The Shek Kip Mei Myth: Squatters, Fires And Colonial Rulers in Hong Kong, 1950-1963

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Kowloon Walled City

INTRODUCTION On 11 January 1950 a fire destroyed an estimated 2500 to 2700 h u t s in Kowloon Walled City, and "nearly 3,500 families consisting of over 1 7 , 0 0 0 p e r s o n s " w e r e r e g i s t e r e d as " d i s p o s s e s s e d a n d f r e q u e n t l y destitute victims". 1 Governor G r a n t h a m described the site of the fire to the Secretary of State for the Colonies as: an encampment of closely packed squatters' huts about 60 acres in extent, of which about 20 acres were affected by the fire. Such huts are constructed of wood, matting and tarred felt, and are thus particularly vulnerable to fire. ... The affected area in some ways resembled a miniature town, comprising not only dwelling huts but huts in which small industries were carried on and stores of various materials were kept. It included also certain Chinese film studios. Stocks of firecrackers and chemicals and stacks of timber added to the intensity of the blaze.2 The complexity of the fire site was not simply a matter of diverse land-use: it was also politically fuk jaap, a Cantonese term that literally means "complicated" but implies a rather unpleasant set of entanglements that the wise steer clear of. The colonial government had gotten burned by its political complications only two years before, so the fire simultaneously offered openings for dealing with some of the problems but also raised serious warning signals about the potential for another international incident if it wasn't handled carefully. Examination of this context is essential to an understanding of the various responses to the fire.

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Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong History China agreed, under pressure from the colonial powers after the disastrous Boxer Rebellion, to lease the New Territories to Britain for ninety-nine years. There was one exception, however, as a clause allowed imperial officials stationed in Kowloon Walled City to continue to exercise jurisdiction there "except so far as may be inconsistent with the military requirements for the defence of Hong Kong".3 This clause was unilaterally amended by a British Order in Council the same year which claimed the area (see Figure 4.1) as "part and parcel" of the colony and expelled the officials. The Chinese protested and never accepted the change in the terms of the lease, and control over land use in the area was never fully implemented, although police did patrol the area. The area emerged as an enclave specializing in purveying prostitution, illegal drugs and gambling.4 Subsequently, the main incidents about this unresolved dispute arose around Hong Kong efforts to clear squatters from within the precinct, first in 1933 and then in 1947 and 1962.5In 1947, the approximately 25,000 squatters resisted their dispossession, and argued that the British had no rights over Kowloon Walled City under the 1898

Figure 4.1 Map of locations of fires

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Treaty. Steve Tsang asserts that the potential repercussions were not recognized by the colonial government, despite an earlier unsuccessful effort in 1946 by Lin Hsia-tze, the magistrate of the neighbouring Chinese county of Pao An county, to establish a Chinese civil administration in the Walled City. On 27 November 1947, the government gave the Walled City squatters two weeks notice to vacate. The residents formed an association and appealed to China for help. On 12 January 1948 the police attempted to carry out the clearance, what one reporter referred to as the "Battle of Kowloon Walled City" erupted when "the police met an enraged mob and a shower of bricks and stones and had to use tear gas bombs and open fire".6 One squatter was killed, dozens injured and fourteen policemen were hurt. A large protest in Canton [Guangzhou] ended in the destruction by fire of the British Consulate-General and the offices of two British companies.7 Diplomats prevented the international incident from escalating further, but the government subsequently left the area "to its own devices" and the Po On [Pao An] District Kowloon City Residents' Association formed in 1947 became a quasi-government in practice. Governor Grantham's memoirs noted that "an impasse had been reached; but so far as the Hong Kong government was concerned we had shown that we were not prepared to abrogate our rights, either by mob rule or at the behest of the Chinese government". Despite this, he saw it as an "unsatisfactory situation. The city became a cesspool of iniquity, with heroin divans, brothels and everything unsavory". The police patrolled regularly, but "we did not care to prosecute malefactors in the courts, lest the controversial issue of jurisdiction be raised by the defence. We preferred to deport — an executive and not a judicial act — those who committed offences in the City".8 According to a fascinating newspaper article from July 1949, "At present two factions are striving for supremacy in the little enclave: the 'Conservatives' under the leadership of a man named Chu Pui-tong and their political opponents the 'Reformists' headed by the Chief of City Guards Leung Chong". Chu and Leung, the former a leader who was sentenced to three months' hard labour and the latter one of those who were injured in the "Battle", "have become heroes and martyrs in the eyes of the mob and reigned supreme in their little kingdom. Their six city guards, besides other duties, collected monthly 'membership fees' from the residents at rates varying from $4 to $8." A power struggle emerged when the Magistrate of Po On District put up a notice that the two organizations were ordered to be de-activated and a new Residents' Association formed, presumably to increase the KMT's control. The reporter estimated that there were 5000 residents, 70% Hoklos (a dialect group located in southeastern Guangdong and Fujian

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provinces), 20% Hakkas (a dialect group widely distributed in China), and the rest local Cantonese, a very different ethnic distribution than for Hong Kong as a whole. 9 After the area was almost completely leveled by the 1950 fire, and with the wall having been demolished by the Japanese for the expansion of the airport, it might seem to have been a perfect time to "immunize" the area. This did not occur, and by the time it was finally d e m o l i s h e d in 1992 (an o u t c o m e m a d e possible by the Sino-British Agreement of 1984), it had become a dense hive of illegal high-rises with a total of 8800 flats and 1045 commercial establishments. The files do not indicate any intervention in the aftermath of the fire from China, unlike the situation in 1947 and the Tung Tau fire discussed in the next chapter. This lack of Chinese intervention is perhaps not surprising, given that it occurred so soon after the victory of the Chinese Communist Party, and after British recognition of their regime in January 1950. The ambiguous and tense situation of the Walled City continued well into the 1970s. On 13 August 1965, the Director of Public Works, A. M. J. Wright circulated a memorandum reminding various sub-department heads that "no public works, other than the routine making of water connections to legal buildings outside the Kowloon Walled City, may be initiated in the i m m e d i a t e vicinity of the Kowloon Walled City w i t h o u t my specific authority". This memo was produced in the wake of a squatter control survey of blocks in the "sensitive zone" near the City in January 1965 (the nature of the earlier omission of the area from squatter surveys is discussed in chapter 10). The survey prompted a petition of protest from the "Kowloon Walled City Residents Anti-clearance Committee" which warned that: In order to protect our country's sovereignty over its territory and to ensure a peaceful and stable life among the Walled City residents, we demand (1) That the British Government of Hong Kong should henceforth refrain from carrying out any clearance within the Walled City; (2) That if anything happened as a result of any clearance within the Walled City, the consequence should be borne by the British Government of Hong Kong.10 T h e g o v e r n m e n t ' s r e s p o n s e was to refuse to talk to delegations as representatives of the Walled City b u t instead to see only "residents or 'owners' of property in the area actually surveyed", and to assure them that the survey was not a precursor to a clearance. They did have some reason to be concerned: in other parts of Hong Kong, instructions for the 1964 squatter control survey were that "Before any area is surveyed it must be covered by the Area Officers ... to undertake a preliminary survey of ... all huts under

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construction or completed but un-occupied which must be demolished as soon as they are discovered".11 The government continued to hope for the right opportunity to end the standoff on the Walled City. Another memo drafted on 6 January 1970 informed concerned official parties that "You should be aware that a contingency plan has been prepared under which Government can take advantage of major emergency within the walled city, such as a fire or a building collapse in order to impose its authority over all or part of the area. Papers on this subject are graded variously 'secret' or 'confidential' and there is no need for details to be circulated at this stage".12This contingency plan was not brought into effect. Its existence does suggest that if another major fire had broken out within the Walled City, use of it as an excuse to demolish the Walled City could have had significant effects on the Hong Kong/PRC relationship in the period prior to the Sino-British Agreement of 1984, with potential impacts on the process of decolonization. It was the signing of this Agreement that finally made the clearing of the enclave in 1994 possible through cooperation between Hong Kong and Beijing. As Seth Harter describes, the park that replaced it has carefully occluded the messy anomalousness of the Walled City, leaving a reconstructed yamen and a Chinese garden in its place.13

Response to the Fire In describing the government's response to the fire, the Governor indicated that "Most of the apparently homeless victims at first refused all offers of accommodation, preferring to stay where they were with what they had salvaged". While his message does not give the details of what kind of accommodation was offered, the prevailing terms set by Executive Council only provided for a small minority of squatter residents, and only about one fifth of those who were qualified actually accepted the offers. Grantham also reported that the "Relief Committee, with the assistance of Government, has initiated a special resettlement scheme for registered fire victims in the Homuntin Valley in Kowloon which was formerly a Chinese cemetary. A water supply is being laid on and fire lanes will be marked out on this site so that suitable huts can be constructed by the Relief Committee in accordance with an approved general layout."14 The Joint Relief Committee was established on 12 January and represented twenty two commercial, charitable and social organizations.15 This approach to dealing with a major humanitarian disaster was one

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example of a practice common in Hong Kong, and which was criticized by the Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1949: the use of private organizations to deliver grant-aided services. 1 6 While accounting issues might have sometimes been questionable, it appeared that political considerations were of much greater salience for the Hong Kong authorities. McDouall, the Social Welfare Officer, was responsible for organizing relief, and provided some interesting comments about the voluntary participants. He identified four main groups that were involved. First, there were those who "once they had assured themselves of there being no high-handed domination by S.W.O. [Social Welfare Officer], worked constructively and energetically in free cooperation with Govt". Then there were those who "through ignorance were openly critical of Govt, action ... These people were not politically concerned, and were usually amenable to reason". The third group were "free-lance relief organizations purely out for kudos for themselves". Finally there were those "allegedly" engaged in relief work but in fact deliberately playing it u p for political reasons: e.g. by the "Po On" contacts, or by the "suppressed societies". These are reliably reported to have had much of their thunder stolen by the genuine relief work ... I have also heard it said that certain left-wing reporters were prepared to play up to the hilt stories of callous disregard for the victims' immediate sufferings ... but that so far they have been unable to collect or concoct sufficiently damning material. 17 McDouall singled out as one of the main contributions of the "constructive" members of the Relief Committee the way in which they "froze out" this Po On group, discussed earlier in relation to the struggle for control over the Walled City. The "moving spirits" of the relief committee were the chairman Daniel Chen (Chan Nang-tong), who was the managing director of a c a n n e d goods c o m p a n y and C h a i r m a n of Kowloon City Chinese C h a m b e r of Commerce; Wong Tuk-sau, general manager of the same c o m p a n y ; W a n Tat-ming, Vice-Chairman of the H o n g Kong C o t t o n Manufacturers' Association; and Tong Luk-kat, Chairman of the Food Business Guild. The committee received about $200,000 from the public, and decided to embark on a "constructive" project rather than distribute cash to the fire victims. They chose to "build houses for the needier cases amongst the victims, and then with the rents collected to build yet more houses, and so on". In the view of the Social Welfare Officer four years later, though, "the

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scheme did not work, even in the early days. My information is that discord very soon developed amongst the members of the committee, many of whom quickly lost interest in the fire victims and wished to put poor friends and relations into the cottages. This led to friction with Daniel Chen, who refused to countenance such abuses".18 This was one of the first cottage areas, or "approved areas", which were a mainstay of squatter resettlement and squatter fire efforts in the early 1950s (see Plate 3). The high standards imposed on the standardized cottages, which could be built either by the "settlers" themselves or by approved construction companies, meant that only a small percentage of squatters could afford them. At an average cost of $1500, they were nearly as costly as the $700 average capital expenditure per adult of the Resettlement blocks built between 1954 and 1963.19 When an expanded approved area programme (discussed in the next chapter) was instituted, the first request for supplementary funds beyond those originally budgeted included the comment that "I believe that the programme is going to cost a lot more than was expected".20 Approved and tolerated areas also represented "inefficient" use of land, with densities below that of most squatter areas. In 1950, there were four approved areas operated by the Urban Council with a total of only 158 huts, and another 91 in the "Healthy Village" pilot scheme operated by the Hong Kong Settlers' Corporation. In addition, after the Kowloon Walled City fire a tolerated squatter area was established in Homuntin with 2600 huts and the Rennie's Mill tolerated squatter area for Kuomintang refugees had another 1300 huts. By the McDouall Report's estimates, approximately ten percent of the 330,000 squatters in November 1950 were in approved or tolerated areas. Chapter 5 will consider why this approach was greatly expanded between 1951 and 1953, despite widespread recognition of its limitations. On first examination, the Kowloon City fire did not seem to have a major impact on the direction of housing policy. It did, however, ignite a high-level debate about squatter fire prevention that both reveals important dimensions of governmental perspectives and influenced the handling of the squatter problem on a continuing basis. One might not expect a file entitled "Fire Services — squatter areas — Correspondence re: fire precautions to be adopted in" to be labeled "Top Secret". In it, however, a minute from the Deputy Colonial Secretary C. B. Burgess to the Colonial Secretary makes the reasons for the designation very clear. He was responding to a proposal from Mr. Gorman, Chief Officer, Fire Brigade, dated 9 December 1949, shortly before the Kowloon Walled City fire. He stressed that Gorman's memorandum had to be considered:

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against a background of practical politics. I do not see how we could put this area [the Walled City] on a proper basis, from the point of view of fire risk, without tearing down a considerable number of these shacks ... in order to make the necessary fire lanes. The effect of this would almost certainly be to upset the whole of the political applecart at a time when we are most anxious to avoid any incidents of this kind whatever. I take it, therefore, that, if only for political reasons, we shall have to compromise on Fire Brigade requirements. Perhaps that compromise should take the form of making the necessary preparations to prevent any serious loss of life, and taking no further steps than this for the time being. It would not be unreasonable to say that that was our main concern in the whole matter. These shacks are entirely illegal structures and it is not up to Government to take measures for their protection. If a large number of them were burnt down we should probably have to take steps to assist the occupants in re-provisioning themselves, but we can hardly overlook the fact that the effect would be no bad thing politically.21 Musing about the advantages of a natural disaster, particularly one that actually occurred within a month of the musing, is clearly something that had to be confined to secret documents. As we saw above, practical politics were of particular salience in relation to the Walled City due to its anomalous status, but practical politics also constrained fire precautions in other squatter areas, although for different reasons. Gorman's proposal was to spend some money to lessen the serious fire risks in the Walled City in particular, as well as in other squatter areas. The memo that the Deputy Colonial Secretary objected to suggested that: if an outbreak of Fire occurs in the Kowloon City Squatter area22 it will turn out to be one of the biggest Fire disasters on record. Nothing could be done to save or rescue the Thousands that are residing there. ... If a large Fire does occur in this Squatter area as stated it will be nothing short of a tragedy and end up in a holocaust with a terrific loss of life. ... To my mind the onus for the Tragedy will have to be borne by some one, as an explanation will be called for to explain what precautions were taken.23 It is fortunate that the Walled City fire, as well as the subsequent Tung Tau fire in the same area, didn't have the feared massive loss of life, but their extent were clearly within the range of magnitude that he envisioned.

