This is a companion piece to ‘Black British Politics, Bernie Grant, and the Question of Hong Kong Migration‘ recently published in History Workshop Journal 98 (open access).
Perhaps not surprisingly, the contemporary British Foreign Ministry is in a tough spot vis a vis Hong Kong and China. In December 2024, the Hong Kong police offered significant financial rewards to anyone who would share information about four high profile Hong Kong democracy activists living in the UK. This bold move placed people seeking asylum in the UK at risk, and it brought into stark relief the challenge of improved relations with China and ongoing support for pro-democracy, anti-Beijing Hong Kong activists.
In response, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Secretary, David Lammy issued a strongly worded statement on Christmas Eve, criticising the Chinese government: ‘We call on Beijing to repeal the National Security Law, including its extraterritorial reach. And we call on the Hong Kong authorities to end their targeting of individuals in the UK and elsewhere who stand up for freedom and democracy’. It continued that the ‘The UK will always stand up for the rights of the people of Hong Kong‘.
These events have an eerie resonance with my recent article, ‘Black British Politics, Bernie Grant, and the Question of Hong Kong Migration’. Born in Guyana, Bernie Grant became a national figure fighting police violence against Black communities in London. He was then elected to represent Tottenham in Parliament in 1987, and he belonged to the first cohort of Black MPs in the postwar era. As an MP, he championed an international vision with a focus on Africa and the Caribbean, which included chairing the Africa Reparations Movement. Like Bernie Grant, Lammy’s family traces its lineage back to Guyana and the Windrush. After Grant’s death in 2000, Lammy was elected to the same seat, and he too advocated for Black and Asian people in the British criminal justice system.
My research, however, turns to Grant’s relatively unknown support for Hong Kong people and their rights to migrate to the UK. I had initially been conducting research on the history of Vietnamese refugee camps and asylum policies in Hong Kong after 1975. This had brought me to Grant’s papers at Bishopsgate, which included several files on Vietnamese refugees waiting in Hong Kong. As I looked through the archives, however, I also found a surprising number of papers and speeches about Grant’s interest in Hong Kong in the late 1980s. The speeches seemed electric, and Grant connected his experiences as a British subject from Guyana and the impossible colonial position of Hong Kong.
This was a time when the UK was negotiating the Basic Law with China, which would result in Chinese sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997. It was clear that Hong Kong politicians and people had been cut out of the decision-making process.
Grant expressed a vision of solidarity grounded in his experiences with colonialism. On the floors of Parliament, he made his commitment to democratic governance and his loyalties clear: ‘I am certainly the only person present who has suffered under British colonial rule, root and branch. I was born in a British colony, so I have much sympathy with the people of Hong Kong’.
I was surprised by how intensely Grant spoke about Hong Kong. He had never been there, and he didn’t align himself with its capitalist economy. And yet, there were numerous speeches about his identification with Hong Kong. I wanted to know more because Grant seemed to offer an international vision here that fell outside the typical 1980s Third World alliances or Black-Asian coalitions, domestically and internationally.
This began a research journey which allowed me to trace both Grant’s early political experiences in London with anti-Black racism and his later advocacy for Hong Kong people. I learned that Grant not only spoke out for Hong Kong people during the Basic Law negotiations, but he became an even more vocal advocate after the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. He argued that all Hong Kong people should be able to migrate and have the “right to abode” in the UK, just like British subjects in the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar. Grant’s advocacy for Hong Kong marked his intense recognition of the relationship between migration and empire.
Today the UK is still struggling with the contradictions of its China policy, its long-standing relationship to Hong Kong, the rights of British Nationals (Overseas), and its support for free speech and the rule of law. Admittedly, Bernie Grant was a backbencher, and he advocated a fairly radical platform of international solidarity. In contrast, Lammy is the Foreign Secretary. He has the weight and responsibility of his position on his shoulders, and he has coined the term “progressive realism.” While Lammy has stood proudly beside Grant’s official portrait, it is not clear how Lammy will balance the competing needs of British support for Hong Kong people and China’s growing power.
And yet Grant’s speeches from the archives make clear that the challenges stemming from the UK’s imperial history in Hong Kong, its relationship with China, and migration are not new. Grant’s identification with Hong Kong and his clear articulation of how the legacies of colonialism affect the present remain relevant well into the 21st century.