AT the end of the year (the 150th anniversary of the founding of modern Singapore by Raffles), the Prime Minister reported that in ten years, from 1959 to 1969, Singapore had doubled its per capita income, and increased the gross national product two and a half times.
The defence build-up continued satisfactorily. By 1979, Singapore would be able to mobilize immediately a well-trained army of 45,000 troops.
Lee Kuan Yew went to London for the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference. The Middle Temple took the opportunity to make him an Honorary Bencher.
Lee was in Washington for talks with President Nixon when race riots broke out in Kuala Lumpur. There were repercussions in Singapore but firm and impartial security measures soon restored the situation.
Princess Alexandra, and Fred Peart MP, Leader of the British House of Commons, came to Singapore for the National Day and 150th anniversary celebrations. There were eighteen tanks and some armoured cars on parade during the National Day procession.
New laws were introduced abolishing the jury system and legalizing abortion in certain circumstances.
United States golfers won the World Cup, held in Singapore for the first time.
“NINETEEN hundred and sixty-eight was an historic year for Singapore,” Lee Kuan Yew claimed in his New Year Message. “On 6 February, 1968, we commenced the 150th year of our history.” Just before that, at the beginning of January, the British broke the “grave news” of a change in the British Government’s defence policy East of Suez. Instead of half their forces out by 31 March they were planned for a total withdrawal by that date. By mid-January the British Government, relenting a little, extended the date by nine months—half out by 31 March, 1971, the rest out by 31 December, 1971. “So we began our 150th year with a shock. But we turned adversity to advantage. What could have been a fatal shock became shock therapy. Looking back over the past year, we can be proud of the way our people responded.”
Lee reminded Singaporeans that 6 February, 1961, would be the 150th anniversary of the day Stamford Raffles came ashore and founded modern Singapore. Students of history knew that the destiny of a people was not pre-ordained. “It is not pre-determination but determination which decides what happens to a people. When the figures for 1968 are complete, they are likely to show that our economic growth was even higher than 1967, which was an eleven point nine per cent growth, at current prices, of 1967 over 1966. And this was in spite of British military expenditure being reduced from twenty per cent of our GNP in 1965 to fourteen per cent in 1967. British military contribution was three to four per cent less for 1968, yet we recorded another successful year.”
As the United Nations Development decade for the ’60s draws to its close, development economists were discovering that the crucial factor was the quality of human resources which decided the pace at which poor backward, agricultural, illiterate or semi-educated communities were propelled into thriving industrial communities of well-educated, skilled and trained professionals, technocrats and technicians. They had been perplexed at the wide differences and discrepancies in the development rate of the LDCs (less developed countries), “a euphemism for backward communities”. The irresistible conclusion was that whilst material resources, capital investment, mineral, oil, timber, fertility of soil and abundance of water supply, determined the population density per square mile, or what a country could sustain in an agricultural economy, the uneven economic growth rates could only be explained by the differences in human endowment and the cultural values and patterns through which these innate qualities were nurtured, cultivated, and groomed to best advantage. The conclusion was that it was social values and social organizations which determined total group performance, that some of the most important factors for rapid growth are the efficacy of the administrative machine, the number of professionally and technologically trained digits, and the mettle or quality of the political leadership.
The Prime Minister contended that some of the less developed countries, at the rate they were going, “will not, even in a thousand years, achieve the present standards of America, Western Europe or Russia—unless they change the cultural and educational milieu through which alone they can bring forth the best of the innate qualities in their peoples”. He clearly did not put Singapore in that category.
But he felt constrained to utter a word of caution. “That we have done well under circumstances which would have crushed lesser spirits, does not mean we can afford to slack. We cannot afford to carry passengers. Whether brains or brawn, whether university student or unskilled labourer, we expect, and we will exact, from each his best. No one is privileged to ask somebody else to carry the burden of making secure the quality of life which we have achieved. A New Year resolution for 1969—‘I will give of my best’, and judging from the figures of 1968, our best will be good enough.”
On 3 January, the Prime Minister, accompanied by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, left for the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference in London. Lee Kuan Yew was away almost a month.
In London on 9 January, he addressed the Royal Commonwealth Society and spoke of the usefulness of the Commonwealth. He referred to the vastly different mood in Britain. He said it was reflected in the Press, on the television and even in statements in the House of Commons. It showed a deepening disenchantment with the Commonwealth; and the problems of colour in Britain, in Rhodesia, and the failure of some black African governments after independence to maintain British standards of government—they had made their contribution to this. They reflected a change of life. As Britain and the British Labour Government discovered (even though the Labour Party said in the autumn of 1964 that they wanted to revive the Commonwealth), the transition from Empire to Commonwealth was accompanied by the loss of economic worth of the Commonwealth to Britain as other industrial countries with more pressures to rebuild their damaged economies—Germany, Italy, France, Japan and even America—moved in, into each independent Commonwealth territory with great alacrity.
“I sometimes think that The Times or The Economist, with each special supplement on the independence of a former dependent territory, besides quite rightfully congratulating the British Government and those that they had governed for making peaceful progress towards disengagement from colonization and nationhood, could perhaps,” said the Prime Minister, “also have put in the obverse side—how much British manufacture was sold per annum, what the tariff walls were, and how important it was that British exporters must meet delivery dates, must meet competition from hungrier and keener workers and entrepreneurs and industrialists from countries like Japan and Germany.” Lee went on to speak of the strength of the pound, the unpopular prices and incomes policy; the attempts at rationalizing and making management more efficient by mergers and vertical and horizontal integration; the proposal to make unofficial strikes illegal and punishable—they all represented a preoccupation with Britain’s domestic problems as she tried to re-structure her economy and her society to meet the very different circumstances in the aftermath of Empire.
The Prime Minister feared that the frustrations at the attitudes of European countries Britain helped to save in the last war, and at the querulous colonies she nurtured to independence and after independence, poured aid into, and in return received churlishness and sometimes abuse—all these had not made a contribution either to Britain’s future role or the welfare of these new independent Commonwealth members. “But then I recall that when a British minister was asked in Parliament not so long ago why it was that action was taken by an independent Commonwealth government against Britain when she had only recently poured a great deal of her resources to safeguard that country’s sovereignty and integrity, he replied that Britain did not do these things in expectation of gratitude.”
Lee Kuan Yew said it was at that moment difficult to take an optimistic view of the future of the Commonwealth if one concerned oneself only with the immediate present. “But if, and as I have attempted to do, one looks forward a few decades ahead and looks backwards a few centuries to see what indications this can give from past performance of future expectations, then I think the past 400 years have given an indication of the capacity and quality of a unique island civilization, and this is not an exercise in nostalgia. I have no desire, in recounting these events, to try and revive a sensation of past grandeur. But the fact remains that no island-nation has ever before in history created an empire overseas so vast and so powerful that at the end of Empire, are created centres of civilization in North America—the United States and Canada combined—five to six times bigger in population than Britain, six to seven times larger in industrial capacity; centres in Australia and New Zealand, potentially civilizations which could grow as big; and, but for a change in the tide of history, a civilization in the south, the central and the temperate highlands of Africa.”
But it was Britain’s very success in Empire and in creating civilizations overseas which now threatened her economic position and sapped trade and influence. Because, unlike the French and their empire, British brains could more easily drain to wealthy, affluent English-speaking communities in America, in Australia, in New Zealand. It was true Europeans too migrated to America, and some Germans migrated involuntarily to help the American space programmes. But there was for the French, and for other Europeans, a difficulty of jumping over a language hurdle and then the uncongenial thought of living in a culture not one they were accustomed to and which they found alien. This was not so with the Englishman.
The Prime Minister argued that the probabilities were that if Britain did not re-establish the soundness of her economy, maintain and sustain the creativity of her research projects and keep abreast in technology, then Commonwealth members now linked through Britain and through Britain to each other—a link now radiating from the centre outwards—would forge new links. “And, if I may borrow a phrase from another context, polycentralism will be the inevitable consequence, as the advanced English-speaking countries—the Americans, the Canadians and the Australians—take over the ready-made markets that Britain leaves behind. All Commonwealth members, however, with the exception of Canada, Australia and New Zealand, had lower standards of living and a lower level of technology than Britain. It would take them a very long time, some if ever, to get to the present levels of science and technology in Britain. But if Britain could get back into the top league of the industrialized and technological nations, either through a bigger base in the European Economic Community, or an Atlantic free-trade area, and perhaps an Atlantic free-trade area linked with a Pacific free-trade area, in place of a common market, then the links with London in trade, industry, education, technology would be re-established, renewed and reinforced.
Lee Kuan Yew thought that even though many members of the Commonwealth today might not realize this, they might find hitching on to some other technological wagon a little more exacting and stifling. “Americans and Russians may be generous peoples, but their Governments expect total and unqualified commitment and unquestioning support, and when American proteges or former proteges, like China or Cuba, turn ungrateful, then reactions and sanctions from the Americans are sharp and angry. So too Russian displeasure with Czechoslovakia.”
At the moment, Britain was bedevilled with the problem of colour. But it was not a British problem, not even that of Rhodesia. “It is a world problem: white and non-white. And when the non-whites are Africans, the problem becomes particularly awkward and sensitive. For reasons of history, it is erroneously believed that the Negro is always inferior for he has no relics in stone, no written language, no literature. And centuries of deep prejudice, slavery of the Negro with the Arabs as masters long before slavery in the New World, have all accentuated this deep prejudice and led to irrational animosities between black and white. But I think it is useful to remember that to make penance it was Britain that led the crusade to abolish slavery. It is also useful to remember that this prejudice is not just a prejudice of the Americans or the Western Europeans. Slav-African riots in Lumumba University are worth mention. And even the Asiatic is inflicted with this irrational prejudice. Fifty thousand Negro GI babies are a psychological and pathological problem because they are not accepted into Japanese society, and many of them have gone to Brazil. And Red Guardism notwithstanding, I think African leaders should do well to remember that if they have African students in large numbers, not just African leaders being banqueted, in Peking, the same problems will arise.”
All this was part of history. Lee Kuan Yew felt that cautious optimism on the future of the Commonwealth was not misplaced. The French resisted freedom movements. Now they had excellent relations with the former Francophobe states—not only in Africa where they gave over the reins of power without conflict, but more strikingly so in Indo-China. After a decade of bitter, cruel and vicious war, the North Vietnamese Government were on excellent terms with General de Gaulle and his Government.
Referring to the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference, Lee Kuan Yew said that he had seen and heard signs of a growing realization—unlike in the Conference in September 1966—that it was not just the problem of the moment “that should decide our relationships with Britain”. A more sober reassessment of the value of these ties, and not just sentimental values, was being made. One advantage was that of not being overwhelmed in an unequal partnership or association with Americans or Russians. “And Commonwealth members may find it less stifling if, despite their proximity to the gravitational pulls of these countries with very big GNPs, they have at the same time some connections with the British in their economic, their educational and their social fields. But the danger is that by the time this realization sinks in, it may be too late, because Britain may have either dropped out of the top technological league or, because disgusted with the excesses of language and postures of Commonwealth members, she may have allowed the special knowledge and expertise of former administrators, merchants, bankers, technicians to be lost as they age and pass away.”
Lee said that one of the most remarkable things that had happened in Asia was that the Indonesians, who after 350 years of Dutch exploitation and twenty years of hatred and suppression of Dutch enterprise, today find themselves more at ease with Dutchmen than anyone else. The moral, both for Commonwealth members and for Britain, was that, whatever the present disputes and quarrels, the former dependencies might in the end find the British and their technological and industrial power the most valuable and the most comfortable to make use of provided, as the Russians and the Americans race to Mars, to the moon and beyond, Britain is able to keep abreast with these new frontiers of science and technology. For it would be a great pity if and when the moment of truth arrives, Britain had already dismantled the organization and lost the expert knowledge and skills acquired through decades and sometimes centuries of association. Many people would then be that much the poorer off if the knowledge and expertise, now in the files of the colonial office and in the memories of former colonial administrators, engineers, technicians, merchants and bankers, were allowed to be lost.
At Marlborough House the following day, at the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference, Lee again referred to the changed mood and thinking of the British people about their role and responsibilities in world affairs, including Rhodesia. He said that since the unilateral declaration of independence by Ian Smith, successive Commonwealth Conferences had approached the Rhodesian problem as primarily a British responsibility, to be solved by the British after the pattern of peaceful progress to independence of other colonies. Tactics and strategy were based on this assumption. Perhaps those assumptions had been valid three years ago. Today they were not. Many things had happened since the autumn of 1965. And one of the results had been the changed mood and thinking of the British people—not just their Government—about their role and responsibilities in world affairs, including Rhodesia. This mood of disenchantment and withdrawal from centuries of the responsibilities of Empire was all-pervasive. “Some of us may be of the view that this disillusionment with what is happening in their former colonial territories is based on too shallow and short-term a view of the future of Britain’s former dependencies. The African case for ending the illegal Smith regime is irrefutable on moral and political grounds. Neither the British Government nor the British public denies the cogency of the moral argument.”
Lee revealed that a few weeks earlier he had written to the President of Zambia in reply to a letter from him. Lee quoted some paragraphs from his letter to the President:
“I delayed replying in order to have more time to reflect not just on the immediate question of tactics and strategy at the coming Prime Ministers’ Conference in London, beginning on 7 January, but more on the long-term implications of colour prejudices particularly against the black peoples of Africa. These irrational feelings of unease, amounting often to hatred and fear, exist not only among white peoples in Rhodesia, South Africa, Mozambique and Angola, but here in the United States, in Britain and other parts of the European world, and even some non-white countries. For they too have been influenced by centuries of prejudice and bigotry which have associated the black African peoples with slavery, first by the Arabs, and then by the Europeans who transported them by the hundreds of thousands across the Atlantic to help cultivate the New World in North America, the Caribbean and parts of the northern half of the South American continent.
“The immediate problem of Rhodesia that you have raised requires the mobilization of opinion against the tendency to apathy and a dulling of the conscience as the issue is pushed into the less prominent parts of newspapers throughout the urban centres of the world. In particular, we must re-arouse the initial feelings of outrage at the time of the illegal declaration of independence, and re-focus attention on the iniquities being committed against over four million black Rhodesians, and even more millions of blacks in South Africa, Angola and Mozambique. We must do this within the Commonwealth and in the United Nations. We have to prevent it from becoming a perfunctory passing of a resolution as meetings are held periodically to discuss the problem.
“However, unhappy events have involved black African governments, like the tragedy still being enacted in the Ibo territories of Nigeria. They do great damage to the cause of the black peoples. In spite of the danger of being accused of preaching a sermon on a subject I am unqualified to do, I shall be dishonest in my dialogue with you if I do not express my concern at the harm that is being done to this crusade against prejudice, bigotry and injustice to the black and coloured peoples in South Africa, America, Britain and elsewhere by such instances of an African’s inhumanity to his fellow-African. I understand the desire of the Federal Government of Nigeria to preserve its territorial integrity. But I cannot help sensing the grievous harm this is doing, as the white backlash in Britain and America exploits these happenings to shore up their theories justifying racial discrimination.
