mrswdk wrote:Dukasaur wrote:mrswdk wrote:The UK didn’t make Hong Kongers British citizens because they never were British citizens. They were people born in a colony owned by the UK. If people in Hong Kong think the British government ever looked at them as equals to someone born in Manchester or Edinburgh then they are kidding themselves. By the time the UK handed Hong Kong back it had been letting all British people directly vote for their government representatives for something like 60-70 years. It never even came close to giving Hong Kongers that same privilege.
You're too young to remember, but I still remember when the inside front cover of my Canadian passport carried the words "A Canadian citizen is a British subject" and the inside back cover said something along the lines of "in places where a Canadian consulate is not available you may always seek protection at a British consulate or High Commission."
The Commonwealth used to mean something. Maybe it doesn't any more.
The key word there being ‘subject’ (not ‘citizen’), as in ‘subjected to the authority and control of a higher power’. Subjects from Hong Kong didn’t have the same rights to live and work in the UK that British people had. They didn’t get to choose their leaders. They were not equals.
You're right that they were not equals. And you're mostly right that they didn't get to choose their leaders. Most of the colonies became self-governing during the 20th century, but Hong Kong didn't, largely because of the military threat from China.
About the right to live and work in the U.K., however, you're wrong. From the inception of the Empire until 1962, all citizens of all British possessions were treated as British subjects who had the right to live and work in all other British possessions. When the laws evolved, though, moving from one continent to another involved an arduous journey by ship which meant that relatively few people undertook it. In the 20th Century, ships got faster and faster, and then air travel began, and the trips got less and less arduous each year. People in Britain started to fret about being overwhelmed by immigrants from the colonies. Nonetheless, the right of all British subjects to live and work in Britain was not encumbered until 1962, with the Commonwealth Immigrants Act.
Here's the pdf from the Home Office. The relevant part about the Right of Abode starts on Page 18 of the pdf.
After 1962, British subjects outside of Britain no longer had the unrestricted right to live and work in Britain, but at that point it was still relatively easy for them to gain it (For white people, basically a rubber stamp. For non-whites a few extra rules were added as discouragement, but it was still relatively easy overall.) The real hammer blow didn't come until the British Nationality Act of 1981, when the whole concept Commonwealth was essentially crushed and citizenships in the various Commonwealth countries were irretrievably severed.
Anyway, that's all interesting and worth knowing, but still not the central point.
mrswdk wrote:The key word there being ‘subject’ (not ‘citizen’), as in ‘subjected to the authority and control of a higher power’.
... and the key corollary to "subjected to the authority" is "under the protection of." This is the central moral point of government. When one surrenders one's autonomy to a higher power, one gains the protection of that power. Otherwise there is no point to the whole exercise.
People who were subject to the British Crown have a right to expect protection by the British Crown. The protection due to the people of Hong Kong was withdrawn from them. These people were born and raised as British subjects, and then they were told, "sorry, defending your rights will be too expensive for us, we'll just toss you to the PRC, accompanied of course by their completely unenforceable and worthless promises to respect the rights you had." This was a betrayal, an abrogation of duty. That was my only point.
