Opinion | Radicals should stop using the 1967 riots to justify Mong Kok violence
Gary Cheung says those who romanticise the leftist-inspired uprising as just action against tyranny forget that the militants had little public support and arguably limited positive impact on social change
Hong Kong has become unrecognisable to me with all the flawed logic put forward by those who defended the violent disturbances that erupted in Mong Kok on the night of February 8. Some sympathisers even made an inappropriate analogy between the unrest and the leftist-inspired riots in 1967.
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They argued that while some leftists resorted to excessive action, launching bomb attacks, social anomalies and discontent with the colonial government were among the reasons behind the bloody 1967 riots. In an oblique justification of the violence in Mong Kok, they contended that the 1967 riots succeeded in forcing the government to introduce sweeping reforms in the 1970s.
The leftist camp completely lost the support of the public after some militants resorted to indiscriminate violence
In a statement released a day after the unrest in Mong Kok, the pro-democracy Progressive Lawyers Group said it was disingenuous of the colonial government to blame the 1967 riots on a small group of violent agitators, when much deeper social problems existed in Hong Kong at the time, and it would be similarly disingenuous to pretend that the Mong Kok riot was an isolated incident.
These kind of interpretations – or misinterpretations – of the 1967 riots, are reminiscent of the leftist camp’s defence of the disturbances, which claimed 51 lives and rocked the city to its core.
After the publication of my book on the 1967 riots in 2012, I was content to leave this chapter of Hong Kong history behind. Yet, I believe I am now duty-bound to set the record straight against the fallacies about the disturbances.
It is too simple to say that the riots were the cause of the subsequent social reform, as there was already momentum within the colonial government to initiate change
It is too simple to say that the riots were the cause of the subsequent social reform, as there was already momentum within the colonial government in the mid-1960s to initiate change. The disturbances, which started with a labour dispute, generated sympathy among some people outside the leftist camp before the unrest was escalated. The leftist camp completely lost the support of the public after some militants resorted to indiscriminate violence.