Brook Bernacchi

Brook Antony Bernacchi, OBE, QC, JP (Chinese: 貝納褀; 22 January 1922 – 1996), was a lawyer and politician in Hong Kong. He was also the founder of the Reform Club, the oldest political group in Hong Kong. During his many years as a member of the Urban Council, he became known for his struggle for direct representation.

Life

Bernacchi was educated in Westminster School and Cambridge University and was called to the Bar in Great Britain in 1943. He arrived in Hong Kong in 1945 as part of the Royal Marines. He decided to stay in Hong Kong and consequently became a member of the Hong Kong Bar Association in 1946 and its chairman in 1963. In 1960 Bernacchi became a Queen's Counsel.

In 1948 Bernacchi and his close friend, Elsie Elliot (later known as Elsie Tu), set up the Reform Club of Hong Kong, whose main goal was to create public housing for all. He was elected to the Urban Council on 31 May 1952, where he was reelected until he stepped down in 1981, in order to protest the lack of universal suffrage. Even though he returned to politics two years later, he was only elected to the Council in 1989.

Bernacchi was one of the original founders of the Sea School, in Stanley, Hong Kong, which was set up to train young disadvantaged boys for a career in the Navy.

In 1949, Bernacchi, haviing been inspired by the tea farms he visited in Burma during the Second World War, bought a stretch of land on Ngong Ping plateau on Lantau Island, behind Po Lin Monastery, in order to produce the only Hong Kong grown tea available.

In 1973, he became a chairman of New Lantao Motor Bus Company Ltd.

In 1994, he became the only Westerner to be sent on the first mission of Hong Kong advisers to China.

He married Patricia Sheelagh Heath in 1970. He died in 1996 of a brain tumor at the age of 74 and is survived by three stepchildren; Robert Whitehead, SC (currently vice-chairman of the Hong Kong Bar Association), Dr. Ian Whitehead and Mrs. Sarah Driver (née Whitehead) as well as 11 grandchildren; Dominique Whitehead, Carina Anne Oechsner, Stefan Oechsner, John Brook Whitehead, Max Whitehead, Tiago Whitehead, Hugo Whitehead, Brook Driver, Millicent Driver, Faye Driver, and Archie Driver.

References

• Elisabeth Tacey, Lawyer and fighter for rights Brook Bernacchi dies at 74 South China Morning Post, 23 September 1996.
• Urban Council, Urban Council Annual Report, 1974