Born and raised in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, Tu moved to Hong Kong in 1951 following a period as a missionary in China.

[1] She fought for gay rights, better housing, welfare services, playgrounds, bus routes, hawker licences and innumerable other issues and her campaigning is credited with leading to the establishment of the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) in 1974.

[2] In the run up to the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China and the midst of the Sino-British conflict on the 1994 Hong Kong electoral reform, Tu found favour with the Chinese Communist authorities, and took a seat on the Beijing-controlled Provisional Legislative Council, from December 1996 to June 1998, after losing both her seats in the Urban and Legislative Councils in 1995 to another prominent democrat Szeto Wah.

In post-1997 Hong Kong, although without a formal public role, Tu consistently supported the SAR government and policies including the controversial Basic Law Article 23 legislation.

Tu was born into the working-class family of John and Florence Hume on 2 June 1913 in Newcastle upon Tyne, the second child of four.

[4] In 1946 she married William Elliott, and went with him to China as a missionary with an organisation called the Christian Missions in Many Lands in 1947, and stationed in Yifeng.

She lived in an illegal apartment in a squatter community in Wong Tai Sin area, known as Kai Tak New Village.

[5] Shocked by the poverty and injustices there, and due to her sympathy for the situation of Hong Kong society, Elsie became disenchanted with her husband's rigid Protestant faith and the refusal of their church, the Plymouth Brethren, to become involved in social issues.

[2] In 1954, she founded and worked in Mu Kuang English School for poor children in an old army tent at a squatter area near Kai Tak.

The Mu Kuang English School is now situated on Kung Lok Road in Kwun Tong, serving 1,300 children of Hong Kong's low-income families.

After she left the church, she felt like she was "starting [her] new life at the age of 43, with a mission on earth for human beings, and not mansion in heaven for [her]self.

[12] Becoming politically active, Elliott was elected for the first time to the Urban Council in 1963, a body dealing with local district matters such as public health, recreation, culture, food hygiene, hawking and markets.

Elliott thought this unfair and lobbied, with Councillor Denny Huang and others, for years to have Chinese recognised as an official language.

[17] From the 1960s to 1980s, Elliott fought for gay rights, better housing, welfare services, playgrounds, bus routes, hawker licences and innumerable other issues.

She called for a review of the policy once she was elected to the Urban Council in 1963 and helped the homeless and filed complaints to the government officials.

Inspired by Elliot's actions, on 4 April 1966, a young man named So Sau-chung began a hunger strike protest at the Star Ferry Terminal in Central with his black jacket upon which he had hand-written the words "Hail Elsie", "Join hunger strike to block fare increase".

[20] Though many in ruling circles disliked Elliott rocking the boat, her campaigning is credited with leading to the establishment of the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) in 1974 by Governor Murray MacLehose who pushed forward massive reforms to the colonial system.

[21] She appealed directly to Governor MacLehose, who also supported gay rights, but he echoed the same sentiment that the community would oppose decriminalisation.

[citation needed] In January 1980, John MacLennan [zh], a police inspector, was found shot five times in the chest and body in his locked flat on the day he was to have been arrested on homosexual charges.

[23] In the period leading up to Hong Kong's return to Chinese sovereignty, Tu became an advocate of slower pace in democratisation as preferred by the Chinese government, which markets it as "gradual pace", as opposed to many democrats who advocate faster-pace democratisation such as Emily Lau and Martin Lee.

[2] In the Urban Council election in March 1995, she lost her seat after 32 years of service to Democratic Party politician Szeto Wah, whose campaign targeted Tu's perceived pro-Beijing stance, by a margin of 2,397 votes.

As she ran against the pro-democracy icon, Tu was supported by the pro-Beijing party Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB), which made her look even closer to Beijing.

"[3] Tu left active politics and closed her office in 1998 but continued to comment on social issues and turned in articles to newspapers to criticise government policies she deemed unfair or inadequate.

[22] She remained, as one Hong Kong commentator put it, "the pro-Beijing camp's only worthy, authentic, popular hero".

When the latter ran in the 2007 Legislative Council by-election against democrat Anson Chan who was the former Chief Secretary for Administration, Tu publicly endorsed the Beijing-supported Ip.

[25] In 2013, she criticised the widening income disparity in Hong Kong and "rich men who seem to have no conscience", expressing sympathy for striking dock workers against billionaire Li Ka-shing's Hutchison Whampoa.

[22][28] All three Chief Executives Leung Chun-ying and his two predecessors Tung Chee-hwa and Donald Tsang were among the pallbearers at the funeral of Tu on 20 December.

Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying praised her "passion and devotion to Hong Kong and her tremendous contributions to social reform and development" in a statement after her death.

Other democrats such as Lau Chin-shek, Lee Wing-tat, Fred Li Wah-ming and Frederick Fung admitted their involvement in social activism was inspired or assisted by Elsie Tu.