“The course of future events will be determined as much by the mobilization of public opinion against the racist regime in Rhodesia, and probably the use of revolutionary methods of guerilla warfare, as by the example of high standards of political maturity, sophistication and multiracial tolerance by black African governments.”
The Prime Minister said that those, who believed that politics should not be just the art of the possible, must regret the fact that the British Government had not held fast to fundamental principles regardless of changes in prevailing conditions. The British Prime Minister, Lee added, had become an uncomfortable prisoner of his earlier optimism.
Lee went on to say that after the end of World War Two, when Britain embarked on decolonization, it was in the expectation that the transformation of Empire into a Commonwealth, a political and economic association of free nations, would be a source of strength and pride to Britain. The British people and their leaders then believed that this transformed Empire would enable Britain and each of the Commonwealth members to wield influence in world affairs more substantially than each could have done separately. Also they had hoped that after independence their former dependencies would be thriving, dynamic democracies with which Britain would be proud to associate for mutual benefit. So, during the first two decades of decolonization there was considerable enthusiasm in Britain for rendering aid, educational, technological, economic and military, to help her former dependencies to grow into thriving democracies.
But the post-independence phase had been one of growing disillusionment. In many new countries British concepts of democracy were abandoned for forms of government alien to British tradition and beliefs. They saw some of the former dependencies rent and torn apart by unbelievably cruel civil wars, fought ferociously on racial, tribal, religious or linguistic loyalties. Day by day the British public, and the rest of the world, had been given regular doses of atrocities and coup d’etat in some part or other of Africa or Asia or Latin America, murders and assassinations of prime ministers and presidents, the arrest and detention of a prime minister in the midst of being sworn in after having won an election lawfully and legally. All this had been part of Britain’s daily breakfast reading. “So we rejoice when the Prime Minister of Sierra Leone, illegally arrested even as he was sworn into office, has now rightfully assumed his responsibilities and can join us at this Conference.”
Lee said that the British saw themselves ousted economically and even politically as new patrons were courted, some of them Britain’s keenest political and economic rivals. They found themselves caught in the cross-fires of internal conflicts and rivalries. Accommodating the demands or yielding to the sentiments of former wards had become for Britain an unprofitable and irritating exercise in futility. So decolonization of Rhodesia was taking place under different circumstances in a vastly changed world. In the first phase from middle 1940s to the early ’60s, the handing over of power was to broadly representative majority governments. The belief then was that Britain’s newly independent former colonies had been set on the path of democracy. “In the case of Rhodesia, it is how to be rid of an unnecessary problem, a political and economic embarrassment and a source of conflict within Britain—a Britain which has decided, for the time being, that it pays to openly put Britain’s interests first.”
This had happened not only in the case of Rhodesia but also in Southeast Asia. Undertakings solemnly given in June and July, 1967, regarding the phasing and timing of the scaling down of British defence contributions were unilaterally abjured within the space of six months, in January 1968. “For me and some other members in that part of the world, this sudden devaluation of her previous pledges was a disappointment. But unfortunately the devaluation of the pound in November ’67 was as sudden as it was unexpected.”
Lee Kuan Yew thought that a British solution to the Rhodesian problem would not and could not be what Africans or Asians would like. “This is not to say that we should not press the British Government to go as far as they can, if only to facilitate the pursuit of other possible solutions to which the Africans will have to give increasing attention.” A solution of the Rhodesian problem that would satisfy black Africans could only be achieved if Africans themselves were prepared to pay the price. “In Southeast Asia the Vietcong have demonstrated that, given the tenacity, the capacity, the will to slog it out to the very end of time, even the world’s mightiest military and technological power can be persuaded to negotiate a settlement. One hundred and fifty thousand Rhodesians, even backed by four million white South Africans, cannot constitute an invincible force for all time, but Africans must develop the discipline and the durability which a war of attrition demands. And when white Rhodesians are convinced that an African solution to the Rhodesian problem is a distinct reality, not just oratory, then a settlement just to black Africans will be the more readily negotiated and achieved.”
President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau of Canada and Lee Kuan Yew discussed the question of Rhodesia in a colour television interview recorded by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, on 12 January, in a London studio.
Lee Kuan Yew said that he thought everybody knew that if Rhodesia was settled the following day, in the sense that Governor’s Rule, or indirect rule, was re-established and gradually over a period of years democratic government—that is to say, majority government of all the peoples living in Rhodesia—were established, that still would not solve the problem in southern Africa, because there was still Angola, Mozambique and South Africa. This was a deeper and a wider problem which would have to be lived with for a very long time and to be solved somehow because the world had become very small. “It is so quick now—the contact between different types, different ethnic groups, cultural groups, and this makes it imperative that we find some way to mute the antipathies, the animosities, and find some way to bring people together in harmony. And this will take time.”
Lee Kuan Yew was reminded that he had been quoted in the Press as advocating something “pretty drastic”—that there should be something more of the spirit of the Vietcong, so far as the African guerilla movement was concerned. The Prime Minister replied that “one of these facts of life that you have to prove, or a particular group of people have to prove”, is that they “had what it takes”, before others would treat them as equals. Lee said: “I think it is a tragedy that people thought the Japanese were funny, short-legged human beings, not to be taken seriously, until they smacked right down into Southeast Asia and demonstrated that they were not funny men. Similarly, the Chinese armies were thought to be a ragged, rag-tagged and bob-tailed group of looters and pillagers until they smacked the American forces down from the Yalu to the tip of Korea, and now they are not thought to be funny men. The same way, I think, with the Africans in Africa. And I hope they will demonstrate in a more intelligent way, because you don’t have to demonstrate the whole thing from A to Z. You can just establish your credentials, so to speak, that you are not jokers and people will begin to take you seriously. I believe that this is, unfortunately, a fact of contemporary life.”
Dr Kaunda said he was afraid that there was a great deal of truth in what Lee Kuan Yew and the others said. “Until the African people, we ourselves,” he said, “make ourselves strong and therefore able to pressurize, in Angola, or Mozambique or Rhodesia, or even South Africa, or Southwest Africa, what we are calling for will remain outside the agendas of important meetings. I’m afraid that is just the truth. And only when those people have, perhaps, lost more of their numbers on the battlefields is it going to be possible for their case to be put on the agenda of the world conferences. That is the truth of the matter.”
The discussion between the three statesmen turned on Britain’s attitude towards immigration, towards letting Africans and Asians in. Britain’s policy had been attacked. Asked for his views, Lee Kuan Yew replied that he thought that one of the values of a “more intimate” meeting like the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ meeting was that they could talk to each other not only because they spoke the same language, but because they had similar terms of reference. A lot of the humbug and hypocrisy could be shrugged off. “Let us not pretend”, Lee Kuan Yew said, “that there isn’t colour prejudice deep down in the middle strata of every population. I am not going to absolve myself or my population from this. We have a multiracial community and we still suffer from this difficulty of getting the overseas Chinese and the Indian migrants and the Malays to accept each other completely and without reservation. I think it is going to take a very long time. Let us not pretend that twenty or more million Negroes in America are being treated as equals of the white Americans. True, adjustments have been made in the immigration laws of Canada and the United States itself. You know, you find a measure which does not define race but which excludes the group you do not want. And I think that is part of life. It makes it possible for us to sit around and pretend that we are civilized, equal human beings. But it is possible for us—three individuals—to sit down and do that. I wonder whether it is possible to get, say an unskilled labourer in Lusaka and an unskilled labourer in Singapore and an unskilled labourer in Ottawa to do so. Is there a common acceptance of the fact that we all Homo sapiens in one very small world? I don’t think they have conceived of it. And this is going to take a very long time.”
Mr Trudeau was asked what there was in the Commonwealth for Canada, and the Canadian Prime Minister promptly replied: “The same thing as what’s in it for Britain or for any other country.” Mr Trudeau agreed with President Kaunda that there were certain common characteristics which made the Commonwealth. But to him the number of differences were greater than the similarities. “The common thing in the Commonwealth is that we all, by historical accident, as the President said, happened to be issued from some common empire. It is only an accident that makes us part of the Commonwealth. This isn’t a reason for rejecting it. But this, I think, is a reason for being realistic in stating its objectives with respect to the self-interest and fulfilment of each of the country participating in the Commonwealth. For some, it will be greater knowledge of such parts of the world; for others it will be better markets; for some it will be cultural advantages; for some it will merely be the exchange of information.”
“But, for most of us, wouldn’t you say, Prime Minister, it offers us a counter-gravitational pull?” asked Lee Kuan Yew.
Dr Kaunda referred to the point Lee Kuan Yew had made earlier—that the world was becoming smaller and smaller. “And, surely, what this means is that all of us are moving in the direction of a world government, whether we like it or not. We are being pulled in that direction.”
President Kaunda was asked whether he wouldn’t agree that nationalism was the force of the times. The President agreed. “But,” he added, “when you look at the way in which tribal feelings have been narrowing, bigger groupings are getting more and more attractive for all human beings on earth.” This was the point, he said, that was underlined when Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew referred to science and technology defeating time and space. “I think”, the President added, “we have to preserve any organization that has such advantages as the Commonwealth. That’s one reason why we in Zambia are in it.”
Lee Kuan Yew argued that this really meant that the Commonwealth countries were trying to find shelter behind the bi-polar pulls of the American GNP and Russian GNP. “This is the problem,” he said, “It’s like getting stuck around a very big planet without the power to get out of its gravitational pull. Hence the value of the Commonwealth.”
Some of the gloomier sections of the British Press had been talking about the present Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ meeting being the last. What did Lee think? The Prime Minister agreed that there had been a lot of deliberate working up to some climax. But now it was an anti-climax. The Commonwealth had not broken up and he did not think it would.
The Canadian Prime Minister was asked about the question of diplomatic relations with China. And then Lee Kuan Yew was asked whether he had any views about Western nations establishing diplomatic relations with Peking.
Lee Kuan Yew replied: “My answer is quite simple. I think China is there. There are 700 million Chinese. It just will continue to be there and probably one of these days, the excesses of Red Guardism will be over and the atomic warheads will increase in number and so will the ICBMs. . . And it is not world government we are moving towards, as I see it. I think it is some kind of world order in which the major powers agree that they shall keep the peace between each other and then they can prevent the smaller ones from scrapping. And this was the whole intention of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945. There was the Big Five with the veto and if they agreed, then action could be taken. If they didn’t, as in the case of the Congo—Dag Hammarskjold broke his heart, he failed. And I think you have to face up to the fact now that there are seven very Big Powers who have developed their muscle. . .”
At this point the television programme ran out of time.
In the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference itself, Lee Kuan Yew contributed to the debate on the world economic situation and trends. He said that while he agreed generally with his colleague, the Prime Minister of Ceylon, who had complained of the niggardly attitude of the developed countries, at the risk, he said, of overstating the case, he wanted to underline the inadequacies of the less developed countries. For Lee said he saw no profit in “our seeking alibis for our failure to develop”.
Present-day Southeast Asia, its people and civilization, was the outcome of the impact of European colonial administrations on the economy and culture of these territories, and the demographic alterations through migration encouraged by the administering colonial powers. What the different political leaderships had inherited varied with the European empires they had been part of. What they had done with their inheritance since independence varied considerably from country to country, depending on the quality of their political leaderships and the cohesiveness, educational standards, drive and stamina of their peoples. Lee developed this theme along the lines of the lecture he delivered at Harvard University, in December 1968.
An outspoken and severe critic of striking British dock-workers, Lee Kuan Yew came home to find that Singapore stevedores were handling less cargo per gang-hour. On 30 January he issued the following statement: “On the Prime Minister’s return to Singapore, his attention was drawn to the fact that certain gangs in the first and second shifts of the Port of Singapore Authority have been deliberately going slow, and cargo handled had, on the average, dropped from fourteen and a half to eleven and a half tons per gang-hour. Investigations have disclosed that although the PSA union leaders have expressed their disapproval of these tactics, in some sections some workers and some gangs are deliberately going slow in order to work with contract labour on the third shift, which is the best paid per hour. The going slow is sometimes deliberately to create work for this third shift. The Prime Minister has discussed the matter with union leaders and management this afternoon. He has stressed the fact that Singapore was doing well economically and that employment figures having gone up, and unemployment down, did not, repeat not, mean that we could afford to slacken in our efforts to increase productivity. With the support of the union, he has instructed the Chairman of the PSA to discipline whole gangs, by dismissals if necessary, where they are caught out engaged in such malpractices. Dismissal will include their vacating PSA quarters. So those who choose to work with contractors for higher pay per hour on the third shift will have to look for their own accommodation. The Prime Minister takes a serious view of those gang leaders who believe that in this way they can increase their take-home pay. They are sabotaging Singapore’s rating as the fourth biggest, and one of the most efficient ports in the world. He considers such activities high treason. Offenders who persist will meet their just deserts.”
A few workers were disciplined. Later, the Prime Minister announced that cargo handled, on the average, exceeded fourteen and a half tons per gang-hour.
On 6 February, exactly 150 years after the founding of modern Singapore by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, the 132-year-old Singapore International Chamber of Commerce organized a banquet “to celebrate and commemorate” that historic occasion. The Prime Minister was the guest of honour.
In a toast to the memory of Raffles, Mr R. G. Bennett, chairman of the International Chamber of Commerce, described him as an administrator, remarkable for speed and efficiency, an historian, a zoologist and a linguist and according to his devoted clerk, Abdullah, a man of infinite grace and charm. But Raffles’ most outstanding characteristic was undoubtedly his appreciation not only of the needs of his day, but also of the possibilities of tomorrow. To an extraordinary degree he grasped and shaped the opportunities of the future for Singapore.
Mr Bennett would not say that the Prime Minister possessed every single one of the qualities and characteristics of Raffles. But he would say that he possessed many of them, “especially the vision of what Singapore can be, to a sharper degree than anyone else who has since walked this island in the past 150 years”. The Prime Minister was fortunate in that he had a government that was 100 per cent behind him, and the population unanimous in their choice of government. Raffles, on the other hand, had considerable opposition, although some powerful names supported him.
Lee Kuan Yew said he was flattered, if a little apprehensive, by the generous comparison of the qualities of Sir Stamford Raffles with the attributes he was supposed to have. “If”, he added, “fifty years from now, your successor would say of me some of the things you have just said, it would be of immense satisfaction to me, even if I should be in some other world. For no judgment can be as fair and as final, or as cruel and conclusive, as that of history. Only posterity can pass judgment objectively on the wisdom or otherwise of their forbears. Only with the advantage of hindsight can people accurately analyse and assess the rights or wrongs of important decisions. Often these decisions had to be taken hurriedly and under intense pressure. But once taken, they could not be easily undone.” Clearly referring to the British Government’s decision to withdraw from bases East of Suez, Lee continued: “And one particularly momentous decision changed the destiny of several millions, not all in Singapore.”
