There was nothing to indicate that Big Mac would differ in any way from his predecessors. He was just another Scottish diplomat who had been made governor of Hong Kong, but as the 1970s went on it was clear that he would have to face fresh challenges, negotiating relations between Hong Kong and London, while attempting not to irritate the communist regime in Beijing. Commercially, the early 1970s were years of expansion and confidence, after the low point of the 1967 disturbances. The Hang Seng index leaped from its low of 59 in 1967 to 1,775 in March 1973, making this six-year period one of the greatest bull runs in international stock-market history.
2
Politically, MacLehose's nominal bosses in Whitehall were less optimistic. As late as 1972, officials in London remained gloomy about the future of Hong Kong, and were considering plans to evacuate the colony, or at least for a managed withdrawal, before the official end of British rule in 1997. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, a new department created in 1968 from an amalgamation of the old Commonwealth and Foreign Offices, was realistic about the prospect of holding on to Hong Kong. Officials in the newly created department argued, no doubt correctly, that âif the Chinese allowed the lease of the New Territories to run its full term, we could not expect to renegotiate it in 1997'. âSovereignty in Hong Kong', a Foreign Office official wrote in 1972, âwill have to be handed over to China and this is likely to become an issue in the 1980s.' The prospects for Hong Kong in the 1980s seemed bleak, as âconfidence and the economy' would âinevitably start to run down'. In the event of a general economic decline, which officials in London anticipated, Hong Kong could âbecome a major liability'.
3
The early 1970s were a bleak time for Britain, as constant threats of industrial disputes and strikes dominated the headlines, and the country was still trying to find a role in the world after the rapid decolonization of the 1960s. Much of this pessimistic outlook is reflected in the pronouncements of officials. Since Hong Kong's economy would wind down in the 1980s, so it was presumed, one official drew the obvious conclusion that âthe disadvantages of our remaining in Hong Kong up to 1997 seem greatly to outweigh the advantages'. The only problem was that any hint that the British intended to leave âcould well precipitate the collapse of confidence that we want to avoid'.
4
Others in the new FCO joined in the chorus of doom: âwe should withdraw as soon as we can reasonably do so' because there was a âlack of defence for Hong Kong' and because of the âdrain which our presence there imposes on our financial balance of payments and manpower'. Another could only observe that âto stay in Hong Kong would be contrary to our general colonial policy'.
5
Organized retreat seems to have been the favoured policy with regard to Britain's imperial commitments at the Foreign Office in the early 1970s. The Chinese, by contrast, after the excesses of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s, had become more reconciled to current circumstances than their harassed counterparts
in London's Foreign Office. Showing admirable pragmatism, the Chinese were now content to allow the current situation to continue, as they waited patiently for 1997. In 1971, the veteran Chinese politician Zhou Enlai informed the former Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald that China would not seek to recover Hong Kong until the expiry of the New Territories' lease in 1997.
6
Strong economic growth in Hong Kong had led to an epidemic in corruption that threatened to destabilize the colony, and it was for his fight against corruption that much of MacLehose's subsequent reputation was gained. âFast money' in Hong Kong encouraged a culture in which the police took bribes from Triad gangs and other known criminals, allowing the gangsters to run gambling syndicates, drug rings and brothels without any interference.
7
The most notorious case involved Peter Godber, a police chief superintendent, who had fled the colony in June 1973, whereupon the slogan âFight Corruption, Catch Godber' became widely heard. Godber had escaped the colony just at the moment he was about to be charged for corrupt practices. Four days before his flight to London, police investigators had raided Godber's car and house, where they found boxes full of silver bars and what they described as âa trail of fortune', leading them to bank accounts in Singapore, Australia, Canada and other countries. Godber's escape was the sensation of the year, but he was brought back from London and sentenced to four years in jail in Hong Kong. He served thirty-one months of his term and then, on his release in October 1977, he disappeared. Ernest, otherwise known as âTaffy', Hunt was an associate of Godber who later turned against his old mentor: âMake no mistake about it,' he assured the
Daily Express
in 1975, âI was a villain.' He candidly told the BBC later in the same year that being corrupt in Hong Kong was âas natural as going to bed at night and brushing your teeth in the morning'.
