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SINGAPORE: |
Thousands of cheering Singaporeans lined the streets waving the Union Jack when British troops reoccupied Singapore in September 1945. But behind the relief and joy at the end of Japanese occupation was a society that had changed vastly from the one the British had presided over in the 1930s. The clock could not be turned back to the days of imperial rule when British officials could govern without question. In many ways, the British realized this, but it took time for Singaporeans and the British to find a new course.
Singapore’s anti-colonial struggle was unique. In the other countries of Southeast Asia – the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, etc. – indigenous people reclaimed their nations from European dominance. For a majority of Singaporeans, the island was not their hereditary land; most of them had just recently made it their home.
Singapore welcomes the return of the British.
For over a century, Singapore had been the administrative center for the Straits Settlements and later British Malaya. The Malayan Union proposal and the 1948 Federation of Malaya that replaced it included Penang and Melaka but excluded Singapore. The Malayan administrative center had shifted to Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore remained a British colony. Many Singaporeans objected to this move because they saw themselves as part of Malaya. For the next fifteen years, most Singapore politicians would be committed to finding a future for Singapore as part of Malaya.
Political attitudes had changed. Singaporeans were happy to have the British return but viewed themselves and the future in a different light than they had three-and-a-half years earlier. While there were serious disagreements and divisions about what kind of political future they wanted, Singaporeans were in agreement about what they did not want – outsiders telling them how to run their lives and their society.
An important element in any country’s national identity is what its citizens have in common. This might be language, race, religion or shared experiences. The more dramatic the shared experiences, the more they bind people together. Of all national experiences, war and occupation are the most telling. Being predominantly Chinese, the people of Singapore had suffered more at the hands of the Japanese than had the people of the peninsula. As a group, Singaporeans had found ways to carry on and survive in the face of Japanese domination and cruelty. These shared experiences brought them together and instilled in them a belief that Singapore was their home. They had fought for it, and they had carried on without the help of the British.
While many British had shared the suffering from behind the barbed wire of internment camps, many had also fled Singapore in the face of the Japanese onslaught in 1941, and those images were still fresh in the minds of Singaporeans, who could not and did not leave. There was nowhere to go; Singapore was their home through good times and bad. After the war, the long-settled, English-educated residents vocalized these changed attitudes first, but within a few years, the voices of newer Chinese-educated immigrants were heard as well.
Singapore was changing in sheer numbers. In the fifteen years between 1930 and the end of the war, the population doubled to a million people. For the first time in Singapore’s history, the population was growing not so much from immigration but rather from resident families having children. In the 1940s and 1950s, the island had one of the highest birth rates in the world. By the 1950s, half the population of Singapore was under the age of fifteen. Population growth and the economic and social problems it caused were key factors in shaping the political course of the island.
There was a new assertiveness on the part of Singaporeans to determine their own destiny. The political course that resulted in an independent sovereign nation in 1965 went through a number of stages. From 1945 to 1948, political discourse was dominated by relatively radical English-educated Singaporeans. In the following five years, it was determined by conservative middle class leaders. This swing to the right during the years 1948 to 1953 was a result of British suppression of communists and their sympathizers during the Emergency. From 1954 to 1959, the political pendulum swung back to the left as politicians scrambled to gain the support of the Chinese-speaking community. The final stage was self-rule, which included an attempt to gain independence through merging with Malaya and a battle between moderates and extremists for control of the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP).
As in Malaya, when the British returned to Singapore, they intended to chart a path to some form of self-rule. Singapore’s future was complicated by its economic and strategic importance to Britain’s post-war aims in Asia. Its future therefore had to be weighed carefully. Singapore’s port and financial community were to operate as launching pads to help rebuild Britain’s role in international trade, which had been shattered by the war.
In addition, Singapore’s military importance to the British was enhanced by the post-war confrontation between the communists and the free world, the Cold War. The outbreak of the Emergency in Malaya, the communist victory in China in 1949 and the Korean War of 1950–1953 contributed to the belief that Singapore was a key outpost for Britain and its Western allies. Singapore’s political future had to be viewed in a global context.
Looking at Singapore today, it is easy to forget how significant its position was as a British garrison and naval base. Close to a fifth of Singapore’s total area was controlled by the British military. In the first two decades after World War II, most of Seletar, Sembawang, Changi, Tengah, Nee Soon and Alexandra were occupied by the British. Some forty thousand Singaporeans depended on the British military for their livelihoods, and thousands of others benefited indirectly from British military spending. Thus, because of its economic and military importance, the speed with which the British were willing to relinquish political power was slower than the desires of Singapore’s Asian leaders.
In the first stage of Singapore’s post-war development from 1945 to 1948, the political leadership was dominated by English-educated leftists and communists. Attempts by these leaders to set the political agenda included the formation of Singapore’s first broad-based political party, the Malayan Democratic Union (MDU). Founded in 1945 under the leadership of Gerald de Cruz, John Eber, Lim Hong Bee, Lim Kean Chye and Philip Hoalim, the MDU brought a number of groups together in its quest for self-rule, including members of the MCP and other communist-dominated groups.