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Gorman's subsequent memo to the Colonial Secretary of 13 May 1950 argued for the expenditure of HK$245,990 to extend water mains, provide fire hydrants and water storage, extend fire breaks through squatter areas, and control dangerous industrial premises and goods. The Colonial Secretary's response was that "fire precautions are getting a litde out of hand" and that "It seems a little odd, to say the least, that we should consider spending $V4 million on protecting from potential danger structures which are illegal, a menace to public health and security, and which our major policy aims at eliminating altogether (e.g. immigration control, expulsion of undesirables, cheap building schemes etc.)". He goes on to assert that "We simply cannot justify the use of public funds to protect the shacks themselves. Danger to lives and adjacent property is a different matter and is, to my mind, the absolute limit of our responsibility".24The Financial Secretary minuted that he agreed that it was "quite crazy" to be asked to spend a quarter million dollars on the protection of "structures that are a perfect curse from every point of view and which we are anxious to eliminate. We should concentrate on fire breaks and lanes, and the elimination of stores of volatile spirit and dangerous industrial premises ... rather than spend large sums of money on water mains and hydrants".25 Fires in squatter areas were seen as a concern primarily in that they might threaten legal structures, a concern that eradication would resolve if it could be accomplished, whereas expenditures on fire precautions might actually encourage additional squatting. The Social Welfare Officer, J. C. McDouall supported the construction of fire breaks, the larger the better, but insisted that "no hydrants, extinguishers or other fire-fighting apparatus should be installed, and no official encouragement should be given to the formation of local voluntary fire-fighting units in any non-tolerated squatter area. To do otherwise would be to encourage the squatters to count on and to trade on official recognition of their 'rights'."26 This concern to avoid providing the appearance of legality recurred regularly in both earlier and subsequent discussions of the squatter problem. The Chairman of the Urban Council, J. P. Fehily, insisted that the question of reducing fire hazards was "very much more complicated than the C.O.FB. seems to realize" and pointed to "certain factors which make it difficult to deal adequately with fire hazards in squatter settlements, e.g. many of them are sited on private land and leased agricultural lots". Although they could clear such areas with the Colonial Secretary's authorization in writing, they were "not in a position to mark out sites and re-plan areas for squatters except on Crown Land", nor could they lay water mains over private lots.

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G. Graham-Cumming, the Senior Health Officer, added some "cautionary observations" to the discussion. He indicated that since every squatter area "differs in character any action in them must be carefully and individually planned. ... Some areas, such as those adjoining Kai Tak [presumably Diamond Hill and Ngau Chi Wan, which will be discussed in chapter 10], are built entirely on privately owned land, others are on leased agricultural lots while the vast settlement around Pak Tin and Kap Shek Mi [sic. Shek Kip Mei] is on mixed private, agricultural lots and Crown land". He also pointed out that cutting out adequate and effective fire lanes in an area like Shek Kip Mei "will involve the displacement of some thousands of huts" and that Shek Kip Mei squatters "are now well organized and capable of putting up very vigorous opposition. They not only have their own Fire Brigade and so called 'Police Force' but their own legal advisers". He also suggested that in clearing fire lanes it was important not to try to displace too many squatters at the same time as "five to eight hundred huts at a time is about the safe limit if disturbance is to be avoided".27 As with a number of the other participants in this discussion, he linked it to the broader squatter problem and concluded that the question of resettlement was "becoming acute. Whether we like it or not the squatters will resettle elsewhere and unless planned settlements are laid out in the first instance they will simply create new and equally dangerous masses a little further away." Similarly, Fehily offered the opinion that it had "always been perfectly obvious that sooner or later a stage would inevitably be reached when squatter clearance operations might have to be stopped owing to the fact that no suitable areas remained available for the resettlement of dispossessed or evicted squatters". He also believed that they were getting "uncomfortably close" to that stage, and the problem had only been forestalled to then by the provision of two large tolerated areas. The next chapter will discuss some of the problems created by badly located tolerated areas with poor or nonexistent facilities and transport infrastructure. All of these considerations indicate a number of factors that will be important in the rest of this story. First, there were fundamental constraints on the capacity of the Hong Kong Government to resolve the squatter problem. They certainly succeeded in displacing considerable numbers of squatters, but it was widely recognized that this simply moved the problem elsewhere. They also saw resistance by squatters to clearance as common, likely to occur and something that was best avoided. Squatting seemed almost as inevitable as death or taxes, and even the closing of the border did little more than reduce the extent of the pressure from those seeking their own solutions to the housing shortage. Second, there were continuing discussions

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about the need to provide planned housing alternatives, even if only the laying out of zones where squatting would be tolerated, if uncontrolled squatting was to be kept under control. Again, this was an argument that continued to be raised, as will be seen in discussion of the 1963 Working Party on Housing Report in chapter 10. It is the nature of the alternatives that shifted over time, and I will argue in chapter 6 that the distinctiveness of the Resettlement Estate strategy was primarily that the multi-storey blocks were cost-effective and used less land than earlier experiments. Third, some form of resettlement, for some proportion of those dispossessed by clearance, was already seen in 1950 as a practical necessity if clearances were to be expeditiously achieved. Fourth, discussions about specific aspects of squatter colonies tended to develop into broader examinations of the whole squatter problem and from there into the housing problem generally. General discussion on fire precautions resulted in the first instance in a meeting convened on 31 May 1950 by the Chairman of the Urban Council at the direction of the Colonial Secretary, including representatives of the Fire Brigade, the Police, Crown Lands and Survey, the Social Welfare Officer, and the Senior Health Officer. In transmitting the recommendations from this meeting, the Deputy Colonial Secretary noted that they went "rather beyond the limited question of fire hazards" but felt that the discussions had proved worthwhile. He suggested that they should start by taking a "decision of principle which will have a considerable effect upon the whole squatter problem", to remove all remaining squatters from the Island to Kowloon. In Kowloon intervention would be limited to attempting to create and maintain fire-breaks, although practical difficulties in achieving this were acknowledged. In his minute to Governor Grantham on the topic, Colonial Secretary Todd first reminded him of the "quite unpractical suggestions" from COFB Gorman. (To label an idea as lacking in practicality seems to have been a kiss of death in bureaucratic circles at the time.) He supported the idea of clearing Hong Kong Island of all squatters which he said would be both a "big step forward" but also a "big decision" on which consultation with Executive Council would be advisable. When it subsequently came out that strenuous efforts had only reduced the number of squatters on the Island from 85,000 to 80,000, the Colonial Secretary revised his opinion since "the removal of such a large number is hardly practical politics except as a very long term policy". His new recommendation was to tackle the problem "piecemeal" by reviews of each large squatter settlement in order to generate specific proposals and estimate costs necessary to reduce the fire hazard in that locality. Parenthetically, he commented that the "trouble about a general file like this is that we go on minuting for

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months while the squatter settlement picture is constantly changing — a clearance of one area means an immediate increase of squatters in one or more other areas". On the other hand, he acknowledged the advantages of having an overall picture of the problem and the costs of resolving it "but unfortunately we haven't got several hundred thousand dollars to spare".28 The Financial Secretary offered the opinion that there were a number of indications that they might be faced with a "serious drop of revenue later in the year" so that it would be "crazy to spend what reduced funds we have on protection of structures which we wish to eliminate. I doubt whether we can contemplate more than the establishment of proper fire brakes and lanes". While various efforts were made to construct fire-breaks, local resistance often derailed them, and even when constructed, re-squatting often erased the clearings. As late as January 1954, comparable discussions about the problems of creating fire-breaks continued. The Commissioner of Police reported on proposed fire-breaks at Tai Hang Tung that would displace between 2,500 and 3,000 persons: "It is possible that they could be pushed further up the hillside ... but it would be a costly business and unless Government either paid compensation or gave them houses on the same basis as is being done at Shek Kip Mei, it would be an intensely unpopular move and could create an explosive situation. This would be highly undesirable at any time but especially so now. Again any move before Chinese New Year would cause considerable and unnecessary bitterness".29 The Commissioner of Police will be seen in subsequent chapters as frequently urging caution in relation to squatter clearances. His centrality in discussions about the squatter problem, and the impact of his warnings, is related to the political role of the police in British colonies, particularly that of the Special Branch.30 Politics seems to have been a greater factor in the course of these deliberations than any benevolent concern for those living in what all acknowledged were conditions almost certain to result in repeated conflagrations. Gorman's replacement as COFB commented that "so long as there are squatter huts there will be squatter fires, and so long as industrial activity is permitted to remain in such areas are there are on the Kowloon Peninsula so frequently, these fires will remain frequent and must inevitably continue to cause loss of life through the abnormal spread of fire due to the presence of volatile substances".31 These high-level discussions point to a systemic problem in dealing with the squatter problem. In the absence of effective capacity to make land available for legal development, illegal housing was seen as almost inevitable, and its control restricted by political concerns, as well as by limitations on

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enforcement capabilities. Squatting in turn added to the difficulties of land supply since much of the open space close to the urban areas had already been encroached upon. Without substantial interventions in existing squatter areas, fires were also seen as inevitable, and when they were sufficiently large, could be anticipated to result in crises of greater or lesser magnitude. Expenditure on fire precautions in the "wild" (unregulated) squatter areas might make their permanence more likely, reducing the return from future land sales, which were a critical part of Hong Kong government revenues. By 1951, previous efforts at squatter clearance had at best marginal success. If squatter clearance without resettlement had been feasible, this would have been the easy (and cheap) way through the developmental quagmire, and would not have required a substantial shift in governmental practices or ideology. What the usual explanations for public housing fail to account for is why squatter clearance without resettlement was not a viable course for an authoritarian colonial government that felt perfectly legitimate in allowing unwanted refugees, and the Chinese population more generally, to "shift for themselves" and which hoped for their eventual "return" to China. The Tung Tau case examined in the next chapter will demonstrate some of the consequences of the unwillingness and inability to make significant reductions in the fire hazards in Hong Kong's squatter settlements. It will also offer clues on why squatter clearance without acceptable resettlement was not a viable, or "practical", strategy. The issues of resistance that have been raised in this chapter will be examined in greater detail, as well as why such resistance was a concern for Hong Kong officials.

Tung Tau

INTRODUCTION On 21 November 1951 a fire spread through the squatter settlement in Tung Tau, immediately northeast of the Kowloon Walled City (see Figure 5.1). The aftermath of this fire had repercussions that, although largely forgotten today, I will argue set the stage for the more innovative response to the Shek Kip Mei fire. The consequences also reveal some of the most crucial underlying constraints on squatter clearance without resettlement. After describing the fire and the immediate response, I will concentrate on three issues. First, dissatisfaction with the accommodations made for the fire victims lead to civil unrest. The disturbances were significant enough that Governor Grantham pointed to them as evidence for the precariousness of Hong Kong's internal security position. Grantham's discourses about his concerns reveal how the Chinese of Hong Kong at the time were seen as a profoundly unreliable population whose fundamental loyalty was to China rather than to Hong Kong or Britain, as do other programmes which are predicated on this assumption of unreliability such as the civil measures for defense scheme, which I briefly describe. Second, I will argue that the disturbances and interventions from China combined with the geopolitical situation to help undermine the viability of the new resettlement policy adopted in January 1952, and thus took the Government farther down the road that eventually lead to multi-storey Resettlement Estates. Finally, I will examine the impact of the development of approved and tolerated areas in New Kowloon on the original villagers, and their resistance to development plans that diminished their control over "their" land. Policies that had treated New Kowloon original inhabitants in ways comparable to what was done in the rest of the New Territories would have created a very different landscape than the one that eventually emerged.