Lee said that decolonization was usually supposed to mean the orderly dismantling of an empire. Conversely, viewed from the position of the subject peoples, it should mean a restoration to freedom and nationhood. But several hundred years of Empire had created civilized communities where none previously existed. When Stamford Raffles arrived 150 years ago, there was no organized human society in Singapore, unless a fishing village could be called a society. There were now over two million people with the second-highest standard of living in Asia. “We thought the rational and orderly way forward was to build a nation out of the conglomeration of British colonies and dependencies in Southeast Asia. So Singapore joined Malaya in Malaysia. But for a number of compulsive reasons, Singapore was asked to leave, suddenly and abruptly.”
Lee said that historians record that five years after 1819, the disposition of Southeast Asia was settled in Europe, in a treaty on 17 March, 1824, between the British and the Dutch. That treaty gave the outer islands to the Dutch. Penang, Peninsular Malaya (including Malacca) and Singapore became British. One hundred and fifty years was a short span in the history of a people. But even so how vastly different was the world today. Europe could no longer decide the fate of Asia. Even America was shy of being embroiled ever again in guerilla insurrections on the Asian mainland. “How much more different the world will be twenty years from now, after Vietnam, after Britain’s military withdrawal East of Suez, after Japan’s self-defence forces have started to pay more courtesy visits, after China’s recovery from the excesses of her Cultural Revolution and her inexorable climb up the technological and military ladder.
One hundred and fifty years ago, there was no Suez Canal, and Raffles took four months to get from Bencoolen to London. Now, it took eighteen hours from Singapore to London by air, even before the super-sonics. But whilst technological and political changes had gone on at a geometrically increasing speed, it was a sobering thought that geography had remained unchanged, except where there had been the dredging of canals, the erosion of the coastline by tides or reclamation of foreshores by tractors. Almost as unchanging were the nature and character of ethnic-cultural-religious groups. “You spoke highly of Munshi Abdullah or Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir, his full and proper name. He was a shrewd teacher, an astute observer. Not only was he a chronicler who faithfully recorded the facts worth noting. He also commented on what might or should have been. In 1832, 137 years ago, whilst travelling to the north of Peninsular Malaya, he wrote in his book Pelayaran Abdullah of many things which, if I had carefully read and digested earlier in my political life, would have saved me much disappointment.”
The Prime Minister remarked that the Chamber in its commemoration programme had thought it worth mentioning that on that memorable day in 1819, some thirty Chinese were present to witness the ceremony. How proud they would have been to know that their descendants would be amongst the Malays, Indians, Eurasians and others who by their hard work, thrift, resourcefulness and enterprise had built modern Singapore. And what satisfaction it would have given them to know that their progeny would be amongst those who came into their own inheritance. And considering the contribution they made in converting a fishing village into a humming centre for commerce, communication and industry, it was only just that it should be so.
The Prime Minister said that the celebrations of Singapore’s 150th year would reach a climax in August, the nation’s fourth anniversary of independence. Anniversaries, he said, must not mean a harking back to some idyllic, romanticized past, though even such an exercise in nostalgia was not without its therapeutic value. “For us this anniversary is a significant and formal moment, for a brief pause, to study and scrutinize the record of the past 150 years, learn the lessons therefrom, and with confidence renewed surge forward to improve upon the past.”
The past was a good indicia of innate ability. It was also a good teacher of future relationships. It underlined the close links Singapore had always had with West Malaysia. “Half my Cabinet colleagues still have their families in West Malaysia. The ties are close and, in several respects, inseparable. In the future, as it has been in the past, there will be an enduring community of interests despite differences of styles, methods and ways of life.”
The past also recorded the mutual advantage found in joint adventure. British administration and enterprise, plus local sweat, drive, skills, and ingenuity, had created what Singapore now had. “We look forward to British industry and technology continuing to make a valuable contribution to our growth and progress in the next 150 years.”
The Prime Minister asked: “Are we being sentimental over this continuing association? But it is worth noting that even sentiment has its worth in foreign exchange and helps to balance payments. For in the balance sheets of companies, when mergers take place, substantial sums are set against what is known as goodwill. And goodwill is but an old-fashioned word to denote the economic value of well-established ties, ties which enduring sentiment and continuing habit support and reinforce in newer forms of association.”
What of the future? “Our future is what we make of it, and we will use to best advantage the factors in our favour. First, the strategic. As long as the balance of geo-political forces in South Southeast and East Asia remain as they are, then Singapore’s strategic value will continue undiminished. Second, our contribution to world trading, shipping, and servicing will continue to grow and expand whilst we add an ever bigger industrial sector to our economic base. Third and most important, the ability and industry of our young people, willing and eager to learn, prepared to work hard and pay their way in the world, finding pride and pleasure in constructive endeavour. But in any case, they are also disciplined and determined to defend what their ingenuity and effort have created.”
In a less serious tone the Prime Minister remarked that with the rapid advance in medicine and in surgical techniques, perhaps not just for transplants but also replants, it was not beyond belief that there would be many besides young students present that evening who, in the year 2019, would recall “this memorable occasion”.
Lee said: “Those of us who will be present then can look back on 200 years and say how right it was that we worked and sweated on the assumption that no one owed us a living, that we strove so hard and nurtured so rugged and robust, so resilient and resourceful a generation. Without this physical and spiritual ruggedness, all the fruits, the results of our labour even in concrete and steel, could end literally in ruins—ruins for the delectation of tourists in the year 2019, as they rummage in the rubble and dustbins of Singapore’s past. And they would wonder how under such adverse climatic conditions a thrusting and striving society built such a thriving city with all the grace of cultivated living. And they would be perplexed and saddened by the unexpected and unexplainable destruction, when a dogged defence could have saved it. But we are not going to let that happen. Your children, and grandchildren, and mine, will be here to welcome all visitors to Singapore and offer them more excitement in present and future achievement than by goggling at past glory in ruins. When visitors come in the twenty-first century they will find Singapore an open and hospitable city to all those who come as friends or visitors, a Singapore strong and confident and thus at ease in offering the traveller a warm, comfortable and memorable welcome. Singapore has been and will remain more than a place on the map. She will give cause for satisfaction to all those who chart man’s progress and who will find corroboration in Singapore’s performance that this climb up the face of the cliff to a higher level of civilization, to a better life in a more gracious world, depends on man’s constant and ceaseless striving for new and higher goals, depends on man’s restless, organized, and unending search for perfection.”
Invited by the University of Cambridge to deliver the Smuts Memorial Lecture (“an opportunity for a distinguished member of the Commonwealth to express his views before an informed but non-political audience”), the Prime Minister journeyed to Britain in April. While in London he had informal talks on security with the British Prime Minister and other Ministers. After his stay in Cambridge, Lee planned to accept President de Gaulle’s long-standing invitation officially to visit France. President de Gaulle’s sudden fall from office caused the French Government to cancel the visit, and Lee Kuan Yew stayed on at Churchill College until, on 10 May, he flew to the United States to talk with President Nixon.
Previous Smuts Memorial Lectures had been given by Sir Robert Menzies, Sir Chintaman Deshmukh, Sir Keith Hancoke, Lord Caradon and H. F. Oppenheimer, all, apparently without incident. But Lee Kuan Yew’s oration was delivered (on 24 April) at the time of Left-wing student agitation in London. This had repercussions in Cambridge, where while Lee was speaking students outside Senate House banged on windows and chanted the thoughts of Mao Tse-tung. Other students began to throw a ball about and accidentally a window was smashed and a shower of glass fell near Lee. He continued, amidst applause, after remarking that, from his experience he could judge this to be no more than a “synthetic revolution”.
The title of Lee’s talk was “Continuity of Association After Empire”. He said that the spring of 1969 was not a particularly auspicious time to eulogize the Commonwealth. British publications, including Hansard, reflected the desire of a growing body of opinion for full membership of the European Economic Community. And because Britain must be manifestly “European” to improve her chances of early membership, there had been a conscious effort to play down the Commonwealth and to mute Britain’s “special relationship” with America.
Throughout history, empires had waxed and waned. But the British Empire was remarkable in three respects. First, it was the greatest of the overseas empires. Second, it seeded civilizations like the one in North America which became bigger than the metropolitan centre. Third, it was dismantled as an act of conscious policy with the minimum of rancour and maximum of continuing association after Empire in the Commonwealth. The British Empire was the only one that had territories on all six continents. Because of her inability to expand on land, Britain had to go across the seas to seek new lands. Britain’s naval supremacy had been assured after the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. She had unimpeded access to all six continents, and so to their markets. This made possible her industrial revolution, and for a long time she was the leading industrial society. The old Commonwealth was settled and colonized in the classic Roman definition of the word “colonize”. After losing the American colonies, Britain was more sensitive to demands for autonomy, and more liberal in granting representative government. In retrospect, perhaps it was inevitable that more and more autonomy to Britain’s own white settlements would lead to independence. Even if the North American colonies had not rebelled in 1776, they would eventually have demanded greater and greater self-government ending with separate sovereignty. Even the non-white empire seemed destined for separate independence. When Britain, as an act of deliberate policy, sought separate membership for India in the League of Nations, she conceded autonomy in principle, and thereby made independence inevitable. And after India and Pakistan became independent, the other colonies and protectorates in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific were bound to follow the protocol path to independence ceremonies.
The Prime Minister said that Britain’s dilemma in the 1940s and the 1950s was that, unlike the war-devastated countries of Europe, she was victor, not vanquished. The vastly changed balance of power in the world was perceived early enough for European Union sentiments to be nurtured. Britain played a part in setting up the Council of Europe in 1949. However, she was then not so much a part of continental Europe, as the centre of a world-wide and far-flung empire. Though more rather than less European in her culture, akin but not completely alike, Britain’s history, her language and her literature had always been distinctive. With the wisdom of hindsight, most people agreed it was unfortunate that Britain did not sign the Treaty of Rome in 1953. It would have been painful, especially for the old Commonwealth countries exporting temperate climate produce to Britain, because a common tariff wall would have had to be built around Britain and the EEC countries as from 1956. But the Commonwealth trade ties could have been adjusted, and growth resumed in a wider European context. British membership would also have made the EEC more outward-looking.
When India and Pakistan became independent in 1947, a feasible alternative could have been some economic arrangement between Britain, the old Commonwealth countries and the new Commonwealth countries, giving British industry the economies of scale necessary for expensive research, production and marketing in high-technology products. It could have given the Commonwealth countries the advantage of sharing in the benefits of research and getting their technologists trained. Then other members of the Commonwealth could have joined as they became independent. But in 1947 both old and new Commonwealth countries were keen to diversify their economic ties and were hoping thereby to accelerate their economic growth. In fact, in 1945 Canada left the sterling area and went with the US dollar. For the decade 1958-67 trade within the EEC countries increased 260 per cent. But it was an inward-looking Europe. EEC trade with the under-developed world increased by only forty-nine per cent. Trade within EFTA increased 254 per cent. But the volume of intra-EFTA trade (excluding Britain) was only one-seventh that of the EEC countries. And Britain’s share was only thirteen per cent of this, although her population at fifty-five million was ten million more than that of all the other EFTA countries. However, trade within the Commonwealth, including Britain, increased only by twenty-two per cent. For the same period, Commonwealth trade with the rest of the world grew by 105 per cent. The volume of intra-Commonwealth trade was less than forty-five per cent that of the intra-EEC in 1967. Furthermore, the new Commonwealth countries did not develop as fast as the old Commonwealth countries. Ethnic, religious and linguistic strife tore whole sub-continents apart, like India and Pakistan, and Ceylon. “Nor can we forget the tragedy in Nigeria.” Then, encroachments on Commonwealth trade were made by American, European and Japanese manufacturers as Commonwealth preferences were lowered a few years after independence was gained. The services of Crown Agents were reduced as British colonial service officers retired.
Lee Kuan Yew thought that perhaps more grievous was the loss of exports of high-technology products to Canada and Australia, as their economies geared into that of the USA. Civilian jet aircraft, built in America and painted with the names of British and Commonwealth airlines, vividly carried this message at all British and Commonwealth airports. For the immediate future, EEC offered a wealthier and bigger market especially for commodities with a high technological content. The figures for 1967 were—EEC: population 182 million, GNP £124 thousand million. Commonwealth: population 849 million, GNP £96 thousand million. EFTA: excluding Britain, population 44 million, GNP £30 thousand million. Further, the Treaty of Rome meant free mobility of labour and capital. “Membership of the EEC would have stuck the spurs on British unions and management. It would have forced the unions to modernize their outlook, discard restrictive practices, and stop wild-cat strikes, to meet competition from keener, and in 1956, hungrier and lesser paid French, Italian and German workers. For management, ‘the establishment’, both old-school-tie and old-boy networks, would have to give way to a meritocracy. Whether in the ’50s or in the ’70s, membership of the EEC requires considerable structural changes in Britain’s economy. It would not be a painless process. Courageous leadership from the Government will have to be matched by an enlightened and spirited response from unions and management.”
However, apart from the advantages of a bigger market in the EEC, there were other special reasons for the spectacular performance of the Germans, and the recovery of the French and Italian economies. They had labour resources not available to Britain. It was the large number of idle workers which made capital investments in new growth industries profitable, and resulted in high growth rates. By contrast, Britain had full employment right from the immediate post-war years. At one stage, considerable immigration from the new Commonwealth countries took place to increase Britain’s labour pool and so increase her GNP. But this was to lead to considerable domestic problems, particularly when the “freeze” and the “squeeze” led to increased unemployment. Unfortunately, by the time Britain decided, in the autumn of 1961, to take the preliminary steps to apply for membership of the EEC, she was blocked by the French veto. In January, 1963, Britain was not “European” enough.
Nearly five years later, in the autumn of 1967, Britain was still not “European” enough. This was in spite of moves making clear that she was loosening her links with the Commonwealth, ending her East-of-Suez responsibilities, and no longer pressing for special transitory terms for old or new Commonwealth countries. But the “overseas” links of the French, Dutch or Belgians did not seem to make them less “European”. But then this privilege was only for founder members. French special links with French-speaking Africa entitled her to send paratroops to restore legitimate governments when they were deposed by military coups. And, despite devaluation in November, 1967, and the diminution of the role of sterling as a reserve currency, the French Government had not changed their views on Britain’s inadequate “Europeanness”.