That the English-educated would lead the way through much of Singapore’s post-war political development was not surprising. Most of them had stronger ties to Singapore and Malaya than their Chinese-speaking counterparts. Given the low levels of literacy and initial political apathy among the Chinese-speaking groups, the English-educated saw it as their natural role to assume political leadership.
The leaders of the MDU had a Malayan outlook and were at the forefront the opposition to the Federation of Malaya proposal. They saw it as undemocratic and discriminatory to the immigrant races and were determinedly opposed to Singapore’s exclusion from Malaya. They were able to generate some support in Singapore and among the Straits Chinese and communists in Malaya, but to most Malays in the peninsula, the MDU’s opinions and the non-Malay composition of its leadership were seen as threats to Malay political dominance.
In Singapore, the MDU brought together widely diverse groups with its anti-colonial rhetoric and “one big tent” philosophy – that communists, non-communists and anti-communists could work together to end British rule in Singapore and Malaya.
The MDU agitated for more than self-rule. It wanted a new education system that was national in nature rather than community based. It fought for the creation of the University of Malaya and the expansion of educational opportunities. It also wanted the local government to take over basic industries and services that were owned by the British and an elected majority in the legislative council by 1948. It wanted income redistributed through the establishment of a progressive income tax. The proposal that the British found most appealing was the income tax, and they were happy to institute it, but for revenue purposes.
The British response to these demands was to proceed slowly and offer limited local participation. In 1948, they called for a reorganization of the legislative council in which thirteen members of the council would be mostly Asian unofficials (non-government members) and nine would be officials. Of the thirteen, four would be appointed by the governor, three selected by the three major chambers of commerce and six popularly elected by British subjects.
The MDU labeled the election a sham because only six of twenty-five seats would be chosen by the electorate, an electorate that was severely limited because the majority of Singaporeans were not British subjects as they were recent immigrants. Unless a majority of the seats were elected and elected by all residents of the colony, the MDU refused to participate. It called for a boycott, and as a result, only 23,000 people registered to vote, and three of those six seats went to the newly formed conservative party, the Singapore Progressive Party (SPP).
Three months after the election, the British declared a state of emergency because of the armed insurrection in Malaya. This proved to be the death blow to the MDU as many of its non-communist members no longer wanted to be associated with the MCP now that it was considered part of the insurrection. In 1948, the MDU disbanded voluntarily, and the next few years of Singapore politics were dominated by right wing parties, such as the SPP.
The communist thrust after the war was directed from the labor union movement. Taking advantage of the slow economy immediately after the war, the MCP resuscitated the Pan-Malayan General Labor Union under a new name, the Singapore Federation of Trade Unions (SFTU). By 1947, the SFTU controlled some two-thirds of the unions in Singapore and had a union membership of over fifty thousand workers. One of the reasons for its success in organizing workers was that initially it produced results. Between 1945 and 1947, the unions it controlled called 119 strikes, and about 75 percent were successful in attaining better pay and working conditions for members. It is interesting that the leadership of much of this union activity came from the English-educated elite, considering that many of the people it was trying to organize spoke Chinese. Many labor leaders who were later jailed by the British, such as Sandra Woodhull, Devan Nair and J.J. Puthucheary, belonged to this elite.
While the MCP had a common cause with the MDU in achieving labor victories, the party was seriously divided over what their goals should be. The MCP branch in Singapore, like the branches in Malaya, was split between those who wanted to follow legal, constitutional methods and those who believed that the only way to power was through armed insurrection and civil disorder. When the leadership of the MCP pursued the latter in Malaya, Singapore’s communists went to jail, went underground or went abroad.
The outbreak of armed rebellion in the peninsula caused great concern among the British officials in Singapore. The large Chinese community, its established communist infrastructure and the recent left-wing labor agitation made Singapore ripe for manipulation by the radicals and the MCP. Emergency laws restricting political activity were rushed through the legislature. Public meetings for political purposes were banned except during elections. The police were given wide ranging powers of arrest and detention, and the definitions of subversive activities were broadened considerably. Many of these powers remain on the books to this day. The Internal Security Act (ISA) still permits detention without trial in cases of threats to Singapore’s peace and order.
In the years 1948 to 1953, the authorities in Singapore also maintained peace and stability through effective political intelligence gathering by the Special Branch. Communists, labor leaders and anyone suspected of communist sympathies were either arrested or silenced. This created a political vacuum that the more conservative and cooperative political groups filled.
