90
PART V PERSONS INVOLVED
from the main crowd and he finally left it at the Astor Theatre, making his way back to Kimberley Road, where he did not arrive until 4.30 a.m., which seems strangely late if he left the crowd before the final incidents at Tsim Sha Tsui where, indeed, LEE Tak Yee claimed to have seen him.
331. He told us that LO Kei and another boy had been prominent during the evening in making arrangements for the following night, but he himself was o the telephone to a newspaper reporter next morning, and, in response to the latter's inquiry, said that a big demonstration was being organized for that night which would entail a two-pronged march in Nathan Road, with some of the marchers coming down from Lai Chi Kok and another group starting from the Tsim Sha Tsui area. According to the reporter, he went on to say that he had been in contact with 'the boys' in various resettlement estates and with certain 'cells'.
332. RAGGENSACK seems to have taken a fairly prominent part at the Reform Club meeting. He told us that his own impression of the attitude taken by Mr. BERNACCHI and Mr. WONG towards demonstrations was that it was none of the Reform Club's business if they continued to demonstrate, but the support of the Reform Club would be given only to the meeting at the Stadium. He maintained that there was no discussion at the meeting or afterwards about arrangements to meet again at 8 p.m. on the Kowloon side (cf. para. 346) or about further de monstrations (para. 126). The subsequent walk along Kennedy Road and the visit to Rediffusion have already been mentioned (para. 127). After dinner with Miss LUI-which she also mentioned he returned with her, he said, to Kowloon by the Jordan Road Ferry, intending to take a bus home but they found the buses had already ceased running. He said this was about 11.15 p.m. although other evidence suggested that it might have been much earlier and, according to Mrs. ELLIOTT, he told her on the 7th that his dinner with Miss LUI was in Nathan Road. Anyway, according to his evidence before us, after arriving from the island and finding the buses stopped, he and Miss LUI went to Nathan Road where he inquired who was leading the crowds and learned that it was LO Kei, to whom he tried to get a message about the meeting arranged at the Stadium. He spoke of the Police firing tear-smoke and some of the crowd being there just for fun; running when the tear-smoke was fired 'just like play'. Some were just shouting and yelling, he said, and some were holding up the signs; different signs, he claimed, from the previous day but with the same slogans against the ferry fares and gambling. He learned that LO Kei had three separate crowds there, at Mong Kok, at Waterloo Road and near the Astor Theatre, where, he went on to say, he saw LO Kei who was 'on the riot'. From the corner of Saigon Street he watched the crowds, whilst waiting for a reply from LO Kei which did not come. Later he became, he said, the leader of a small group belonging to a crowd about a hundred strong; these were people that he knew and, after asking them to separate from the main crowd, he took them down to Kimberley Road where, he claimed,
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.