Was It Suicide? Was It Murder? How A 1980 Death Led to a Better Life for Hong Kong’s LGBT Community

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fountainhall

Was It Suicide? Was It Murder? How A 1980 Death Led to a Better Life for Hong Kong’s LGBT Community

Post by fountainhall »

This is a very long article! Last year I was asked to rake through my memory and undertake additional research on an event that took place almost a year after I had arrived in Hong Kong in early March 1979. A writer friend wanted to flesh it out with a view perhaps to developing some form of lengthy magazine article. His idea was squashed when earlier this year a new book about the event in question was published. Recently I found our joint notes. I have his permission to post them here. I hope perhaps some may find it of interest and a change from Immigration rules and Trump sleaze – although this story itself does include plenty of sleaze!

PART 1

The Death


On the morning of January 15 1980, five gunshots rang out. In bustling, over-populated Kowloon preparing for the day ahead, no one seemed to hear those shots above the noise of the rush hour traffic below. In the source of the shots, a government flat, a young expatriate police inspector lay dead in his bedroom. It was a scene reminiscent of an Agatha Christie or John Le Carre novel. Five bullets had pierced his abdomen – but not his heart or head. A police revolver lay by his side. The door and windows to the room were all securely locked from the inside.

Had anyone taken a snapshot of that body, the conclusion would almost certainly have been one of murder most foul. As the events leading up to this death ever so gradually became public knowledge, they were to resound for years and lead to the uncovering of a secret world where the gleaming, glistening facade of prosperous Hong Kong would be shown to be no more than surface deep. As layer upon layer of the undergrowth was exposed, an incredulous public was shocked. No one on that January morning realised it at the time, but this event would ultimately lead to a change in a law that had been on the statute books for close to 100 years. Gay men and women would finally be able to lead much more open lives.

Background

The action takes place in Hong Kong in January 1980. Under British rule following two Opium Wars in 1841 and 1860, the territory is just starting to recover from the murderous decade of the Cultural Revolution across its flimsy land border. That decade had all but destroyed the very fabric of Chinese society, its education and legal systems and, above all, the family unit.

Hong Kong’s economy had for some decades been built by and expanded through immigrant labour from China. Its population had grown from 600,000 after World War II to over 4 million by 1966. After the Cultural Revolution, the stream of migrants increased. Small shantytowns visible on many Hong Kong hillsides became much larger. To accommodate the inflow, the Hong Kong government commenced what at the time was the largest urban development programme in the world, creating vast new housing estates and four New Towns that would each eventually accommodate over 500,000 people. Hong Kong quickly became one of the most densely populated parts of the planet.

By the 1970s, Hong Kong’s economy was in transition from a “sweat shop” producing cheap goods for export to an international centre of trade and finance. Hong Kong’s freewheeling capitalist economy was attracting much international praise and investment. Local chinese entrepreneurs who had hitherto headed small to medium scale companies began to take over long-established international British colonial conglomerates (known locally as “hongs”)

Criminal Activity in Hong Kong

Underneath its glittering surface, though, there was much the world did not see and which the all-powerful British colonial administration did not want it to see. The Hong Kong Governor, always British and usually a senior civil servant who had spent time in Beijing, was appointed by the United Kingdom. He wielded far more authority than a Prime Minister. Hong Kong’s legal system was based on British Common Law.

Maintaining order in the British colony (the British preferred to call it “Territory” whereas the Chinese claimed it was Chinese Territory “temporarily under the control of the British”) was the Royal Hong Kong Police (RHKP), a large body of Chinese whose senior officers were almost exclusively from Britain and its former colonial outposts. Endemic corruption and triad organized crime activity were rife at all levels of society. With the Cultural Revolution had come a period of considerable instability in Hong Kong, including riots. Maintaining civil order became a key objective of the RHKP.

The crime rate in Hong Kong had been rising rapidly. Official statistics show the violent crime rate had risen from 48 per 100,000 of the population in 1963 to 477 in 1976 . It was also known that the percentage of violent crimes reported to the police was almost certainly less than one quarter of actual numbers.