The SPP was ideally suited to play a leading role at this time. Its leaders, C.C. Tan, J. Laycock, N. Mallal, A.P. Rajah and Thio Chan Bee, reflected the makeup and goals of the party. The products of English education in Singapore and British universities, they led a rank and file that was primarily made up of conservative middle and upper class members. They felt that Singapore was not ready for full self-rule and should move slowly in that direction until the population was more literate and politically experienced. Francis Thomas, a leading educator and political activist in the 1950s, labeled them “something between government stooges and the protectors of wealth.”
Due to the repressive political climate and an electorate limited to British subjects, when an election was called in 1951 to expand the elected representatives in the legislative council from six to nine, the SPP won six of the seats. In this election, the registered voters increased to 48,155, but only 24,578 bothered to vote.
Accepted by the British as the elected political voice of the people, the SPP was able to influence policy. A champion of English education, it was successful in its push for expansion. The number of students enrolling in English schools more than doubled in the decade after the war. By 1956, more students were starting their primary education in English than in Chinese. This took place at the expense of Chinese education and was resented by much of the Chinese-speaking population.
With SPP prodding, important strides were taken toward the Malayanization of government jobs (In this context, Malayanization refers to employment for Asians who were citizens and residents of British Malaya.) The SPP also convinced the British that locals in the civil service should be paid salaries equal to those of their expatriate British counterparts.
The Malayanization of the civil service was an important reform but only benefited those with English education. Perhaps the greatest legacy of the SPP was the establishment of the Central Provident Fund (CPF), the savings and retirement scheme that is in effect to this day. The SPP’s narrow base of support and limited goals contributed to its lack of success when the political franchise was expanded to greater numbers of Singaporeans in the mid-1950s.
In the 1950s, Singapore instituted a nation-wide savings plan known as the Central Provident Fund (CPF). (Malaysia has a similar program known as the Employees Provident Fund.) Originally intended as a forced retirement savings program for low-income workers, it has taken on an increasingly important role in the lives of most Singaporeans.
Each month, a percentage of a worker’s salary is deducted from his pay and placed in his personal account. His employer deposits a corresponding amount in the account. The contributions of both parties are tax-deductible, and the interest earned is tax-exempt. The basic premise is that workers contribute to the fund throughout their working lives and then withdraw the total amount, plus interest, when they retire.
At its inception in 1955, the percentages paid by worker and employer were relatively small, 5 percent by employer and 5 percent by employee. The percentages peaked in 1984 at 25 percent for both employer and employee, and were 14.5 percent for employers and 20 percent for employees in 2007. Under present guidelines, 21–24 percent of the contributions are set aside in a special account for medical expenses.
In the late 1960s, the program went beyond its original aim by allowing contributors to use their savings to buy residential property. This corresponded with the government’s intention to move public housing in the direction of a home ownership program. It is highly unlikely that Singapore could have achieved the high percentage of home ownership it enjoys today without this program of compulsory savings. Singaporeans can use balances in their accounts to meet the down payments on home loans and their monthly CPF contributions to meet the mortgage payments. Contributors are also allowed to invest part of their savings, buy insurance, obtain education loans and pay medical expenses.
Apart from the social security, medical and housing dimensions of the program, CPF funds are invested in government bonds, creating a huge pool of low-interest funding for credit that enables construction of HDB apartments and infrastructure projects, such as roads, utilities, the expansion of Changi International Airport and the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system.
In 1953, the political tide in Singapore began to turn as the needs and aspirations of the Chinese-speaking community began to make themselves known. The Chinese community was the sleeping giant of Singapore politics. Singapore was 75 percent Chinese, and out of this figure, two-thirds were educated and communicated in Chinese. As Singapore edged toward democratic rule, by sheer numbers, they determined its political future.
There are a number of reasons why the Chinese-speaking community began to flex its political muscles and demand a greater role in Singapore’s future. The Chinese-speaking population had a host of social and economic grievances that British authorities had failed to handle effectively. While opportunities for English-educated Singaporeans had expanded after the war, the massive population boom had brought about conditions that lowered the standard of living and quality of life for the majority of population. Problems that had been shunted aside because of the war and the Emergency had moved to center stage and had to be addressed.
The population explosion had generated a housing shortage of epidemic proportions. The working class Chinese, who were crammed into the city center, were the hardest hit. Studies of the Chinatown area in the 1950s show abysmal conditions. Small shophouses gave shelter to as many as a hundred people. The average living space was 3 m by 3 m (9 feet by 9 feet), about the size of a prison cell. Many lived in dark, dingy cubicles with no windows or access to fresh air. Public services, such as sewage disposal, water and electricity, had been built for a community a third of the size of the existing one.
The physical condition of much of the existing housing was dismal. An important reason for this was the Rent Control Act of 1946. This was a well-intentioned effort by the authorities to prevent landlords from raising rents to take advantage of the housing shortage. However, since owners could not increase their returns, they neither maintained nor carried out repairs on their properties. The end result was worse housing and ingenious methods of circumventing the laws through under-the-table payments and tea money.
Crowded housing in Chinatown in the 1950s.
