I think we spoke up on the radio because we were identifying certain issues which I thought were on people's minds. [Lau and three other students called for more senior government posts for locals, free education, better pay for local teachers, youth vocational training and more facilities at resettlement areas to try and keep youths off the streets].

All the events of that summer, not just the violence, showed that people were unhappy about the existing government and social system. Sentiments like that were not built up overnight. Even if a group of activists was involved, support for them did not come automatically. It had to be something in the minds of people already, somethingthat manifested itself in action. But, that said, I don't rule out that there were other influences.

The summer of '67 probably shook up the Government and made them listen more to the people. It led to more open government. All the improvements we saw in the '80s can be related back to that time. Of course, you could say that the Government became more open because of '97, but it could equally be traced back to the events of '67.

From a legislator's point of view, that time shows how important good security is. The incidents of '67 were, I think, very detrimental to Hong Kong and it took us a number of years to shed that image. It was a major disruption to Hong Kong which we don't want repeated at any time.

Frank Knight, a former police officer, now owner of the private detective agency, Asian Security And Video Services Office. In 1967, Knight commanded the New Territories' Emergency Unit. He gained a commendation for his life-saving role in a Sha Tau Kok border post firefight in which five policemen were killed after coming under machine-gun fire from across the border. Earlier that summer, he had been kidnapped and held for 36 days on the mainland.

I HEARD on my radio that farmers were protesting about barbed wire on land belonging to China at the old Man Kam To bridge crossing. Someone was sent down to the barrier because the farmers were demanding the wire be removed immediately. A European police inspector, two Pakistani and three Chinese policemen went to the bridge in a Land Rover. When I heard, I went to the bridge too.

I found the jeep surrounded by a mob. They were shouting and screaming and waving their farming tools. We calmed them down and got the inspector and the jeep out of there - the jeep had reserve ammunition and gas for a riot platoon so we were anxious to get it away and we did, no problem. But they kept me there.

The District Commissioner of the New Territories came up and told them he came in good faith, but they didn't listen at all. Later, a British armoured unit was brought up and all the revving of the engines must have threatened the farmers so I was taken nearer to the bridge. A chap threatened me with a cargo hook - he got a big thrill out of that, what with me being in uniform. Then I was dragged over to the other side where I got a smack in the face and a couple of kicks, but nothing serious.

I ended up being tied to a post inside Chinese territory. When the Chinese Army turned up, they took me away from the farmers, blindfolded me and took me to their headquarters. I was taken to a doctor who asked me if I was alright. I had a twisted ankle, a few bruises, but nothing serious. Then they took me to a place where I was kept for 36 days - a kind of Government guest house close to the border. They put a guard at the back and front - no nastiness or anything. I wasn't frightened, more annoyed really: I had been trying to help the farmers and I ended up being dragged across the border and imprisoned.

The Chinese would say: 'You're not our prisoner. You're our guest.' So I said, 'Well in that case, I can go.' 'You can't,' they said, 'the British have blocked the bridge.' And they had - they had put barbed wire on the bridge so that it would be impossible to cross.

I was treated well. The food was quite good, they fed me three times a day: a snack in the morning, one for lunch and an evening meal. Anyway, what followed was day after day of questioning. There were no secrets to know in Hong Kong, so anything they wanted to know I told them. They wanted to know about the police set-up: everybody knows about that, it's not secret. I didn't know anything about the military set-up anyway and everybody knew how many soldiers we had. It was a lot of bloody nonsense, asking silly questions all the time.

After 34 days, they said arrangements had been made for me to go but then they said that had been cancelled because of a dispute. I thought all the nonsense was over, so I thought, 'I'm going' and started looking at ways to leave.

I managed to work the windows loose at the back of my room and studied the guards routine. I suppose they thought I'd just stay there. I left my uniform on a chair - my cap and my shirt - and I climbed out of the window in a shirt they'd given me and some shorts. I left everything else behind so that if you looked through the spy hole you'd have thought you saw someone.

