Brook Bernacchi

Brook Antony Bernacchi (Chinese: 貝納祺; 22 January 1922 – 22 September 1996) was a lawyer and politician in Hong Kong.

He represented the club to run in the first Urban Council election in the post-war period, in 1952, and went on to hold the position for most of his public life.

[1] The club, under Bernacchi's chairmanship, was involved in grassroots politics, calling for public housing for all, as thousands of refugees flooded into Hong Kong from the Communist uprising in China.

[1] For instance, he opposed Financial Secretary Sir Philip Haddon-Cave and his "positive non-interventionism", criticising him for cutting expenditure on the overdue housing programme.

[5] Bernacchi showed rare support to the colonial government during the 1967 leftist riot and endorsed an outright crackdown.

In 1978, he wrote to the Foreign Secretary David Owen that half of the Hong Kong population, 62 percent of those aged 18 to 34, "positively want a measure of elected representation" in the Legislative Council.

He also asked rhetorically, "how can one purport to represent nearly six million people in Hong Kong when you have been elected by only 6,000 voters?