Some 25 percent were squatters on the fringes of the urban areas. They lived in Chinese kampungs constructed of wood, tin and thatch and made their livings from agricultural pursuits and part-time labor. The extent of their labors was evidenced by the fact that Singapore was virtually self-sufficient in the production of poultry, eggs, green vegetables and pork products. The Chinese farmer tending his vegetable patch was as much a part of the Singapore landscape as its teeming urban areas.
As the population grew, there was no way Singapore’s economy could grow quickly enough to provide sufficient employment. About a quarter of the Chinese-speaking households lived below the government’s definition of the poverty line. The high rates of unemployment and poverty were not just due to the population expansion. Chinese who had attended Chinese-language schools had limited opportunities for jobs in government and commerce because of their lack of English-language skills and the poor education they had received in substandard schools. Their Chinese schools were substandard because of government neglect, lack of funds and poorly trained and educated teachers. When the Chinese-educated entered the labor force, they were at a serious disadvantage. Although wages rose during the boom years of the Korean War, when demand for tin and rubber rose dramatically, the surplus of workers chasing low and semi-skilled jobs depressed wages and further contributed to the low standard of living. These conditions created a conducive environment for leaders who could articulate the problems of the Chinese-speaking community.
From about 1953 onward, political activity and participation began to increase dramatically. The British had turned the corner in their fight against the Malayan Races Liberation Army (MRLA) in Malaya and had begun to ease up on the restrictions on political activity in Singapore. Between 1948 and 1953, around 1,200 people had been arrested for communist and anti-British activities. As the authorities began to release them, many ex-detainees became spearheads of agitation for change. There was a natural constituency for the communists and radicals among the Chinese-language students and workers, whose grievances only needed leadership to make them known.
The students in Chinese-language schools had legitimate concerns of discrimination, which alone would motivate them to political action, but there were other factors that would determine the radical path they would follow. One was the communist victory in China. The unification of China under one government and its ability to stand up to the United States and the West in the Korean War instilled in many young Chinese a new pride in their race. In addition, the communist party’s attempts to form a more just and equal society held great appeal.
The Chinese schools had always been highly politicized, and once the communists emerged victorious in China, their influence in Singapore increased accordingly. Government attempts to control these political activities in the schools were portrayed as attacks on Chinese culture and identity. This radicalization of the students was boosted by the presence of large numbers of overaged students. Some were in school because the war had interrupted their educations; others were in reality professional student agitators. Notable among them was Lim Chin Siong, who was instrumental in organizing student unions whose primary functions were political and anti-government in nature. Schools such as Chinese High School and Chung Cheng High School became hotbeds of communist and chauvinistic activity.
On the other side of the political spectrum, the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce also played an important role in raising the political consciousness of the Chinese-speaking population. In 1954, this conservative business group led a campaign to demand action on Chinese grievances. It fought hard and vocally for the Chinese language to be given equal status with English in public affairs and for the creation of Singapore citizenship that encompassed all the residents of the island and not just those who had accepted British nationality and protection. Thus, from the right and the left, the Chinese speakers were being prodded into greater political activity.
The easing of the Emergency restrictions and the release of detainees also led to the resurgence of militant trade unions. In the immediate post-war era, the trade union movement had been dominated by English-educated leaders, and much of its success was among white-collar workers, such as teachers and civil servants. This changed in the 1950s, when the old line leaders were eclipsed by younger Chinese-educated leaders.
Through the Singapore Factory and Shop Workers Union (SFSWU), men such as Lim Chin Siong and Fong Swee Suan began to organize the low-paid, low-skilled workers. Their Chinese-educated roots and successes in achieving better wages for their followers brought the SFSWU widespread support. Within a couple of years of its inception in 1954, the SFSWU represented thirty unions and some thirty thousand workers. Its agenda was not just working conditions – many of the strikes it called were political in nature and were meant more to foment unrest against the government than to meet the needs of working class unionists.
Neighbors chat outside their tiny rooms in Chinatown.
It is natural to dwell on the Chinese community of Singapore because of its dominance in terms of numbers, but the Malay community of the 1950s bears close scrutiny because it was at odds with the conventional wisdom of the time – that it was impossible for Malays to compete with immigrant Chinese because they were a non-confrontational, rural people who did not want to undertake urban employment. The Malay community in Singapore did not fit this stereotype.
It is true that the Malays tended to live together in kampungs outside the urban areas, but in the case of Singapore, the kampung was a social phenomenon, not an economic one. Malays preferred to live close to those who shared their religious and cultural values. They wanted to preserve their traditional cooperative values in the face of an overwhelming alien population.
Dr. Goh Keng Swee, who later served as minister of finance, did an exhaustive study of the incomes and occupations of Singaporeans in the early 1950s. In terms of per capita income, the Malays of the 1950s held an economic position on par with that of the Chinese. The locally born Malay had a monthly income almost equal to that of the locally born Chinese and a third higher than the immigrant Chinese. His monthly income was twice that of the Malay in the peninsula. Only a small percentage of Malays in Singapore were involved in agriculture and fishing. The vast majority were wage earners.