Besides the many reasons that had been advanced across the Channel to show how inadequate were Britain’s qualifications for membership, Lee thought there might be another, so far unexpressed, objection. “If the end objective of EEC is political integration leading to political unity, then language and culture are most important considerations.” New France, as Quebec was once named, and again recently called by de Gaulle, had held on with tenacity to the French language and culture. They had resisted anglicization in a continent overwhelmingly English-speaking. Why then should old France be anglicized when its own language was until recently supreme as the language of Europe and of international diplomacy? Why should French culture be displaced or demoted? This was what might happen if the EEC six were to admit the EFTA eight under the present rules of the Treaty of Rome. The present EEC had a majority of Latin-speaking, French, Belgians (most of the Flemish-speaking also speak French), Luxembourg, and Italians, 112 million to 70 million Dutch and Germans. In practice, when the representatives of the EEC six met, four spoke or understood one another in French or Italian. So it was that proceedings were usually conducted in French. Add the EFTA eight, and the Latin group became a minority of 121 million to 160 million British-Scandinavian-German-Dutch. “In practice, if the fourteen representatives of an enlarged EEC were to meet under the present rules, English will be the language most understood and likely to be used. And if political unity is achieved, English will be the language best qualified to be the common language of any supra-national European Assembly or Parliament. Otherwise, the gathering will be like a smaller United Nations General Assembly. With a language goes the literature. And literature will pass on the history, ethos and culture of a people. The fact that Britain readily agreed to have ‘Concorde’ spelt with an ‘e’ only underlines British confidence in the growing strength of the English language. The ‘e’ in Concorde has been explained as standing for England, excellence, elegance and entente. But ‘e’ for the French stands especially for Europe.”
Lee said that today, English-speaking governments represented over a third of the world population. The new Commonwealth countries all needed to learn one language that would give them access to scientific and technological expertise. English offered the most advantage. It meant access to Britain, the developed Commonwealth countries, and America. This had led many countries, Japan, China, Thailand, Latin America, Belgium and Scandinavia, to adopt English as their second language. This was happening even in former European dependencies. The Dutch ruled the Indonesian Archipelago for about 350 years. The present elite was educated in the Dutch language. The next-generation elite would probably be at ease in English. For English was the second language taught in Indonesian schools. The present South Vietnamese elite was more French-speaking than English-speaking. But the next generation would be more English-speaking. As the world grew smaller through man’s ingenuity and inventiveness in communications and transportation, the tendency was towards fewer but larger blocs. Russia and the Slav-speaking people of Eastern Europe formed one bloc. Latin-speaking Rumania wedged in the south-western Slav bloc was an accident of history. China, and what de Gaulle had referred to as her numerous millions, formed another bloc, more Chinese than communist.
Even as early as the 1940s, after India and Pakistan became independent, Churchill spoke of the English-speaking peoples, meaning those of European stock, Britain, America and the white Commonwealth. He conceived of a cohesive bloc on which British international influence could be sustained, now that the Empire was dismantled. Churchill’s vision of the future was in the same lofty historic terms as de Gaulle’s. Expressed in percentages of world population, France was one point five per cent to Britain’s one point six per cent. France and Quebec was one point six per cent to Britain, Canada (minus Quebec), Australia, New Zealand and America’s eight point five per cent. However, if there were a strong French- or Latin-led EEC there could be a “Latin” bloc of French-, Italian-, Spanish-, Portuguese-speaking, fifteen point seven per cent of the world population. There were forty-two “Latin” governments in the United Nations (twenty-one French-speaking, nineteen Spanish-speaking, two Portuguese-speaking) to thirty-one English-speaking governments.
Lee argued that if a larger economic grouping was to be created, then, for France, the present rules were not suitable. For the EEC would undergo a qualitative change. A directorate of the larger four—France, Germany, Italy and Britain—was one way of avoiding anglicization. It might be worth Britain’s while to explore the implications of these proposals.
He predicted that if only full membership under the present rules of the Treaty of Rome was acceptable, then the British application was likely to remain on the table unconsidered for some time. The danger of such a policy was that it might lead to stop-gap measures whilst waiting for membership, when in fact Britain could recover her economic health without the EEC, provided she was prepared to make the effort, undertake the changes necessary, and pay the political price. The Japanese had done this. They were another island people, with almost the same land area, if more mountainous. They had nearly twice the population. They lost huge pieces of valuable real estate after the war—Korea, Manchuria, Formosa, and half of Sakhalin. Like the Germans, they had to take back large numbers of their ethnic kind expelled from their extended empire. This meant large unemployed labour reserves, to make investment give high returns. They had no common market, free-trade area, or even commonwealth preferences. But the Japanese, like the Germans, having gone through national humiliation in defeat, had that resolve to redeem their national pride, to make that greater effort to demonstrate that they were not down. And the Japanese had got around the problems of economies of scale by specializing in certain fields like electronics, and petro-chemicals. For instance, Japanese colour television production for 1969 was expected to be five million sets, three million for home consumption, as against Britain’s 130,000 sets. They were doing this even though their per capita income was half that of the British. Britain unfortunately competed with America in very high and sophisticated technology like civilian and military aircraft and missiles. Whilst she was as imaginative and creative as the Americans, Britain did not have America’s large domestic market to enable export prices to be reduced and competitive. The VC10 was technologically as good, if not superior to the Boeing, Douglas, or Lockheed jet aircraft. But, without a large domestic market for long haul aircraft, Britain’s export prices could not be as competitive. Nor could she afford to invest in further expensive research and development to make the VC10 more economical in running cost, nor produce a comparable jumbo-jet version of it. Meanwhile, Russian Ilyushins and Tupolevs kept out all Western aircraft from the national airlines of Eastern Europe.
But the Concorde showed what was possible with European collaboration. So also the MRCA aircraft now under discussion. If EEC membership was not immediately possible, some other form of economic co-operation or association could be of mutual value especially in research and development production and marketing of products of very high technology. So long as Britain was strong and thriving, the English-speaking civilizations she had created overseas—North America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand—were a source of added strength. In two World Wars they came to Britain’s aid. Their “brains”, like many of the Rhode scholars, including Americans, came to Britain to learn and many stayed on. But a Britain which had become less thrusting no longer offered fulfilment. These English-speaking centres of civilization had now become her competitors. The United States and Canada were five times bigger in population, had nine times Britain’s wealth and industrial capacity, and an infinitely bigger multiple in potential growth. What began as a useful method of settling second and third sons in circumstances approximating that of the eldest who came into the inheritance under the rules of primogeniture, had now become a magnet drawing away frustrated brains and skills. They threatened to take over British influence and markets throughout the world, especially in the English-speaking new Commonwealth. It was ironic that those European countries, which failed to create comparable civilizations overseas, were placed in less hazard of being drained of their brains and their influence.
The old Commonwealth countries now wanted more British brains and brawn to populate their countries. English-speaking Canadians wanted to increase the ethnic British component of their population. So too with the Australians and the New Zealanders. From 1963-67 there was a net outflow of 616,800 Britons to the old Commonwealth, America and South Africa. More debilitating than the loss in sheer numbers was the loss in men of quality. In 1961 the brain drain into Britain equalled the flow out. The loss from Britain to America and the old Commonwealth started in 1962, with a net loss of 400. The total net loss for the five years 1962-66 was 7,800 scientists and technologists. Whilst Britain had always sent out the middle quality of her population to help build up the old Commonwealth, she could not afford to lose her best. It was not numbers, but quality and high performance, which gave and could again give Britain a pre-eminent place amongst the nations of the world. The quality of life, as distinct from standard of living, was higher in Britain than in North America, Australia, New Zealand or South Africa. Many Britons who had migrated to America found the violence and the problems of Negro-white relationships so disturbing that they had moved on to Canada or Australia. If, Lee continued, Britain’s economy recovered, and her standard of living improved, then the present mood of depression would pass off; in place of frustration would be fulfilment in professional or artistic creativity. If high performance was given social and material recognition, the brain drain could be reversed. A thriving Britain had always attracted the best from the old Commonwealth and from America.
Britain could not and should not compete in the numbers game. There were more Commonwealth students in America than there were in Britain. In 1960, there were only 7,000 Commonwealth students in Britain as against 13,000 in the USA. In 1967 the numbers in Britain had increased to 10,000, by only thirty-four per cent, as against a 126 per cent or fourfold increase to 29,000 in America. America could offer more scholarships in more universities. Perhaps also some American colleges classified as tertiary educational institutions would not be so graded in Britain. “For Britain, the emphasis must be on excellence, both in her own institutions and in the scholars she takes in from the Commonwealth, and from America.”
Meanwhile, new sub-groupings were formed, as links were formed by the lesser-developed, non-white English-speaking peoples with the developed white peoples of America, Canada and Australia-New Zealand. Canada was developing a special interest with the Caribbean Commonwealth countries, and with both the English- and French-speaking countries of West Africa. Canadian economic assistance extended to India and Ceylon for reasons of sentiment, compassion and potential economic relationships. Malaysia and Singapore had as many of their students in Australia and New Zealand as in Britain. For security and economic reasons both were getting closer to Australia and New Zealand. But whatever centres of new sub-groupings might emerge, none would replace Britain as the hub of the Commonwealth. Britain would always have a special link with each one of the twenty-seven members of the Commonwealth. With growing maturity an adult relationship was being established. Old ties were valued, not just for economic advantage. Both for the old and new Commonwealth, continuity of association with Britain after Empire was a useful and valuable counter-weight to the new and more aggressive forces they all had to face in a world growing ever smaller. The Americans and the Russians, however generous and agreeable they might be as individuals, were demanding as governments. And bigger neighbours suspected of expansionist tendencies were always troublesome.
Trends do not continue indefinitely, said Lee Kuan Yew. Some historians had made the point that discontinuity, as much as continuity, marked the history of nations, peoples and empires. A cruel example of this was Smuts’ vision of a continuing white Commonwealth of Nations, with South Africa a proud and leading member of it. He would never have believed that in 1962 South Africa would be officially refused continued membership in a multiracial Commonwealth. Perhaps in a decade for some, or more for others, the new Commonwealth countries would either sort out their problems themselves, or seek outside help to re-establish conditions which made economic and social progress possible. When stable conditions for constructive endeavour had been established, then investment would flow in and rapid growth will be achieved. Their present backwardness could be the very reason for high growth rates. Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan had very high growth rates. One of the reasons Japan had been galloping at about fifteen per cent growth per annum from 1950, when the Korean war gave her a booster, was because she started from a relatively low base. For Britain, there could be no easy return to the comfortable past. The sooner adjustments were made, the sooner the recovery. The worst that could happen was a Britain with economic problems becoming chronic because her entry into the EEC or any other economic association was systematically blocked. “To aggravate the situation her trade unions and management do not see the economy as a joint responsibility but as that of the government of the day. Then the old Commonwealth will want to cream off British brains and brawn to build up their economies and populate their empty spaces. And the new Commonwealth countries will gravitate elsewhere for their development needs in education, expertise and high-technology equipment.” The best was a Britain with her economy put in order because the Government inspired and carried her people and, more crucial, because her union leaders and her industrial managers accepted a joint responsibility to get the country moving forward and upwards to higher levels of technology and productivity. Then confidence would be restored, Britain’s confidence in her role and future for the next hundred years. And more mundane, but no less valuable, was the restoration of the confidence of other peoples and their governments in Britain’s economic strength. She would then add to the strength of Western Europe, the Commonwealth and America. To achieve this, some formula must be found with West European or North American Governments for joint research, production and marketing of products of very high technology. It also required excellence to be once more admired, nurtured and rewarded. Such a Britain could the better afford to care for her less fortunate, the old, the disabled and the unemployed. A Britain recovered in poise and prosperity, once again pushing outwards on the frontiers of discovery in the pure and applied sciences, would be the intellectual and cultural centre of all the English-speaking peoples.
Meanwhile, Lee concluded, it would be a pity if temporary irritations and frustrations with seemingly intractable economic and political difficulties were to lead to false economies, the abandonment of links, and the losing of expertise. As the old generation that knew the Commonwealth countries well passed on, a younger generation must keep up the expertise. The links Britain had with the Commonwealth countries, old and new, her special relationship with America, were part of her history. It might be prudent to maintain these Commonwealth links. They could be of considerable economic value in the next few decades. “The remarkable way in which the Empire was dismantled, consciously, and with the minimum of animosity and antipathy means goodwill.” And goodwill, another way of describing trust and confidence as a result of long association, was not without economic value. But some theoreticians for the welfare state, accompanied by high personal taxes to pay for the welfare, had expounded that the British were not interested in the acquisition of wealth. Lee said: “Even if this were true, I would like to recount what a worldly-wise minister of a member of the EEC told me when he passed through Singapore recently. ‘We thought’, he said, ‘that if all our people enjoyed high standards of life, with all the things needed to make them comfortable, then they would be happy. Now we have comfortable homes and the good life, but we are not happy. We have lost that sense of adventure when we travelled overseas and found fulfilment in this part of the world.’ He added: ‘I fear my British friends may discover what we already have, that without that challenge, life is not as meaningful, not as exciting, not as satisfying.’ I would hope my British friends will never be without that challenge at home and overseas, which is where this island people have historically sought adventure and found fortune and fulfilment.”
“If all Commonwealth leaders were as well-informed and unprejudiced as Lee Kuan Yew,” declared The Daily Telegraph in an editorial comment the next day, headed “A Candid Friend”, “the group would be in far better shape than it now is, and certainly command more loyalty and respect. In his Smuts Memorial Lecture, while giving Britain more credit than she usually receives nowadays for her colonizing and de-colonizing role, he also gave a frank and shrewd diagnosis of her present malaise. High on the list of defects he puts out-of-date trade unions, restrictive practices and wild-cat strikes: management also has not transformed itself as the fierceness of modern international competition demands. He is no opponent of the European Common Market, and deplores Britain’s failure—through a preoccupation with the Commonwealth to which he pays tribute—to go in at the start. Britain would have exercised a liberalizing influence which would have benefited Commonwealth countries. But Britain seems to him to be prepared to sit moping indefinitely because entry is barred. The Japanese, he points out, also an island people who had lost an empire, overcame far greater difficulties than Britain has had to contend with. Mr Lee finds the Commonwealth an inspiring enterprise, and although aware of its practical limitations, hopes that false economies will not lead to the abandonment of links. The answer is surely that much depends on reciprocity. Both militarily and economically Singapore’s case is a strong one.”
