The 1967 disturbances in Hong Kong, which pitted militant leftists and their supporters against the security forces of the colonial regime, have continued to arouse the interest of academics and journalists and remain a source of controversy within the community. The award of the Grand Bauhinia medal, Hong Kong's highest honour, in 2001 to Yeung Kwong, a prominent leftist leader during the troubles, re-opened old wounds. More recently, leftist claims that the petrol-bombing and subsequent death of the anti-communist broadcaster, Lam Bun, should not continue to be attributed to them have led to charges that history is being re-written. The disturbances, which lasted over a period of about eight months, resulted in 51 deaths, 832 injuries and nearly 2,000 arrests but it is the extraordinary intensity of the confrontation, well captured in this book, which seems to have endured in the collective memory. No quarter was given on either side; the lives of many were shaped by the events of which they were part; and the continuing status of Hong Kong as a colony was determined by the outcome.

Gary Cheung's book, which was originally published in Chinese and has now been updated using previously unavailable archival resources, is a blow-by-blow, chronological account of the disturbances. It will replace Cooper's Colony in Conflict (Swindon, 1970) as the standard description of the events because it is based on more extensive resources and on interviews with some of the participants. But it is more than simply a descriptive account. Cheung presents an explanation of why the confrontation took place and the responses of the Hong Kong, British and Chinese governments as well as the role of the local leftist militants and the Hong Kong public.

As Cheung sees it, the disturbances arose principally because local leftists, orchestrated by the Hong Kong branch of the New China News Agency, saw the opportunity to mount a challenge to colonial rule in Hong Kong. They were encouraged by the success that their fellow militants had in bringing the Portuguese government in Macau to its knees and, in the oppressive labour conditions then prevalent in Hong Kong factories, they had a cause for discontent which they could exploit. They were not, however, totally supported by the Chinese government. In the throes of the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese government could not exert much control over the militants in Hong Kong but there were some, especially Zhou Enlai, who sought to mitigate their worst excesses in both Hong Kong and in Beijing where the British embassy was ransacked and its diplomatic staff assaulted.

On the British government side, too, there was the view that a conciliatory approach was appropriate because, it believed, the Chinese government did not want to take back the colony at that stage. Had that been the case, the British would have to withdraw from Hong Kong and there were contingency plans, ultimately regarded as futile, drawn up to do so. On the ground, the Hong Kong government was inclined to take much stronger action against the militants than the British government probably thought necessary. The police force took heavy-handed action against rioters in confrontations which often took the form of pitched battles, and they jailed the organizers of the disturbances without trial under the emergency regulations. This served to further inflame the situation and the militants eventually resorted to a bombing campaign which cost them any lingering public support. The picture that Cheung presents is of a local confrontation, a spillover from the Cultural Revolution, over which the Chinese and British governments had only limited influence and which eventually died away as the militants realised that Beijing's support was conditional and that the Hong Kong police force would continue to enforce law and order.

Cheung's book is admirably researched and provides a plausible and balanced explanation of what happened in 1967. It will invite comparisons with Bickers and Yep's (eds.) May Days in Hong Kong (Hong Kong University Press, 2009) which deals with the disturbances thematically. If the books are seen as complementary, they provide a rich account of the causes and impact of the disturbances. Cheung's description of events, for example, can be matched against the in-depth analysis of their effects on labour, the police force and the economy which are discussed in Bickers and Yep's book. Taken together, these books provide a comprehensive account of the disturbances which adds considerably to our understanding of Hong Kong's history.