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Figure 5.1 Map of Tung Tau. Source: HKRS 337-4-249, Public Records Office, Government Records Service

THE FIRE AND ITS AFTERMATH The estimated numbers of people left homeless by the fire varied considerably. The South China Morning Post on 22 November suggested that over 3000 huts housing about 15,000 people were destroyed, 5ing Tao indicated just over 20,000, while the Hong Kong Standard offered an estimate

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of 25,000 losing their homes "in a four hour conflagration believed to be one of the worst in the Colony's history" (see Plate 5). The Social Welfare Officer responsible estimated between 15,000 and 25,000 victims. Screening of fire victims by the Social Welfare Officer registered a total of 11,961 victims from 1024 huts, 1 but it seems likely that many had left without being registered, since registration provided little but free food and perhaps a blanket or used clothes on the site.2 The Acting Social Welfare Officer's notes report that by 23 November, "relief arrangements were being subjected to serious criticism". A "determined attempt" was made on 24 November to re-squat on the fire area and "Urban Council officers on spot were putting forward the view that erection of 'temporary' shelters could not be prevented unless Government had alternatives to offer". On 27 November, when a move to Ngau Tau Kok tolerated area began, "some opposition to the move and some tentative demagogues emerged". 3 Resettlement in Ngau Tau Kok, in the eastern region of New Kowloon, was opposed by the fire victims because at the time it was extremely isolated, with no buses and few jobs available locally. Ta Kung Pao reported that resistance focused on inadequate transport facilities which required a full hour's walk to the nearest bus-stop. The villagers stressed that they needed to live near the urban area to facilitate travel to their work places and they could not afford to waste four hours every day in commuting.4 The Governor noted that "As in previous cases this fire has given the Government an unexpected opportunity to improve the area concerned and prevent it from reverting to its former overcrowded state".5 A report from Social Welfare Officer D. R. Holmes (who later became the first Commissioner for Resettlement) to Colonial Secretary Nicoll, described Social Welfare actions after a big fire as "confined to the provision of free food, the registration of victims and the encouragement of voluntary effort, primarily by the Kaifong [neighbourhood] Association concerned" (see Plate 7). He described the reasons for this policy as being to save money for the Government, to "encourage and train" the Kaifong Associations in community service and take advantage of their "detailed knowledge and understanding of local conditions". He also noted that "We have welcomed a 'time-lag' in the initiation of large-scale direct relief measures in order that those victims who can somehow make shift for themselves may not be dissuaded from doing so".6 The absence of major protests related to prior squatter fires raised expectations that this would be an easier and more cost-effective way of clearing squatter areas, with the downside being primarily related to the unpredictability of the crises. The aftermath of the Tung Tau fire was to alter this experience, and the underlying governmental calculus.

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T h e c o n n e c t i o n b e t w e e n d i s g r u n t l e d fire v i c t i m s a n d b r o a d e r Governmental concerns appears in a 22 March 1952 telegram from the Governor. He was responding to a query from the Secretary of State for the Colonies about the defensibility of Hong Kong in the circumstances of a Communist blockade and air attacks, but without a land-based invasion. The assumption for this scenario was that if there was an accompanying g r o u n d attack, local forces would be inherently inadequate. Governor Grantham stated that any evaluation made on the basis of those premises: would be unrealistic for two reasons. (A) In addition to blockade and air bombing, it is clear that a third and most potent weapon would be used against us. I refer to the capacity of the C.P.G. [Communist People's Government] for fomenting internal disturbances whether by strikes, riots or extensive sabotage and terrorism. Ability to survive blockade and air bombing is of no significance if the internal security position cannot be held. (B) Freedom from attack by Chinese ground forces is postulated. This also is of little practical significance since, whether or not the attack actually developed, the threat of attack would remain, and our present resources of manpower are frankly insufficient to cover that threat and the threat to internal security simultaneously. An examination of the position on 1st March when the disturbances occurred in Kowloon leaves no room for doubt on this point. ... By withdrawal of labour, and the internal disturbances that would certainly ensue, Hong Kong ... could be made untenable quickly and without much effort on the part of the enemy. ... my answers to the questions asked in your second paragraph must be understood to rest on one basic assumption, namely that the internal security position can be held ? W h a t happened on 1 March 1952 to merit this emphasis in relation to the prospects for Hong Kong's very survival during the uneasy days in the middle of the Korean War? According to the Hong Kong Standard: Thousands of Communist-led students and workers marching along Nathan Road yesterday afternoon attacked police, servicemen and Europeans, overturned and burned vehicles, and smashed property in a roaring riot ... The crowd had gathered at the Kowloon Railway Station at Tsimshatshui around noon in order to await the expected arrival of the Canton 'comfort' mission to the Tung Tau Village fire victims. When the mission failed to arrive, having been denied entry into the Colony, the crowd started its parade, waving banners and shouting slogans. The mood of the paraders grew uglier as they marched, and disturbances broke out. 8

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The Comfort Mission, which was bringing funds sent from Canton [Guangzhou] totaling HK$ 102,040.81, was to have been met at the border by a reception committee headed by Mr. Ying Kwai Mok of the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce and representatives of various trade unions and students aboard a special train coach9 (see Plate 8). This coach was detached at Fanling station and not permitted to proceed. It is worth noting that Mr. Mok was deported for life in September 1952 "as a result of his extreme left-wing activities". A Police Special Branch report on the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce singled out his involvement in the comfort mission affair. More generally, it noted that the Chamber has "frequently acted indirectly as an agent for the Chinese People's Government in the distribution of relief money in Hong Kong". The secret report did acknowledge that because of the high level of involvement of the Chamber's members in China trade, it was largely a "matter of expediency that the Chamber should adopt a policy favourable to Communist China, especially as the Chinese People's Government favours some of its leading members with certain trading monopolies and concessions". Nevertheless, the anonymous author continued, this situation "resulted in the Chinese People's government gaining a large measure of control over the Chamber, which it has been able to use effectively in carrying out its United Front campaign in the colony".10 Comfort missions were a potentially effective element of such United Front tactics, expressing support for those oppressed by imperialism without necessarily demanding British withdrawal. In order to understand the reaction to the Tung Tau comfort mission, the security situation of Hong Kong in the early 1950s needs to be placed in a broader context of geopolitics and colonial perceptions of the political proclivities of the Chinese residing in Hong Kong.

INTERNAL SECURITY AND THE GEOPOLITICS OF HONG KONG The riot reinforced broader concerns that Governor Grantham had about both internal security and the risk that Beijing or Guangzhou would use disturbances as an excuse to intervene in Hong Kong affairs. This concern for internal security had been apparent since much earlier. For example, Steve Tsang says that in 1949 Grantham rejected the idea of a municipal council "because it could be infiltrated by the Communists". Drawing on Department of Defence documents, he notes that the Chiefs of Staff Committee in early 1949 assessed the most serious threat to HK to be an influx of refugees, while an additional threat was "thought to be Communist-

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inspired strikes. The Committee was not of the opinion that the Chinese Communists would invade the colony, but it considered that the local security forces would need to be reinforced by a brigade group if they were to be capable of coping with both an influx of refugees and a Communist guerilla attack from across the border".11 Mark concluded from his study of Foreign Office records that the "likelihood of a direct Communist military attack on Hong Kong worried the British less ... than the internal unrest caused by the influx of refugees and Communist-inspired strikes".12 David Clayton also claims that the "Colonial Office and the authorities in Hong Kong recognised, and were extremely concerned by, the colony's vulnerability to communist insurrection".13 Chi-Kwan Mark concluded that the "main British worry was internal unrest used by China as an excuse for intervention".14 Whether or not the fears and distrust were justified, they had their effects on colonial governance, and Leo Goodstadt concludes that "fear of an unruly populace was prominent in the colonial service culture".15 In chapter 3, in the context of discussion of the Young plan for constitutional reform, I raised Steve Tsang's argument that Grantham's references to fears about internal security were not genuine but only shrewd manipulation of an issue that would be very effective in derailing proposals he opposed. Tsang discusses the Comfort Mission riot in this context, and again dismisses it, first as being not as serious as it might have appeared, and second in terms of there being no evidence that Grantham linked it to the reforms. In any case, he suggests "the situation in the colony in early 1952 was delicate and potentially explosive, but this was not entirely new; it had been the situation since the Communists obtained control in China".16 This may be true with regard to the constitutional reforms, but in a broader sense, I believe that there is evidence that Grantham was genuinely concerned about the internal security problem, and that he felt it was impossible to rely on the loyalty of the Hong Kong Chinese. In comparing him to Governor Young, Roger Louis suggested that "Grantham held much more of a Foreign Office than a Colonial Office viewpoint and believed that Hong Kong was essentially a Chinese port. He certainly did not think that the Hong Kong Chinese would ever develop a British allegiance. They would merely be content to prosper under British rule. At the time, Grantham's assessment seemed realistic enough."17 Among other evidence of his lack of trust in the Hong Kong Chinese, he reported in 7 January 1949 that "Chinese members of the Police Force cannot be regarded as wholly reliable".18 In addition to statements in the files and his memoirs, the best evidence for his lack of trust in Chinese loyalty is the way in which his concerns

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about the internal security situation produced a set of initiatives to deal with the threat. Each of these policies or programmes deserve more careful scrutiny than space allows here, but I think that a brief sketch will indicate that there is a common preoccupation with the internal security problem posed by the unreliability of the Hong Kong Chinese. Defence was one of the largest areas of spending in the early 1950s, with total cost of the Hong Kong Regiment, the Home Guard and the Royal Hong Kong Defence Force in January 1954 totalling $2,418,286. It is symptomatic that "The overall agreed role for the Hong Kong Regiment [the Reserves] is two fold: - (a) to support the civil power in maintaining intact the security of the Colony against internal unrest; (b) to support the military in the event of external aggression against the Colony".19 In subsequent discussion it was confirmed that the internal security role was primary. In order to serve this role, it was considered essential that the Chinese did not predominate in the Regiment, as reflected in the following decisions during the Defence Review: That the racial proportions between Europeans (including Portuguese) and Asians (Including Indians) be confirmed at a 50:50 ratio until the Royal Hong Kong Defence Force reaches its approved establishment. ... [and] Asians should in future be directed to the Royal Hong Kong Defence Force only as required by the Commandant... [and] That a review of European manpower at present enrolled in the Essential Services Corps should be undertaken with the aim of ensuring that the strictest economy in holdings of European manpower is observed by that Corps, and of making available to the Special Constabulary and the Royal Hong Kong Defence Force any European manpower that can be released by the Essential Services Corps without endangering services ... .20 The Essential Services Corps also reveals the belief in the association between European heritage and reliability. The Corps was composed of "reliable" non-Chinese employees in facilities such as light and power. They received substantial supplements to their salary and were to be issued pistols to defend their plants in the case of civil disturbances. The Assistant Defence Secretary minuted that the "managers of the two electricity companies count only on the services of their non-Chinese staff in an emergency, and one can only agree with this desire to play safe in two very essential undertakings".21 In another minute an official responsible for the programme reports that he asked the General Manager of one of the power companies how he would view a suggestion that some of his Chinese staff should be:

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encouraged to join the Essential Services Wing with a view to trying to secure their loyalty in this manner. Both he and Mr. Duckworth reacted very strongly against this. They felt that it was likely to have little success in compelling loyalty, and they pointed out in addition that their workers were foremost in the Union movement in the Colony and they were always looked to for a lead by other u n i o n s contemplating a strike. They felt that it would be exceedingly dangerous in these circumstances to try to enlist members of their Chinese staff into the Essential Services Wing. 22 As late as April 1960, the Commissioner of the Emergency Services Corps wrote to the Colonial Secretary that "It is the policy of the Unit Controller to build his Unit as far as possible into one comprising non-Chinese members hoping thereby to establish a more reliable 'production team'". 23 A n o t h e r k e y i n s t i t u t i o n established in p r e p a r a t i o n for i n t e r n a l emergencies was the Chinese (Emergency) Advisory Committee. The decision to establish it was made in late 1949 and its role would be "(a) to keep the Government in the closest possible touch with current Chinese o p i n i o n , before a n d d u r i n g an emergency, (b) c e n s o r s h i p , a n d (c) propaganda". In addition to government officials, several Chinese members of Executive Council and other prominent Chinese were appointed to this secret committee. 24 Other policies that reflect the widespread distrust of the loyalties of the Hong Kong Chinese include the shutting down of schools that had been "infiltrated" by c o m m u n i s t s , 2 5 a n d the p r o m u l g a t i o n of the Societies O r d i n a n c e in 1949 to p r e v e n t s u b v e r s i o n by e i t h e r CCP or KMT sympathizers. 26 Steve Tsang demonstrates how the Ordinance was related to Hong Kong's strategy for survival in the 1950s which was that while finding itself "vulnerably placed amidst the conflict of the superpowers and unable to afford becoming a flash point, Hong Kong tried to minimize such risks by ignoring the Cold War". It was able to do so because all of the Great Powers preferred to avoid a showdown there. In this context, the "basic t h r e a t to the colony's security" arose from the contest b e t w e e n the Communists and the Kuomintang which could undermine its balancing act; as a result only a policy of neutrality (which suppressed political activity from b o t h sides) w o u l d preserve H o n g Kong's security. 2 7 T h u s , t h e considerable political repression in place (at a time when Hong Kong was seen as a place of freedom at the fringe of communism) could be justified as a necessity for survival. The long list of deportees at the beginning of the minutes of every Executive Council meeting is only one example of the techniques used to discourage the wrong kind of political involvement.