I took off at about 8.30 pm and got back to British territory at about 6 am. I had been in charge of all the border stations so I knew the area. I knew the places to stay away from too. The railway line into Hong Kong was used by the illegal immigrants so I knew it was patrolled. Instead, I crawled through the paddy fields, taking a long loop to the border. It's strange. You think of paddy as just grass but when it's just been cut it's like sharp pencils.

I was annoyed when I got back - I found people had been inventing stories about it. The British side hadn't announced what actually happened. They didn't say a vehicle was surrounded and that Frank Knight tried to get the occupants out and he got abducted. No, they said I was on my own. When I asked why they hadn't mentioned I'd had gone in there, they said, 'It wasn't in the public interest'. 'What about my interest?' I said. They said, 'You don't count.' The whole '67 thing was very unfortunate. Luckily, it's a temporary thing, a thing of the past and it's most unlikely to happen again. Things got out of control and people got killed. It didn't change anything much. Fortunately, we did very well in keeping control and protecting law and order. The rule of law is Hong Kong's secret.

Elsie Tu was known in the 1960s as the people's champion. An Urban Council member, she was accused of instigating the Star Ferry riots which erupted in 1966 after the company raised the fares. But at the subsequent inquiry she led the charge against police and government corruption. Next week, she will become the only non-Chinese to take a seat in the Provisional Legislature.

ONE morning in May 1967, before dawn, I got a call at home asking me to go immediately to the Urban Council. The rest of the council arrived and said they were going to send a letter of support to the Governor, blaming the leftists for the trouble. Council Secretary Jack Tinsin asked me to write the message. I wasn't the chairman or the vice-chairman so I don't know why he asked me. I said, 'I'm sorry, I'm not signing,' because I remembered the lies they told [at the Star Ferry riot inquiry]. They were capable of anything at that time.

The press asked me what I thought about the summer of rioting and I said I was really fed up with the violence and the killing, no matter who was doing it. That said, I tried not to get involved. The Government tried to drag me into it and tried to get me to stop the rioters, speak to them, blame them; but I wasn't having any of it. I don't think that violence is the right way of going about things but if the Government had dealt with the problem at the start, it wouldn't have escalated.

First of all, the police viciously attacked those workers at San Po Kong. A friend of mine who was there - an anti-communist reporter - told me that they weren't doing anything but chanting and waving their little red books. Then the police came barging in and smashed their heads. Students were bringing in food and drinks, and they smashed up the students too.

The Government should have taken action right away at the factory. The students started marching. They wanted to see the Governor to complain. I think if the Governor had at least been willing to listen or talk to them, it might have helped solve the problem. Instead, he went to Fanling to play golf. In circumstances like that, a Governor should have really taken action. I knew then that it would escalate. If you don't deal with a problem it gets worse. Next came the violence, then the bombs - nobody knew who was doing the bombing.

Some of the leftists were doing some very violent things but at the same time, people were getting arrested for being in groups of three. And the police were framing people, as were Taiwanese nationalists. There was one magistrate working in the auxiliary police at night and then in court the next day, trying those he had arrested. On one occasion, he told the parents of two young girls who were crying to slap their faces.

Most people disapprove of riots - it upsets daily life. They may sympathise - but they wouldn't join in. The local communists thought China would welcome their actions.

I don't think there was any particular issue involved except the territory's economic problems and the frustration. But if you put the events of '66 and '67 in context, it made the Government face up to the fact there was a ground swell of discontent and that they better look into it. And after '67, they did. I was too angry to be on one side or another. I didn't understand what the leftists were doing - I wasn't clear on it - no one knew where their orders came from. I was so angry with the corruption and the way the Government had behaved in the previous riots. I really couldn't say I was on the side of the British but, that said, I never felt the British would lose Hong Kong because they were so tough. I remember thinking that when I was on a bus and travelling past the China Products on Jordan Road. The police were lined up about to go in the shop and were so intimidating - batons, shouting. They went in frightening the shop assistants.