The point is that the Malays could and did adapt and survive in an urban wage-earning situation. The Malays’ backward economic position vis-à-vis the other races in Singapore did not take place until after self-rule and independence.
In the political and social arena, Singapore’s overwhelmingly Chinese majority would determine the leadership of Singapore, but the Malays were a large enough minority that their views and sensitivities could not be ignored. This was especially true when viewed in the larger context of communal politics in British Malaya.
Malay political influence in Singapore was dramatically exemplified by riots that took place in 1950 as a result of a court case involving a young woman by the name of Maria Hertogh, a Eurasian whose father had served in the Dutch army in Indonesia. Facing internment at the time of the Japanese occupation, her mother left the four-year-old in the care of a Malay friend, who raised the child as her own daughter. When the war was over, Hertogh’s parents were repatriated to the Netherlands and lost contact with their daughter and their friend, Aminah binte Mohammad, who had moved to the eastern coast of Malaya. It was not until 1949 that Hertogh’s parents found her, a twelve-year-old Muslim girl with a Malay name. The Dutch authorities went to court to have the girl returned to her natural parents. In the ensuing legal battle, emotions ran high in the Malay Muslim community. The courts first turned Hertogh over to the custody of the Social Welfare Department. On appeal, she was given back to her foster mother, who arranged for Hertogh’s marriage to a local Malay. The appeal was then overturned, the marriage annulled and custody given to her natural parents.
Throughout the entire legal tussle, the press had a field day. The Malay press depicted Hertogh as a Muslim child who was forced to become a Christian and separated from the only mother she knew. In the English press, it was a human interest story about a mother finding her long-lost daughter and returning her to her culture and religion. Extremist Malay politicians inflamed the passions of the Malay community. They decried the injustice of a system that would take a Muslim child away from the mother she loved and her new husband and turn her over to Christians who had abandoned her.
Eventually, the issue boiled over into the streets, and Malay crowds attacked Europeans and Eurasians indiscriminately. For three days, the British army and Singapore police battled furious mobs. The city was placed under a week-long curfew, and when the smoke cleared, eighteen people were dead, hundreds injured and hundreds in jail. For Singapore, it was a painful reminder of how race and religion were issues that could at any time explode into civil disorder.
British constitutional reform also contributed to the level of political participation. The 1951 election and subsequent municipal elections had been failures in terms of voter turnout. The problem of low participation, coupled with the need to map out Singapore’s constitutional future, led to the creation of a commission under the leadership of Sir George Rendel. The Rendel Commission’s report, which was published in 1954, proposed that a new constitution establish a self-governing legislative assembly in which twenty-five of the thirty-two members would be popularly elected. The executive council would be replaced by a council of ministers under the leadership of a chief minister who represented the party with the greatest number of seats in the assembly. British officials would retain control over defense, internal security, foreign affairs and finance.
While it proposed only limited self-government, the new constitution did mean that a significant portion of government responsibility would be turned over to the elected representatives of the people of Singapore. By the automatic registration of voters, the electorate was increased from 75,000 to around 300,000. This set the stage for Singapore’s first meaningful election both in terms of representation and participation.
There are some who say that the constitution of 1955 was tailor-made for an SPP victory. The SPP’s desire to move slowly toward self-rule and cooperate with the British would probably have made the changeover smoother than it was. However, it is hard to believe that the British truly expected an SPP victory, especially given the quality of their political intelligence through the Special Branch. In the election the SPP took a drubbing, winning only four seats, a natural result of the enlarged electorate that had moved the political agenda markedly to the left.
After the election, no one party had a majority of seats in the new assembly. The Labor Front won the most number of seats – ten. This was a left-of-center party organized in 1954 and led by David Marshall and Lim Yew Hock. It drew much of its support from the more moderate trade unions and also had significant middle class backing. Another new party, the People’s Action Party, had won three of the four seats it had contested. Led by Lee Kuan Yew, the PAP had a large following among the Chinese-educated community and the more militant communist-influenced labor unions.
The Labor Front formed an alliance with the Singapore version of the Alliance Party of Malaya, which had won three seats. When the British governor used two of his appointed seats to place Labor Front supporters in the assembly, Marshall had a majority and became chief minister of Singapore’s first elected government.
Marshall was from a Jewish family that had immigrated to Singapore from Iraq close to a century earlier. A brilliant lawyer and indefatigable orator, his flamboyant style gave the new government a rousing start. The Labor Front had never really expected to be in the position of forming a government. Like the PAP, it had planned to sit in opposition until full self-government came into effect at a later date. Thrust into power, the chief minister and his party faced a sea of troubles.
