Then & NowHong Kong police cliques and how to dodge the Freemasons
Retreads, Coconuts, the Afrika Korps – there were various nicknames for police officers transferred to Hong Kong amid British decolonisation. Masonic influence was strong – except in the Marine Police
Uniformed services aim to give a public impression of being exactly that – uniform. But surprising diversity of experience and origin can be discerned within apparent ethnic homogeneity and, historically, the European contingent within the Hong Kong Police Force has offered various examples.
Now wryly referred to – mostly by the men themselves – as a critically endangered species, fewer than 100 expatriate officers remain within the 28,000-strong force.
From the colony’s 19th-century beginnings until the 1990s, the Hong Kong Police Force recruited large numbers of Scotsmen and Irishmen, and for similar reasons; urban and rural poverty, and lack of opportunity at home, impelled many to seek better prospects in the colonies.
When the International Settlement Police force in Shanghai was formally disbanded after the Pacific war, a small number joined the Hong Kong Police. Policemen with Allied nationality had been disarmed and interned when the Japanese occupied the city’s international settlement.
Numerous White Russians were also recruited into the Hong Kong force around this period. Drawn from a sizeable émigré population that fled into China after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, the reasons for their employment were ultimately economic.