8
The scale of corruption prompted MacLehose to establish the Independent Commission Against Corruption, or ICAC, in 1974. This body was âflabbergasted' by the scale of corruption in the police force, where policemen were found to be âsalting away sizeable fortunes to acquire villas in Spain', and it was discovered that highly organized police syndicates took âbreath-taking' sums of money, âamounting to hundreds of
millions of US dollars'. The key figure in each police syndicate was known as the âcaterer', and he alone possessed all the information on the deals, acting as a sort of banker in the distribution of kickbacks and bribes to the other members of the syndicate. This was the other, seamier side of the laissez-faire culture which Cowperthwaite and his superiors in Government House had promoted.
9
The air of corruption in Hong Kong was part of a wider malaise in the colony which stemmed partly from the free-wheeling nature of its capitalism and partly from the ossified nature of its society, which remained snobbish and static. In such an environment, where free enterprise was promoted but society stagnated, a criminal underworld, with its own rules, rapidly emerged. This was the time when it was said that âthe Jockey Club, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, and the Governor' ruled Hong Kong â
in that order
'.
10
The Jockey Club had, by the 1960s, replaced the Hong Kong Club as the colony's most elite social institution, though the Hong Kong Club kept its gentlemen's club atmosphere until 1997.
But it wasn't from the Chinese, the gentlemen's clubs or even the corrupt police force that MacLehose experienced the most acute political pressure. It was the advent of the Labour government in Britain in 1974 which put Hong Kong's rather anomalous position as a benign dictatorship, or at best a benevolent oligarchy, in the spotlight. Democracy in Hong Kong was back on the discussion table, in the corridors of Whitehall at least. The 1970s in Britain was probably the decade when inverse snobbery, a hostile suspicion of many of the elite presuppositions which had underpinned the British Empire, was at its strongest. It was the time when the top rate of tax on earned income reached 83 per cent, and when grammar schools, which selected their pupils by rigorous examinations at the age of eleven, were mostly abolished in Britain. British Labour MPs had started noticing the archaic flavour of Hong Kong when they visited the colony as opposition MPs in the early 1970s. At the end of 1973, the Labour MP Robert Hughes wrote to his even more left-wing colleague Ian Mikardo that he had been ârecently in Hong Kong and no one who has visited the colony can fail to have been greatly concerned at the manner in which the Hong Kong Government runs affairs'. Hughes's letter enumerated the usual left-wing objections to Hong Kong in a litany which recalled the
Pravda
article
of 1964 entitled âThe Ill Fame of Hong Kong'. Hughes complained to Mikardo of the âtremendous disparities of wealth, of working conditions, of housing conditions'âdisparities which would not be tolerated in Britain. He compared the state of affairs in Hong Kong to that in South Africa and attributed this to the âlack of Trade Union rights and organization'. More importantly, in a classically Marxist critique of the Hong Kong government, he said that âall the nominees to the Legislative Council represent the commercial and business interests of the Colony' and that there was no âdemocratic right of people to influence their way of life'. This had been the case for the 130 years before Robert Hughes had come to this realization. At the conclusion of his letter, he added astutely that â[we] forget that [Hong Kong] is a colony because of its autonomy'.
11
In a series of meetings which took place when the Governor visited Britain in April 1975, MacLehose was told very clearly what the Labour Party thought of Hong Kong. The Governor, of course, was treated in a civilized manner; he often met officials for lunch in London at gentlemen's clubs like Brooks's or the Travellers, but real business was conducted in the Foreign Office where, on Friday 11 April at 11.30 in the morning, MacLehose met James Callaghan, the Foreign Secretary. Callaghan was a stalwart of the Labour movement who had been elected to Parliament in 1945 and was very much in touch with the grass roots of the party, in contrast to his more privileged colleagues, such as Anthony Crosland and Roy Jenkins, who had enjoyed more financial security in their upbringing and had earned first-class degrees at Oxford University. âSunny Jim', as Callaghan was popularly known, had left school at fifteen and had served in the navy before becoming active in Labour politics. His interview with MacLehose on that April morning was characteristically frank. Callaghan opened the meeting by baldly stating that âthe reputation of Hong Kong did not stand particularly high in the Labour movement in the United Kingdom'.
