0003160 G.F. 316
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3.
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May 1st was maled by mammoth Labour Day processions
Ard mass meetings which were joined by delegations from other
areas and in which PLA units took part. On the eve of the
official termination of the Fair, when most visitors had left,
violence erupted on a large scale and continued for two days.
Many travellers from Canton gave eye-witness accounts of fistfights
which broke out all over the city and which the PLA were powerless
to stop. In some of these skirmishes the military were themselves
said to have been assaulted. A letter from one of the students
involved to an addressee in Hong Kong confirmed that fighting had
taken place and that revolutionary groups had been attacked; it
described the situation as having deteriorated.
4.
The main development of the month, so far as Hong Kong is
concerned, was the official support given by the Chinese to left-
wing demonstrators in the Colony in their confrontation with
Government.
On 15th May the CPG delivered the sharpest attack
which the Chinese have made on the British Government for many
years. In an oral state ent to the British Charge d'Affaires,
Vice-Minister LO Kuei Po conveyed "the most urgent and strongest
protest against brutal persecution of Chinese nationals in Hong
Kong which the "British authorities in Hong Kong" were alleged to
have instituted.
5.
Demonstrations were already being staged in various parts
of Kwangtung even before the chinese government support for the
Hong Kong agitators was declared. Travellers arriving by train
from Canton on 12th May saw posters displayed in the city
protesting against the persecution of compatriots in Hong Kong
and pledging the support of their 700 million mainland brothers.
The poster campaign built up over the following two days and was
supplemented by slogans painted on road surfaces in some parts
of Canton and Shum Chun. Daily meetings of Red Guards, workers
and government functionaries in both towns soon developed into
street demonstrations.
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