tim's experiment

I have been reading Mike Rowse’s book on his tussle to escape scapegoat status after the Pipefest. This can be recommended as a good read, though it is – like its author – a bit on the short side.  The book is an interesting addition to the rather slender record of people who took on the Hong Kong government over the way they were treated as employees — and won. It gives a pretty good idea why this is unusual.

Firstly it takes a long time. The official instinct when challenged is to waste time. It took Mr Rowse four years to establish that his case had been mishandled and this is not a record. Also the fight is hard on the fighter. He invariably discovers that many people he supposed to be friends were in the fair-weather category, though one does usually find a few surprising new ones. The uncertainty begets unhappiness. Mr Rowse still had his job. Less fortunate claimants have often degenerated into a state of embittered obsession which lasted long after the eventual victory. Another characteristic of this sort of thing is that it is expensive. Mr Rowse reckons that being innocent cost him about $3 million.

Readers who thought the Harbourfest was a daft idea in the first place will find their suspicions confirmed by the interesting story of how the idea came up. Readers who think the sort of people who become political appointees would not be their first choice as a son-in-law will also find their opinions unchallenged by glimpses of our leaders ducking out of a fight.

On one matter Mr Rowse is disappointingly unimaginative, and that is the role of race in all this. The government, he says, is not institutionally racist. I expect this is true, as it is of most Hong Kong institutions. On the other hand it is a feature of many local crises that the solution includes the ejection of some awkward foreigner, and this happens far too often to be a coincidence. It is, I suppose, instinctive. I am reminded of a study of cannibalism among seamen in the age of sail. It was accepted that if the crew were adrift without food or water the custom of the sea sanctioned sacrificing one shipmate to feed the others. The person selected for this honour was supposed to be selected by lot. Yet in every case the unlucky victim who finished up with a short straw in his hand and a knife in his guts was either the cabin boy or the only foreign seaman in the crew. I expect those legendary occasions in Russia when a horse-drawn sleigh was pursued by wolves and a passenger had to be jettisoned to distract them worked the same way.

Mr Rowse’s successful bid to change the script does him credit. But he was not the first foreigner to be invited to lighten the boat and he will not be the last.