Hong Kong's Watershed: The 1967 Riots

10: Impact of the 1967 riots

10 Impact of the 1967 riots The left wing paid a heavy price for instigating the riots which briefly brought the Hong Kong society to a standstill. In the beginning of the labour dispute at the Hong Kong Artificial Flower Works, some members of the public were sympathetic with the workers who joined the strike. The left wing, however, quickly dropped the labour issues and the call for improving labour rights. Instead, they positioned the incident as a “national oppression” by the colonial government. In an article published in the Far Eastern Economic Review, Derek Davies, chief editor of the regional magazine, wrote that “the local communists very soon dropped the industrial and labour issues (in which they had such a very strong case and which should have formed the basis of any proper, representative left-wing union movement in an industrial society) because in terms of the Cultural Revolution they would have been guilty of economism . . . So the campaign shifted onto the purely political level. Once the meaningful bases for a left-wing movement had been jettisoned, the campaign became rootless and purposeless, inspired by hate and a desire to destroy,” he wrote.1 The general strike and food strike caused huge inconvenience to the public and the image of the left wing was particularly undermined by the bomb attacks. It largely offset the progress that Beijing made in winning over the hearts and minds of Hong Kong in the 1950s and early 1960s. Wu Tai-chow, president of Hong Kong Evening News who was jailed for publishing “inflammatory articles” during the riots, said: “The leftist camp quickly lost the public support in the wake of bomb attacks. The members of public thought the leftists politicize the incident and were not sincerely concerned about workers’ rights.”2 Even some prominent leftist sympathizers distanced themselves from the left wing during the disturbances. Henry Fok Ying-tung, who made his first “bucket of gold” by shipping machinery, medicines and other vital supplies to the mainland while an international trade embargo was imposed on China during the Korean War in the early 1950s, did not join the Struggle Committee. He went to England and left his business in Hong Kong to his staff. Cheung_10_ch10.indd 131 19/04/2011 4:13 PM 132 Hong Kong’s Watershed The leftist newspapers were hit hard because of its support for the disturbances and they lost appeal among the general public after the riots. Their total daily circulation plunged from 454,900 in May 1967, when the disturbances broke out, to 240,500 in November.3 The left wing went into a self-imposed isolation after the disturbances. The Federation of Trade Unions (FTU) concentrated on its internal affairs and stopped participating in social affairs. The FTU boycotted advisory bodies on labour affairs such as the Labour Advisory Board and did not take part in the 1982 district board election. The left wing’s isolation from mainstream society lasted until the mid1980s . Wong Kwok-kin, former chairman of the Federation of Trade Unions, said that after the riots, the traditional leftist camp had developed a “siege mentality” as they felt they were marginalized by mainstream society. “Such a mentality has been receding gradually since the 1990s but it still exists among some leaders of the leftist organizations,” he said. The leftists’ self-imposed isolation after the riots allowed room for independent unions to develop in the 1970s. Lau Chin-shek, who became director of the Christian Industrial Committee in 1979, said that the FTU did not attempt to reassert their influence on labour legislation again until the early 1990s. “Otherwise, we would not have room for development in the 1970s,” he said. Forcing the colonial government to introduce social reforms The colonial administration’s success in quelling the leftist-inspired disturbances did not mean that it enjoyed wholehearted support from the Hong Kong people. Until extremists launched bomb attacks in July, most people did not actively support the Hong Kong government although they disagreed with the actions taken by the left wing. Elizabeth Sinn, a Hong Kong academic who specializes in Hong Kong history, said: “Members of the public were ambivalent towards the labour dispute [in San Po Kong] in the early stage; some even thought that it was good to teach the colonial administration a lesson for its authoritarian style of government.”4 Lau Siu-kai, currently head of the Central Policy Unit, said that he was sympathetic with the left-wing demonstrators when...