In 1975 the then Governor Sir Murray MacLehose (the longest-serving Hong Kong Governor from 1971 to 1982 and much admired by all in Hong Kong for his achievements) decided the time had come to get rid of corruption. He established the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) with its own police force and separate Judiciary. In essence, anyone accused of corrupt activity was thereafter guilty until proven innocent. Immediately a number of high-ranking officials fled Hong Kong.

The ICAC itself was not a total panacea in solving Hong Kong’s problems. One police officer at that time, Stephen Griffiths, claims in an article that many policemen suggested the initials stood for “I Can Accept Cheques”.

Homosexuality in Hong Kong

In 1967, the government in Britain had decriminalised homosexuality. The law had been on the statute books since 1885 and became law in all-British colonial possessions. The repeal of the law was initially confined to England and Wales, although later confirmed also in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Since by 1967 Britain had already relinquished power in almost all of its former colonies, the homosexuality law in these countries was not repealed. It therefore remained – and in most cases still remains – as law in countries including Hong Kong (eventually repealed in 1991 – see below), Singapore, Malaysia, Jamaica and Uganda.

It was known that despite the law there were many homosexual men in Hong Kong, some in the higher echelons of the government, the Police Force and the Judiciary. More than a few had steady Chinese boyfriends.

Some incidents involving homosexual blackmail and even murder occasionally appeared in the Hong Kong media. In October 1980 a noted Australian antique dealer and homosexual, Ian McLean, was found dead in his expensive Peak apartment. His Filipino servant discovered his naked body lying on his bed with an arm and leg bound together with an electric cord. He had been suffocated. His home had been ransacked and his car stolen. It was later discovered he had taken two young Chinese youths back to his home for the purpose of sex. They had murdered him.

Worse for the authorities, two years earlier in 1978 Richard Duffy a prominent English lawyer practicing in Hong Kong, pled guilty to charges of “buggery and gross indecency” involving four 15-year old Chinese boys. He was sentenced to three years in prison. In a petition for clemency, he named many “highly-placed” men in Hong Kong who were homosexuals, gay prostitution rings and the triads who ran them.

Another highly placed lawyer in the Attorney General’s chambers was Howard Lindsay who appears later in this story. He had been threatened with prosecution but stood his ground and refused to bow to police pressure. He was never charged.

Partly as a result, in August 1978 the Hong Kong government set up another division – the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) of the RHKP. Its main functions as described to parliament in London were “to investigate cases of homosexuality which may involve procuring or the abuse of young people or in response to complaints made by members of the public.” The penalty for homosexual behaviour could be from two years to life in prison.

It has long since become known that the SIU collaborated with triad gangs and other criminal syndicates to procure young male prostitutes to ensnare several key officials. One victim was an effeminate former judge who fled Hong Kong in 1979 when he fell out with the RHKP.

At this time, despite the law, Hong Kong did have a thriving underground gay community. It also had two bars/clubs that catered almost exclusively to homosexuals – Waltzing Mathilda in Kowloon and Dateline in a basement in the Central District of Hong Kong. Access to Dateline was by a long set of steps down from Wellington Street. These steps were brightly lit by a floodlight placed above and behind that entrance on Wellington Street. This light was less to do with assisting patrons down the steps. It was there only because on the opposite side of the small one-way street the SIU had set up a camera to photograph everyone exiting Dateline.

Fearing a witch-hunt, a number of academics, lawyers and social workers began to criticize the SIU and the laws that it sought to enforce. In mid-1979, 424 individuals petitioned the government to bring Hong Kong into line with England and Wales and decriminalize homosexual conduct between consenting adults. The petition had no effect.

Inspector John MacLennan

In the mid-1970s John MacLennan, a young 25-year old Scot, flew to Hong Kong to join the RHKP on a 2 1/2 year tour of duty. With a close friend, a fellow Scot and member of the RHKP Christopher Burns, MacLennan spent much of this spare time trawling the girlie bars and low-life nightclubs. Burns assumed his friend was a womanizer. It now seems as though he might have been mistaken.