Once again the name of Lee Kuan Yew was mentioned in London as a possible successor to U Thant at the United Nations. The Times on 18 April carried the following item: “Although U Thant’s second five-year term as Secretary-General of the United Nations does not expire until December, 1971, there has already been some speculation about who might succeed him. One theory, strongly held in certain Commonwealth quarters, is that Singapore’s brilliant Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, might not be unhappy to tread the wider stage of the UN. It is an attractive theory, partly because he was one of the Afro-Asians suggested when U Thant was showing reluctance to take on another term; partly because his abilities are widely recognized. Lee reacted with characteristic crispness when we popped the question. With a shrug, and a touch of scornful exasperation of the man who has been asked the same question many times, he said: ‘First, the job is not vacant. Secondly, it’s not the sort of job that gets offered: and thirdly it’s only for a man who has a certain philosophical approach towards life. . . and is prepared for an endless series of disappointments and can be consoled by—well—contemplation. I mean, exchange, for a lifetime of frustration, what we have here—where it blossoms, and blooms? No, at the end of ten years you won’t recognize this place. . .’ Lee is a man of action whose first consideration is the flourishing emergence of Singapore, where he exercises real and virtually full power. Ambition would have enticed his hopes, once, to be Prime Minister of Malaysia, but that hope seems extinct. Given a different UN in ten years’ time, with Singapore safely launched, perhaps his view might change. He is, after all, only 45. Until then the jocular comment is likely to persist that the story is always started in Kuala Lumpur, in the hope that his removal from the scene would facilitate new links between Singapore and Malaysia.”
Lee Kuan Yew declined to make any further comment on The Times report, but a spokesman said the Prime Minister wanted to devote all his energy to the development of Singapore “for the next ten years at least”.
While Lee Kuan Yew was in England considerable feeling was being aroused in Malaysia by intemperate speeches during the general election campaign. In Penang, the Malaysian Prime Minister on 5 May made the astonishing allegation that the Peoples’ Action Party was trying to destroy Malaysia. “That is why”, Tunku Abdul Rahman was reported to have said, “it is pouring in money to help opposition parties here. The Singapore Government”, the Tunku continued, “is working hand in glove with traitors of Malaysia who are bent upon destroying the Malays.” A spokesman accompanying Lee Kuan Yew said that the suggestion was too extravagant for any serious comment. He added that Singapore’s Prime Minister had engagements in London, Washington and Tokyo, and would not be returning to Singapore until 20 May. Further, to emphasize that Lee Kuan Yew was hardly the man “bent upon destroying Malaysia or the Malays”, the spokesman said that the Prime Minister was that afternoon taking a seminar at the Centre for South Asian Studies in Cambridge, and on the morrow, would be lunching with Mr H. Hinsley, Reader in History of International Relations, and dining with Dr E. R. Leach, Provost of Kings College and Reader of Social Anthropology. The following day, Lee Kuan Yew was made an honorary Fellow of his old Cambridge College at Fitzwilliam. He dined that evening with the Master and Fellows at High Table.
Lee Kuan Yew’s state visit to France abandoned, the Prime Minister remained in Cambridge, completing his “Sabbatical” until it was time for him to fly to the United States to see President Nixon. He was with the President at the White House for an hour on 12 May. A statement put out by the Prime Minister’s staff said that Lee also met the Defence Secretary and Dr Henry Kissinger, the Security Affairs adviser. Later, the Prime Minister met Mr Marshall Green, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Mr Elliot Richardson, Under-Secretary of State, and Mr Alexis Johnson, Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs. The statement said this was the first time Lee had met Mr Nixon since the President took office. He also took the opportunity to meet some of the President’s Cabinet Ministers and the aides who help formulate policy towards East and Southeast Asia.
News came from Malaysia of riots in the capital and Lee Kuan Yew told the Press he was concerned over reports of communal clashes in West Malaysia. “Malaysia”, he said, “is our closest neighbour. Her well-being or otherwise must affect us all in Singapore. I hope her present difficulties will be quickly resolved and reasonableness and tolerance become the order of things.”
The New York Times on 14 May reported that Lee Kuan Yew told reporters that the United States should not withdraw too quickly from combat in South Vietnam “just because the burden has become too costly for you”. A gradual disengagement, he said, could probably be carried out without serious repercussions across Southeast Asia—but only if the South Vietnamese were given adequate time to “get on their own feet and carry the burden themselves”. The New York Times said that after talks with President Nixon and Secretary of Defence Melvin R. Laird, Lee spoke bluntly about the military and political tasks that lay ahead for the South Vietnamese—responsibilities, he said, that they should have taken upon themselves long ago.
Twelve hours before President Nixon’s nation-wide television address on Vietnam, Lee said: “I am confident that Nixon will do the right thing—I like the deliberately thorough way in which he is approaching the problem.” He expressed reservations about the intention to disengage American combat forces. “Every thinking person in Southeast Asia has already accepted this trend in United States policy,” the Prime Minister said. “If this disengagement is gradual and orderly, then confidence in American commitments in the region can be maintained,” he added.
To the astonishment of his aides, Lee Kuan Yew, said the report, assailed Vice-President Nguyen Cao Ky of South Vietnam in an interview with the Columbia Broadcasting System. He accused his Southeast Asian colleague of “extravagance and lack of sensitivity to his people”.
“The South Vietnamese leadership must understand the mood in the United States. Unless they show the capacity—not just the willingness—the capacity to stand up for themselves and for what they believe, then this last chance will pass them by,” the Prime Minister said. “Either they’ve got it by now or they’ll never get it—they must be put to the test.”
In his televised report on the war in Vietnam, President Nixon said that the United States had ruled out attempting to impose a purely military solution on the battlefield, and had also ruled out either a one-sided withdrawal from Vietnam, or the acceptance in Paris of terms which would amount to a disguised defeat. “If”, he added, “we simply abandon our effort in Vietnam, the cause of peace might not survive the damage that would be done to other nations’ confidence in our reliability.”
In a comment to the Press on 15 May, the Prime Minister said that “if there is to be a negotiated settlement it has to be fair and honourable. It must be as fair to the National Liberation Front as to the South Vietnamese Government in Saigon, offering both an equal chance of achieving power through an expression of the popular will of the people of South Vietnam. This will also be an honourable way for the North Vietnamese and American Governments to withdraw their forces from South Vietnam.” The problem now, the Prime Minister added, was how to establish conditions of stability and security, so that the people of South Vietnam could express their wishes in free elections, without intimidation or terror.
A month later, the Washington Post editorially referred to Lee’s remarks in the United States. The paper said that the Prime Minister had a correct and realistic view of America’s position in Vietnam. “This country has had no stronger supporter of its Vietnam effort over the years than Mr Lee Kuan Yew, the Prime Minister of Singapore, and yet when Mr Lee was here in town a while ago he was not asking as much of us, in his private conversations with old friends, as we have been asking of ourselves,” the newspaper said. “He had read American public opinion rightly, and, while he was puzzled and dismayed, he was realistic. If the public would not see it through, it was time to begin a gradual withdrawal of our forces—to Vietnamize the war. And if the South Vietnamese prove incapable of handling the increased burden and succumb in time to communist control, what would the repercussions be elsewhere in Asia? They would not be serious—the American position would not collapse. Provided the South Vietnamese were seen to have been given a reasonable opportunity to save themselves, provided we were honest about it, and did not pull out precipitiously, provided it was plain that we had done as much as any outside power reasonably could be expected to do to foreclose a communist conquest by force. This was the hub of it, giving the South Vietnamese an honest, reasonable shot at their own salvation, and, while these are not easy measures to make, this is the test which must somehow be applied to the proposals for disengagement put forth by Mr Clark Clifford . . .”
Lee went back to his old school, Raffles Institution, on Speech Day, 6 June. Because of a traffic hold-up he was a few minutes late, and he took the opportunity to tell the scholars that this was not a good example. It was one he urged them never to follow. One hundred and fifty years, he said, was a very short time reckoning in the terms of the histories of the various civilizations which had existed in Asia. But 150 years was a very long time in the life of any community. It had seen the rise and fall of empires; it had seen the emergence in the past twenty years of over sixty new nation states, of which Singapore was one. “I do not pretend to be able to see the kind of world we will live in, or our progeny will live in, 150 years from now. Suffice to say that if we do our duty, five or ten years from now we will have a more thriving, more robust and a more secure Singapore and that much a more certain future for all of us.”
Lee left the students in no doubt about what he thought their duty should be. “It is my intention, and that of my colleagues, that the University of Singapore is worthy of the young men and women we are producing from our schools, whom we are nurturing with the right values. And by right values I mean the values that will ensure you a reasonably secure, a relatively high standard of living which demands a disciplined community prepared to give of its best and ready to pay for what it wants, work and earn and pay for what it wants. Nothing is more disastrous than to be sucked up into the fads and fetishes that we read about and see on our television screens, the kinds of student protest, unrest, malaise in North America, in part of Western Europe and in Britain. They have their problems; we have ours. We share some problems in common, living in a world which has grown smaller as a result of man’s inventiveness and his capacity for instant communication and rapid transportation. Ideas pass quickly from capital to capital and we happen to be on the jet route and on the satellite communication system besides the SEACOM communication system. So what happens in London, Washington, Paris, California, Tokyo, Canberra, Melbourne, Wellington, we know of in a matter of minutes or see on our television screen in a matter of hours. But always ask: is this relevant to me? Ask yourself that question. The American student is caught in his own problems, the dilemma of either being patriotic and dying for a war which seems endless and unwinnable or listening to some of his professors and teachers say that this is a wicked, vicious, inhuman war which he should dodge; of wondering how he is to solve the problems of black versus white, problems of poverty, lack of education, lack of educational and entertainment opportunities. They are different from the problems the British student faces. He has to ask himself what his country’s role is, now that Empire is over. He is undergoing a period of malaise because his elders in government, in opposition, in industry, in the unions are themselves groping for answers to his future. I am not groping for answers to your future,” said Lee Kuan Yew.
The Prime Minister said that he and his colleagues did their rethinking as of 9 August, 1965 (when Singapore separated from Malaysia and became an independent nation). “We attempted the other way, the broader base, a place within a wider framework. It was not workable, not for reasons of personality, conflict of leadership, but for fundamental reasons; and we are determined, whatever people may have thought on 9 August, 1965, that we shall continue to thrive, to prosper and to uphold values which we consider critical to the survival of new nations which embrace within their frontiers more than one race, more than one language, more than one religion. In other words, giving and being seen to give equal opportunities to all to find fulfilment.” And that could best be done in Singapore by each keeping his own links with his past, his language, his culture so that he would understand his parents, the fables, the folklore, the parables, but seeking common ground with all the other groups “because it is not in the past that we have to live. It is today and tomorrow that we have to prepare ourselves for; that means common ground, hence effective bilingualism.”
Lee Kuan Yew said he believed in these things very profoundly and over the years he knew that they were absolutely fundamental to Singapore’s future. “So much so, although I would like very much for my sons to have come to this school, I decided that because they would be effectively English-speaking, having an English-speaking environment at home, they went to a Chinese school; and they are completely at home in either culture, in either language and in more than just these two languages.”
The Prime Minister reminded the students that their future was in his hands and those of his colleagues for the time being, but ultimately in theirs. “A generation passes on, a younger one takes over and I do not want to see what we have done over the past ten years go into fumbling, feeble hands. They must go into hands which are firm, minds which are just, free from muddle-headed thinking, which means that we will see to it that our universities and, most important, teachers in those universities, reflect the values which trial and error, plus theory, have shown to be important if we are to continue to prosper and to flourish.”
Lee said it would be unrealistic if he did not advert their attention to what had been happening. “You know that there have been communal incidents. I returned on 20 May knowing that a Malay had been shot and killed by a group of thugs not very far from here. We held the ground. It erupted again last Saturday. When a situation like that happens, you first let everybody know that there will be just, fair, and firm government. We talk about goodwill, love, fraternity in one community after everybody knows that his life and his property are best secured by listening to reason and to what the Government through its police is urging him to do: not to take the law into his own hands, and not to believe that for reasons of sentiment he ought to beat another person up because of his race. That is a very foolish thing to do in Singapore. Those who take the law into their own hands will be smacked down firmly and where the evidence justifies it, a criminal prosecution will go right through to the end.”
When this sense of justice had been restored and everybody saw that justice was being done, “then we go back and then talk about long-term problems. For this is now a long-term problem, it’s different from the riots in 1964. Then we had no control over the army and the police; this time we have. In 1964 the problems were not as deep and as abiding. They have become far more painful, far more difficult, because the magnitude of the problem has taken on a new dimension. From time to time we may have to face this little bit of fuss and bother but a population properly educated on what is best for itself should be emotionally inoculated from these irrational, communal, emotive outbursts.”
It was in schools like Raffles where the different communities learnt to be one people that the future lay and eventually all schools in Singapore would comprise within their classroom more than just one ethnic group. This would take some time, but in the long run “we will not have any school where pupils are put together on the basis of just one race and one language. The monolinguist is a bigot because he does not know that there are other languages and other cultures as great if not greater than his own. A bilinguist has an aperture, a window open in his mind, into other worlds and when all of Singapore understand that and all of them have windows opening on to each other’s worlds, then we will have a truly more tolerant, more understanding and for that reason a more peaceful and prosperous future.”
In a long interview with Time-Life on 10 June, parts of which later appeared in Time magazine, the Prime Minister discussed, among other topics, the Asian Revolution.
What happened to it, he was asked. Lee Kuan Yew thought it got bogged down in a great deal of problems with which it started, namely, lack of trained administrators, technocrats and entrepreneurs with sufficient drive and creativity. Different ethnic groups, brought into one economic whole by a European overlord, did not hold together once power was handed over to indigenous majorities. They attempted to stay in office and prove legitimacy through the popular vote by making appeals to ethnic, religious and linguistic loyalties. These were some of the easiest of appeals to make. In short the Asian Revolution got bogged down with the mechanics of administration—or lack of it—and the plain facts of life, and economies of development.
Time-Life said that since the end of World War Two, the primary task of Southeast Asian leaders had been to harness the forces of nationalism to gain independence, and after that to forge a national identity. Had these tasks been completed? Lee did not think they had been completed—the forging of their national identities. None of these countries in Southeast Asia had completely established a new identity. What they must establish was an identity which comprised the various ethnic groups in the various territories which a colonial overlord brought together into one whole. One of the problems was that these things took a very long time.
Was forging a national identity the task of Southeast Asian leadership in the 1970s? Lee said it was one of the tasks of leadership. First to forge a people with a unity of purpose who found fulfilment by working together and giving each other a better life. They had to feel that they together belonged in one whole. “If you are making the effort for the prosperity and well-being of a group you do not consider a part of you, then people find it very difficult to make the effort.”
What should be done to get the Asian Revolution going again? Lee thought there should be a move into a new phase. Not a revolution in the sense of sudden political change, of getting rid of one set of rulers and a system of government, to establish another set of rulers and another system. That had already been done. The question now was how to fulfil the expectations of a people that had been mobilized to get rid of European colonial regimes? They had been mobilized on the basis that once the white man was gone they would occupy all the big houses, the big desks, and the big motor-cars of the European. Well, that was fine. “But unless you know how to run the economy. . .You can get aid for some time. But in the long run you have got to pay for these things. And that means getting your economy going. From a purely agricultural to plantation-mining economics, to commercial economies, on to higher levels of industrial production and higher technology. This means educating the population into higher skills. Without discipline you cannot even begin the education and training. Once you have chaos, riots and civil commotion people do not go to school, and teacher training colleges close. So the teachers are not produced and so on. You can tie yourself up into a knot.”
