchemy this crucible produced in the '50s was to mould the shape of Hong Kong's future destiny.

Its chief ingredients were the very factors that imposed its greatest burden - the trade embargo that forced Hong Kong to industrialise and manufacture its own goods, and the huge boost of population that produced the labour, the skills and, paramount of all, the determination to bring about that transition.

Hong Kong had always been a base for light industry. The Chinese Manufacturers Association was founded in 1934 to promote its exports to other colonial territories. But never before had it been forced to rely almost exclusively on its manufacturing base for its sheer survival, or to aggressively seek out overseas markets for its vastly expanded range of products.

These were the years of 'flatted factories', rapidly erected by government contractors to stack one above the other and to house, in conditions of controlled chaos, such disparate enterprises as artificial flowers, hand-painted porcelains, plastic toys and clock radios. They were also years that produced a new perception of Hong Kong in the world at large, as some kind of vast transit centre whose occupants were desperately knitting, hammering and soldering their way towards sufficient savings for a better life somewhere overseas.

It was a perception bolstered by such hugely successful novels - translated into films which, curiously, both starred William Holden - as Han Suyin's A Many-Splendoured Thing and Richard Mason's The World of Suzie Wong. And while it was a view on the whole sympathetic to Hong Kong's plight in the face of adversity, it was also to label and dog Hong Kong for many years to come until - like a successful businessman haunted by his past as an orphan child - Hong Kong would fight to reshape its own outmoded image.

The fight to put it all in perspective, and achieve a more balanced view of Hong Kong, was embarked on early within the scope of Murray's still limited domain, and little by little the additional posts, the talents and the technical resources were acquired to achieve that objective.

When the Public Relations Office became the Information Services Department in April 1959, staff numbers were increased from 53 to 95, with proportionately increased funding. By now the organisation had moved into the West Wing of the Central Government Offices, just across the courtyard from the seat of power and fount of all information it would ever be permitted to release.

Despite this closer proximity, it was still viewed with detachment and cynicism by many civil servants who, as in imperial China of old, had acquired rank and status through the process of civil service examinations. As such, they distrusted those that, in the days when GIS placed emphasis on journalistic experience rather than academic qualifications, might have gained access through what the mandarins regarded as the 'tradesman's entrance'.

Successive Directors of Information, from Murray onwards, have fought to achieve professional status for the information grade, balancing the government's insistence upon academic qualifications and university degrees against the invaluable asset of sound journalistic experience. Although not incompatible, the two - at least in the early years - seldom went hand in hand.