Following last year’s centenary of the foundation of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 2022 marks the 100th anniversary of the first general strike to shut down a British colonial territory – Hong Kong.
The strike began with the grievances of the British territory’s seamen, but rapidly spread to other sectors, effectively shutting Hong Kong down. It represents the first major episode of industrial unrest in the territory, to which the colonial authorities responded with emergency anti-strike legislation. The law introduced by the colonial authorities, which allowed the governer to pass “any regulations whatsoever which he may consider desirable in the public interest”, was used in 2019 to ban the use of face masks by protesters.
