Colonial Hong Kong in the Eyes of Elsie Tu

9. Colonial Ignorance

_ 1 9 _ Colonial Ignorance Isuppose I belong to that generation of British people who were known to speak up for the underdog. I believe there are people of all nations who do so, but I also suspect that when social conditions improve and th e middle class becomes larger, fewer care enough to do so and more become self-seeking. To me, the underdog is not necessarily a poor person in need of financial assistance. Th e underdo g coul d b e a n individual , a group o f persons , o r even a whole community. I f they suffer injustice , the y are underdogs an d need support . Presen t da y politics hav e produce d a new bree d o f peopl e who stand up for the underdog for the sake of publicity for a political party, or for a candidate in an election seeking votes. In short, not everyone who stands up for the underdog is doing so for altruistic reasons. My reason for saying tha t i s th e fac t tha t s o man y politician s nowaday s organiz e demonstrations and marches, with the banner of their party in the forefront . After being involved in politics for about forty years, I still cannot see any good result or, at any rate, not much good resulting from taking to the streets on every issue under the sun, with party colours flying, and the party leaders talkin g int o a microphone , wit h fist s raise d an d lou d repetitiv e chanting of slogans. Most people ignore these marches and demonstrations anyhow, but they provide good fodder for the news-hungry media to fill up their columns and get a few good sound-bites, after which the issues disappear from sight most of the time. I am more inclined to support world issues, in which the demonstrators gain no kudos and seek no votes. 158 Colonial Hong Kong in the Eyes of Elsie Tu I may be wrong, but I do believe that on local issues more can be done by negotiation, or by trying to educate the powers-that-be o n the reason s for public discontent. I think that method succeeded in the days of rampant corruption in Hong Kong, in the 1960s and early 1970s, when I was able to prove my case by real examples of an injustice, or by taking photographs to show the actual injustice taking place, rather than by mustering a crowd to disturb the peace of a neighbourhood or disrupt traffic . Right or wrong, let others judge, but in any case my method was to go right to the source of the problem and try to reason. That was my purpose in going to London in 1966 to lobby Members of Parliament, which venture is described elsewher e i n thi s book. At th e tim e i t seeme d t o be a futil e effort, yet eventually it paid off, and Hong Kong was given a democratically minded diplomat, Sir Murray MacLehose, as Governor. He tackled all the problems that were causing the groundswell of discontent. What i s more, he understood Chinese people and could speak their language. When, in 1992, the British prime minister, John Major, decided to cut out diplomac y an d tr y pugnacit y i n negotiation s wit h Chin a ove r th e handover of sovereignty, he sent the boorish Chris Patten here to snub and deride the Chinese leaders in Beijing, who were obviously sincere in their promise o f 'on e country , tw o systems ' an d a gradua l progressio n toward s democracy. Gradual progress towards democracy was in fact al l I had eve r lobbied for. The replacement of the diplomat Sir David Wilson in 1992 by an ignoramus Governor Chris Patten, put Hong Kong back into the colonial system, minus the gunboats, though with the arrogance of the gunboat times. Writing to the press in January 1995 , a correspondent who signed himself as K.S. Chow, said: John Major saddled us with a political brawler unrestrained by any sensitivity or knowledgeof the conventions and rationale that have to be followed when discussing business in this part of the world. True to nature, he started behaving like a bull in a china shop... He is abrasive, cantankerous, and undiplomatic. Hong Kong people are fed up with him...