It has been alleged that MacLennan was a closet homosexual. On his nightly meanderings he had discovered the city’s underground gay scene and met a triad pimp named Molo Tsui. Tsui, it has been alleged, found young Chinese men for him. It has also been alleged that MacLennan was a regular at the Waltzing Mathilda gay bar.

Towards the end of his tour of duty, MacLennan was temporarily transferred to the Police Special Branch (a different RHKP branch from the SIU and comprising almost 1,000 members). Special Branch was considered a highly professional security apparatus, pursuing anti-corruption and anti-triad duties in addition to intelligence and counter-subversion operations.

Leaving for a vacation back in Scotland after his first 2 1/2 year contract and with a second contract in his pocket, MacLennan asked to be transferred to Special Branch when he returned. The request was granted.

On his return, MacLennan began working for Special Branch. Digging through police files, he was shocked to discover that Special Branch had been building cases against likely gay men for at least a decade. Many were in prominent positions in Hong Kong including in the RHKP. He was later to tell a City Councillor, Elsie Elliott, that the files he had seen were “political dynamite that would blow the lid off the territory.” Many civil servants were named in the files, including his boss, the new Police Commissioner, an unmarried fellow Scot, Roy Henry, and other senior police officials.

Police Commissioner Roy Henry

On leaving the British Army in 1948 aged 21, Roy Henry had joined the Colonial Police Service as an Assistant Superintendent in the Malayan Police. After several promotions and the award of the title “Datuk” (the equivalent of a knighthood in the UK), he left the new Malaysia to serve as Police Commissioner in Fiji.

In 1973 he again moved, this time to Hong Kong as Senior Assistant Commissioner of Police Operations. The following year he was promoted to Deputy Commissioner. He was named Commissioner in March 1979, taking over a Force that was plagued by corruption scandals, a breakdown of discipline and a lack of public confidence. By all published accounts, he was known as a steadfast, upright man who transformed the force into a modern, efficient and sophisticated law enforcement agency. But there might have been more behind that mask.

As he tackled a major restructuring and “clean up” of the Force, he maintained his former ties in Malaysia. He shared his home with old friends from his days in Malaya, Jack and Eileen Cradock. He is also alleged to have travelled for weekend trips to Kuala Lumpur. Although the majority Muslim population and Malaysian law were anti-homosexual as a result of the old English Colonial Law, Kuala Lumpur had always had an active homosexual underground. Its one openly gay bar, Blue Boy, was packed every evening, especially at weekends. Whether Henry visited the bar on his Kuala Lumpur trips we do not know. But it would have been a convenient and – in terms of his Hong Kong career – a virtually anonymous venue for trysts with Malaysian youths.

Adding to the suggestion that Henry might have been homosexual, the journalist Aileen Bridgewater (whose husband Ken had written one of the first books about the MacLennan affair) later met him in Kuala Lumpur where he lived in retirement after leaving Hong Kong in March 1984 aged 57. Aileen was conducting seminars in the city. As Ken wrote in his fictionalized version of events (therefore adding considerable doubt to the following quote): “Roy Henry retired to Malaysia and lived openly as a gay.”

Suspicion Falls on MacLennan

In possession of so much detailed knowledge that many might wish to suppress, MacLennan became nervous. Within months of his return he was sacked from the RHKP and given one month’s salary in lieu of notice. The reason was an alleged homosexual advance.

In the summer that year, he is alleged to have made a pass at a 17-year old Chinese student who was studying in Glasgow and had returned to be with his family for the summer vacation. The advance was rejected. The student later told a friend about the incident. This friend’s father happened to be an officer in the RHKP. Attempts, ultimately successful, were made to dismiss MacLennan from the force.

