According to the western media, Hong Kong's Democratic Party and a few vocal elected legislators are the guardians of the struggle for democracy in Hong Kong. Such a view is simplistic and overlooks the broader social movements and grassroots organisations which have been engaged in persistent education, organisation and mobilisation.
The groups which now make up the Democratic Party emerged in the 1980s, in the wake of London and Beijing's negotiations on the future of Hong Kong. One component, Meeting Point, was formed in 1983, and another, United Democrats, a few years later, both as "opinion groups".
Both groups were founded mainly by ex-student activists and liberal professionals. They achieved a degree of electoral success in the 1980s as the colonial government broadened the scope of local elections, and they were a vocal component of the broadly based campaign for direct election of the legislature in 1988.
Their perceived leadership in the mass movement came in late May 1989, on the eve of the Tiananmen massacre, and started with the first big mobilisation after martial law was declared in Beijing. They ignored earlier mobilisations in support of the Chinese democracy movement and even the protests in solidarity with the Beijing hunger striking students in April.
Hong Kong people were shocked by the massacre. More than a million people, out of a population of six million, poured into the streets. Leaders of the United Democrats became the most visible in the broadly based support movement, which comprised more than a hundred organisations.
They became the spokespersons because of their "respectability" — barrister and legislator (elected to a seat reserved for the legal profession) Martin Lee Chu-Ming; Professional Teachers' Union president Szeto Wah, who led important teachers' strikes in the early 1970s; and Lau Chin-Shek and Lee Chek-Yan, organisers of the church-funded Christian Industrial Committee and established commentators on labour issues.
Their image was reinforced by Beijing's attacks on the support movement, which was accused of turning Hong Kong into a subversive base.
This profile of being outspoken and ready to confront Beijing translated into electoral success, especially in the 1991 election, the first time that a small component was directly elected by popular vote. Members of Meeting Point and United Democrats won most of these seats.
They continued to gain prominence through speaking at subsequent anniversary events for Tiananmen, in the legislative chambers and on television.
The two groups merged to form the Democratic Party in 1994, winning about 60% of the popular vote in the 1995 election — in which 20 of the 60 seats were elected by popular vote.
Elected positions could be useful if part of a broader strategy for democratic change involving the education and mobilisation of the majority. That isn't the case with the Democratic Party. It seems fixated on parliament as the beginning and end of change.
After being unseated on June 30, its parliamentary leaders proclaimed that they would go "back to the streets" — temporarily — but would aim to reclaim their parliamentary seats. They subsequently formed a shadow cabinet, with spokespeople designated on various issues, for regular "dialogue" with the new chief executive, Tung Chee-Hwa.
Earlier, they showed great reluctance to speak up for even the most fundamental of democratic principles, the right of popular franchise.
In a proposal to the Basic Law Drafting Committee on the future electoral system, the proposal of 190 so-called democrats headed by Martin Lee, the most radical measure suggested was a popular vote for "no less than half" of the seats in the legislature. Thus they accepted that most of the remaining seats would be allocated to privileged groups, heavily favouring the business sector and professionals.
Despite being the biggest bloc of popularly elected legislators after 1991, they took few initiatives in leading a campaign for universal franchise. It was independent legislator Emily Lau Wai-Hing, not the Democratic Party, who moved in 1994 in the Legislative Council a bill for a fully popularly elected legislature.
Emily Lau and Christina Loh are outspoken legislators whose electoral support was based partly on their readiness to confront Beijing. They represent little beyond than themselves.
The Association for Democracy and People's Livelihood is led by a long-term grassroots organiser, Frederick Fung Kim-Kee. The group has shown too much willingness to be coopted into Beijing's layers of consultative bodies and to compromise on demands for democracy.
There are a large number of grassroots organisations which have been organising local communities to lead fights on local as well as Hong Kong-wide issues. The Society for Community Organisations, the United Social Service Centre of Tsuen Wan (recently dissolved) and the Council on Public Housing are examples.
Many of these groups have been organising in the communities since the '70s, for empowerment of the people and the raising of social consciousness through local struggles. They were a product of the youth radicalisation in Hong Kong in the early '70s. They were convinced of the need to fight the excesses of the colonial government, but avoided challenging the colonial order as a whole.
But they responded effectively to the movement for direct elections in 1987; some 160 of them formed a fighting coalition. Basically the same groups formed the coalition in 1986 against the construction of a nuclear plant just across the border in China, and in 1989, the coalition supporting, mobilising and fundraising for the protesting students in Tiananmen.
Though these groups, on their own, are mostly limited by their sectoral and local concerns, they have a potential to be transformed into a force for social change.
Included in these coalitions are a range of activist groups (mostly in solidarity with the democracy movement in China), as well as student and feminist organisations.
Few militant workers' organisations exist because of the dominance by pro-Beijing forces in the trade union movement, except for the Christian Industrial Committee. (That committee has hired Chinese democracy activist Han Dongfang as a Hong Kong-based researcher on the workers movement in China. Han coordinates the publication of China Labor Bulletin.)
Active in these coalitions are also three groups linked to or coming from the Trotskyist movement of China. They are the Revolutionary Communist Party, which publishes the bimonthly Marxist magazine October Review, the Pioneer group, which publishes a bimonthly magazine, Pioneer, and the April 5th Action group, with some members coming from the disbanded Revolutionary Marxist League.
The first two groups are in solidarity with the Fourth International, which could be construed as unlawful "links" under the post-July 1 legislation in Hong Kong and used as an excuse for persecution.
A large number of grassroots organisations have been receiving overseas funding, many from churches. That is technically unlawful now too. How ready Tung Chee-Hwa is to persecute them will be linked to the extent of international attention and solidarity they receive.