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Beyond the general issue of distrust about loyalty and reliability, squatter settlements were seen as a particular threat to internal security. The McDouall report emphasized that "from a military point of view" the principal objection to the squatter colonies was no longer their harbouring of brothels but: on account of defence problems. Dense new squatter colonies are now astride or uncomfortably close to all the main approaches to Kowloon, and are being forced more and more towards Lyemun. It is of course dangerous to think that squatter colonies in Hong Kong are virtually the same as, or present identical problems to, the scattered and inaccessible hotbeds in Malaya. Nevertheless, even in the unlikely event of its happening in an emergency that 90% of Hong Kong's squatters proved not only to be peaceable but also to be co-operative with the authorities, the remaining 30,000 could constitute a very real potential threat. In an Appendix to the McDouall Report, DCI Johnston provided a long list of ways in which the squatter colonies were a menace to public order. He asserted that "no single factor in the Colony has so much bearing on the crime situation as the squatter problem. Because of the geographical nature of squatter settlements, the complete lack of planning and the absence of lighting of any kind, no proper police supervision can be exercised and patrol w o r k is almost impossible at night in these areas". In addition to common crime, "these areas provide shelter and meeting places for political agents of all kinds". A meeting took place on 4 June 1951 between military representatives Brigadier Neilson and Wing Commander Marwood-Elton and a variety of government representatives to discuss the Wakefield Report. One issue of particular concern was its recommendations of specific sites for approved and tolerated areas. This appears to have been the key meeting in which decisions were made on which parts of the Wakefield Report w o u l d be recommended to the Executive Council and which would be modified. A variety of o b j e c t i o n s a n d s u g g e s t i o n s were offered by t h e m i l i t a r y representatives. They suggested that the gridiron system of streets should be avoided in new areas since it "presents serious problems when an area has to be combed by security forces". Most significant of the alterations were that it was "agreed that 'self-screening' by squatters could not be accepted", the Commander-in-Chief and the Commissioner of Police "stressing the importance from the security angle of having a record of every family which is moved into 'tolerated' and 'approved' areas". In order to move into an approved area, each squatter would have to establish that he

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not only has the necessary financial resource but also "is accepted as a lawabiding and useful citizen".28 The strategy of gradually forcing squatters out of unregulated into regulated areas would be insufficient for these security interests if they did not have adequate control over who would be moving into the new approved areas at least. When local resistance and resentments in squatter areas prompted intervention from China, the problem was greatly intensified. Grantham commented in his memoirs on the 1951 Tung Tau squatter fire situation and noted that the absence of rehousing "led to a great deal of dissatisfaction and complaining, which was just what the communists wanted. Their press made bitter attacks on the government, but a more dangerous tactic was the intention they expressed of sending from Canton a 'comfort mission"'.29 Such "comfort missions" emerged repeatedly (see Plate 6). For example, "Canton and Kwangtung branches of Chinese People's Relief Commission have sent" $185,000 for distribution "on the occasion of Chinese New Year to victims of recent area fires at Homuntin and Kowloon Tsai. This shrewdly timed gesture is being given much publicity in left wing press.... as a counter to this move, the Nationalist Mainland Relief Association in Formosa sent $300,000 to the refugees at Rennie's Mill Camp".30 China later contributed RMB$ 1,000,000 to the Shek Kip Mei fire victims, and a memo by the Deputy Colonial Secretary expressed concern on 23 January 1954 about a Comfort Mission coming from Canton.31 Vociferous and sometimes violent resistance to clearance without acceptable resettlement arrangements emerges again and again in the files,32 and seems to have had an impact on official thinking about what courses of action were practical. On 13 May 2004,1 interviewed Denis Bray, a retired Hong Kong Government official who was a young Assistant Secretary in the early 1950s and whose name appears a number of times in following chapters. When I asked him why squatters were not simply cleared without worrying about providing resettlement, Mr. Bray replied that "We were frightened. Doing that would be unacceptable. To go in to a big area and tell them they would have to go tomorrow, there would be murder". He made it very clear that they were worried about the possibility of riots: "no one in their senses" would try to evict large numbers of squatters without anywhere to go. Despite concerns about the possibility for violence resulting from widespread clearance without adequate resettlement, this consideration alone might not have compelled the Hong Kong Government to commit substantial resources to the construction of resettlement estates. The vulnerable diplomatic situation gave it much more leverage. A statement by Mao Zedong to a British journalist in 1946 is suggestive (although given the context one cannot place too much weight on it):

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I am not interested in Hong Kong; the Communist Party is not interested in Hong Kong ... Perhaps ten, twenty or thirty years hence we may ask for a discussion regarding its return, but my attitude is that so long as your [British] officials do not maltreat Chinese subjects in Hong Kong, and so long as Chinese are not treated as inferiors to others in the matter of taxation and a voice in the Government, I am not interested in Hong Kong, and will certainly not allow it to be a bone of contention between your country and mine. 33 Although regularly cited as reassurance that Hong Kong would be left alone by a victorious Communist Party, the caveats about mistreatment of Chinese subjects are usually not accorded much consideration. Given the long history of popular mobilization within China against the evil-doing of Western imperialists, this could be simply a rhetorical device. It could also, however, have been a genuine signal that maltreatment of Chinese subjects could provoke intervention in the interests of justice. When I asked Mr. Bray about whether China influenced considerations about the squatter problem, he agreed that deliberately provoking thousands of people would have invited i n t e r v e n t i o n from C h i n a . He e x p l a i n e d t h a t t h e r e w a s "a m u t u a l understanding that the communists wouldn't cause too m u c h trouble for us, and we wouldn't cause too much trouble for t h e m . . . . China was prepared to accept the colonial situation. If you were to interfere with any of the tripartite legs [Hong Kong, China and Britain], it could cause problems. This situation continued right up to 1997". In support of this view, a memo dated 18 February 1950 from Bevin, the Foreign Minister, to the Far Eastern Department argued that "we must do everything we can in Hong Kong to prevent [and] avoid incidents which give additional ammunition to the Chinese communists". 3 4 Incidents such as the Tung Tau Comfort Mission riot received extensive coverage in the Mainland media, particularly in Canton/Guangzhou. A 1959 M.A. dissertation noted that: Several organizations unanimously considered this act a provocation by the "British imperialists" against the People's Republic of China. ... Whilst lodging with the British authorities in Hong Kong the most serious protest, all these people's organization pledged wholehearted support to the patriotic struggle of the Chinese in Hong Kong against the imperialist atrocities.35 Shanghai's Ta Kung Pao newspaper wrote that "the outrage is-not accidental nor an isolated case but a premeditated conspiracy — evidence of the British

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imperialist's hostile policy toward the Chinese people".36 The Chinese Foreign Ministry released a statement that "charged that there had been a number of fires of suspicious origin in poverty-stricken areas of the colony, after which the British imperialists had refused to aid victims or allow them to receive outside assistance. For these and other atrocities, the statement concluded, the British government would be held fully responsible". Chinese newspapers also "accused the British of deliberately setting the [Tung Tau] blaze and refusing to fight it, in order to clear land for extension of the nearby airport".37 Militant dispossessed squatters or fire victims, then, potentially destabilized the balancing act that helped to preserve the status quo in an era where anti-imperialists ruled China and decolonization was rising almost everywhere else in the world. At the same time, the United States, while no longer as insistently anti-imperialist as it had been during the early parts of World War II, was very reluctant to either be seen as intervening to support the retention of Britain's Empire or to provide guarantees that it would assist Britain in any necessary defence of Hong Kong. It was not until 1959 that the United States was willing to commit itself to anything more than assistance with evacuation in the event of a Chinese invasion of Hong Kong.38 Previously, a version of "strategic ambiguity" had been used to keep both London and Beijing guessing about what Washington would do, and messages had been transmitted with the implication that if London were to "provoke" Beijing into invading, London should not expect Washington's support.39 Militant, even violent, responses from dispossessed squatters or fire victims would probably not have been sufficient incentive to provoke the Hong Kong Government to move into areas where it was reluctant to venture: the direct provision of housing and heavy involvement in social welfare of any kind. In any case, public opinion could have been swayed against the squatters by emphasizing the need to deal first with the housing needs of those who had contributed in the past to the development of Hong Kong rather than the demands of disorderly and unwanted breeders of disease, crime and delinquent children. It is only in the context of the potential for angry squatters to prompt unwanted intervention in Hong Kong affairs by the mainland that the difficulties in dealing with unruly squatters can be explained as necessitating substantial investment in resettlement rather than simply clearing them out. And the very proliferation of squatters is partly explicable in the same terms. Taken one step farther, intervention by Guangzhou or Beijing in turn could have been easily managed if it were not for the precarious diplomatic and geopolitical situation of Hong Kong, and

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the inability of Britain to defend it without the strong support of the United States or at least its Commonwealth partners.40 What was still missing, though, was a squatter resettlement programme that was both effective and affordable. The new squatter resettlement policies adopted in 1952 achieved neither criteria. I will argue in chapter 6 that once this part of the puzzle was in place in 1954, it became possible to expand the Resettlement Programme sufficiently to eventually provide affordable housing to a large proportion of the Hong Kong population. The success of the multi-storey Resettlement Estates did not, however, in itself resolve the squatter problem, which was finally brought under effective control only after 1984.41 The next section addresses the new initiatives adopted in 1952.

THE WAKEFIELD REPORT AND THE 1952 RESETTLEMENT PROGRAMME In chapter 3 I indicated that the recommendations in the McDouall Report, and the resulting decisions from the Executive Council were relatively modest, despite McDoualfs recognition that the policies deriving from the 1948 legislation had primarily resulted in shifting the problem elsewhere. The larger shift in policy came with the Wakefield Report, but the most important change seems to have been first proposed in a note by Todd, the Secretary for Chinese Affairs. His comments on the McDouall Report were included with the Report and the Memorandum summarizing the recommendations. At that time, the practice was that before squatters could be cleared, the specific site had to be "gazetted" with a notice in the Hong Kong Hansard under the Public Health (Sanitary Provisions) Regulations, 1948. The effect of this was stated to be that "new arrivals in the Colony, or anyone choosing to vacate his tenement flat or cubicle, may squat unmolested in any non-Gazetted area".42 While McDouall had suggested a few extensions of the Gazetted areas, Todd proposed the simpler and more radical step of Gazetting "the whole of the Island of Hong Kong, Kowloon, New Kowloon, and an area beyond the limits of New Kowloon, if necessary". He also suggested carefully demarcating certain approved squatter areas, with adequate fire-lanes and "other necessary measures for reducing chaos to some semblance of order". Once the space of the Colony was ordered in this fashion, he suggested as a general strategy that "All squatters outside the declared 'approved squatter areas' would then systematically be driven into the 'approved squatter areas' and would be kept there under some degree

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of control. Once having got the squatters into a few large and well-defined settlements we can 'turn on the heat', as circumstances allow, with a view to persuading them to return to China". He suggested three techniques for "turning on the heat". The first technique was setting a maximum size for squatter huts. He noted that they had discovered a large hut which contained 32 rooms or cubicles, each of which was rented for $25 per month, for a total annual rent of $9600. Since it was reportedly built for $4000, the profit motive would clearly encourage squatting under conditions of housing shortage. The second element of the approach was requiring that squatter structures be used only for residential purposes and demolishing those used for commercial and industrial purposes, since such uses tend to make "selfcontained communities of the squatter settlements". The third technique would be to forbid the power companies to install or allow the installation of electricity. He also recognized that a great expansion of the number of squatter patrols would be needed.43 The key recommendations of the Wakefield report reflect this overall strategy. It first suggests that all squatters should be immediately registered. After this they would have to choose between three options. They could build an approved-type hut (13' x 13') in an approved area at an estimated $900 if self-constructed. Or they could build an approved-type bungalow at an estimated cost of $1300 for a small or $1500 for a larger unit, if selfconstructed. Thirdly, they could "continue to be a tolerated squatter and move to whichever of the tolerated areas they are directed to, when clearance of their area is effected". This recommendation would remove the prior limitations of residency and occupation on eligibility for approved areas. Much of the report involved proposals for where new approved and tolerated areas could be established. The suggestion for dealing with squatter structures on private land was that lessees should be warned to remove the illegal structures and if they failed to do so their land would "revert without compensation to the Crown for breach of terms of the lease", with remaining structures being tolerated as being on Crown land until such time as planned development proceeded. On the issue of Todd's suggested policy of attrition on non-tolerated areas, Wakefield thought it should be applied very gradually. He noted that if squatters who moved to tolerated areas were not allowed to set up commercial or industrial enterprises, "greater difficulties will be met with in later clearances". He cites the Commissioner of Labour as having the opinion that a policy of attrition "may cause political ill-feeling and will not attain the object desired". In a minute, the Deputy Colonial Secretary also expressed concern about the policy of attrition and the attempt to pressure

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squatters to leave Hong Kong by making them "as uncomfortable as possible". He wrote that "we may be in danger of losing sight of the basic claims of humanity. The Japanese, faced with the same problem, persuaded 4/5th of the population to leave by stopping their rice. Whatever measures we adopt will be less effective (because less ruthless) but will expose us to accusations of Japanese brutality".44 The squatter problem was commonly referred to during this period as reflecting a broader problem of overpopulation, and it is relevant to point out that the McDouall report had been referred for deliberation to the Chinese Advisory Committee under the heading of "Over-population and Squatters" and that there was a committee established on over-population.45 Wakefield's estimate of the cost of these proposals was $237,140 for non-recurrent costs and $399,750 total annual recurrent costs related to squatter control in the tolerated areas.46 Wakefield's report also made proposals for a Housing Trust to provide permanent housing for employees of government and utility companies, which will be discussed separately in chapter 6. Subject to the modifications mentioned above, the key recommendations were adopted in principle by the Executive Council on 3 July 1951.47 A subsequent Executive Council memorandum on 15 January 1952 accepted the draft Emergency (Resettlement Areas) Regulations and the list of approved areas to be established. It also noted that it "will also be possible for certain of the fire victims from Tung Tau Village ... to be resettled properly".48 The new policy was announced by Chairman of the Urban Council Barnett in a radio broadcast on 17 January 1952. Secretary of State for the Colonies Lyttleton responded to a question in the House of Commons on 12 March about the 1 March riot and the Tung Tau fire victims' situation. The main forms of accommodation were allowing re-squatting and the provision of approved sites to those who could afford it. Of the 2,996 who were registered, 28% stated that they could afford to raise $1200 for the approved type bungalows, and were offered sites in King's Park and Lai Chi Kok, and in the planned new area at Tung Tau itself.49 The planning of this new site, however, became subject to intense political conflict in itself, and in the next section I connect these difficulties to the position of indigenous villagers in the New Kowloon portion of the leased New Territories. While the Tung Tau fire in itself did not transform housing policy, the political difficulties it exposed in the 1952 Resettlement Scheme combined with its inefficient use of scarce land and relatively high costs to help set the scene for its replacement with something that would be more capable of breaking the bottleneck in urban development.

