May 4, 1961
a mere formality). This affair made many people think: the degree of unanimity in opposing the pools plan from almost every organ of opinion was startling.
The two organisations that have made the running in the constitutional reform stakes are the Reform Club and the Civic Association, both multi-racial groups with similar ob- jectives. Neither publishes its membership figure, but each is usually claimed to be "several thousands" (the Club is probably slightly bigger than the Association). Their officers are not heavyweight leaders in the community but most of them are respected. In 1953 Mr. Bernacchi had organised for the Reform Club a petition bearing 20.000 signatures for re- form (without result). The Civic Association had originally been more moderate on this issue, but in November of 1959 three of its moderate leaders (Messrs. K. B. Allport, V. Mamak and P.A.L. Vine) resigned and it moved closer to the Reform Club position.
In January of 1960 the two groups agreed in principle to send a joint delegation to Britain for talks with the Colonial Office. On March 18 they made an official request through the Hongkong Government and at the end of June there was a reply "sufficiently favourable to justify the joint delegation to proceed to London". The two bodies were at this time claiming that through their own separate memberships and their clected seats on the Urban Council they reflected the views "of a large section of the Hongkong public". The Government published the text of its letter to the two groups indicating that the Secretary of State for the Colonies could not offer formal discussions on constitutional reform but that the delegation would be "welcome to visit the Colonial Office informally" to
•
express its views.
Isolation of Government
The joint memor indum to be carried to London by the CA-RC team was never fully published but its contents were summarised in the Ilongkong press on July 20, 1960 and March 3, 1961. It referred to the June, 1949, debates of the Legislative Council in which Sir Man-kam Lo, a respected local leader, had urged elected members for that Council. It stressed the isolation of Government from public opinion (particularly in such fields as police, public works, corruption and narcotics) and demanded a "genuine two-way traffic in its communication with its people".
Specifically it recommended another eight elected members on the Urban Council and wider functions for that body, eight elected members of the Legislative Council to match the eight appointed (in stages, first four and then another four later), and a 'convention' by which the Governor invite some elected members to sit on the Executive Council. Finally the franchise should be extended to include new categories of voter-nurses, property tax payers and business profits tax payers, for instance.
The gaps were filled in by a number of public speeches and letters in the public debate that developed. "In aspiring to its rightful place in the Commonwealth sun," Mr. Cheong- leen told a Y's Men's Club meeting on July 14, "Hongkong seeks not to be known as a Colonial museum piece' (perhaps a reference to a caustic comment from Malcolm Muggeridge after a recent visit) "in the political sense, but as a living society. He dissociated himself from the idea of a timetable and he unconsciously exposed the extent of the humiliation that is caused by the terminological traditions when he advocated that Hongkong become known not as a colony but as a non-self-governing territory' instead.
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A few days later (July 20) Mr. Bernacchi accused the Government of contravening the UN Charter in not offering any local participation in the administration. On August 23 last there was the famous joint CA-RC public meeting at the Miramar Hotel attended by 300 persons and at which 16 of 17 speakers supported reform. The Standard, moved, commented: "Hongkong cannot expect to remain untouched by the wave of revolutionary change that is sweeping over
HK$ MILLION
300
200
-100
CHINA'S
1954
₤ MILLION
·201
whi
VISIBLE TRADE SURPLUS WITH
HONGKONG QUARTERLY 1952-60
1955 1956 1957 1958 1959
15-
10.
1960
1952 1953 LLIL I IIN IIIKITIX WII WII IV I IIYN III N TINW
all the non-self-government territories of the world."
Finally on September 8, Mr. Bernacchi (Chairman, Reform Club), Mr. Cheong-leen (Vice-chairman, Civic Association) and Dr. Peter Lee (Secretary, Civic Association) saw Mr. W. I. J. Wallace (Chief of the Far Eastern Division of the Colonial Office) informally in London. "We were extremely well received, and I am very hopeful", Bernacchi said two days later. At the end of October Mr MacLeod's reply came in the shape of a visit to Hongkong by Lord Perth, the Minister of State at the Colonial Office. It was not desirable, Lord Perth declared at the end of his stay, to have any radical or major constitutional changes but this did not preclude the "possibility of minor modifications, within the framework of existing principles, in the composition of the Legislative Council or the Urban Council" (October 29).
He hinted that Sir Robert could enlarge these bodies more or less on his own initiative (the same idea had been expressed by a correspondent in a letter to the China Mail on July 15, invoking the precedent of Clementi). The Morning Post approved this compromise decision, the Standard denounced it as a "sop". On November 9, Mr. Ngan Shing-kwan, an unofficial member, asked the Government in the Legislative Council if the inclusion of elected members in that body would constitute a "radical or major" change in the sense of Lord Perth's statement. Mr. Claude Burgess, the Colonial Secretary, removed any remaining misunderstandings with a firm 'yes': such a move was "not contemplated".
In the New Year the CA-RC coalition consolidated its alliance by agreeing on a four-year coalition to contest the Urban Council elections, its four sitting members (Messrs. Bernacchi, Cheong-leen, Li Yiu-bor and P. F. Woo) offering themselves for re-election. The Morning Post said that this made the elected seats in the Council a "closed shop" for the CA-RC group, who did not really need such protection since Independents had been conspicuously unsuccessful in their candidacy in recent years. The Standard agreed, noting that electoral apathy would be enhanced. In the end no other candidates came forward and the four coalitionists were