With a sickening sense of inevitability, the peaceful pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong has ended up locked in violent clashes against police after confronting a ruthless dictatorship. The homemade catapults, crude barricades and flaming petrol bombs of students are little match for a well-armed force backed by a superpower. But from the start the passionate young protesters fighting for their future accepted that blood would be spilt and lives might end up being sacrificed for their cause.

They believe they have no alternative when they see the repression, backed by technology and concentration camps, used by Communist Party chiefs to control more than one billion citizens. Their courage is inspiring. Yet how depressing to see some Britons confronting these youngsters on the frontline, doing Beijing’s