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THE TUNG TAU RESUMPTION AND URBAN PLANNING IN NEW KOWLOON The fire site was gazetted for clearance u n d e r the 1948 Public Health Regulations on 23 November 1951, but because most of the land was private a g r i c u l t u r a l l a n d it was dealt w i t h by n e w E m e r g e n c y ( I m m e d i a t e Resumption) Regulations, 1952. 50 W h e n the New Territories were leased for 99 years in 1898, landowners were given 75 year leases, renewable for 24 years, w h i c h were registered as Building Land for those with built structures and Agricultural Land for other uses. Allen Chun has argued that we cannot understand the transformation of village society in the New Territories after 1899 without a close examination of the impact of land policy which transformed "tradition" as much as it preserved it under ideas of indirect rule. 51 His fascinating account, however, fails to address the fate of those villagers unfortunate enough to live in the New Kowloon portion of the leased Territories, whose village organization has been demolished to an extent much greater than beyond the Kowloon mountain range. 52 From t h e b e g i n n i n g of t h e Lease, N e w K o w l o o n was w h e r e v e r p o s s i b l e administered in the same ways as the ceded parts of the Colony and very differently than in the rest of the New Territories. The most significant element of this for current purposes is that the capacity of villagers to develop their own land was m u c h more restricted. A significant, but inestimable, portion of the squatter settlements resulted from the villagers operating as squatter landlords and attempting to profit from the demand for land in a way that the formal rules made almost impossible. Perhaps surprisingly, given the strong emphasis on the merits of private profits in Hong Kong, squatter landlords were seen by almost all c o m m e n t a t o r s within the government as a group on which "no sympathy need be wasted". 53 An Arbitration Board was formed to settle the amount of compensation for the resumed land. As the Director of Public Works noted in a minute to the D e p u t y Colonial Secretary o n 23 December 1952, "considerable opposition has been voiced to the various resumptions of land in the Tung Tau Village Area". Opposition was presented as: [based] not on the resumptions themselves but on the use to which the resumed land is being put — that is resettlement of squatters. No one can reasonably object to resumptions for permanent development since this is vital to the expansion of the community but people do object to being displaced from land they may have occupied for many years to make way for what they consider relatively newcomers to the

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Colony. Over and above this there is the larger issue of the uneconomic use of land and the social problem likely to result from displacing more people than are resettled.54 The level of anger among the villagers, coupled with some broader political support, was sufficient that Colonial Secretary Robert Black felt compelled to "postpone further resumptions in this area which were approved by the Governor in Council last February, in spite of the fact that additional land is urgently required for squatter resettlement. The effect is, therefore, that further progress of the squatter resettlement scheme, which has political significance as you know, is being held up". 5 5 One reason for the delay were the tactics used by the landowners representative at the Arbitration Board. Percy Chen was a political activist who had been actively involved with the left-wing of the Kuomintang, and had returned to Hong Kong in 1947. 56 He involved himself in a variety of political causes, and references to him by government officials in minutes seem accompanied by an almost audible sigh. Percy Chen was also one of the key figures in trying to bring the comfort mission to Hong Kong in support of the Tung Tau fire victims, but was not deported as Mr. Mok had been. He also was the co-author, as Vice-Chairman, of a letter from the Hong Kong Chinese Reform Association to the Colonial Secretary on the "resettlement scheme and the livelihood of squatters". This letter argued that "the resettlement scheme should be cancelled, and that the original districts and the houses therein should be allowed to remain". The rationales included that the construction companies producing the approved cottages were m a k i n g excessive profit and the injustices being inflicted on the "farming population of nearly 20,000" in the peri-urban areas. It also pointed out that some of the homes to be destroyed had been there for over a hundred years a n d m a n y were of m u c h higher quality t h a n the n e w approved bungalows: "The stone and brick houses in Diamond Hill, Sheung Yuen Ling, Chuk Yuen Village and Nga Chin Wai are suitable for residence, and some of them are nice structures in foreign style". 57 In his representations at the Arbitration Board, he ranged widely through the rationale of the entire squatter resettlement scheme, calling a variety of government officials as witnesses on points that the Government saw as irrelevant to the issue of c o m p e n s a t i o n . O n e of his i n t e r v e n t i o n s is particularly interesting. He suggested that: the Hongkong inhabitants who held agricultural land in these areas are desirous that an exchange of land for land will be made by Government. This, however, is a matter which may be discussed at a

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later stage. The Hongkong inhabitants who owned buildings and building land in these areas request that Government will accord them the same rights as those given to the "squatters", namely (a) to build a dwelling house; (b) to erect a shop; or (c) to erect a factory. Those whose buildings are still standing request that Government will not pull them down but will let them remain, provided that sanitary improvements are carried out.58 Essentially, this is an argument that villagers should be allowed the right to develop their agricultural land. It is worth noting that such a decision would likely have greatly expanded the supply of housing, given the high profits reported from the rental of squatter structures, and would have resulted in a dramatically different urban landscape than the one that emerged from the massive provision of Resettlement housing. It is clear that there was considerable resentment from the villagers of New Kowloon about the loss of control over what they saw as "their" land, and that these sentiments increased the difficulties in implementing the new resettlement policies. Chairman, Urban Council Barnett stressed that the squatter resettlement scheme should start with "docile" cases and that "no political or legal difficulties are added to the physical ones". He argued against pursuing immediately a case near the Kai Tak Airport on these grounds. He believed that the squatters intended to provoke an incident similar to the Walled City clearance and said that "from the fact that they have briefed Percy Chen it is possible that the People's Govt, is going to take a hand. And if the Foreign Office gets dragged into the squatter resettlement scheme before it has got steam u p there will be no resettlement scheme". 59 This last comment clearly sets out a sense of the way in which involvement from the Mainland could undermine plans, if only through the undesired meddling of the Foreign Office. A memo from the Chairman of the Urban Council to the Commissioner of Police reveals some of the dimensions of local resistance so well that I will address it at some length. He is sending the Commissioner a poster calling upon squatters in Ngau Tau Kok to unite "against the Resettlement policy and naming Overseer Kan Chi Wing (under the name of 'Kan Kau' or 'Kan the Dog') as a traitor, public enemy and running dog, and 'one who relies on the power of British Imperialism to oppress the people'. It says at the end 'If we rise u p in unity, there will come a day w h e n traitors and running dogs of this sort will be liquidated'." Barnett notes that the wording of the poster is "reminiscent of that of leaflets handed out on 10/2/52 at Tung Tau". Barnett argued that this was not:

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an isolated piece of sedition, but part of a definite propaganda offensive against the resettlement scheme, which must be, in my opinion, calmly met and defeated. The Commissioner had been provided with the names of some people: we know to be taking part in this offensive. They appear to be of the "squatter landlord" type — in fact the racketeers whom I have publicly castigated. Mr. Wong Pak Chau I think is one of these. Mr. Tang Chi Keung (see page 11 of today's Hong Kong Standard) is another. The initial successes of the resettlement scheme have no doubt frightened them, as the successful resettlement of their victims will mean the loss of their profitable rackets. But the organization which is linking these individual racketeers together is one on which I have not yet drawn a bead: its existence is evident from the fact of coordination, but the brain directing it is I suppose in Canton. It is worth pointing out that the very profitability of "squatter rackets" seems to indicate that there was a very substantial population of individuals who were capable of paying rents high enough for providers to make a profit, despite the risk of losing one's investment in a clearance, and that this suggests that legal housing was being underprovided for various reasons. I have argued above that the fundamental reason was the inability of the government to make adequate amounts of land available for legal private development. The suggestion of a political alliance between racketeering building speculators and the Chinese Communist Party (while landlords in China were actively persecuted as the class enemy) is somewhat mindbending. If we see the landlords instead as oppressed indigenous inhabitants suffering under the iniquities of British imperialism, however, the cognitive dissonance is considerably less. Barnett suggested that it would be ineffective to contradict "lies like those given to the press yesterday afternoon by Mr. Tang Chi Keung. Nor, I think, is it good policy to receive deputations like that organized by Mr. Wong Pak Chau, which was seen by the D.C.S. also yesterday afternoon". He then made very clear the way in which the deportation system operated to stifle dissent and undermined even the supposed liberties of free speech: "Both of these gentlemen may, it is true, be found to have elected themselves for deportation when you have got more information on their activities. But the master brain will soon find others to take their place". 60 Regardless of what the "master brain" may have been at the time, a political organization did emerge in the region somewhat later which was

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widely disliked among government officials, the Kowloon Thirteen Villages Committee. This Committee was formed in 1957 in response to a clearance i n N e w K o w l o o n . A c c o r d i n g to t h e i r t w e n t y - f i f t h a n n i v e r s a r y commemorative publication, "the villagers, after the news that Chuk Yuen was to be resumed, realized their close interdependence and c o m m o n economic interests and organized the 'Kowloon Ten Villages United to Help Chuk Yuen Villagers Committee'", which was eventually expanded to thirteen villages. 61 In relation to a clearance for the Wong Tai Sin Resettlement Estate in 1957, the Secretary for Chinese Affairs reported that: Subscriptions totalling $30,000 or more were collected from practically every resident throughout the bemused and by now frightened area, to enable a largely self-appointed committee to fight an alleged threatened eviction of "two hundred thousand" villagers from their ancestral homes ... direct contact with the real villagers in this area or with genuine village elders became increasingly difficult. At one stage it looked as though the trouble-makers might be able to stir up serious physical violence when the first clearances were to be made for the Wong Tai Sin Resettlement Estate.62 A particularly interesting case emerged in relation to that clearance. Secretary for Chinese Affairs McDouall supported, based on the appearance of the stone dwelling, an appeal from a resident who claimed that his house had been built in 1850 but was missed by the 1900 Land Survey. McDouall was eventually convinced to drop his support on two grounds. First, he admitted that he had "overlooked the possibly awkward results of heretically suggesting that the old Land Courts could ever have humanly erred. I therefore reverse my original suggestion and recommend that as a matter of expediency Government should reject Lam's land claim as not proven." Second, the appellant was described by Wakefield as: one of the more outspoken representatives of the Thirteen Villages Committee [who has] called at intervals at this Secretariat since the first clearances started to express the general dissatisfaction of farmers and residents at Wong Tai Sin to the development of this area as a Resettlement Area. ... Throughout LAM has proved to be a most offensive and objectionable individual. ... I was apprehensive of this demolition giving really solid ground for political unrest. McDouall noted that he had "refused to have anything whatsoever to do with the Thirteen Villages' Committee, and have turned them away from the SCA [Secretary for Chinese Affairs] w h e n they attempted to get an

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interview to discuss the case". 63 Despite this reluctance by the government to concede to demands, they eventually responded to the way in which the "1957 Wong Tai Sin clearances caused some apprehension among the old villagers in the North Kowloon strip (fostered by the 13 Villages Committee) and Government made two announcements, on the 6th April and 30th May, 1957 to p u t their minds at rest". These were: plans for the Wong Tai Sin Estate, the Housing Authority Estate on the Clear Water Bay Road and resettlement estates at Jordan Valley and Kwun Tong would go ahead, but that no future development schemes would be put in hand until S.C.A. had first discussed them with affected villagers, and they had been put through the Town Planning Board. We also promised to preserve the integrity of old villagers "to the maximum extent possible"; this meant that in planning road lines we would avoid villages houses and the tempo of redevelopment of village areas would be left to the villagers themselves.64 W h i l e these cases are from a few years later t h a n t h e Tung Tau resumptions, they indicate that similar issues in terms of the tension between old villagers and the resettlement plans persisted during the period, and suggest that attempting to deal with their concerns by political organization rather than relying on the paternalistic benevolence of the government may have worked against them. However, avoiding politicization did not mean that problems were any more likely to be resolved, as the case of water supplies to the old village of Cha Kwo Ling indicates. F r o m 1948 the villagers repeatedly petitioned the g o v e r n m e n t for urgently needed help. Their only source of water in the dry season had been diverted by two large petroleum and clay companies. As the population rose from 3000 to 5000 by 1952, villagers were forced to buy expensive water from waterboats or line u p for many hours, sometimes overnight, at a single small pipe. Each time they petitioned, the government acknowledged the need and the injustice, but when they received estimates on providing the water, they decided that, for example, $70,000 could be better spent elsewhere. In 1955, an official asserted that: If there is to be any choice between the potential factories and the existing inhabitants as having a claim to existing water, then I suggest the villagers should be supported. ... It would be, I suggest, gross injustice to Cha Kwo Ling to put the problem aside until the end of 1958. These villagers are outside DCNT's [District Commissioner, New Territories] purview and tend therefore to be somewhat overlooked.65

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The Deputy Colonial Secretary responded that "Like you, my sympathies are with the inhabitants of the Cha Kwo Ling village whose interests are being sacrificed for the needs of big business" and asked for another inquiry.66 Again the price was too high and the water was needed for the new industrial area in Kwun Tong, and water would be in better supply once the reservoir at Tai Lam Chung was completed in 1958. When the reservoir was completed, another petition produced the comment that the extension of the main supply would be rather expensive! The file ended there, and it is not clear when water was finally provided to the long-suffering villagers. It seems to express some of the sadder elements of the treatment of villagers in New Kowloon, in contrast to a generally more supportive environment in the rest of the New Territories.

CONCLUSION The Tung Tau fire raised a wide range of important issues concerning the path of development of Hong Kong in the early 1950s. The Comfort Mission Riot exposed risks posed by civil disturbances that could be seen by China as the result of imperialist mistreatment of Chinese subjects. They could also damage the more progressive face of colonial rule that Britain was trying to promote in the period after World War II, and which was important in encouraging American tolerance for the continuance of the British Empire. In exploring the nature of this geopolitically constituted vulnerability, the broader governmental beliefs in the unreliability of Hong Kong's Chinese residents became clear. The new squatter resettlement policies adopted in January 1952 also intensified governmental conflict with the original residents of New Kowloon, where the vast majority of the new approved and tolerated areas would be located. These conflicts contributed in some part to the failings of this new programme, which will be examined in the next chapter. It should already be clear that the loss of homes to fire by tens of thousands of squatters was not enough to launch the government on the construction of permanent public housing. In the next chapter, I will examine the background of the immediate response to the Shek Kip Mei fire, but will also suggest that at least until the following large fire, it was still not clear to the government that they had initiated Hong Kong's remarkable public housing programme.