Marshall presided over a weak government, and his job was made even more difficult by those who wanted him to fail. His government and party had problems from the outset because they did not have a popular mandate. Many of Marshall’s ideas were widely accepted – full self-rule, merger with Malaya and education reform – but his party had not won a majority of seats, which is essential in a parliamentary system. The party encompassed a coalition of liberals, socialists, trade unionists and political newcomers. As a result, it did not have the cohesion of a more established, experienced political party.
In parliament and the streets, Marshall and the Labor Front were under constant attack from opponents on the left and the right. In the legislative assembly, the PAP portrayed Marshall and his government as tools of the British who were standing in the way of the wishes of the masses. Debates between Marshall and Lee were articulate and entertaining but unproductive. The PAP was more concerned with its image in the Chinese-educated community and future elections than with the smooth running of Singapore’s first elected government. The SPP and the conservatives saw Marshall as a radical who was a threat to the position and power of the English-educated. Marshall and his colleagues were caught in the middle and could not please anyone.
In the streets, the militant trade unions and Chinese students were determined to discredit the Labor Front government through strikes and demonstrations. The communists and their sympathizers used the grievances of workers and students to destabilize the city and lay the groundwork for their assumption of power. Within a month after the Labor Front took power, a strike at the Hock Lee bus company by union extremists escalated into a full-blown political riot. Before the strike was settled, two policemen had died, an American reporter had been killed by a mob and property worth millions of dollars had been destroyed. In 1955 alone, over three hundred strikes were called by unions controlled by men whose goals were far more political than economic.
British skepticism made Marshall’s problems worse. While leaders in London were willing to move toward greater self-rule, the British officials in Singapore made the transition difficult. Many British had a hard time coming to grips with the end of the empire. Their reluctance to give up their power and special privileges to elected Singaporeans made the Labor Front’s attempts to meet the demands of the people a Herculean task. In the eyes of British administrators, the civil disorder was proof that Singapore was not ready for self-rule. Singapore’s stability was being threatened by communists, riots and a government unable to rule effectively. In many ways, the hesitancy of the British administrators helped make the failure of the Labor Front self-fulfilling.
The conservative British business interests and many in the middle class wanted Marshall to crack down on the left and establish law and order. If he did so, then the PAP would accuse him of being in the pocket of the British. Marshall’s personality and strong convictions made his dilemma worse. A man of deeply ingrained principles, he was committed to social justice, democracy and civil liberties. He sympathized with many of the grievances at the lower end of Singapore society, and this made the use of police power against them an agonizing decision. In the Hock Lee riots, his attempt to find non-violent solutions was interpreted as weakness by his opponents. When he was finally forced to bring in security forces to put down the disorder, Marshall was portrayed as a British puppet.
A further problem was that, like many men of deep conviction, Marshall found compromise difficult. While this trait is an asset for a trial lawyer, it is not necessarily good in a politician. Marshall’s dramatic and uncompromising stands were useful in his dealings with hide-bound British civil servants in Singapore. At home, his insistence that the British authorities respect the elected government and let it handle its own business was probably one of his greatest legacies. Singaporeans had been elected or appointed to most of the government services that affected the daily lives of people, yet the British failed to provide adequate office space for them. Marshall set up a desk under a tree outside City Hall until space was found. He threatened to resign when Governor Sir Robert Black tried to block the appointment of four assistant ministers and again when he and the governor disagreed over the powers of the governor. Black felt he had virtual veto power over the decisions of the assembly. Marshall insisted Black had to “act on the advice of the chief minister and the assembly,” except on issues of defense, foreign affairs and internal security. The issue went all the way to administrators in London, who agreed with Marshall.
When Marshall went to London in 1956 to negotiate full self-rule, his uncompromising style brought him down. Before leaving Singapore, Marshall had declared that he was going to obtain full self-rule, except for defense and foreign affairs, or resign, but the British were not about to give up control of internal security, given the civil disorder and threat of communism. Singapore was too important to them both militarily and economically. Marshall refused to compromise and returned home empty-handed. Although his party did not ask for it, he felt duty bound to resign as chief minister. After a little more than a year in power, Marshall was replaced by his deputy, Lim Yew Hock.
Lim Yew Hock was an English-educated Straits Chinese who had been active in the trade union movement. His organization, the Singapore Trade Union Congress, was a moderate alternative to the unions that had fallen under the influence of communists and other leftists. He was staunchly anti-communist and unlike Marshall, was willing to use the powers at his disposal to block communist control of the unions and Chinese student organizations.
In 1956, his government put forward a proposal to bar student groups from political activities. The reaction was swift: militant Chinese students seized control of six Chinese-medium schools and barricaded themselves inside. Lim retaliated by sending the police to clear the schools. The students took to the streets, and almost two weeks of rioting led to the death of fifteen people and the injury of hundreds of others. The streets of Singapore became battlefields between security forces and Chinese radicals. Numerous arrests were made under the ISA, culminating in the 1957 detention of many leading extremist members of the PAP, including Lim Chin Siong, Fong Swee Suan and Devan Nair.
