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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
། ། |
Reference :--
C.O.882/11
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-
COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH—NOT TO
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regards anti-British outrages which may be committed in Kwang-tung, the Consul-General at Canton, in consultation with the Governor of Hong Kong, the General Officer Commanding the Forces at Hong Kong and the Senior Naval Officer at Hong Kong, should have authority to decide upon and enforce such retaliatory measures as may from time to time be necessary.
22. No one is more anxious than I am to see friendly relations restored between Hong Kong and the neighbouring Chinese provinces. I am a man of peace, not of war; and it is only because I am con- vinced that a policy of patient conciliation in China can, under present circumstances, only lead eventually either to warlike action by ourselves in China on a large scale or to our ultimate evacuation of China, which would, of course, mean the ruin of Hong Kong, that I plead for such authority to the men on the spot as would enable them by prompt and firm local action, in defence of British interests, so to maintain British prestige in South China that the painful alternatives of war or ruin may be avoided. So far as Kwang-tung is concerned, ample British naval and military force is now available at Hong Kong. But it is quite useless to hold Hong Kong__and Shanghai with large British forces, if our trade in the West River and Yangtsze valleys is not made safe. No Chinese regional autho- rity will move a finger to help us in this matter so long as we ourselves pursue a completely defeatist policy of evacuation and conciliation. But, if the various Chinese authorities realize that we mean to act forcibly in our own defence promptly and courageously, whenever we are attacked, I am confident that our prestige will soon be restored: and, once that is achieved, it will again be safe for our merchants to trade in the interior of China, even though there may be civil war raging spasmodically up and down the country.
C.30001/27 C. [No. 16.]
No. 15.
I have, etc.,
C. CLEMENTI,
Governor, de.
The Governor of Hong Kong to the Secretary of State for the Colonies.
(Secret.) SIR,
(Received 6th July, 1927.)
Government House, Hong Kong, 1st June, 1927.
I have the honour to inform you that by Order in Council made on the 26th May, under Section 4 of Societies Ordinance No. 8 of 1920, and duly published in the Government Gazette next day, the Chinese Seamen's Union (Chung Wa Hoi Yuen Kung Ip Luen Hop Tsung Wui (Chinese characters) was declared to be an unlawful society, and that it was accordingly closed down by the police on the night of the 27th-28th May.
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2. Constant references in my previous despatches will have made you familiar with the fact that the Chinese Seamen's Union, whose headquarters were at Canton and which had branches at Hong Kong, Swatow, and elsewhere, was one of the most powerful and implacable enemies of British interests in China, and particularly in Hong Kong. This Union, in the shape in which it became notorious, consolidated itself during the Great War by seizing the opportunities for organiza- tion offered by the war traffic. It first became prominent in Hong Kong in connection with the Seamen's Strike of 1922, a movement which it initiated and pursued by the most unscrupulous methods of coercion and intimidation, not shrinking even from murder. It had already assumed something of a political character by virtue of its contribution to the war-cheat of Sun Yat-sen for his Kwang-si cam- paign of 1921; and in 1922 it was strong enough to ignore the possi bility of interference by the Canton Government-if indeed it could not actually dictate to that Government and it organized the Hong Kong strike of 1922 from the security of its base at Canton. The strike of that year, which lasted about two months, and which for a time paralyzed the shipping of this port, extended to many other branches of Labour in addition to the seamen, including for example the house- hold servants of the European population. It was prosecuted to a result which the Seamen's Union proclaimed as great victory," although it is open to doubt whether many seamen other than Union officials have ever realized much advantage from the concessions then made by the employers. The "victory," however, naturally resulted in a great increase in the power of the Union, and its value as a potential weapon was not lost on the Bolshevik conspirators, who about that time began to be busy in Canton.
F
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3. The confidence of the Seamen's Union in its own power was unhappily increased by the action of the Hong Kong Government. On the 1st February, 1922, when the Seamen's Strike had already lasted for six weeks, the Union was proscribed by the Governor-in- Council by notification published in the Government Gazette of 1st February, 1922. But on the 16th February, the delegates of the Union then in the Colony were officially informed that, subject to a settlement being reached on other points, the Hong Kong Government would be prepared to permit the Union to be reinstated. The extreme “demands" of the delegates, which in the later stages of the settle- ment discussions included strike pay, reinstatement of strikers, and approximately five months' post-settlement pay for strikers remaining unemployed, were no doubt prompted by this lenient action. The Hong Kong Chinese became imbued with the idea that the Government was afraid of the Union itself, or of the political consequences of opposing it: and the Government's surrender was unfortunate in providing support for this opinion. Since then this Union has been the champion of organized labour in southern China and has grown steadily more political in character and more extreme in its views, becoming one of the main supports of the labour or mob-platform upon which the Kuomintang has built its "Tower of Babel". It was thus assured of official support, or at least non-intervention, on the part of the Cantonese authorities, in its anti-British activities when the next trial of strength came in 1925.