IT is often forgotten these days. But in the early 1980s, some of today's Democratic Party legislators were among the first people to back Hong Kong's return to China.
That was long before it became fashionable to do so. Back then, some of the Hong Kong guests invited to this year's National Day celebrations in Beijing were still pushing for Britain to extend its lease on the colony.
Jardine Matheson, which was represented in Beijing on Friday by director Martin Barrow, was so hostile to the prospect of China taking control that it moved its legal domicile to Bermuda.
By contrast, Democrats such as Yeung Sum, Cheung Man-kwong and Szeto Wah openly advocated a resumption of Chinese sovereignty. It was a view at that stage only shared by a few local leftists.
Meeting Point, one of the groups which later joined together to form today's Democratic Party, even declared the mainland had been right to take the path of communism in 1949.
So the Democrats can consider themselves far more patriotic than the numerous 'instant noodle patriots' - to coin the famous phrase used by the late Liu Yiu-chu, a maverick leftist - who only began singing Beijing's praises after the handover became inevitable.