Lim’s determination to maintain law and order paved the way for new talks with the British in 1957. He was willing to find a compromise that would allay British fears while achieving control of the government by Singaporeans. The deal was much like the one that had been offered to Marshall. A State of Singapore would be created, with a democratically elected assembly of fifty-one members. Singapore would have a prime minister and cabinet in control of all functions of government except defense and foreign affairs. In foreign affairs, Singapore would have control of commercial relations with other countries. Singapore would have its own flag, citizenship and national anthem. The British governor would be replaced with a yang di pertuan negara (local head of state) chosen by the assembly.
On the issue of internal security, a council was set up. It consisted of three British officials, three Singapore ministers and a chairman who represented the Federation of Malaya. This was acceptable to the British because they knew any representative sent by the Alliance government in Malaya would be as anti-communist as the British. The deal was also acceptable to the majority of Singaporean politicians because the council would have a majority of Asians. In any case, most Singaporeans felt they would be rejoining Malaya in the future. These compromises set the stage for a general election in 1959 to establish the new government.
The four years of Labor Front rule were years of turmoil, but they did result in some important legacies. Whoever won power in 1959 would inherit a civil service that for the most part had been Malayanized, an important building block for any future government’s plans. In 1957, a citizenship ordinance had added another two hundred thousand people to the electoral rolls. The vast majority of those living on the island had full citizenship rights. Another reform was the Education Ordinance of 1957. It created equality in education in all four language streams and set the stage for a common curriculum.
The Labor Front had created the conditions necessary for self-rule but gained little political benefit from its efforts. Throughout its four years in power, the party had been unable to generate much mass support. Lim had produced some positive results but could not translate them into any voter passion for his party. Many of the Chinese-educated were alienated by what they saw as anti-Chinese and heavy-handed efforts to maintain law and order. Added to Lim’s problems was the discovery toward the end of his tenure that his minister of education had received $700,000 to further democracy from American sources (some said the CIA) and then diverted the money to his own ends. In the eyes of many people, not only was Lim’s government on the American payroll, it was also corrupt.
Finally, the Labor Front’s hold on power was tenuous because its most capable opponent, the PAP, had laid the groundwork for a convincing victory in 1959. The PAP had significant support among the Chinese-speaking and thus – with masterful manipulation of the charges of corruption, anti-Chinese bias and elitism – was able to sweep to victory.
When we speak of the PAP today, it is hard to separate the man, Lee Kuan Yew, from the party. Throughout its fifty-nine-year history, Lee has endured as the prominent public symbol of this incredibly successful party. Looking back, it is difficult to imagine his tenuous hold on the leadership of the party in its early years. The history of the PAP’s first decade of existence is a fascinating study of Lee’s political skills, determination and survival instincts.
The roots of his political career and the PAP can be traced to London in the immediate years following World War II. Lee Kuan Yew, like many of the best and brightest English-educated Singaporeans of his generation, went to Britain to continue the education that had been interrupted by the war. For young students from all parts of the empire, these were heady days to be in Britain. The Labor Party that had been elected in 1945 was sending clear signals that the days of the empire were drawing to a close. Students from the British colonies rubbed shoulders with the Asians and Africans who were destined to be the first leaders of newly independent nations. Fired with the spirit of nationalism, they were heavily influenced by the socialist agenda of the Labor Party. Its goals of social justice and equality were very attractive to those, such as Lee, who saw them as applicable to their own societies. British government policies in the areas of health, housing, education and income that were geared to break down class barriers in Britain seemed the road to follow in places such as Singapore, which had serious inequalities of wealth and services.
During his student days in London, Lee came into contact with other Malayans who shared his dreams and goals. An organization known as the Malayan Forum, organized by Goh Keng Swee and Abdul Razak, brought them together to discuss the kind of society and government that would replace British Malaya. The men in the forum had common backgrounds. They were members of an English-educated elite who felt it was their destiny, being the educated and the talented, to provide the leadership for an independent Malaya. It is here that Lee began to have a common cause with two other prominent future leaders of Singapore – Toh Chin Chye and Goh Keng Swee. Together, these three men were the driving force behind the success of the PAP.
Lee returned from Britain in 1950 with a law degree and full of ambitious plans to free Singapore from colonial rule. The initial steps to this end were made by drawing together Toh, Goh and other like-minded English-educated anti-colonials, such as S. Rajaratnam and K.M. Byrne, to form the Council of Joint Action. The council was mainly a discussion group of men who planned their version of the future of Singapore’s political system. Beyond this, it did organize a mass rally of government employees in 1952 to extend the SPP requests for equal pay for Asians to include the family allowances that were paid to expatriates. The strategies and goals of the PAP had their origins in the discourse of this group.
