240
MAURICE FREEDMAN
prospect of starting up in business. The hundreds of Chinese restaurants now in Britain (there are well over a thousand) began from a very small nucleus. Men started as workers, saved a little capital, joined with a few friends or relatives, and opened their own establishments, town after town being drawn into the network (so that, as one of my undergraduates in London put it to me last year, there has been created a provincial tradition for chop suey and chips.) In its expanding phase the business could justify a claim to offer opportunities to all; now that its peak has passed it can no longer exert the same attraction.
77. Statements have appeared that the new law in Britain to restrict the entry of people from the Commonwealth has had a decisive effect in restraining migration from Hong Kong. I am under the impression, however, that the causes of the recent sharp decline in the movement to the United Kingdom have been more complicated. If the new law has in fact cut down entry from Hong Kong it is partly, it would seem, because misconceptions have arisen in the minds of restaurant owners about their responsibilities towards the men to whom they have offered jobs; I have been told that they wrongly suppose themselves to be the legal sponsors of the immigrants and have accordingly become reluctant to allow their names to appear on newcomers' documents. (When I began my enquiries in February this year the new legislation did not appear to be having much effect; entry could be obtained for men who wanted to go,) but I am inclined to think that the basic reason for the closing of this chapter in New Territories emigration lies in Britain. The demand for Chinese restaurant food has probably been overmet; there has been unemployment and underemployment in the business. Some of the New Territories emigrants have only part-time jobs; others have been reported to be working only for their keep. Moreover, there is evidence that many have taken up work in different fields: as waiters in ordinary restaurants, as servers in fish-and-chip bars, and as barbers, some of them in these lines working in new ventures financed by New Territories capital and enterprise.
78. The New Territories restaurant business has not been confined to Britain. From there men have branched out into Europe, setting up shop in Holland, Belgium, France and West Germany. But these outliers can never, presumably, compensate for a decline in the United Kingdom demand, for at the very least immigration restric-
Page 255
Page 256