ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the developments in the 1960s in a series of interlinked issues, some of which had already begun to rear their heads in the late 1950s. Triads were seen from the very beginning of Hong Kong’s colonial administration as a threat to social order, as much because of their links with political struggles on the Mainland as because of their criminal activities within the colony. The decline in the ‘traditional’ triads was, the police argued, due to their intensive anti-triad actions since the late 1950s, since when the major triad factions had disintegrated. The drive to clean up Hong Kong in the late 1950s, and bring triad activities under control, resulted in the introduction of several new ordinances regulating gambling, vagrancy, supervision of offenders and hawking. In 1960s colonial Hong Kong were heavily involved in corruption, and in particular the corruption of the police.