Shek Kip Mei *

INTRODUCTION Descriptions of the massive fire on Christmas Day 1953 in the Six Villages of Shek Kip Mei cannot begin to account for the disastrous consequences for the more than fifty thousand people who lost their homes that day. Photographs offer more effective portraits of the situation (see Plates 9 and 10). The headline of the Ta Kung Pao suggests the impact of the calamity: "Running for life with families,/ Grieving screams echo in the night,/ Everything lost after escaping from dreadful fire,/ Thousands homeless in freezing weather". Despite the devastation, large numbers of victims combed the site searching for any remains of their possessions (Plates 11, 12). Given the tremendous scale of the blaze, it is remarkable that only two people were killed in the fire. Mortality rates in Hong Kong's squatter fires have generally been surprisingly low. Fatalities may have been reduced by general psychological preparedness: people lived in fear of a fire and thus were primed to flee at the first sign of a fire out of control (Plate 14). Dr Ernest Chui of the University of Hong Kong has described the flight of his family from the fire. They lived in a stone hut in Lower Pak Tin Village, one of the Six Villages that were destroyed in the disaster. His second older sister only told him about the fire at his mother's funeral in 1989. She told him that she couldn't let go of the "idea that she was somewhat 'abandoned' by mother during that fire [when she was three years of age]". She related to him that she "was only carried by a neighbor while escaping from the squatter fire" while the eldest (seven years) and third sisters (three months of age) were carried by their mother during the escape. His eldest sister described how during the crisis she had been: given the greatest family responsibility ever: to carry the family's whole fortune of HK$30 in her pocket. Mother sewed the three $10 dollar

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notes into her pocket at the front of her skirt and that was probably why Mother carried her all along during the escape, together with the 3-month old baby third sister. After all, she only had two arms. Father was out at work when the fire broke out and so couldn't help a bit for his wife and 3 children at the ages of 7, 3 and 3 months). After the fire, our family was allowed to return to live in the stone h u t . . . My aunt, whose wooden hut was burnt, could only erect cardboards/wood structures on the streets for some time. Eventually both my family and my aunt's were resettled in the resettlement estates when the squatter was cleared after the fire. This story is only one of tens of thousands of tales of survival from a day that must live indelibly in all those who lived through it. It also has acquired a mythical status in the stories told about how Hong Kong became the place it is today. While there are disagreements about why the Hong Kong Government undertook the direct provision of permanent multi-storey housing after the Shek Kip Mei fire, t h e radical n a t u r e of the decision a n d its fateful consequences for Hong Kong's subsequent history are rarely questioned. At one level I do not question it either: the building of the first Resettlement Estates was indeed a pivotal decision. But I suggest that the nature of this initiative is rather different than what has subsequently become established as an iconic t u r n i n g p o i n t or milestone in public h o u s i n g . First, the continuities are m u c h greater than is usually recognized in the standard accounts. Second, it is not before the second half of 1954, and another major squatter fire, that the government officials involved clearly understood, or agreed, on what they were doing, beginning a new Resettlement Programme rather than just a provisional, expedient response to a singular crisis. Finally, it is inaccurate, and a case of interpreting the past in the context of the future, to see the first multi-storey Resettlement as the beginning of public housing. Government subsidized non-resettlement housing had already been produced in the form of Housing Society and Model Housing Society projects, and the old Housing Authority was also established in 1954 to produce low-cost housing, with a distinct process of gestation (the Resettlement Department and the old Housing Authority were merged to form the new Housing Department and Housing Authority in 1972). Although dramatic origin stories are useful for the creation of myths, which in turn can mobilize social and cultural forces, the real story of the gradual emergence of public housing is a much more complicated, multi-stranded affair.

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In chapter 1,1 sketched the main explanations for the beginnings of public housing, which I will now be treating more accurately as the beginning of sustained public provision of permanent multi-storey squatter resettlement housing. In subsequent chapters, I hope that it has become clear both that large squatter fires did not of themselves necessarily produce this kind of intervention, and that it is insufficient to examine only the motivations of colonial decision-makers. Of at least equal importance are the constraints on their actions. Squatter resettlement is best seen not as something that the key players wanted in itself, but something that was imposed on them if they wanted to clear land for the kinds of urban development that they desired while simultaneously maintaining civil order and freedom from unwelcome interventions from Beijing, Guangzhou or London (the last being constrained in turn by its junior status in the postwar partnership with the United States). By the end of 1953, the problem with the earlier approach was that two years of squatter resettlement had entailed significant expenditure without any great progress in the main goals: a landscape, free of squatters and their accompanying prospects for social disorder, that could easily be developed in the manner favoured by the government while producing a healthy flow of land-based revenues.1 While temporary housing fit well with official attitudes about what squatters deserved and what were proper forms of governmental intervention, the problem was that by its very nature it was uneconomical in its use of what was the scarcest factor of production in Hong Kong: developable land. Indeed, because of expectations about minimum standards of housing and maximum rents that could be charged, approved and tolerated areas were actually both less economical in their use of land and less efficient in generating rents in relation to capital and recurrent expenditure than were the squatter settlements that were being demolished at government trouble and expense. The squatter problem was often described as a bottleneck that was holding up development. If squatter settlements on the developable periphery could be eradicated, then new housing could be built that would allow squatters to obtain some kind of legal shelter, if only through "trickle-down" effects as more established residents left their more dilapidated dwellings for the less well-off to occupy. I believe it is more realistic to see the bottleneck as resulting ultimately from the choices of government, with squatting as a consequence rather than the ultimate cause of the problem. Land was immensely valuable in Hong Kong, and not only was there demand for housing, but this demand was intense enough that squatter landlords could recoup their investment in less than a year (as long as they didn't lose their investment to clearance in the interim). Governmental revenues exceeded

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expenditures consistently in the postwar period. The government could have helped resolve the mismatch between effective demand for housing and the supply of land and housing made available to meet this demand in at least two ways: by reducing their control over development and allowing the villagers of New Kowloon to profit by turning their agricultural land into profitable rental housing, or by getting involved in public provision much earlier than it did. Arguably, public provision at the minimal standards of the Resettlement Estates could even have been profitable, as the Wakefield Report suggested. It seems to have taken a series of squatter fires, the failure of earlier approaches, and the success of the Shek Kip Mei experiment to break this governance logjam. How these processes eventually produced a housing scheme that worked in fiscal terms (and, surprisingly, in social terms as well despite the potential for disaster in overcrowded high-rise "barrack-style" housing of very minimal standards and facilities), and how this experiment was eventually institutionalized as an ongoing programme is the subject of the remainder of this volume.

CONTINUITIES AND POLICY SHIFTS In a 1960 essay, J. M. Fraser, the Commissioner for Housing could still refer to the squatter resettlement programme as having begun in 1952.2 From this perspective, it was the Emergency Regulations adopted in 1952 to facilitate squatter clearance, with their more radical procedures in relation to notification and resumption that was the more significant turning point, even though it has faded from our historical imagination as having any real importance. Legislation regularizing (after the fact) the Shek Kip Mei multistorey buildings was labeled the Emergency (Provisional Resettlement Areas) Regulations 1954, and was part of a sequence including the Emergency (Resettlement Areas) Regulations, 1952, and the Emergency (Squatter Clearance) Regulations, 1953. From an administrative perspective, the architectural characteristics of the provisional housing were less fundamental than the powers that were being expanded or curtailed. It is only after the fact that the innovations of the emergency response to the fire can be seen as the beginning of something radically distinct from past practices. An example of an innovation that developed before the Shek Kip Mei fire but fed into the fire response can be seen in a minute from September 1953 concerning the slow pace of tolerated area construction. The slow pace had resulted in an almost complete moratorium on new clearance until tolerated plots were available. In a proposal to deal with this constraint, an

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"unprecedented proposal" was made that Government should form the sites. The argument in favour of this was that "Not only will this save money in the long run but it will save Government from being attacked for resettling squatters on perilous sites". The cost of site formation, drainage and paths, "some of which would have to be done in any case, will be about $1,000, 000 out of a total of about $1,280,000 required to start the area this financial year".3 Once engaged in site formation at considerable expense (see Plate 13), the move to preparing sites for higher density accommodation might be a relatively natural one. Throughout 1953 there was an ongoing review of the squatter resettlement policy. This review appears to have been set into action as a result of a one-year progress report on the new resettlement policy that reported what was interpreted as insufficient progress,4 and a critical letter from Brook Bernacchi at the Reform Club of Hong Kong which was covered in the newspapers.5 Most of the official commentary on the report was negative. The Commissioner of Police stated that there could be "little doubt that there is, at present, a lack of suitable areas upon which displaced persons can be resettled. Bluntly, Ngau Tau Kok is a failure. It was planned that by now there should have been some 6,000 huts, whereas there are, in fact, only 219". He pointed out that this failure has resulted in an increase in street sleeping, and concluded that he did not "believe that any further rehousing schemes of the nature of those already permitted should be undertaken with Government sponsorship". He asked "whether we really need to move any more squatters when we have no suitable place to put them", particularly since displacement tends to produce great hardship and may "add to both the security and crime problem already in existence because of the displacement of such persons". It seems particularly prophetic that he pointed out that on a "first-class site" like Tung Tau "it would have been far better to have utilized it to the full by putting up large blocks of tenements six or seven stories in height".6 This is only one of a variety of indications that such ideas were becoming common well before the Shek Kip Mei fire took place. It seems very likely that even in the absence of the fire, something like the Mark I Resettlement Estates would have developed, if not in 1954, then shortly thereafter. Governor Grantham wrote after his retirement that they had been "thinking of doing something far more drastic when the Shek Kip Mei fire compelled us to make up our minds and take speedy action".7 The Secretary for Chinese Affairs, in a minute of 8 January 1954 to the Colonial Secretary, also described resettlement as a failure. Todd suggested the need for a serious policy review and that "It may be that we should

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cease to attempt to move squatters on a large scale" and instead "tidy up" existing squatter areas while initiating "substantial housing schemes with Government leading the way".8 Despite these fundamental critiques, the decisions made at a high-level meeting on 12 January 1953 were much less radical, probably because the official primarily responsible for resettlement, Fehily, the Chairman of the Urban Council, felt that the programme could be put on track with some minor revisions. The key decision taken was that squatter areas should be cleared only if the area was required for developed or was a very serious health risk, and there must be an area available for immediate resettlement. It was also recommended that the authority for clearance should become the Director of Public Works, and that more effective measures be taken to provide employment in or near resettlement areas.9 In a minute summarizing the discussion prior to the meeting it was indicated that there was "general agreement that large schemes for low cost blocks of flats are required. This is certainly a less wasteful way of using land in the urban areas than the building of bungalows", although reservations were expressed about whether squatters could afford to pay an estimated $70 a month for a flat.10 The Finance Committee was consulted on these conclusions, and it also expressed "concern about the squatter re-settlement policy, following on last night's fire. W D'Almada appeared to favour some form of subsidized housing (fireproof housing in place of shacks)".11 Norman Miners describes the meetings of the Finance Committee as more important than the formal open sessions of the Legislative Council and second in significance only to the Executive Council. It was composed of all the unofficial members of Legco plus the Colonial Secretary, the Financial Secretary and one other official, often the Director of Public Works. Finance Committee always deliberated in secret, with the result that meetings were much less restrained than Legco, and Miners provides evidence that it served as an important check on the Government and Executive Council.12 The concrete measures taken immediately after Christmas Day were modest in comparison with the more radical proposals, and were highlighted in the Governor's Budget Speech of 4 March 1953. While acknowledging that the tolerated areas had not proceeded according to plan, he affirmed that Government's policy "remains the same — to clear the squatters with as much expedition as possible and to resettle them, if possible, in fireproof buildings, but at least under control". Grantham noted that difficulty had arisen in organizing large clearances "by reason of the division of authority between three departments, and it has been decided that the authority for actually ordering clearances should be concentrated" in the

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hands of the Director of Public Works, after appropriate consultation, and resettlement would remain the responsibility of the Urban Council. 13 This organizational revision failed to significantly improve the situation, and dissatisfaction with the Director of Public Works' performance led to more radical organizational restructuring after the Shek Kip Mei fire. This p r o d u c e d the n e w (originally temporary) Resettlement D e p a r t m e n t , discussed in some detail below. It seems likely that even without the Shek Kip Mei fire, there would have been major changes in squatter policy, given the c o n t i n u e d failure of the 1952 r e s e t t l e m e n t p r o g r a m m e , a n d the interventions of major players such as the Secretary of Chinese Affairs, the Commissioner of Police and members of the Finance Committee. Denis Bray submitted to the Deputy Colonial Secretary a first draft of a new directive on squatter policy on 25 November 1953. Bray summarized policy at that time as involving a "general intention to clear all of them into resettlement areas, and to do as little as possible in the squatter areas in the meantime". He proposed that by clarifying "what it is that is bad about squatter areas" government could identify what can be done to "reduce the evils of squatter areas by 'tidying them up' ..." which would largely involve instituting fire precautions similar to those proposed by Gorman in 1949. Initially the decisions made at an emergency meeting at Government House on 26 December 1953 were very much in line with past practice, and i n d e e d failed to m a t c h the shift in t h i n k i n g revealed in the internal discussions of 1953. The main decisions were summarized as follows: This disaster was the most serious in squatter areas and the size of it justified special measures. It was agreed that assistance in the form of housing materials to individuals should be given. The form of assistance to be decided on Public Works Department advice. The scale of assistance mentioned was about $200 a family. 6. It was agreed that the homeless would be resettled on as much of the site of the fire as possible. 7. Factories would not be allowed back but would go to Ngau Tau Kok. 8. Private land in the burned out area would be resumed under emergency powers. This will be taken in Executive council on 29 th December. 9. The site of the fire would be leveled out immediately. ... 10. The site of the fire would be needed for low-cost housing in three to five years. When it is needed the inhabitants will be moved to Area C [Tolerated Area].14 These proposals were adopted by the Executive Council on 29 December 1953. At least during the early days, the response adopted was thus one of using the fire site for an approved area, which would only be temporary in

