CO129-572-6 Hong Kong Seamen's Union- proposed proscription 22-1-1938 - 30-8-1938 — Page 15

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themselves, freed the Colony for some time not only of political agitators but of a number of criminals. the early months of 1927, however, the events in Shanghai and Hankow seem to have stimulated the seamen's union in particular to endeavour to get back some of its lost ground. Meetings, prohibited on land, were held in defiance of the authorities on board ships lying at the

wharves. Permission was sought to hold a memorial

service for Sun Yat Sen on March 12th in the Lee Gardens

and this was granted on certain stringent conditions.

The conditions were not kept because, as a Canton paper

stated, the promoters thought them unreasonable, and the meeting was dispersed by the Police, without incident, at

the first attempt at an inflammatory speech. There is

little doubt that the intention of the organisers had

been the creation of an incident which would again arouse

popular feeling as the incidents similarly engineered in

1925 had done, but there could be no doubt whatever that

the movement had by then lost all public support, and that

the action of the authorities was welcomed. Shortly

afterwards, in Canton, Government troops stormed the

headquarters of the Seamen's Union, and the opportunity

was seized in Hong Kong to proscribe both the Seamen's

Union and the General Labour Union, the two societies

primarily responsible for the boycott. During the

same year the Communists were expelled from the

Kuomintang and for some time Communism was discredited

and the unions assumed a new political colour. A

number of irreconcilables were killed, or imprisoned, or