Soon the Police SIU, known internally as the “bum” squad, was established. Instead of pursuing senior officers suspected of being homosexual, perhaps to ensure their future careers the SIU picked on junior officers. MacLennan was one target. Following his dismissal on November 4 1978, he spoke to Elsie Elliott. On December 4 she managed to get the dismissal overturned. This angered the heads of the SIU, a pair of bullies Superintendent Bob Brooks and his second in command Chief Inspector Mick Quinn. They would later seek revenge.

Brooks and Quinn determined to set MacLennan up. In October 1979 Howard Lindsay, the Crown Counsel mentioned above in the Attorney General’s Chambers, was approached by Inspector Michael Fulton. For about a year Fulton had been providing information to the SIU. He informed Lindsay that he had recently been asked to set up a fellow officer, John MacLennan, but had refused to do so. Allegedly gay, he was worried about his own future in the force. Lindsay spoke directly to the Attorney General in both November and December about the allegations.

A subsequent Inquiry (see below) found that senior officers in the RHKP then attempted to set up MacLennan by rounding up eight rent boys and getting them to admit that MacLennan had paid them for sex. It seems that one had in fact slept with MacLennan. The others lied.

On January 14 1980 an officer friend warned MacLennan that Brooks was planning to see and arrest him the following morning. MacLennan then went to the mess bar where, it has been alleged, he had several drinks. He then returned to the police station in the early hours of January 15 and withdrew a Smith and Wesson .38 revolver. Back at his flat, five shots were heard in the early morning.
fountainhall

Re: Was It Suicide? Was It Murder?

Post by fountainhall »

Part 2

MacLennan’s Death

Later that morning a team of policemen headed by Brooks and Quinn forced their way into MacLennan’s apartment. The door and its windows had all been locked from the inside. On the bed they found the body of MacLennan, the revolver and the cartridges from five bullets. The police alleged that MacLennan had committed suicide by firing five bullets into his abdomen. The first three had resulted in superficial wounds. The fourth had resulted in a more serious wound. The fifth had killed him. MacLennan was 29 years old.

At first the police refused to provide much information about what they termed a “suicide”. The RHKP claimed that MacLennan’s body had been discovered by his maid. No mention was made of multiple gunshots.

No official RHKP spokesman explained why a man used to firearms would attempt to commit suicide by firing into his abdomen no less than five times rather than once to his brain. A solicitor involved in the subsequent Inquiry into the death, Murray Burton, stated that, “MacLennan was seated on his bed holding his revolver reversed. Some shots were fired into his stomach and abdomen area, as well as his chest. He did not shoot himself in either the head or the heart.” Burton failed to explain how anyone could remain conscious after firing no less than four bullets into his body and still have the strength to fire a fifth time.

A suicide note was discovered. An autopsy on MacLennan’s body had taken place on January 16 and it was then cremated on January 22. No prior permission for cremation had been sought from his next of kin in Scotland.

Coroner’s Inquest

As is usual in British territory, an inquest was held because this was a case involving an unusual death. The inquest on MacLennan’s death was scheduled for February 20. It was then postponed twice before commencing before a coroner and a jury on February 29. The RHKP witnesses claimed to prove that MacLennan had been homosexual and had taken his own life, fearing he was about to be arrested and exposed that morning. The action of the police was sloppy and illustrated many failures. Much evidence seems to have been tainted. It was revealed that at no time did the officers who entered MacLennan’s apartment bag his hands as a way of proving he had actually fired any shots from the gun. With dozens of police roaming around the apartment, the “crime” scene was thoroughly compromised. The autopsy had shown no evidence of consumption of much alcohol in the blood samples. Several police witnesses all identified the handwriting on the suicide note as MacLennan’s despite other experts commenting on the extraordinary wording of the note which, it was stated, did not conform to that of a native English speaker. No pen was ever found in the room.

The coroner informed the jury of his view that the verdict should be suicide. The jury came to a different conclusion. The members demanded an Open verdict, meaning no cause of death had been determined.