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status. However, one of the decisions made seems to have had a major impact, the commitment that "fire victims who could not be accommodated in the temporary housing proposed at the site of the fire ... be accommodated elsewhere in resettlement areas as and when possible, at the same charges as were imposed for victims housed at the site of the fire", $10 per month. 15 The adoption of a multi-storey building approach seems to have been greatly encouraged by this commitment to resettle combined with the inadequacy of the site to accommodate the large number of fire victims without higher densities than could be achieved with single-storey approved or tolerated resettlement areas. First, continuing with the design of the two-storey "Bowring Bungalows" model that had been initially adopted (see Plate 15) w o u l d h a v e m e a n t t h a t t e n s of t h o u s a n d s w o u l d h a v e h a d to be accommodated elsewhere, and this magnified the difficulties given the shortage of sites with infrastructure adequate enough to be acceptable to the fire victims. Building six-storey accommodation (Plate 16) instead reduced the numbers that would have to be rehoused off the fire site. Second, Executive Council commitments on off-site housing and the rent set at $10 (which was the standard rent for an approved area site, rather than for a constructed cottage) intensified pressure to reduce the costs of housing construction. This resulted in a debate about the maximum and m i n i m u m residential densities that would be allowed and required. The Director of Medical and Health Services argued for a maximum density of 35 sq. ft. per adult, while the Deputy Colonial Secretary felt that "this allowance is over generous under the circumstances and that it may well involve us in considerably more expenditure than was anticipated". In a minute to the Governor, he stated that if they were to accept these health r e q u i r e m e n t s , they w o u l d have to r e t u r n to Executive C o u n c i l for authorization: because we would be carrying out an operation more elaborate than I believe Ex. Co. Members envisaged in the original discussions. The DPW's [Director of Public Works] units were regarded as an extraordinary measure to meet a catastrophe and must, therefore, not be related too closely with normal building requirements. DMHS is obviously concerned that, as Government is putting up the units, a good example should be shown ... None the less, this is very much an emergency measure and I think we must accept a lower standard. If the [lower] recommendation ... were followed for maxima, 8,500 units would be required (that is, 500 more than DPW originally calculated he might get on to the Shek Kip Mei area).If DMHS's maxima of 4 and 3 [per room] are accepted, I understand that the number of units

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required would be 13,174, or more than half again the number of units DPW originally planned. ... This would mean that our commitment for providing accommodation on not less favourable terms than at Shek Kip Mei would be a heavy one and there might be serious delay in re-providing for these people.16 Lower density requirements of 24 sq. ft. per adult, with children calculated as half an adult, were adopted, and had a major impact on the subsequent R e s e t t l e m e n t P r o g r a m m e , a n d ultimately o n t h e c u l t u r e a n d social organization of Hong Kong. 17 The Executive Council Minutes of 29 December 1953 make it clear that this was a decision on a special case involving "provisional housing accommodation". W h e n the Resettlement Department was created by an order of Executive Council on 6 April 1954, what it ordered was that "a temporary department, independent of all permanent departments be set u p for the purpose" of "screening, clearance and resettlement of squatters". Documentation in the archived files of the decisions in response to the Shek Kip Mei fire and the adoption of multi-storey permanent resettlement seem sketchier than for other issues that I have dealt with previously. In part, particularly for the first few days, this seems to have been the result of the emergency situation. Normal issues were dealt with by circulating files on which minutes were annotated or attached so that decisions gradually emerged amid commentary on the development of these choices and the considerations that influenced them. In an emergency like the Shek Kip Mei fire, however, officials did not have time to draft laconic, ironic and insightful minutes, and in any case decisions were being made in face-toface meetings with only the outcomes recorded without much attention to the deliberations that led up to them. As Denis Bray describes, All the great men were gathered near the fire site. I remember particularly the Commissioner of Police who had been so dissatisfied with the resettlement efforts. We all thought that something had to be done to provide housing ... I don't remember what time I got to bed but the Governor had called a meeting at Government House for 6:00 am on Boxing Day. ... I was able to tell the august gathering that it would be impossible and futile to try to build temporary shelter for some 60,000 people. Grantham then turned to the Director of Public Works and asked him to make proposals for some permanent shelter. So the momentous step was taken for the government itself to build something for the fire victims.18

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I have already argued that the decision to resettle the Shek Kip Mei fire victims did not in itself imply a decision to launch an ongoing multi-storey Resettlement Programme. Even as a single emergency response, however, it is very true that this step was indeed momentous. The telegram sent by the Governor to the Secretary of State for the Colonies o n 29 December, although u n d o u b t e d l y crafted with careful attention to political considerations, does give some ideas of what influenced the decision to rehouse all of the fire victims. The Governor emphasized that the disaster: leaves this Government with a potential financial burden as large as it was unexpected. The victims of this fire are not Hong Kong people. They are persons who have taken refuge here in face of recent developments in China. Even if the Christmas disaster had not occurred they would have imposed on this Colony a continuing burden in the varied fields of finance, social services, housing employment and security. For these reasons I feel it necessary to urge that a contribution of say $3 millions should be made by H.M.G. The contribution could be devoted towards the $10V2 millions which would be required for rehousing. A contribution by H.M.G. would of course create an excellent impression here and would provide a powerful antidote to any propaganda which C.P.G. may create by means of contributions from Chinese Government funds.19 The context for this statement is very likely to be the Comfort Mission Riot, and in fact China did send a substantial contribution in aid of the Shek Kip Mei fire victims, as did the Americans. The scale of the disaster meant that world media attention would be considerable, and the prestige of the colonial government would be influenced by its response. And while not mentioned in this message, prior messages had made clear the concern that disaffected squatters and fire victims might create problems for internal security. After the initial decision, which left open what the Public Works Department would actually construct, an emergency sub-committee on resettlement was established on 5 January, with J. D. Clague from the Urban Council as chairman; the other members were T. L. Bowring, Director of Public Works, A. P. Weir, Deputy Director Public Works, J. T. Wakefield, Chief Resettlement Officer, R. C. Lee, OBE, and P. D. Au. 20 Their report in April recommended the establishment of a body that would produce more multi-storey housing. The proposal was accepted by the Executive Council, which on 6 April 1954 decided that one officer would be made responsible for the screening, clearance and resettlement of squatters, and that a

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"temporary department" be set u p for this purpose. Despite the idea that this marked a sharp break with the past, the decision emphasized that "the need to clear fire lanes in squatters be accepted as over-riding". While the "new resettlement organization should make one specimen detailed plan for the resettlement of squatters" in multi-storey structures, it was specified that if possible this should be for those "dispossessed in the clearance of the fire lanes". In other words, the new approach still maintained substantial continuity with the past policies at this time, and multi-storey resettlement was still seen as a provisional approach which needed to be "examined in more detail". 21 As late as 7 July 1954, Assistant Secretary 7 argued that "I am not so sure that the balance lies so firmly in favour of Government ownership of the buildings. If Government once makes itself responsible for permanent housing where is it going to stop? The Shek Kip Mei operation was a special case and has already given rise to difficulties with the private builders on account of discrepancies in rentals." In the same file, on 15 July 1954, Assistant Secretary Barty suggested to the Deputy Finance Secretary that the Clague Report "proves conclusively, I think, that the squatter problem in Kowloon cannot be solved except by the provision of multi-storey accommodation for cleared squatters. The problem is now not merely how to finance such multi-storey blocks but how to get a sufficient number built by next October to accommodate the squatters cleared for the fire lanes which are to be cut through the squatter areas. Unless these fire lanes are established by October there is little doubt that we shall have at least one more large squatter fire next winter". Responding to these notes, the Financial Secretary wrote to the Governor on 20 July that he recalled a discussion of this matter in Finance Committee after the Executive Council decision: but I cannot find any record in this file. My recollection is that E C. [Finance Committee] accepted the principle that squatters should be cleared from fire lanes, but was most reluctant to do anything further. My recollection also was that Y. E. [Your Excellency] was largely in agreement with that view. The Commissioner of Resettlement ... has put up a note on resettlement generally, not merely on resettlement of squatters in fire lanes. ... It was my understanding that EC. favoured the proposition that the Settlers Housing Corporation should accommodate these squatters. 22 Despite this opposition, the Resettlement Programme became much more wide-ranging rather than simply a way of finally achieving Gorman's desire of adequate fire precautions. The fire at Tai Hang Tung two days after the

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Finance Secretary's minute seems to have finalized the deal, as I will argue in chapter 8.

METROPOLITAN PRESSURES FOR SOCIAL WELFARE If we leave aside the questionable claim by Drakakis-Smith that the primary beneficiaries of the Resettlement Programme were private developers,23 the rest of his argument accords well with government public and private statements about their intentions. He stressed that resettlement was not aimed at improving the welfare of the squatters, but rather the "prime reasons were firmly economic since the frequency of squatter fires showed every sign of increasing the financial burden on the Hong Kong government through immediate relief demands".24 It was simply cheaper, since a sixstorey block could be built for what was being spent every two weeks in 1954 on the feeding of fire victims25 (see Plate 17, 18). Resettling squatters would also have the crucial benefit of making land available for other forms of development from which the government could benefit directly, through land-based revenues, and indirectly, through economic expansion. The problem I have raised before, however, is that this takes for granted that the government would feed fire victims and ignores the way in which squatter clearance without resettlement would have had all the same benefits for the government without the substantial costs. David Faure offers a plausible explanation for these discrepancies: that concerns about welfare were in fact involved, but for political reasons it was better not to acknowledge them. He argues that Governor Grantham had been "concerned with introducing subsidized housing from as early as 1949, but encountered opposition from Chinese members of the Legislative Council".26 The Shek Kip Mei emergency was an "administrative godsend" that allowed him to respond to Colonial Office pressure to do more about the housing and squatter problems while minimizing criticism from the Legislative and Executive Councils which had shown themselves to oppose such initiatives, particularly if they required increased taxation or government spending. Faure presents Grantham as having often been "caught between pressure exerted on him by the United Kingdom government for toeing the social policy line ... and appeasing a legislature which has highly suspicious of any extension of social services".27 This novel argument deserves close attention, and I agree on the point that the Shek Kip Mei fire is better seen as an opportunity for innovation than a cause in itself of the Resettlement Programme. Examination of related

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documents in the Hong Kong archives, however, do not seem to support the claim that pressure from the Colonial Office was a major influence on the development of housing policy. There was indeed some pressure from the Colonial Office, particularly while Creech-Jones was Secretary of State under the Labour government, but the nature of this pressure and the extent of its efficacy in shifting Hong Kong is a different question. First of all, while Faure largely equates social welfare in Hong Kong with housing policy, this does not seem to have been Creech-Jones's main focus. Instead, when he forwarded the critical report from his Social Welfare Advisor, W. H. Chinn, who had conducted a study tour of British possessions in the Far East, the two points he stressed in particular in his cover dispatch were consideration of a separate Social Welfare Department and his hopes that it would be possible to include in the official policy being prepared "a plan for the treatment of juvenile delinquency on a comprehensive basis. ... in the present conditions of Hong Kong delinquency can easily degenerate into crime and, apart from the human wastage, the Government is then faced with increased non-productive expenditure on prison services. I hope that all measures for the treatment of delinquency will be pressed ahead as quickly as circumstances permit." 28 Faure does not mention juvenile delinquency at all, but it is significant to note that the Social Welfare Advisory Committee in London had only in September 1942 changed its name and terms of reference from the juvenile delinquency sub-committee of the Committee on Penal Administration.29 One result was that when the Hong Kong Government finally did get around to sending a report on social welfare as requested, the main points highlighted concerned an initiative to create a reform school and an argument for why a separate Social Welfare Department did not make sense in the particular context of Hong Kong. Housing was not highlighted in this report.30 Secondly, I did not pick up a sense of urgency in initiating reforms when these were suggested by Creech-Jones. It is true that the file reveals that the Social Welfare Officer was repeatedly asked by the Colonial Secretary when his response to Chinn's report and draft welfare policy would be ready, so obviously some urgency was felt to deal with it. However the report did not finally go to London until 14 November 1950 (after Creech-Jones was replaced by James Griffiths as Secretary of State for the Colonies following the February 1950 election). The delay was partly because McDouall, the Social Welfare Officer, was transferred to the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs, and it was not considered appropriate for his temporary replacement to draft the report. The Colonial Secretary suggested to Governor Grantham on 15 May 1950 that Mr McDouall should "write demi-officially to Mr.

