The Maclennan Affair
30 was the end of a decade, but for me it was the year of MacLennan.
It Began in mid-Jamiary with the gory death by five gun-shot wounds
of Police Inspector John Mackennan, and ended with me in hospital with a vicious. attack of shingles. The two were not unconnected. Shingles is a nervous complaint often brought on by tension, and there was plenty of that in 1980.
I had met John MacLennan only once, at the end of November 1978. Hy meeting with him was arranged by a mutual friend, a magistrate, who thought could help
hir, and was not foreplanned by either John or myself.
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John had just been dismissed from the Police Force before his second three-year contract had expired. The dismissal was based on an antiquated Colonial regulation no doubt intended to be used on civil servants who proved a disgrace to the Crown, and no reason was required for the dismissal. John was given no reason. His case reached the Secretary for the Civil Service before he was eventually informed that a friend of the father of someone with police connections had made charges of homosexual assault by John on a young man. John not only denied the charges but demanded names so that he could take libel action against his accusers, who, I believe, remained anonymous. The young man apparently refused to press a case against Johm, so no charges were made, but the Inspector was dismissed from the Police regardless.
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At this point our mutual friend phoned me and said I should help this shocking case, and he arranged for us to meet at the Magistracy where both John and our friend worked.
The Inspector had been well questioned by our legal friend, who was convinced that the evidence, if given in court, would have been dismissed. He was also disgusted that no chance had been given for the Inspector to defend himself in court.
I talked to John for some time, and took him to be a typical dour Scot, simple, down-to-earth, the kind of person we need in the police in Hong Kong. The only possible reason one could evince from the circumstances of the case was given to me, not by John, but by our legal friend. The Inspector had in the course of his duties seen files on the homosexuality of senior police, and that could have posed a threat to them. Homosexual practices are illegal under all circumstances in Hong Kong, even when practised by consenting adults in their own homes.
I had thought little about homosexuality before this event.
Apart from" one distant relative who lived a harmless life with another man, I had always imagined that homosexuals were warped people who went about catching little boys to assault. That impression was not without Foundation, as my own brother had just managed at the age of about seven to escape a homosexual pervert, and my nerhey had fared worse when at the age of eleven he had to be sent to hospital after a shocking sexual assault. I had no reason to feel sympathetic towards homosexuals. In fact I had fought tooth and mail for the dismissal of a homo- sexual headmaster in a Hong Kong school when parents complained of his relationship with their underage sons.
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