The feeling was of frustration. Most of the people who joined in felt just like that. I remember one night there was a curfew and I was standing on the roof of my house looking down on the road - I was living in Prince Edward Road then - and I saw the police going down the road in this arrogant way and I felt like throwing a bottle at them. Of course I didn't. I would never do something like that, however angry I felt.

Jimmy McGregor, former legislative and executive councillor and ex-chairman of the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce. In 1967, he was a 'very active' assistant director in the Commerce and Industry Department. He received many death threats for his work with a counter-propaganda committee.

A DECISION was made early on back in Britain that what had happened in Macau [when the Portuguese administration was humbled by the Red Guards] would, come what may, not happen here. The Hong Kong Government would stand firm. I didn't know if we had the means to hold on to Hong Kong, but I knew we had the will.

I served on a committee that I think was called something involving public relations but was actually a counter-propaganda committee.

I knew many people at that time who were patriots - pro-China in the best sense - who very much wanted to see Hong Kong return to the mainland as peacefully and successfully as perhaps we are now. But they were caught in this maelstrom of hatred and vilification that built up in China. The violence was inevitable. We were dealing with people who felt righteous - this was a colonial territory and a humiliation for China stretching back more than a hundred years.

For many working-class people, there was nothing much to lose and they felt very strongly as patriots. They wanted to show their disgust for the colonial system and didn't mind causing damage or going out into the streets to shout slogans. Many of the left-wing leadership understood perfectly well this was not something to be supported and that it was something that, at the very least, should be kept down to reasonable proportions, otherwise the whole of Hong Kong might be destroyed and have no value to China whatsoever. And that's certainly not what they wanted.

There was communication [between China and Hong Kong] in a very desultory way, I think. I helped by approaching people who the Hong Kong Government wanted to ask to approach senior officials in China.

It's fair to say that the police took a tough line with the rioters they caught. As far as I'm aware, if people were arrested then the police gave them a thumping before they got to court. At Arsenal Street and other police stations, people were brought in as rioters and were allegedly beaten up and even killed. There were very serious breaches on both sides.

I gained a very high profile through my media work, but my wife is Chinese and at that time she felt her family in China would suffer because of me. She feared the Chinese authorities would make the connection and take action against her relatives. She was very afraid. I told her that was not possible as I had never met her family. I knew roughly where they lived - in the Guangdong area - but I had never visited. Yet the fact was that was exactly what did happen. Years later, we learned that they had been badly treated because of me. They had been questioned about whether they had a foreign relative and they were beaten up and given a very bad time. But these are minor things compared to the terrible, terrible things that happened to families all over China.

My high profile also prompted severe attacks in the left-wing press, to the extent that Wen Wei Po and Ta Kung Pao printed my name repeatedly. Eventually, they were so angered by me they went too far: Ta Kung Pao called me a corrupt government official. Corruption was widespread, endemic. People didn't like the police because they thought they were corrupt, which was proven in 1971. But such an accusation about me was unacceptable to my mind. I had spent years in the Government fighting corruption and I was not prepared to tolerate such a slur, so I took advice and then took legal action against Ta Kung Pao and its publisher, Fei Yi-ming, whom I knew quite well - he was a very straightforward, nice individual, a man who was very much pro-China, a gentleman in every sense of the word. However, I had no alternative. The legal action dragged on, but I finally won my case in the Supreme Court and kept my honour as an honest government official.

Then I learned that whatever action I took against Fei, action would be taken against Anthony Grey, the Reuter's correspondent in custody in Beijing. Grey had already been held for quite a long time and he'd had a very rotten time of it, I knew. So my feeling was that I could not risk a court action for damages. Of course, Fei would refuse to pay, bringing me in direct conflict with Ta Kung Pao. So I issued a statement to the press that, as my own contribution to law and order in Hong Kong, I would hold the damage assessment. It's still there now.