Time-Life turned to the outcome of the Vietnam war. Did Lee think that in the long run South Vietnam would come under the control of the communists? Lee Kuan Yew replied: “I would hope not. But nobody can predict that. It would depend upon what political leadership the South Vietnamese are given, or can produce. Militarily, American intervention has prevented the communists from winning. But politically, in order to win, the South Vietnamese have got to create a government which commands the loyalty and support of the bulk of the population in South Vietnam and galvanizes it into self-help. And that is something which only the South Vietnamese can do. I hope that American troop withdrawals that have been announced, and undoubtedly will continue, will be at such a rate so as not to generate a sense of insecurity among the armed forces and the Government of South Vietnam. There must be sufficient time for the South Vietnamese to be trained and to stand up to fight for themselves. If they can’t do that, well. . .that’s that.”
Time-Life said that some people felt that if South Vietnam did go communist this would put intolerable pressure on the rest of Southeast Asia in the form of continued insurgencies. Others believed that the main danger would not come from a wave of communist take-overs—that the real danger would come from the failure to solve the social and economic problems that confronted this region. “It is really two aspects of the same problem,” replied Lee Kuan Yew. “If your country is moving to a higher level of achievement, of prosperity and the better life, then no one is going to listen to the rabble-rousers. The communists are going to find it extremely difficult to recruit people. If this is the case then what has happened in Vietnam will not be easily repeated elsewhere. But if you get more and more hungry and angry people, then communists will find it easier to recruit people as guerillas. Eventually, they will take over. In a chaotic situation, with the economy going downhill, a well-organized, tightly knit communist minority has a good chance to seize power. If South Vietnam is lost, then the chances are that whoever is the successor-government—whether it be North Vietnam or a combination of communists of North and South Vietnam—they will want to be the successors to French Indo-China, which included Laos and Cambodia. Whether they will be able to create a communist guerilla insurrection in Thailand is another matter. I feel that if the Thais do not let their will melt away at the thought of being on their own and having to fight for themselves, with American aid in arms and resources, but not in men, then Thailand will stay non-communist. It is not a question of the Vietnamese taking over the Thais. That is not the method of People’s Liberation Wars. And if Thailand sticks, then West Malaysia has a better chance, and so Singapore will stick.”
Did this mean that he thought that the will of the Thais was somewhat in question? “Really, the will of the elite,” replied Lee. “The mass of the people may or may not express that will periodically in some form.” He thought it was absolutely crucial that the Thais did not over-react.
Time-Life said that it would appear that Southeast Asia in the 1970s would be more on its own than it had been for several hundred years. How would the region react to that situation? Much had been said about the need for regional co-operation in Southeast Asia. It seemed to be the great hope of the area. Yet so far the results had been quite disappointing, in that countries had been unwilling to put aside their own narrow national interests for the good of the whole. What did Lee think were the chances for really meaningful regional co-operation in the 1970s? First of all, it depended, Lee said, whether things took a constructive turn, whether or not the different countries tried to make sense of themselves and of what they had inherited from former colonial empires. But the first thing to remember about regional cooperation for economic development was that geographic proximity did not mean that one formed a natural economic unit for advance into the industrial and technological society. If blind persons got together they were unlikely to get anywhere. Somebody was needed to lead the way, to blaze the trail. The Organization of African Unity, for example, expressed the desire for African Continental Unity. But after the past few years, all accepted the fact that the northern part of Africa, the Arab part, was very different from Africa south of the Sahara. East Africa was different from West Africa. Economic co-operation between, say, Kenya in the east and Sierra Leone in the west just did not make sense. There were no communications between them other than by sea around the Cape. How did they industrialize when neither had an industrial base? Putting this in a Southeast Asian context meant putting it into a more sensitive context. “Obviously we all need a more advanced economy to generate growth providing the capital and expertise. Who is more advanced? I accept the fact that Japan is an advanced industrial country. I accept the fact that although there are only twelve million Australians—they are also advanced in both the pure and applied sciences and in industry. Although not as far ahead as the Japanese, they can nevertheless make a contribution to education and training, industry and technology in Southeast Asia.”
Asked his views on regional co-operation as far as defence was concerned, the Prime Minister replied: “Who are we going to defend ourselves against? When Americans talk about defence arrangements in Southeast Asia they usually mean defence against China. But is China going out on a predatory expansionist policy? I do not expect the Chinese People’s Liberation Army fanning out through Southeast Asia. That is not their method. Their technique is through People’s Liberation Wars. Vietnamese, not Chinese, have to die in Vietnam. And to counter that, the government of the country must give fulfilment to their people, isolating the ideologically convinced communists and preventing them from setting on fire the rest of the population.”
Should the countries of Southeast Asia try for a better relationship with mainland China? Lee said that the whole world had to live with China. But the countries of Southeast Asia were not big enough to come to terms with China on their own. The major powers, America, Russia, Japan and the countries of Western Europe, must first come to some accommodation. Then the countries of Southeast Asia could, Lee hoped, find accommodation with China within the framework of the United Nations.
According to Time-Life, there was a feeling in the United States that the Americans had become over-involved in the affairs of Asia and should be less involved in the 1970s. What did Lee feel America’s role in Asia should be during the 1970s? Lee’s reply was that this was a question Americans had to answer for themselves. What kind of a world would they like to live in? Only they can answer that. “Your President has said that he is not a ‘half-worlder’. By that I understand him to mean that he is not just interested in Europe alone. You look eastward towards Europe and Russia. You can look westward towards Asia and also Russia. The Russians claim to be both a European and an Asian nation. Distances mean less and less. So you must play the role you think is in your best interests. I would like to believe that you can discern your interests dispassionately so as not to have the pendulumn swing away from Asia because of your rather tiresome experiences in Vietnam. If you recognize that Vietnam was not the kind of war in which an army that is heavily dependent on conventional firepower and gadgetry is best equipped to fight, then you may discern that American national interests can be advanced congruently with the interests of the countries in Southeast Asia. The more there is a recognition of this, the easier it is for countries of this region to reach an accommodation with each other and with the bigger powers of the world.”
Did he think America’s role should be to lend economic and technical support rather than sending troops to Asia? Lee said he accepted the world as he found it. “One of the things I find is the disillusionment and even revulsion of the American people against the losses they have sustained in killed and maimed fighting this war in Vietnam. But at the same time what is not underlined, as much, is that you have prevented the communists from taking over.”
Questioned about the future of Singapore’s relations with Malaysia “after the present state of unrest is over”, the Prime Minister said that much depended on what the position in West Malaysia actually was. The dust had got to settle. “Everyone, including us, will have to make his hard-headed assessment of what has happened and what the resultant position is. That it is very different from what it was before the afternoon of 13 May is obvious. Secondly, what will be the policy of the Malaysian Government when they have sorted things out? At some point the domestic emergency or crisis must end. Once it is ended officially what will be the policies of the Malaysian Government? Where we are concerned we are prepared to continue co-operation for mutual advantage, in defence and other fields.”
Lee refused to discuss the recent riots in Malaysia. He said it was not proper, nor profitable to express his public views on this matter. As for racial tensions in Singapore, there had been some. But they were within manageable limits. They would continue to remain manageable so long as the Government, through its law enforcement instruments, the police, the courts, with the backing of the army. . . remained completely impartial in the maintenance of law and order and the administration of justice. There could be no question of the Government being more partial on the side of the Chinese against the Malays because the majority in Singapore was ethnically Chinese. “If we get into that sort of position, we cannot solve the problem, because then we shall generate a sense of insecurity amongst the Malays and eventually bitterness and hatred against the Government.”
As for Singapore’s role in Southeast Asia in the 1970s, Lee said this depended on how Southeast Asia developed. “If it is constructive development, then we could play a useful role in speeding up development around us because we are a convenient source of expertise and a convenient channel through which these countries can get foreign exchange, which is important for the purchase of machinery and other capital equipment. Then, using a very broad metaphor, we can act as a spark plug for economic progress and development in the region. If it goes the other way, chaotic and nihilist, then, like Venice, I hope, we shall have enough wisdom and skill to isolate these forces of chaos and destruction. As the Dark Ages descended on Europe, places like Venice maintained relatively civilized standards of life in a very dark and gloomy chapter in European history. I would hope that such light from Singapore would eventually help to brighten up the area again.”
Considerable interest, in the Republic and abroad, was aroused when the Government announced its intention to abolish the jury system. Lee Kuan Yew, a practicing and successful lawyer for many years before he became a politician, spoke on this issue in Parliament on 12 June. He said the business of government was to ensure that the rule of law must be seen to prevail and not thwarted. This meant that the administration of justice must be carried out fairly and justly, and that the law did take its course. When making changes to existing practice, “we have to ask ourselves whether the change we are introducing will be for the better”. Having spent a decade in the practice of the law, with some experience in the criminal courts, and another decade in government having to provide for the machinery of justice, the police and their investigations, public prosecutors and the courts, Lee said he had little doubt that this was a change which, in Singapore’s circumstances, would ensure that justice was the more likely to be done, and seen to be done.
If, added the Prime Minister, three High Court judges could not decide on questions of fact better than seven random jurymen, then grievous harm was being done every day. Single judges and single magistrates had been, and were, deciding questions of fact, both in civil and in criminal cases. Every day single judges and single magistrates made decisions after findings on questions of fact on the evidence of witnesses under examination-in-chief and cross-examination. Sometimes they intervened to pose questions. Sometimes documents and exhibits were brought before them. “I have little doubt that they are the more likely to arrive at the truth as against a jury of laymen.”
Lee thought that the jury system might work in Singapore, if jurors did not feel overwhelmed with the responsibility of having to find a man guilty, when they knew that this meant a death sentence. It also required judges who had complete command of their courts, and were sufficiently subtle and skilful to get juries to arrive at the right verdict through a judicious choice of words which could not be attacked on appeal. Even in England, the present Lord Chief Justice had occasion in recent years to make a number of caustic comments on the jury system. One could always fall back to Blackstone in the eighteenth century, and several English judges of this present century, to proclaim the virtues of the Anglo-Saxon method of jury trial. But, even in England, where once a unanimous verdict was required for a conviction, it was now only necessary to obtain a majority. Also not so long ago in England, juries were called upon to decide questions of fact even in civil cases, like actions for libel. Now they had been abolished. The administration of justice had to be kept apace and abreast with the times. And the reputation of the jury for divine discernment was now much tarnished.
“We have seen in Singapore several miscarriages of justice in the past few years,” said Lee Kuan Yew. In one trial for murder recently, a trial that should have taken five days dragged on for over thirty days as judge and prosecutor leant over backwards to ensure the appearance of justice being manifestly done. “In my view, it was overdone.” Every visiting psychiatrist was called to give evidence, ending with the majority of jurymen being so impressed or confused that a majority of the jury reduced the charge of murder to a conviction for culpable homicide. The time had come put this right. Western Europe was not uncivilized. They too had the rule of law, although more Roman law than Anglo-Saxon law. The French, Germans, Italians, and Dutch did not have juries for civil or criminal trials. No jurist or student of jurisprudence had been reckless enough to say that justice was not being done in these countries.
The question some lawyers unconsciously framed was: Before whom did an accused person, who could pay for a good advocate, stand a more sporting chance of being acquitted—three High Court judges or a jury of seven? “I suggest that as legislators concerned with the administration of justice, we are not interested in this question. The question that we in this House must ask is: Are three judges more likely to do justice than seven men chosen at random to serve on a jury? I think we know the answer to this.”
Early in 1970, Parliament passed a law abolishing the jury system in Singapore. In future, two judges will decide murder cases.
In the middle of June, Lee Kuan Yew flew to Australia to attend the Five Power defence talks in Canberra, between Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Singapore. He made it clear in a speech at the Australia-Malaysia-Singapore Association dinner in Sydney, on 18 June, that he intended to do nothing at the Canberra talks to jeopardize Singapore’s future. He said he did not want to endanger Singapore’s relations with other nations at the talks. He said: “I do not get into the permanent orbit of a major power so that I can’t get out of it. Some big countries in our region have got into orbits of big powers, like the Soviet Union and the United States, and can’t get out of them. But I put my cards on the table before going to Canberra. I have enough thrust: if I want to get out of orbit I do so.”
Lee Kuan Yew went on to say that he preferred to be associated with Australia and its Melbourne (HMSA Melbourne collided with the US destroyer Frank E. Evans on 3 June with the loss of 74 American lives) than to be tied in with America and its nuclear-powered USS Enterprise. “If I get into that sort of orbit I stay in it until the end of time.” However, if, after the British left, Australia and New Zealand decided to leave the region, too, “we’ve got to live and make other arrangements”. But he thought there was more advantage for Australia and New Zealand to stay because of the minimum risk for maximum advantage. The friendship and goodwill these countries had established over a period of time were not without economic value. “But, when the chips are down, and this is for all governments when it comes to the crunch, it is up to what a government decides is in its national interests. I believe our national interests—and I don’t know what Australia’s are—are best served in an association with Malaysia, New Zealand, Australia, and I hope, the British.”
The Prime Minister said that in the United States some six weeks earlier he had claimed that Singapore was a “more or less sheltered, secure and peaceful area”. Having the tragic events of 13 May and after in his mind, the Prime Minister said there had been a lot of events reported since which denied this. “But I believe that to give up and say it is no longer secure, peaceful and law-abiding would be to invite more disaster. We must try as best we can to re-establish some sanity, tolerance, reasonableness and accommodation, so that the Malaysia-Singapore area can become an area of relative prosperity, and perhaps this can spread outward and bring a slightly better life to others in the region. I hope the talks in Canberra are a step towards this end.”
Lee Kuan Yew argued that the problems of the contemporary world were all inter-related. Even the super-powers had their problems, America with its “never-ending, almost unwinnable war in Vietnam”, and the Soviet Union which was trying to “bash things out at the communist summit with no signal success”. And a third world was also in turmoil. Ethnic, religious, and linguistic groups were brought together within boundary lines drawn by cartographers. When representative governments tried to sustain the myth of legitimacy by popular vote they found the temptation to appeal to localities and groups. The net result was Nigeria, Ceylon, a decade ago, India and Pakistan with the insoluble problem of Kashmir. All this affected Singapore by increasing tension, and Lee said he wondered whether ANZUS was a comprehensive insurance, or whether the United States might one day become more occupied with problems of its own.