Interestingly, the objections of the âLabour movement' to Hong Kong did not really stem from the lack of democracy in itself, but rather from the poor labour rights which existed in the colony, the low wage rates of Hong Kong seamen and the narrow social composition of the Legislative Council, which continued to be handpicked by the Governor. The embattled
MacLehose argued that the Legislative Council âmore closely approximated to a Cabinet than to a Parliament' and, as a consequence of this, a âhigh calibre of member' was essential. He did however accept that members âfrom lower income brackets' would need to be included âin due course'. Callaghan conceded the need for âhigh calibre in the members', but made the obvious retort that such arguments would not âcarry much weight politically' in the Labour Party in Britain. At an earlier meeting with the Foreign Office minister Goronwy Roberts, Callaghan's junior in the department, MacLehose had played the stalling game beloved of natural conservatives when faced with a radical onslaught, insisting that he did not think that any âprecipitate action should be taken . . . to broaden the membership of the Legislative Council'. Given time, he told Roberts, âone or two of the natural leaders' of the workers could emerge. Roberts was unimpressed, continuing to harangue the Governor; and in his summary of the conversation he claimed that MacLehose shared his view âthat Hong Kong must continue to move towards more progressive taxation and social security policies'. These were the very measures which Cowperthwaite had so vigorously opposed in the 1960s, and which Milton Friedman believed had made Britain less prosperous in the period after 1945.
12
Unsurprisingly, the Governor earned the same polite rebuke when he came back to Britain in July the following year. Yet he clearly knew how to handle his political superiors in London. Labour ministers had by then become fixated with the idea of placing a trade union representative on the Legislative Council, and had abandoned any interest, if they ever had any, in establishing real democracy in Hong Kong. They ârecognized the difficulties in Hong Kong terms of appointing a trade unionist to the Legislative Council' but contended that it âwould be virtually impossible to defend a decision not to do so here'. The âLabour movement' was still very concerned that the âinterests of wage earners [should] . . . be represented in the Hong Kong government'. The government ministers were polite enough to show understanding of the difficulty the Governor was in, but âministers were under severe pressure' in Britain, especially from the TUC (the Trades Union Congress) and from the NEC (the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party). Towards the end of his visit to Britain, MacLehose met Ted Rowlands, who had replaced Goronwy Roberts at the Foreign
Office in March 1976, when Callaghan moved from the Foreign Office to become prime minister.
Rowlands showed considerable aggression at the meeting, asking about corruption in Hong Kong. MacLehose acknowledged that there had indeed been corrupt practices in the Hong Kong police force, to which Rowlands, in an extraordinary attack, responded that âVictorian attitudes sometimes seemed to prevail in the Colony.' MacLehose objected to this, by pointing out that Victorians did not provide âhousing or health on the scale that was being provided in Hong Kong'. The next day, MacLehose saw Tony Crosland, the Foreign Secretary, who told him in schoolmasterly fashion that the âmatter of a trade unionist on Council had now assumed symbolic importance here and it was, in his view, essential that such an appointment should be made now'. Crosland was prone to seeing Hong Kong politics in terms of tension between social classes. The notion of class conflict had, of course, been the legacy of Karl Marx to progressive political thought. In this context, Crosland asserted that there had to be a ârepresentative of working class interests' on the Legislative Council.
13
It was unlikely that many people in Hong Kong saw their society in such narrowly defined social categories. There was grotesque inequality in Hong Kong, but the Chinese hawkers and traders had never subscribed to a Marxist philosophy which saw everything in terms of class. In this respect, the Hong Kong Chinese were more like Victorian liberals who believed, as Deng Xiaoping later said, that âto grow rich is glorious' and that wealth was a reward for industry and individual initiative.