Years later, I was back on good terms with Fei and we have exchanged views about that time. It was a very difficult, fierce and unhappy situation for both of us, I guess, but when I saw him, shortly before he died - after he had helped me make contact with Chinese officials that I wanted to meet, after I had left the Government and taken over the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce - he was very friendly to me. The story had a good ending.

I don't think the riots have anything to tell us today because it wasn't the natural outcome of anything that was wrong in Hong Kong - it was a natural extension of something that was very, very wrong in China.

Tommy Lewis was a young South China Morning Post reporter in '67. He is now back on the Post crime desk. Lewis laments the past. He says, 'You needed guts in those days. If the same thing happened today, most of the young reporters would probably leave.' IN THOSE days, the Post was known as a pro-British newspaper, with a Union Jack outside its entrance in Wyndham Street, Central. Its 'frontline reporters' covering the riots were branded by the leftists as 'yellow skin running dogs' and they attacked them at every opportunity.

One night, I was told to stay in Kowloon in case more rioting erupted. At about 10 pm, the news editor called and told me to go to Shamshuipo where rioting had broken out. I left my Argyle Street apartment but couldn't find a cab - rioters had been setting fires to taxis. One taxi driver was willing to take me at double the fare. When we got to Nam Cheong Street, a crowd was forming and the driver told me to get out.

I walked for about a kilometre up to the riot near the Garden Bakery in Tai Po Road. A large crowd was confronting the police on the opposite side. When orders to disperse were ignored and a warning banner came out, I knew from past experience that the officers were ready to fire tear-gas. As I was in the crowd, I had to make a quick decision - whether or not to cross to the police lines.

I was darted across the road towards the police when I heard the crowd behind me cheering, thinking that I was a brave man challenging the officers. I reached the other side but was stopped by a constable who pushed the barrel of his gun into my stomach. I shuddered. I felt the barrel shaking. I said, 'I am a reporter. My press pass is in my back pocket. Can I take it out to show you.' As I spoke, the crowd continued to cheer. After showing the officer my pass, he directed me to his senior officer further down the road at the centre of the riot. I came across an expatriate officer further down the road and he told me six taxis had been burned but that he and his men were about to leave. Within seconds, he shouted, 'Fall in' and his men ran, jumping into a line of police vehicles which sped away - leaving me standing alone against the surging crowds.

I had to fend off a volley of missiles and after knocking over buckets, chairs and a lot of other stuff, I managed to clamber through a squatter camp and escape down an alley.

Around the same time, I was asked to cover a protest at Government House. Demonstrations there had grown and became more aggressive, with people plastering the main gates in posters. One evening, our Eurasian news editor, Alec Greaves, asked me to go there to relieve fellow reporter, William Lam, who had been there since the morning. I thought there might be trouble so I left all my personal items except for my press pass in the office before heading off.

I walked to Battery Path to cut into Garden Road but was stopped by an armed police sergeant sitting on a tree outside St John's Cathedral. He suggested I take the alternative route: down the flight of steps into Queen's Road Central and then up Garden Road. The problem was I had to go past the Hilton Hotel, where I knew there was a large crowd of demonstrators.

In Garden Road, I was recognised by a man in the crowd who rushed at me and held my shirt by the chest and shouted: 'A running dog is here.' One grabbed me by the shirt and started punching me with his fist while the others shouted 'beat him, beat him'. The only thing to do was to stay calm and reason with them. Most of them were holding their little red Mao books - which I had read. So I said, 'Chairman Mao said that Chinese should not attack Chinese, so why are you beating me up?' Everything came to a standstill for a couple of seconds and then an older man - whom I had never seen before - said, 'Let this running dog go'.

Frightened? You bet I was. I darted away to make my escape in the crowd and to make my way back to the Wyndham Street office. The news editor asked why I was back so quickly. I told him what happened outside the Hilton. 'What?' he shouted. 'I've always told you to keep clear from the crowds and never get yourself involved. You go to Government House right away to relieve William and stay there until further notice,' he yelled. I went back. It was my job.

