‘Extremely reactionary gentlemen’ amidst a ‘modern miracle’: was a compromise between labour and capital in British Hong Kong unthinkable?

The Labour Advisory Board (LAB) in Hong Kong is a tripartite government body mediating between labour and business. Set up in 1927, it is often overlooked by studies of labour and economic development in Hong Kong due to its relative insignificance in decision-making processes. However, between the 1960s and 1980s, before direct elections for higher legislative bodies took place, the LAB was the only body in which workers’ interests were represented. In 1966, under the influence of George Foggon, Overseas Labour Adviser under the British Labour Government, a proposal was made to enlarge the tiny LAB into a 29-member body – similar to the National Economic Development Council in Britain and the system of ‘Parity Codetermination’ in West Germany. The abandonment of the proposal during the left-wing riots of 1967 led to stagnation in efforts to reform the LAB until 1977. In the 1980s the battle for a Central Provident Fund, first proposed by Foggon, was lost. This article examines how weak labour welfare and representation in Hong Kong came to be, through the history of the LAB, and reflects on the failed attempts of reformers, local and British, to advance planning and the codetermination of high-level economic policy.