Lee realized that any path to real power in Singapore had to go through the Chinese-educated. In many ways, this group was alien to Lee. Culturally, they came from different worlds. He was Straits Chinese; they were recent immigrants. Lee spoke English, Malay and some dialect; they were Chinese-educated. Lee was a moderate socialist; most of the Chinese-educated leaders were much more radical.
Lee’s brilliance as a lawyer and politician made it possible for him to bridge these differences with leaders of the Chinese-speaking community. Much of the PAP’s political support came from the labor unions and student organizations, which needed representatives who could speak the language of the commercial and governmental power structure. The unions needed to be able to negotiate and deliver results. Lee became the legal counsel for numerous unions and emerged as a prominent defender of workers’ rights. Both the unions and student organizations constantly ran afoul of the authorities because of their aggressive methods, and Lee defended them in court. In a short period of time, his activities as a lawyer gave him a reputation as a defender of those who felt that Singapore’s commercial and government leaders discriminated against them.
In 1954, Lee, Toh and Rajaratnam were key players in the organization of a new political party, the PAP. The party was an odd alliance of noncommunist, English-educated professionals on one side and left-leaning trade unionists and Chinese chauvinists, such as Lim Chin Siong, on the other. In many ways, the two groups planned to use each other to gain political power. They had the common goals of freeing Singapore from colonial rule and creating a more equitable society, but each knew that once the party attained power, one faction or the other would have to be destroyed because they disagreed over too much else.
Lim Chin Siong, the most popular leader of the leftist faction, was very different from Lee. While Lee was in Britain studying law, Lim was in the Chinese-language schools organizing students against the British. When Lee returned to follow a professional career, Lim had been expelled from Chinese High School for political activism and was working as a bus conductor. Lee was Straits Chinese; Lim was of more recent immigrant stock. Lee was from the middle class; Lim from more humble origins. They were destined for a showdown.
The PAP had made its first impact on the political scene in the 1955 election when it had won three of the four seats it had contested. Contesting only four seats was a calculated decision on the part of the PAP leadership because it gave them a forum for their views but placed them in the opposition. At a time of political and social unrest, they could criticize both the Labor Front and the British to score points in the Chinese community. They could portray their rivals, men such as Marshall and Lim Yew Hock, as oppressive and undemocratic when they attempted to maintain law and order. This the PAP did very successfully.
The English-educated PAP leaders were, however, walking a fine line. To maintain party unity and keep the support of the unions and students, they could not publicly attack the pro-communist riots and strikes that were meant to bring the communist faction in the PAP to power. On the other hand, men such as Lee and Toh were anti-communist and committed to constitutional and peaceful change. Reconciling these two positions was not an easy task.
The first serious clash between the two PAP factions took place in 1957. The Labor Front government had invoked the Internal Security Act and rounded up many of the radical union leaders as threats to public order. Ending these laws was a key tenet of the radical left as they felt the laws were the government’s way to deny them power. For years, Lee had been vocal in opposing arrest under these laws, but when Lee had accompanied Lim Yew Hock to London in 1957 to negotiate self-rule, the Singapore team had agreed to keep the laws. Many of the PAP radicals questioned Lee’s motives for compromising on this issue. The existence of the Internal Security Council with its British and Malayan representation was a direct threat to the left’s future, given its confrontational methods.
The radical faction of the PAP feared that they were being sold out and at the party’s annual conference in 1957 took control of the party’s central committee. Lee and his colleagues resigned from their leadership positions, and it appeared that the left-wing faction would lead the party. The political future of the moderates was saved at this point by an unlikely source – Lim Yew Hock. Using the internal security laws, Lim arrested five members of the new PAP central committee as threats to public order. Lee Kuan Yew and his group quickly regained control.
The incident was a classic example of Lee’s brilliance as a politician. Although Lim had saved his bacon, he attacked Lim for doing the bidding of the British. He accused him of using dictatorial methods and thus reestablished his credentials among many of the Chinese-educated. At the same time, the party structure was revamped. There were to be two kinds of members – cadre and ordinary. Only the cadre membership could determine who led the party. These cadre members, about a thousand in all, would have to be approved by the party’s central committee. With this rule change, Lee and the moderates could determine their own electors, thus guaranteeing control of the party. From this moment, Lee chose the people who elected the party leaders.
It was one thing to control the party and another to win elections. Lee had no choice but to continue to court the favor of the left-leaning Chinese leadership if he was to gain power. He needed these people. In the lead-up to the 1959 election, the leaders of the PAP branded their more conservative opponents as corrupt pawns of the capitalists, defenders of privilege and anti-Chinese. They vowed that if elected they would never serve until their “comrades” were released from detention. The support of radical labor unions, the backing of Chinese-speaking students and a message of democratic socialism were the core of a successful strategy. The PAP swept to power with forty-three of the fifty-one contested seats. Many of the victories were close, and if the anti-PAP politicians had united, the results might have been even closer. At thirty-six, nine years after his return to Singapore, Lee was sworn in as Singapore’s first prime minister.