The Kowloon rioters displayed no signs of a unified battle plan, nor any concerted push toward a strategic objective. But their actions revealed a consistent pattern of criminality after the looting and extortion began, confirming the police belief that Triads were in control. Police decided to shoot to kill, but realized that even this last-ditch measure would be useless unless they deployed their units to surround the rioters and take them prisoner. Shortly after noon of October 11—and very late by many people’s judgment—three battalions of the Hong Kong army garrison were thrown into the fight.
With army battalions in action, the mob spirit began to die down throughout Kowloon by evening. A curfew was imposed, cross-harbor ferry service suspended, and the main impetus of the Kowloon riots came to an end.
Rigid enforcement of the curfew slowly cleared the streets of bystanders, but failed to drive the active rioters to cover. Looting and stoning of police persisted in Mongkok until after midnight, when riot guns and tear gas finally halted it. Strong-arm gangs armed with rocks, hammers, and iron bars prowled through eastern Kowloon, extorting money from shopkeepers, looting factories and battling police. Three rioters were killed and more than 400 arrested before the plundering was checked.
Looting and arson continued for the third day, October 12, at many places in Kowloon. The mass riots of the first two days were replaced by a merciless street war between bands of gangsters and the uniformed services of the colony. Three looters were shot to death in a raid on a provision shop in Mongkok. Firemen, ambulance crews and practically every man in a uniform was stoned or beaten if he ventured into a riot area.
On the afternoon of the 12th, police began dragnet raids on the hideouts of rioters and looters, taking 1,170 prisoners. The next day, raids at Li Cheng Uk by police and military units took 1,000 prisoners, and 700 others were rounded up at Tai Hang Tung.
On the morning of October 14, the curfew was lifted in Kowloon and most of the army units were relieved. But a night curfew continued for three more nights in northwestern Kowloon.
The day after the Kowloon riots erupted, a related but different kind of rioting broke out in Tsuen Wan, a New Territories factory town five and one-half miles west of Li Cheng Uk. In this area of textile and enamelware factories, most of the workers lived in company dormitories; physically close, but divided into intensely hostile pro- and anti-Communist unions.
Tsuen Wan had experienced some friction over the refusal of factory owners to display Nationalist flags on plant buildings during the Double Ten holiday, although pro-Nationalist workers could display the flags in their dormitories. No open protest was made until the afternoon of the next day, when a mob gathered outside a cotton mill and insisted that Nationalist flags be shown. The company acceded, and even granted the crowd leaders a small amount of money.
But the right-wing unions were in no mood for peaceful solutions that same evening when they launched a series of raids on Communist union offices; they looted and burned the offices and beat some leftist workers so savagely that five of them died. Sixty other leftist union members were collared by a mob and dragged off to a Nationalist rally where they were kicked and punched until many were unconscious. Meanwhile, another group of right-wing unionists continued to raid Communist union offices, assaulting any members they could find. Army troops were called to restore order, and their heavy vehicles crashed through mob barricades to remove the injured and clamp a strict curfew on Tsuen Wan.
One mile south of the town, mobs were still on a rampage, attacking a canning factory and setting it on fire. Four other factories on the outskirts of Tsuen Wan were besieged by mobs carrying Nationalist flags. Their demands were identical; either the plant would put out Nationalist flags and pay protection to the mob, or the place would be burned down. Management officials hastened to comply.