Public Anger following the Inquest

There was an immediate public outcry with calls for an independent inquiry. On May 23 the Attorney-General John Griffiths announced there was no need to reopen the inquest as the overwhelming body of evidence pointed to suicide.

On June 1 Inquest Jury Foreman Tony Pannell stated he was not satisfied with the Attorney General’s statement and itemized many points where the jury had disagreed with the evidence.

The RHKP attempted to reinforce their failed case. On June 4 they presented four male prostitutes who claimed that MacLennan had been one of their customers. Indeed so regular was he that – quite ridiculously given the ease with which payment could have been tracked, but no evidence found – they suggested he had been permitted to pay by cheque rather than cash!

On June 18 Elsie Elliott delivered a public bombshell. She revealed that the Attorney General was made aware in November 1979 of the plot against MacLennan - two months before his death. Her statement referred to the comments made to her by Inspector Michael Fulton (see above). On July 2 Fulton himself confirmed in public he had informed the Attorney General about his being asked by members of the SIU to set up MacLennan.

As public anger mounted, the Attorney General and Police Commissioner remained silent. On July 3, the Foreman of the Inquest Jury, Pannell, publicly called for the resignation of the Attorney General. Elsie Elliott repeated her call for a formal Inquiry into MacLennan’s death. The government again stated there would be no fresh Inquiry.

On July 7, Elsie Elliott compounded the government’s problems by announcing she was willing to help raise funds to sue both the Attorney General and the Police Commissioner.

Government establishes a Royal Commission of Inquiry

By this time public opinion, particularly in the large and influential Chinese media outlets, had become so great that the government had to reverse course. It agreed to establish a Royal Commission of Inquiry headed by a respected Supreme Court Justice (and later Chief Justice), T. L Yang. Evidence was heard from 110 witnesses including senior government and RHKP personnel and male prostitutes. This Inquiry was the most expensive in Hong Kong’s history. It came to the conclusion that MacLennan had indeed committed suicide. Again this verdict was ridiculed in public. It was eventually to become clear that some evidence had been deliberately withheld from the Inquiry and its work greatly hampered by severe restrictions to its terms of reference.

Government Considers Possibility of Changing Law on Homosexuality

Behind the scenes the government was clearly very concerned. Prior to the announcement of the T. L. Yang Inquiry, on June 14 1980 it officially but confidentially requested the Law Reform Commission to consider the following topic: “Should the present laws governing homosexual conduct in Hong Kong be changed and, if so, in what way?”

On July 5 the Commission appointed a high level Sub-committee “to research, consider and then advise it upon aspects of the said matter.” After three years of deliberation, the Sub-committee made a number of specific recommendations and provisos, the most important of which was: “We recommend that the law should not prohibit consensual sexual conduct in private between two males provided both are 21 or more years of age."

One controversial recommendation was the proposal that the age of consent be 21 for males whereas it would be 16 for females.

Government Action following Publication of the Commission’s 1983 Report

Following publication of the Report, the government did precisely nothing! It was in the midst of extensive discussions with its masters in London regarding the future of Hong Kong after the expiration of the 99-year lease on the New Territories (by far the largest part of Hong Kong) on June 30 1997. Even after the December 19 1984 signing of the Joint Declaration between China and the United Kingdom on Hong Kong’s future, homosexual law reform remained on the back burner. It took several more years of pressure before the government finally realised it could procrastinate no longer. Before becoming a Special Administrative Region of China with many rights exclusive to other Chinese citizens, Hong Kong would need to enact further legislation covering the international rights of its people.

Hong Kong Bill of Rights

The Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance (HKBORO) was enacted into law in June 1991. This empowered local courts to rule on cases regarding the violation of the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) as applicable to Hong Kong, and to provide redress through HKBORO for cases where violation had been proved. As regards homosexuality, the government’s stated position up to this point had always been that Chinese society would not accept homosexual behaviour. This stood little scrutiny given a tradition of acceptance of such behaviour stretching back millennia and there being no law on mainland China banning homosexual behaviour. Although the Governor Murray MacLehose (see above) had believed the old British law should have been changed, this concern was a primary reason for him, his successors and senior officials making no moves to effect any change.

