HE describes himself as the little boy from Tai Po, was raised by a fanatical Communist guardian, and for two years lived under the shadow of a racial insult by a senior London police officer that led to blows and an ignominious transfer.
But in October, Metropolitan Police Inspector George Lee went up to Cambridge University. He had won Britain's most coveted scholarship for police officers destined for the top, the Bramshill Scholarship. Former Bramshill Scholars have been promoted to the ranks of Chief Constable and Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.
Lee describes himself as a high-ranking Hong Kong-born Metropolitan Police officer. ''After 1997, a lot of Hong Kong Chinese will enter Britain. Macau people with Portuguese passports may also enter the UK. The triad threat has already been highly publicised, and there will be an increase in the Chinese population here.
''Already it is the third biggest minority group in Britain. Until now the Chinese have not been so vocal about their rights, as have been the Afro-Carribeans and Asians. Now more Chinese are members of the professional classes, like lawyers, and have become more of a political force. So I hope that what I am doing will help the police service deal with that.'' His parents, who ran restaurants and takeaway food shops in the Portsmouth area, are now retired in Britain. Lee's father, son of a Hakka peasant, married the daughter of well-off North China landowners.
When his parents left Hong Kong in 1962 to work in Britain, Lee and his three brothers were left behind. He did not see his parents again until he was 91/2. The four boys were raised in Tai Po by a a relative paid by their parents to look after them. Lee's eldest brother joined his parents in Britain in 1965.
''The nanny we were left with used to make us call her Mum. We lived in a converted pig shed at Tai Po. It's still there and I go to look at it when I go to Hong Kong. It had an iron roof and our beds were planks. Our neighbours had a radio, so we thought they must be rich.'' With the two other children, he was sent to afternoon school in Tai Po. ''We only went to half-day school because she made us put together plastic and rubber dolls and flowers. If we didn't make enough she would beat us, and my brother was burned with a cigarette.