Tsang Tak-sing was jailed for two years in 1967 for handing out 'inflammatory leaflets'. He is now the publisher of the pro-Beijing newspaper Ta Kung Pao.

I WAS a 17-year-old student studying at the Anglican Church-run St Paul's College. It was quite a prestigious school back then and was difficult to get into. It taught in English and our parents wanted us to get in so we could get ahead in life. Those were the days when you could not get things done unless it was done in English. Both my brother and I got in. We had reasonably good grades and, in '67, I was a prefect, studying in the lower sixth.

By the summer, some of my classmates and I had become very disillusioned. I felt very strongly about the fact all our subjects were taught in English except for Chinese literature. Even Chinese history was taught in English. It was all very biased.

The movement started in May, and some fellow students and I would get together and talk. After the summer holidays in September, we came back to school and hand-printed leaflets. One lunch hour, I passed out the pamphlets to students. The content was rather harmless. We criticised the 'colonial enslavement system of education' and I might have linked it up with some stuff about the colonial administration. The school authorites called the police - I think they had to - and they came into the schools armed with rifles. I was arrested and taken to the station. In the car, the police started making remarks. 'Why don't you go back to the mainland if you are so unhappy,' they asked. So I answered, 'To leave you bastards running the place?' I took a pretty firm stand in court. I defended myself, saying that what I put down in the pamphlets was true, so I didn't expect anything else [but jail]. I was then sentenced to two years in jail. I went into Stanley prison in October and came out in March 1969.

What is really deeply imprinted on my mind is that while I was getting beaten up at the police station someone came in to bring them coffee and tea. He was obviously nothing to do with the interrogation but he joined in the beating anyway.

Stanley was very bad. The good point was that we were kept separate from the common criminals. They didn't class us as political prisoners - we were called YPs [young prisoners].

There were lots of beatings in prison. In November, I was one of the leaders of an inmates' strike. The adult prisoners had gone on strike and brought in riot police firing tear-gas. So we decided on a sympathy strike and were sentenced to one-month solitary confinement. During that month, new prisoners were brought in and immediately beaten up.

By that time, I guess the hatred on both sides was even stronger. Bombs were being planted and those responsible were brought in. Some of them were very young.

I remember the sound I heard through the door: the prisoners didn't wear shoes and only had plastic slippers on. All I could hear was the dull thuds on the bodies and the clatter of the slippers as the body was thrown back. They never cried or complained.

To this day, I had no regrets about my experience. I lost 18 months of the best and most important years of my student days but I learned something that otherwise I couldn't have learned. The education I had been getting was very elitist. I was taught to compete to get ahead but, unintentionally, I looked down on workers, labourers, the lower classes. But this view changed. I made very good friends - comrades - people who had very strong qualities.

We expected to win. During May and June, the [British] military were already on the streets. There was already expectations that the PLA would come. There had already been border skirmishes. In fact, the prisoners in G Hall expected the PLA would march in and they would be released as the victors. Some got long terms - six years or more - and when they got out, they felt China had let them down. They thought they would come marching triumphantly out of Stanley to the music of bands. They became totally disillusioned with politics.

When I was in Stanley, I knew that Zhou Enlai came down to Guangdong to have a meeting with the Committee in Support of the Patriotic Movement in Hong Kong. We thought, 'Now the central government is behind us'. In hindsight, I know that Zhou was trying to control the situation. Now we know that even during the height of the Cultural Revolution and the height of the movement here, Mao and Zhou had taken the decision not to take back Hong Kong.

After getting out of prison, a group were invited to Guangzhou for a study session and we were told that we should follow the great strategic considerations of Mao. At that stage, the Vietnam War was on. The United States was the main aggressor. We were told that, 'When there are tigers in the way, you do not take on the wolf and the fox.' We would like to feel we made an impact. The Hong Kong Government changed their policies after '67 - in the late '60s and early '70s. That is quite clear. And we like to think that despite whatever our sacrifices or foolhardiness, we made sufficient impact to change the course of history.