The Australian papers made much of Lee’s airport statement that if Australia and New Zealand withdrew from Singapore they would “never come back”. He would like to think, he said, that “your Government, having done its sums carefully, will find a national interest, and not just sentiment, in not leaving the Singapore-Malaysia region. Because if you leave you will never come back, even if you want to, because a mutation takes place and people have to live. If the Australians leave and the New Zealanders leave, we will have to make other arrangements.”
“Listen to Mr Lee,” advised The Sun, in an editorial on 18 June, “He makes as much sense in Sydney as he does in Singapore.” The Age, the same day, called attention to the fact that Lee Kuan Yew, in his speech, referred to the Soviet Union’s invasion of Czechoslovakia as “an outrage”. Lee had said that Russia had marched into Czechoslovakia not just to gain a buffer zone, but because failure to do so would have “unscrambled the whole of the East European States”.
At a luncheon in Sydney shortly before flying on to Canberra, the Prime Minister again emphasized that if Australia and New Zealand withdrew from the region there could be no return to the status quo. But he reiterated that Singapore was not anxious to lose its alliance with the four nations represented at the Canberra talks. Lee Kuan Yew described the world as “bi-polar”—a world in which only two powers, the United States and Russia, had the capacity to destroy each other and the rest of mankind. “It is a problem that has arisen as a result of man’s inventiveness and ingenious creative capacity, and leaves the lesser nations with a great problem. It would be foolish for us living in the Pacific not to recognize that moods change. The mood of the USA is of global interest with complete confidence. It has the wealth and technology to influence the rest of the world. But what if the pendulum swings the other way, with the American people questioning their role of world policemen,” he asked—and this at a time when Russia is increasing its range of nuclear weapons. “I would like to believe that between the competing forces of the major powers, Singapore, perhaps in consort with its neighbours and Australia and New Zealand, and maybe Japan, can find some area in which there could be relative security without being fully committed at the drop of the first bomb. This is what any national government of any nation must think about.”
Lee Kuan Yew said that every age had its set of problems, “but our generation is having more than its fair share of trials and tribulations. Historians will tell us there were very few golden ages in the history of man. Perhaps the British Empire under Victoria, Germany under Bismarck and Japan before World War Two were golden ages for particular groups of people. But it didn’t mean that everyone had a good life. Never before has there been this excruciating dilemma of having to live with ourselves in the knowledge that man can destroy himself completely.”
The Prime Minister said Singapore was only a small, unsophisticated country in a world of “little planets revolving round bigger planets. And if you’re an extremely small particle in orbit, you don’t want to choose a planet with too great a gravitational pull,” again referring to his desire for links with countries at the Canberra talks rather than with bigger powers. “I like to leave my successors with the option of putting thrust on and going to another planet,” he added.
When he arrived at Canberra, the Prime Minister was asked by newsmen about the proposal to remove Australia’s battalion of troops from Terendak Camp in Malacca to Singapore. He caused some astonishment by replying that he thought they could be “more effectively deployed” from Malacca than from Singapore. He reasoned that the views of Australia in Malaysia would then have been backed by Australia’s firm intention to maintain forces of sanity and stability. But Lee stressed that the decision was one for the Australian Government alone and he would not presume now to try to persuade the Australian Government to reverse a decision made after very prolonged consideration and deliberation.
Lee said that Singapore welcomed aid from Australia and New Zealand, “and as far as defence against external aggression is concerned, we welcome more battalions from the Australians, the New Zealanders and perhaps even the British. And we certainly intend to have as many of our own troops as we can muster. Singapore welcomes all forces which contribute to the stability and security of the region.”
Asked if this included Russia, he said: “It need not necessarily exclude them. It depends on the circumstances. They are already in the Indian Ocean.”
Asked if relationship between Singapore and Malaysia had deteriorated over the past few weeks, Lee said: “I see no official change in the relationship.” He had earlier referred to “the strategic consideration which made us consider defence as indivisible between Malaysia and Singapore—that stands.”
On Singapore’s internal security, Lee Kuan Yew said his country’s educational and social programmes were aimed at denying “the communists the kind of ferment from which they can mount revolutionary methods of seizing power.”
Lee Kuan Yew arrived in Canberra suffering from an eye infection—“only a slight infection”, he said, “but it gets worse in a smokey room.”
In an editorial on 19 June, The Australian Financial Review remarked that it would be a tragedy if Australians regarded Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s warning that he would have “to make other arrangements” if Australia withdrew from regional defence as merely the pressure tactics of a clever politician. “In the first place, there can be no doubt at all that other arrangements with the Soviet Union would be all too easy to make and might well be strongly in Singapore’s interests (as distinct from those of the region as a whole). Secondly, and more importantly, what Mr Lee was really doing was stretching out the hand of friendship, collaboration and partnership to Australia. It should be grasped firmly. In a world rent by bitter racial divisions, by multinational suspicion and by isolationism born of affluence, the opportunities presented by a close working partnership between Australia and its Asian neighbours are astonishingly unique. But the time element is such that Australia now stands perilously poised between a leap into genuine, wholehearted multiracial regionalism or a backward fall into the abyss of racial isolationism. Industrially, economically and militarily Australia is ideally suited to a “special relationship” with Southeast Asian countries which do not want to fall into the clutches of either of the big power bloc or become latter-day members of a neo-coprosperity sphere. But it is idle to pretend that this country can selfishly hope to enjoy the benefits of close economic collaboration while shunning any regional military responsibilities . . .”
In spite of a digestive upset, which caused him to miss social events, and though still worried by his slight eye infection, the Prime Minister spoke at the conference as the head of the Singapore delegation. The Minister of Law and National Development, E. W. Barker, carried on in his place when he was absent. In his speech, Lee Kuan Yew referred to “recent events” in Malaysia and Singapore. He said, “We have had our little difficulties.” Singapore’s position was that what took place recently “does concern everyone sitting around the table. Singapore’s position is unchanged. The strategic considerations of geography and demography were what they were before Singapore joined Malaysia: were the same while Singapore was part of Malaysia: they are the same today whether before or after race riots. Singapore’s feelings are that it would be very sad indeed if we have to admit that human ingenuity and just plain self-interest cannot find a way around the difficulties.” Singapore hoped that in the course of these deliberations the conference could come to some conclusions which would reassure all who were making a commitment to their joint interests.
“It is our contention”, Lee said, “that we should muster such strength as we can and in conjunction with Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand and Britain, present those who do not wish us well with a credible deterrent.” The Prime Minister referred to statements he had previously made about what would happen if Australian troops withdrew and their places filled up. He said: “My public statement was intended for those who subscribed to the theory that Australian ground forces should not be in the area. I think too much is at stake on this point. Australians may or may not decide it is in their interest to have ground forces in the Malaysia-Singapore area. But they should take this consideration into their calculations, that if they withdraw their forces, in the nature of things, a shift would take place and it is unlikely that the status quo ante would ever be restored.”
The communique issued at the end of the conference said that the five nations affirmed their continuing interest in the peace and stability of the area and their “joint concern with practical questions” arising from the withdrawal of British forces from Malaysia and Singapore. The five nations expressed their intention to continue the practice of close consultation among themselves about the situation in the area, and about developments affecting the security of Malaysia and Singapore. The conference reaffirmed that the principle that the defence of Malaysia and Singapore was indivisible “constituted an essential basis for future defence co-operation”. Malaysia, Singapore and the United Kingdom welcomed the announcements that had been made by Australia and New Zealand to continue stationing elements of their armed forces in Malaysia and Singapore after the British withdrawal in 1971. And Malaysia, Singapore and New Zealand welcomed the reaffirmation by the United Kingdom of its intention to continue exercising and training in the area. The conference also noted that the major combined exercise to be held in 1970 would, among other things, demonstrate the capability of the United Kingdom rapidly to deploy forces in the area.
Interviewed by the Australian Broadcasting Commission shortly after the communique had been made public, Lee Kuan Yew was asked if he felt after attending the conference, that Australia could be counted on as an effective ally. Lee replied, “As much before the meeting as after the meeting. As in most things, the real proof in this particular case will be when the chips are down.” Did he think anything more could have been done to make Australia’s position more credible? Lee said he wouldn’t have thought so. And if the chips were down would Australia be there? That depended, Lee thought, first of all, whether it was in Australia’s interest, and how big the risks were, and, most important of all, whether it was manageable. “If it is a middling power, I think it’s manageable. If it’s a super-power . . .”
The question was put to Lee Kuan Yew as to whether he was concerned at all that Mr John Gorton, the Australian Prime Minister, did not lead the Australian delegation. Lee had journeyed to Canberra believing that it was to be a prime ministers’ conference, but he replied: “That is a matter of form, entirely a matter for the Australian Government.”
Lee was reminded that upon arrival he had said that Singapore might have to look to other countries for support. “You did not exclude the Soviet Union. Are you serious about inviting the Soviet Union?” The Prime Minister replied: “No.” Then he added. “I don’t think, you know, that one should just pick up a phrase. This is a kind of interpretation which, I think, does not put things in perspective. Somebody threw a question: ‘What about the Soviet Union?’ and my rejoinder was: ‘In certain circumstances.’ For instance, keeping the Straits of Malacca open as an international waterway. I think they are a force to the good because they want to keep the Straits of Malacca open for navigation. They like to be able to go from the Atlantic through the Straits of Malacca up to their maritime states; to that extent they are a positive force.”
Was he satisfied with the conference? Lee Kuan Yew thought that the conference went as far as expected. The really serious commitment which we must have fairly clearly defined would be the one in 1971 after the British Government’s position had been resolved, and when the Australians and New Zealanders knew what had happened to Vietnam, and could see what kind of problems would arise post-Vietnam.”
Concerned that student unrest prevalent in the United States and Europe might spread to Singapore, the Prime Minister spoke to the Association of Nanyang University graduates on 19 July about “growth and development or decline and chaos”. He referred to what he called the disinterest of developed countries in new countries that could “yield no great rewards”, countries that would “suck up more aid than pay dividends”. He said that even global powers like the Soviet Union and the United States were reaching the conclusion that, other than for militarily strategic areas, it did not matter, and would not affect their military or economic strength in the world, if these new countries went chaotic, or even communist. Hence Americans and Russians had shown little interest in Africa south of the Sahara. It was only still ideologically motivated China which was spending a few hundred millions of dollars building railways in Tanzania and Zambia, and roads in South Yemen. Just over 100,000 white Rhodesians united, well armed, well trained, with the backing of South Africa and of Portugal, had been able to flout with impunity the feelings of 150 million disunited, poorly organized, poorly educated, poorly armed, and poorly trained black Africans. Britain, like the rest of Western Europe and America, was disillusioned at what had happened to most of the new countries. After independence they had been torn asunder by conflicts between tribes or races, over languages and religions, like Nigeria and Kenya. This had led hard-headed British and European businessmen to conclude that there were very few countries in the third world worth bothering about. The exceptions were a few countries where there were quick profits to be made through the extraction of soils, minerals or timber, and a few areas of stability and sanity.
“We must always remember”, continued Lee Kuan Yew, “that the choice before Singapore is either an orderly, organized community, enabling long-term planning for growth and development, or a disintegrating society sinking into chaos and perdition. It takes time and effort to build up an efficient organization to administer to the needs of a community. But in a short while one can run things down. Water, power, homes, roads, transportation, harbours, airports, schools, polytechnics, universities, teachers, industrial estates, all require a climate of stability and security. Without them, planning for long-term production and profit is impossible. We have the highest density of population with an elected government in the whole world—8,855 per square mile. Only Hong Kong exceeds us—9,966 per square mile. But Hong Kong does not have an elected government which has to worry about governing with the consent of the majority. Hong Kong also has almost no subsidized educational, medical or social services. We can continue to meet the ever higher expectations of our universally educated younger generation only if we improve on our organization and produce a better disciplined and better educated generation, more skilled in the techniques of modern industry. Our people cannot afford not to be diligent. Our people cannot take things for granted, whether it be prosperity or security. We must maintain the maximum of security with the minimum of cost. So our citizen’s Army-National Service which will, as the administrative and infrastructure expands, enable and require every man and woman to make a contribution to both our economy and our security.”
Lee said it was only when hard-headed businessmen and industrialists believed that what Singapore was doing was sound and practical and would ensure orderly working conditions with workers trained well and emotionally geared to high productivity, “that we shall get the maximum of capital investments, giving the maximum of economic growth, leading to higher incomes, better homes, better schools and new levels of achievement”. The alternative was to join the many broken-back states of Asia, Africa and Latin America, where arbitrary government and insecurity was part of a way of life. “The economy runs down in the midst of social disorder. Inevitably there is an exodus of brains, skill, expertise and capital. But the bulk of the people without professional training or money will have to remain.” Instead of a rational thinking government, constantly looking and planning forward, substitute an irrational, impulsive and unthinking leadership, and the worst would happen to Singapore. Then those who could not emigrate would have to put up with grinding poverty, disease and squalor. But worse, “because we are in a militarily strategic position at the southernmost tip of Asia, in the middle of the Southeast Asian archipelago, astride one of the world’s most important sea lanes, between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the super-powers cannot afford to have Singapore go Maoist-communist. So they will use others, to try and hold down Singapore and prevent it from ever being used by the communists in China.” This might sound like a nightmare. But any government in Singapore that did not think through the most horrendous of possibilities was guilty of a grave dereliction of its duties.
Lee said that one of the contemporary dilemmas facing Singapore was that, on the one hand, excellent communications with the rest of the world by sea, air, wireless, cables and, soon, satellite, were a great economic asset. “You can take an aircraft, or a ship, any day to any part of the world. You can telephone through to all the main centres of world commerce. You can watch television and read newspapers and magazines within hours of publication in the main centres of Eastern and Western Europe, North America, Japan and Australia.” But, on the other hand, this exposed Singapore to the fads and fetishes of the contemporary permissive society of the West. Some people learnt easiest by imitation. “Because students in North America and Western Europe are in a state of disorder, for a variety of reasons, and free sex, drug-taking, long hair, and funny clothes are thought to be fashionable, so this affects Australian students although their problems are so very different. An anarchic protest for the sake of protest becomes fashionable. Some young students in Singapore, particularly that part of the English-educated, without a grounding in their own cultural values, want to be ‘with it’.” Whilst such student aberrations would not wreck America or Western Europe, they would surely ruin Singapore. “It is the business of a government to govern. It should do this in the interests of the majority, or better still, in the interests of everyone. And in the interest of all, we cannot and will not allow this permissive, escapist, drug-taking, self-indulgent, promiscuous society to infect our young. Those who try to introduce these habits do so at their own peril, for we shall take immediate antiseptic measures to prevent and scotch any such infection, or affectation. The choice before us is constant vigilance or a complacent slide to perdition.”