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Chinn explaining at greater length the reasons for the delay — staffing changes, the vast influx of refugees since Mr Chinn's visit in August to September 1948 (which have aggravated all our social welfare problems), the financial stringency due to our preoccupation with defense and internal security, and so on." The very fact that the Social Welfare Officer could be transferred to other duties at this time indicates a lack of panic about the initiatives from London. There was some need felt that there should be a response, but I do not get a sense that they felt under great pressure to accept the various recommendations, only that they should reply without more delay than necessary. Within the eventual reply, a number of suggestions were rejected: it seems as if as long as an appropriate rationale could be provided, there was no serious belief that Secretary of State's suggestions needed to be implemented, only treated with appropriately serious attention and consideration. If the colonial government did not feel obliged to accept the recommendations when it was primarily an issue of re-organization rather than large spending commitments, it is hardly surprising that Hong Kong would feel justified in ignoring recommendations on housing initiatives when the Korean War blockade made claims of financial stringency very plausible and the funds available from London through the Colonial Development and Welfare were very modest in comparison to the scale of the problem. More generally, Leo Goodstadt has concluded that Hong Kong's "governors did not feel much intimidated by London's sweeping constitutional powers" and were "very prepared to clash with London when the colonial administration was asked to follow a course of action which might be politically convenient of economically advantageous to the United Kingdom, but which was unacceptable to Hong Kong".31 A related key question is, if the Home Government did commit significant political capital to promoting housing reforms in Hong Kong, why did it do so? Here Faure seems to rely on the concerns of individuals, without considering the broader implications. Presumably the politics of embarrassment played a part: London didn't like to see negative portrayals in the press, and Hong Kong regularly generated such unwelcome coverage. Pederson's account of the child slavery controversy in Hong Kong between 1917 and 1941 showed how organized social pressure and embarrassing questions in Parliament could lead the Colonial Office to insist on reforms even against resistance from the Governor.32 These reforms, at best lightly implemented, did not require the expenditure of large sums of money as would a real improvement in Hong Kong's housing situation, only the risk of alienating the Chinese notables. A broader influence was that the war

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effort had substantially increased managerial capacities and had "a distinct effect on metropolitan conceptions of what could be done from the 'centre'". This combined with the powerful forces towards decolonization so that the Colonial Office became "both more vulnerable and more confident. It was more sensitive to attacks against its alleged failure to meet the expectations of the colonial peoples and at the same time it was better equipped to apply a more constructive set of policies to the whole range of colonial territories, whatever their stage of development".33 To question Faure's explanation of the adoption of multi-storey resettlement in terms of metropolitan pressures for expanded welfare is not to suggest that these pressures did not have some influence, nor that the influence might not have increased in the postwar period. Clearly, colonial officers had career motivations for wanting to please London. In this respect, the newly appointed Colonial Secretary Nicoll might have been more impressionable than Grantham, who was near the end of a long career. From my examination of the files, I have been able to identify two more direct impacts of London on housing initiatives. The first was that the availability of Colonial Development and Welfare funds seems to have had as much impact on housing initiatives as anything else from London. Money was available, so cheap housing schemes were considered as a way of accessing them. In 1950, the balance of funds allocated to Hong Kong (but requiring approval for specific projects) was 660,000 pounds.34 However, money in itself was not enough to decide policy issues. In a discussion on developing town planning, Grantham was initially reluctant to undertake anything, but once reminded of the availability of funds, he responded that "This puts a new complexion on the Town Planning project. I am in favour of getting a CD&W". The Financial Secretary replied that he was concerned about the "probable implications of such an application for CD&W assistance" since the committee would "realise perfectly well that it is no use spending a lot of money on town planning unless something happens as a result of that expenditure. In order to make it possible for any progress to be made it would be necessary to spend a great number of millions on resumptions and the Colony clearly cannot afford to do this". He was worried that it would lead to "pressure for action here" like that in Malaya for compulsory development of property so that "before we consider sending home any application on the lines proposed, we should seriously consider the political implications if matters develop on the lines which I have indicated". Subsequently the Governor decided that it would probably be better to do without the money.35

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The second factor is that in 1947 the Secretary of State for the Colonies asked Hong Kong to nominate an officer as correspondent with the Colonial Liaison Officer: S. G. Feltham from the Public Works Department was nominated. 36 If nothing else, this generated a funnel by which ideas on housing elsewhere were circulated in Hong Kong, a process which Richard Harris has demonstrated had considerable impact on housing policies within the Empire, as Margaret Jones has for interwar Hong Kong.37 Feltham produced the plans for cheap "barrack style housing" which were considered by the Housing Committee (see Chapter 3) that had been initiated in 1950 at the encouragement of Fehily, Chairman of the Urban Council.38 The Committee's task was initially to consider possible "cheap housing schemes" that could qualify for the Colonial Development and Welfare funds as well as any proposals from the private or non-profit sector that would involve subsidized grants of land. It also deliberated on the Wakefield Report in January 1952 which recommended low-cost housing be produced by a Housing Trust modeled after the Singapore Improvement Trust. Ultimately, these deliberations led to the creation of the old Housing Authority in 1954.39 Wakefield's report argued that "It is apparent to the most uninformed that private development of housing in Hong Kong has not, nor ever will, solve the present overcrowding" and that it actually aggravated the problem by consuming what land was available for housing and that by providing housing for the more prosperous political refugees it drove up rents for the less wealthy Hong Kong citizens, forcing them "to become squatters in wooden huts, or transgressors of the law by illegally erecting 'better type' buildings to no preconceived layout on land determined for agricultural usage". His proposal was that if land "must be revenue-producing then it should be sold only to a suitably constituted Improvement Trust; moreover the sale price of that land must be of a nominal nature in comparison to the present speculative value of such land on the open market".40 Executive Council approved the establishment of such a body. Deliberations on 18 August 1952 raised the issue of whether the new body should be responsible for both squatter resettlement and low-cost housing. The Chairman of the Urban Council argued that while action on the two issues should be coordinated, there should be two separate administrative machines since squatter resettlement was a temporary problem that "was liable to be affected by political considerations from time to time". The Committee agreed to their separation. Executive Council gave approval in principle on 19 August 1952 to the proposals to set up a Housing Authority, directing that the Housing Authority should report to the Urban Council; that "construction

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of new housing should be carried out by the Public Works Department; and that houses when complete should be handed over to the Housing Authority". Implementation was delayed by examination of a rival proposal from the Financial Secretary to stimulate housing production by facilitating slum clearance, and the Housing Authority was not officially established until April 1954. From these accounts, it seems that the Colonial Office pressures were more clearly seen in the low-cost housing proposals than in the Resettlement Programme, and that while it may have encouraged certain "cheap housing schemes", the construction of large-scale multi-storey Resettlement blocks doesn't seem to be in any significant sense the result of pressure from London. Instead, I suggest that the motivations lie more directly in inability to get rid of squatter colonies without a more effective resettlement programme than had been developed prior to 1954. The design of blocks that were efficient in both the use of land and capital added the missing piece of the puzzle to resolving a problem that had been diverting a great deal of governmental concern since 1949. In the next section, I examine the debates about how this new programme was to be administered.

CREATING THE RESETTLEMENT DEPARTMENT We can see the same continuities and subtle rather than radical shifts in discussions about the agency that would organize squatter resettlement. By early 1953, there had been considerable discussion about setting up a new agency to take responsibility for resettlement, which at first seemed likely to be a Division within the Public Works Department. Failure to deliver on at least one of their commitments in regard to clearance combined with internal politics to produce a different solution: the establishment of a new Department, but one that was initially intended to be only "temporary". A meeting in February 1953 decided that the Director of Public Works: "should co-ordinate all proposals for squatter clearances, prepare a 6 months programme for clearances in an agreed order of priority and submit it for approval". But by October, no programme has been prepared, an Assistant Secretary complained in a minute. The reason was said to be "partly due to reluctance to undertake large scale squatter clearances in Kowloon so long as there is only the unpopular Ngau Tau Kok area in which Grade II [tolerated] resettlement can be offered".41 The Colonial Secretary added on 11 November 1953 that:

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Whatever may be said in these minutes in explanation of delays, the fact remains that His Excellency's orders for action to be taken after a meeting at Government House on 19th February have not been carried out. The fact that they could not be carried out should have been reported to this office earlier than May. Squatter resettlement policy is a matter of major importance for political, social welfare and health reasons, and it must not be allowed to drift. If DPW has difficulty in co-ordinating the activities of the departments concerned in squatter clearance, he must report to this office as soon as possible to secure either support in what he is doing or clarification of any issues presented by difficulties disclosed by any department. 42 Interdepartmental cross-purposes and divided responsibilities were seen as making the prosecution of squatter clearance and resettlement ineffective and incapable of keeping up with the growth of new settlements. The Deputy Colonial Secretary wrote that: I am informed that the CP [Commissioner of Police] is vetoing practically every proposal put forward by the DPW for clearing squatters on the grounds that [Chairman, Urban Council] Barnett's proposals for resettlement are inadequate. Although it is not strictly the CP's concern, unless he considers the proposals to be so inadequate that security would be threatened by putting them into effect, it is obviously desirable that the process of clearance and resettlement should be carried out with as much consideration for the squatters as possible. 43 T h e c o n n e c t i o n t h a t is d r a w n here b e t w e e n threats to security a n d "consideration for the squatters" is intriguing. The politics of the status of the new agency continued well into 1954. O n 13 March, the Deputy Colonial Secretary reported to the Colonial Secretary on problems with proposals from the designated Commissioner for Resettlement, Holmes. He wrote that: [their] original idea was that since certain unofficial members of the Urban Council had interested themselves in the practical problems of clearance and resettlement it would be difficult to make any changes in Government's machinery which did not fully recognize this interest. It was therefore suggested that Mr. Holmes ... should be subordinate to the Chairman of the Urban Council ... Mr. Holmes' suggestion is that those unofficial members who are interested in resettlement should, as it were, be taken out of the Council and should serve as

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nominated members of a Resettlement Board under his Chairmanship. I have litde doubt that this suggestion would provide a more workable and active arrangement, and my only hesitation arises from a doubt as to whether it would be politically acceptable to the unofficial members concerned ... 44 It did prove unacceptable, and shortly after a discussion with Colonel Clague, an Urban Council member and chair of the emergency sub-committee on resettlement, Holmes concluded that his own proposals were "logical but not feasible". Clague persuaded him that "squatter clearance and resettlement is a matter which must now for 'political' reasons be brought openly within the sphere a n d responsibility of the Urban Council as such". Holmes summarized Clague's position as follows: (a) Government should have been prepared to devote more resources to resettlement before the drastic lesson of the Shek Kip Mei fire; (b) if Government had listened to the view of the Urban Council, stronger action would have been taken sooner; (c) the unofficial members feel, rightly or wrongly, that the Chairman of the Urban Council has to some extent frustrated their efforts to interest themselves in the fundamental aspects of resettlement or to influence the course of Government action in that field; (d) if we now set up a resettlement organisation outside the sphere or influence of the Council we shall forfeit the goodwill of unofficial members. Holmes concluded that his proposal to associate them through membership of an independent board would fail because the Urban Council members would be predisposed "to obstruct rather than assist, whereas there is plenty of goodwill to be exploited provided we concede that this is an Urban Council matter". 45 Holmes also commented that he thought it "unfortunate in the present 'political' circumstances if the Urban Council is able to extend its authority into a new sphere of administration merely by persistently expressing an interest and thus establishing some sort of squatters' rights" but was prepared to accept the situation. 46 Robert Black, the Colonial Secretary, responded that he found the whole situation "surprising" and was disturbed at discovering that Barnett, the Director of Urban Services "holds the view that we can take no decision on the future of the Shek Kip Mei site until the report of Col. Clague's Committee has been received". Barnett and the head of the Housing Authority, Richards, argued for resettlement being within the scope of the Housing Authority. Colonel Clague spoke against this "on the interesting grounds that the

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Unofficials would be satisfied with nothing less than resettlement being within the sphere of the Urban Council as such". The Deputy Colonial Secretary was opposed to both proposals, fearing that they would distract Holmes from: the emergency work on clearance resettlement to which he has been selected. Resettlement has suffered in the past from a diversity of interests and hands, and if it is now to be simply identified with a general policy for rehousing there will be little chance of the drastic and urgent action for which we have hoped. I have always thought that resettlement and housing policies would converge eventually but until the worst features of the wild squatter areas have been removed or brought under control, the two policies have little in common. 47 This was the position that was eventually adopted, with a Resettlement Department (still designated as a "temporary" Department) separate from the Housing Authority which was responsible for non-resettlement lowcost housing. However, the debate could have gone the other way, producing the equivalent of their merger that finally occurred in 1972 under Governor MacLehose. It also produced two housing agencies that operated under very different organizational principles and cultures. Christopher Mackay describes the Resettlement Department as having been run on military lines with many of the resettlement officers having been ex-soldiers. By contrast the Housing Authority included housing professionals trained in Britain and drawing on social work ideas. When the two agencies were merged, it was the m u c h smaller Housing Authority that took over the Resettlement Department, with six times more people housed in its estates. Besides the better management in the Authority, it was hoped that there would be a reduction in corruption. 48

CONCLUSION What I have tried to show in this chapter is that the immediate response to the Shek Kip Mei conflagration, despite its massive scale, did not involve an instant "momentous decision" 49 that set Hong Kong on the path to providing homes for half its population. While the Governor or other key officials might have had in m i n d something like the Resettlement Estates, the Executive Council decision seems to have envisioned something more congruent with what had been constructed in approved areas in the past. In

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any case, there was no commitment to an on-going programme of permanent squatter resettlement at that time, and the decision was still an open and contested one in the early months of 1954. I have also criticized David Faure's innovative recent argument that shifts the focus to metropolitan influences and their impact on Hong Kong housing policy. The initial, provisional, plans for the Shek Kip Mei fire site seem to have been a response to the scale of the disaster combined with the consequences, perhaps unintended, of the commitments that the Executive Council and Finance Committee did undertake in the days after the fire. The difficulty of resetding fire victims off the site created a context in which increased density was the natural way of dealing with the various constraints. This in turn produced an architectural solution that helped resolve the problem of resettling many low-income squatters with a significant capacity for politically inconvenient resistance while avoiding heavy financial commitments. By adopting a scheme with minimal standards and maximal density, the costs of producing resettlement housing could be accomplished with both low rents and substantial space being opened up for more profitable forms of development. The subsequent adoption of a continuing programme of permanent multi-storey resettlement seems thus to have been the result of the difficulty of the fire lane and squatter fire prevention efforts and the success of multistorey resettlement estates in breaking the bottleneck of land development where squatters couldn't be cleared without places to put them. As the Commissioner for Resettlement said: "this is the only possible way of removing the fire risk and the constant risk to public health and public order which are presented by the remaining squatter areas, and also the only practical means of recovering for proper and permanent development the extensive areas of Crown land still sterilised by squatter colonies".50In January 1954, however, no such continuing programme was yet in existence. In the next two chapters I will first demonstrate what happened to the fire victims who weren't as strategically located, and then how another major fire set the seal on Resettlement as an ongoing government activity.

Plate 1

Illegal extensions to private buildings. Photograph by the author, 1985

Plate 2

Shek Kip Mei before the fire. Courtesy the private collection of Tim Ko

Plate 3

Cottage area at Tai Wo Ping. Courtesy the private collection of Tim Ko

Plate 4

Kowloon Walled City in 1985. Photograph by the author

Plate 5 Tung Tau fire. Photograph by Chan Chik

Plate 6 Tung Tau fire victims receiving Comfort Mission aid. Photograph by Chan Chik

Plate 7

Distribution of relief. Photograph by Chan Chik

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