This requirement for a Bill of Rights brought the matter of homosexual law reform back into the discussion and inevitably the MacLennan case came to the fore. The Bill could finally enable those proposing a change in accordance with the Law Reform Commission recommendations to make that change. The government decided not to challenge that view. The law against homosexual behaviour was immediately repealed.

Unequal Age of Consent

As a result of a lawsuit brought by human rights groups, Hong Kong’s Justice Hartmann ruled in the Supreme Court in 2005 that the unequal age of consent was unconstitutional under the HKBORO. His decision was upheld in the Court of Final Appeal. From 2006 the age of consent for males was brought into line with those for females. Both became 16 years of age.

The Impact of MacLennan’s “Suicide”

The tragic circumstances of MacLennan’s death are unlikely ever to be known – or at least made public. Could it possibly have been suicide? Was he indeed murdered, as so many now believe? Several books and articles have been written on the subject. The latest “A Death in Hong Kong” by Nigel Collett was published earlier this year. I have not read it.

Based on its reviews, though, Collett places the suicide/murder in the context of the times, something not generally well known now and which I have also tried to explain above. As the South China Morning Post reviewer noted, many homosexual and bisexual men had arrived in the 1970s to take up official positions in Hong Kong where, despite the law, the city was more open to gay behaviour than Britain where it had actually been decriminalised.

That relatively casual approach to homosexual affairs all changed after Richard Duffy was jailed and opened the Pandora’s Box which revealed a degree of sleaze and corruption that shocked many to their core. There can now be no doubt that that one act inevitably led, albeit indirectly, to much of what followed, including MacLennan’s death.

It is also unlikely we will ever understand how MacLennan’s death and the resultant utterly shambolic attempts by the RHKP and the government to keep it quiet had such an impact in changing what were allegedly entrenched beliefs about homosexual behaviour amongst the Chinese population in Hong Kong. I suspect the vast majority of the Chinese population had never given much thought to it. With most being an immigrant population fiercely determined to work hard and make lives better for their families, homosexual behaviour was well down their list of priorities.

After a thorough examination of facts, Collett concludes that MacLennan did commit suicide. I recently spoke to someone who has been a friend for decades, a former senior official in the Hong Kong government at that time. I asked for his views. He agrees with Collett and the suicide theory.

We all love conspiracy theories and most of us believe – or want to believe – that we know better than official versions. I believe I know who killed John F. Kennedy and how, based on facts that keep emerging as time goes on. It is not what the Earl Warren Commission wants us to believe. But I will never know if my theory is correct. Equally I believe I know that John MacLennan could not have committed suicide – not given the background of the times and by shooting himself five times in the abdomen. That to me defies credulity. And so I and the few friends I still have who also lived in Hong Kong at the time of MacLennan’s death refuse to believe that it was suicide. To us it was a botched murder to cover up a great deal of sleaze and sludge in a filthy little swamp. I wish I could prove it!

All I know is that that death of one very insignificant member of the police force contributed in no small way to Hong Kong becoming a much more tolerant, open and free society for gay men and women. If only for that, John MacLennan will always be remembered.

NB: Source notes have been omitted.
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Re: Was It Suicide? Was It Murder? How A 1980 Death Led to a Better Life for Hong Kong’s LGBT Community

Post by thewayhelooks »

An excellent article uncovering a forgotten piece of gay history. I've always enjoyed your longer features fountainhall and look forward to more of them. Pretty please?
fountainhall

Re: Was It Suicide? Was It Murder? How A 1980 Death Led to a Better Life for Hong Kong’s LGBT Community

Post by fountainhall »

I have added another 1980s Hong Kong tale of murder, suicide, devious characters and unlawful deeds in the Everything Else forum - since it has nothing to do with gay Hong Kong.
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