Speaking mostly to Malays at a PAP branch meeting on 22 July, Lee Kuan Yew said it was very necessary, particularly after the comparatively mild troubles in Singapore in May and June, to reaffirm that the Government in Singapore “will, and must, ensure security and fair play to all, regardless of race, religion or language”. If, said the Prime Minister, “we had not acted with complete impartiality, but had allowed some vicious hooligans and gangsters of Chinese ethnic descent, for their own reasons, to get away with bullying and murdering some Malays, because Malays are a minority in Singapore, then today it would have become a different Singapore.” Once basic trust in a government that it would act impartially and protect every citizen was destroyed it would never be the same again. “We meet tonight in a secure and relaxed atmosphere because people of all ethnic groups understand that the rule of law will be upheld. It will protect you, whether you are Malay, Indian, Ceylonese, Eurasian or Chinese. That you are a Chinese does not allow you to flout the law.” Similarly, an injured party, whether from a majority or minority ethnic group, was not entitled to take the law into his own hands. There were policemen and National Servicemen to back up the law-enforcement agencies.
Lee said that he was naturally proud of the way in which the multiracial police force and the multiracial National Servicemen behaved: with discipline and propriety. “Our young men in the Special Constabulary or in the Vigilante Corps or in the uniform of our Armed Services are ordinary citizens. They share in your happiness and success, or your trials and tribulations. They must and will always conduct themselves with decorum and courtesy.”
This was a troubled part of the world. It did no good to pretend that all was well. “We know that all may not be well.” But all difficulties would be manageable and resolved if preparations were made and precautions taken to ensure that nothing was allowed to disturb the racial harmony or upset respect for law and order “so essential for our economic growth”.
Lee concluded: “The future is what we make of it. And we must resolve, particularly after the unhappy events in May and June, that despite the misadventures, we in Singapore will continue on the path of sanity, a fair deal for everyone, and fair shares for all. That is our way forward to a better life.”
On 8 August, Singapore’s National Day, Princess Alexandra represented Queen Elizabeth at a banquet held to celebrate the 150th anniversary of modern Singapore. Proposing a toast to President Yusof the Princess, in a short speech, said that it was one man, Stamford Raffles, who had the vision to realize the potentialities of what was, in 1819, a largely uninhabited, jungle-clad island, situated strategically at the cross-roads of the East; but on the foundations he laid then, successive generations of immigrants from many countries had combined to create the Singapore of 1969. “Out of their efforts has emerged a society which is proving every day its ability to adapt successfully to changing needs, and since independence your city state—small in size but great in spirit—has gone from strength to strength. Today it is a Commonwealth in miniature, where peoples of many different creeds and cultural traditions are bound together by common ideals and interests, working for the good of all. If the economic, industrial and social advances of recent years provide a guide for the future, then Singapore’s star is bright indeed, and though there must of course be problems and dangers in the years ahead, it is not difficult in Singapore to feel confident in the ability and will of the Government and the people to foresee and overcome whatever obstacles they may have to face. There is an atmosphere of energy and enthusiasm here which it is a delight to encounter, and which has impressed me greatly.”
The Princess read a message of congratulations and good wishes from the Queen to the people of Singapore.
In a toast to Queen Elizabeth, Lee Kuan Yew remarked that change was a companion of life; but in no period of human history had the changes been as spectacular as those in the past thirty years since the Second World War. And it had been going at a geometrically increasing speed, until two men set foot on the moon. Few events in life were inevitable. However, the declared policies of Britain to withdraw from East of Suez, the painful American experience in Vietnam, “and their President’s pronouncement that there will be no further Vietnams” made it likely that there would be momentous changes in Southeast Asia. This made it all the more necessary, “in our mutual interest”, to continue co-operation in matters of defence between Malaysia and Singapore. And the statements by the Australian and New Zealand Governments, that they would keep their forces in the Malaysia-Singapore area beyond 1971, had already helped to reinforce confidence. Without confidence economic development was not possible.
The shape of things to come was not pre-destined. They could be altered by many imponderables, “and by our own initiatives”. What could not be changed was the past. “This evening, we deem ourselves amongst the fortunate few who can afford to be proud of their past, with no desire to rewrite or touch up the truth. It is a short history, 150 years, but long enough for us to value our association with the British people. British naval and maritime supremacy is the golden thread that has brought about the four nations of Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore. With the passing of Empire, British naval supremacy is being displaced as more and more American and Russian naval vessels fill up the Pacific and the Indian Oceans. But this is nothing compared to the debris and litter in the skies from American and Russian space probes.”
No one could foresee in what kind of Singapore, or indeed in what sort of world, Singaporeans would celebrate their 200th anniversary. The chances were that there would be no reassuring presence of a resident British Commander-in-Chief. “So we take particular pleasure in having with us tonight the British Commander-in-Chief Far East, and his Navy, Army and Air Commanders. Geography may lead us towards closer co-operation with our neighbours in East and Southeast Asia and Oceania. But on this evening, we may be forgiven a little nostalgia as we give credit to our founder, Sir Stamford Raffles, and to those who came after him. Without them modern Singapore would not have been.”
“History”, declared the Prime Minister in his National Day broadcast, “is valuable as a guide to the future. It provides insights into the nature and potentials of various peoples, because both the innate qualities and the cultural characteristics of a people do not change easily or quickly. A hundred and fifty years ago Raffles could not have prophesied what Singapore would be today, an independent nation state, a busy centre of trade, servicing and manufacturing. But he had foresight. He knew the value of Singapore’s strategic location for trade and communications. Then by establishing the principle of free trade and free competition, he attracted the adventurous, the resourceful and the industrious. In less than three years a few thousand traders had left Bencoolen, Malacca and Penang to establish their business in Singapore. While it was not inevitable that Singapore would succeed, the ingredients for success were present almost from the beginning.”
Lee said that Singapore had enjoyed another successful year. The economy had again surged forward. “I do not wish to dwell on our progress. I want to strike a note of caution. It is dangerous to be complacent and to take continuing progress and prosperity for granted. The fact that things have been getting better and better each year, since we turned the corner in 1961, does not mean that progress comes naturally. Better jobs, better homes, better schools, better public services, the better life can come only after careful planning and hard work. If we had shirked the unpleasant, or postponed the painful changes required of our thinking and of our working habits, first in 1965 after separation, and again in January, 1968, after the British Government announced their accelerated military rundown, we could have slithered downhill rapidly.”
Government, Lee said, did not consist only of making speeches. “Of course, we need communication and rapport between a people and their leaders. More important are good judgment and bold planning. But most important of all is the confidence, the trust between a people and their government. It is when a people are behind their government, and not at odds with it, that the best results are achieved. When everything looks simple and easy, it means either the gods are on our side, or that the decisions we have made were right. But we have made mistakes. Then they have to be remedied. Four years ago, when we agreed to separation from Malaysia, we admitted that the kind of Malaysia we envisaged when joining the federation in 1963 was not to be. So we accepted a separate Singapore. However, separation required a fundamental reassessment of our position, the kind of economy we must develop as a nation state on our own, and the security and defence arrangements we need. But the ties of history, geography, and family between the people in Singapore and in West Malaysia were not changed by separation. The destinies of the two countries will always be inter-related.”
Referring to the “incidents of racial conflicts in May and June in Singapore” Lee said they vividly demonstrated what was always known: that what happened in Malaysia could have profound consequences for Singapore. The converse was also true. “In this instance we snuffed out the fires before they spread.”
There were few problems facing Singapore that the Government had not foreseen. “Where we may have been wrong is in the timing. Things have happened sooner than we had expected. We will face quite a few hazards in the 1970s. If we are to overcome our problems we must reaffirm our determination not to allow any citizen to be persecuted because of his race, religion, language or culture. Four great civilizations have met in confluence here. The British, Malay, Indian and Chinese came and they built a metropolis out of a fishing village near the equator. Eventually, perhaps after several generations, a separate, distinct Singapore identity will emerge in which the differences of race, culture and religion will be more than made up for by similarities in values, attitudes, and a feeling of belonging to one whole.”
Lee said he wanted to pay a tribute to “our workers and their unions”. A year and a half ago, the Employment Act was passed. It was designed to stop abuses of fringe benefits and to make workers keener and more productive. “We demonstrated to hard-headed industrialists both in Singapore and overseas in the developed countries, that we had the will to put our own house in order. Our workers and our unions have entered into the spirit of the Employment Act. There were few strikes last year. This year there have been none at all. Investments have flowed in.” This “superb response” from workers and their union leaders, together with capital and enterprise, industrial expertise and management know-how, made it possible for Singapore to achieve its high economic rate of growth of about nine per cent last year. “Our workers must always be willing to give of their best. And because they are intelligent, dexterous and hard-working, they learn new skills quickly. They are willing to put in intense and sustained effort. So entrepreneurs have found it profitable to base their operations in Singapore. Our economic strength will grow as long as the Government, workers, and management are all pulling in the same direction, with the minimum of friction and the maximum of reasonableness and accommodation.”
Lee added that he and his colleagues would also like to pay a tribute to those civil servants and other officers in the public services who helped in the rethinking and planning of Singapore’s economic strategy. “We have had also to build up our armed forces from scratch four years ago. We have built more homes for our people, schools for our children, roads, reservoirs, power stations—all the infrastructure of a modern industrial society. To this group of dedicated officers and their teams, Singapore owes much. Behind the throb of success is the constant monitoring, the unceasing alert. At the first sign of anything not going right immediate corrective action is taken. Problems are never allowed to get out of hand. It is organization and teamwork that make success come our way as if it were in the nature of things.”
The future was as full of promise as it was fraught with danger. “We cannot slacken in our efforts. Nor can we allow liberties to be taken with our stable and orderly society. Each generation has its own problems. Our generation has either to add greater strength and security to our society or watch all that we and our predecessors have built up over 150 years be lost or ruined. We cannot afford not to succeed.”
In another National Day speech at a rally on 16 August, the Prime Minister again warned of hardships ahead. He said it was sound government to plan on the basis that the worst would happen. In fact, it was not often that the worst did happen. “So we find ourselves better off for having made the maximum effort to meet maximum difficulties when less than the maximum troubles us.” Any government that made plans on the basis of “tomorrow being a sunny day” would soon find that it had led the people into dire difficulties. “For if it rains, and no wet-weather arrangements have been made, confusion and chaos must result.”
Lee Kuan Yew was confident that economically Singapore would continue to do well, but only “if our workers and our unions accept the challenge that 1972 will be a very different world, with many imponderables, in matters of defence and security, and also the consequential repercussions when the world balance of power in East and Southeast Asia is profoundly altered.”
It was foolish to plan on any basis other than that “only we may find it worthwhile to fight and die for our country and for our children’s future”. The Australians and New Zealanders had already made it clear that they were not stepping into the role of the British. Theirs would be a subsidiary role. “As the Australian Prime Minister put it, he will be a part of the posse, not the sheriff.” It was only common sense that if and when the chips were down, “we must be prepared to play sheriff in our own domain. Otherwise all that we have built up over 150 years will be destroyed or captured.”
The decisions which Singapore made four years ago on the build-up of defence forces might have appeared more than was necessary at that time. Many were grateful in May and June that full use had been made of the time. It could have been a very different situation had the past four years been wasted. So the two and a half years between now and the end of 1971 had to be used to the maximum. Defence and security arrangements were necessary to ensure that economic growth could take place. And without economic growth, defence costs would overwhelm and smother the economy.
Singapore must continue to be clean and green, spruce and well maintained. “It is that air of general well-being, of trees and shrubs, flowers and creepers, no flies or mosquitoes, the general cleanliness, and the appearance of well-manicured and well-kept city, with nothing in a derelict condition, this is the backdrop for success.”
Lee said that one of the most crucial factors of a people’s performance, whether in military or in civilian fields, was morale. When an army or a people was slovenly and disorderly, it was probably because of bad leadership. “Morale goes down and the army is easily defeated, or the people are overwhelmed by their problems. When an army has an officer cadre, or a people has a leadership which keeps everybody on his toes, things are kept smart and spruce, morale is never down, even under the most adverse of circumstances. Things are never allowed to sag. Whilst we congratulate ourselves for achievements up to our 150th year, let us raise our targets even higher for the 151st year.”
The Prime Minister claimed that Singapore had never looked back since that day, 6 February, 1819. From a population of 150 in a small fishing village, it became three thousand in a matter of months, and to the two million today. Singapore had always attracted the ablest and the most competitive. It thrived on the basis of free competition with the best man going to the top. “So we have attracted the highly skilled and the talented. Provided people are able and prepared to make the effort required in high performance, we can go on to a population of three to four million, without lowering standards of life. But it requires professional competence, technological know-how, industrial skills and work discipline. People with these qualities can always find a place in Singapore.”
Opening an exhibition showing the development of education over the past 150 years, Lee Kuan Yew said on 19 August it was the future that counted. “We have to make the effort, to plan, to organize, so as to bring into being a more secure, more stable and more prosperous Singapore. If the preceding generation only had the foresight to see ahead and the courage to assert their rights, we would have had a much broader framework on which to build our future. But the past is the past. Fortunately, the present generation had the courage to face difficult situations. So we have Singapore, making it possible for us to organize ourselves to preserve and safeguard the values that we all cherish.”
Singapore, he said, was a small country, and it was imperative that the emphasis must be quality, not quantity. “We must nurture, train and educate our people and so organize our society, to enable us—a nation of two million—to match the performance and capacity of countries larger than us. To achieve this, the key is education. Every school, primary, secondary or university, all must train and educate our youth to bring out their best, a rugged and robust generation. They must have the capacity to contribute to national security and social order, and help the growth and development of our economy.”
Singapore’s brain-power potential was reviewed by Lee Kuan Yew in a speech to university graduates—the International Alumni—on 5 September. The Prime Minister said that 26,000 or two point nine per cent of those over twenty-one years of age in Singapore had received more than twelve years of primary and secondary education. Of this 26,000, about 2,300 were non-residents, that is to say neither from Singapore nor Malaysia. Nearly all those 2,300 persons were holders of current professional visit or employment passes and had gone through some form of tertiary education.
Lee proposing a toast in 1968. Mr Sato, the Japanese Prime Minister, is on Lee’s right
Welcoming Mr Kang Ryang Wook, Vice-President of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, to Singapore in 1968
With the Crown Prince of Japan, in Singapore
General Ne Win of Burma on a state visit to Singapore
Instructing Princess Alexandra how to use chopsticks
Lee said that by Afro-Asian standards, Singapore had a high percentage of the population going on to tertiary educational institutions. But it was not high compared to American, West European or Japanese standards. In America, over thirty-five per cent of the secondary level students go through to tertiary level, as against thirteen per cent for Singapore.
Lee argued that the total performance of any society depended mainly upon, first, the general level of its population as a whole, and second, the quality of its top one to two per cent. The general level of the average digits, their physical and mental attributes, was inherited and at any one time was relatively fixed. But it could be improved by careful nurturing. The physical capacity could be increased with good food, training, health and medical attention. As for the brain power, While an IQ was fixed, a good environment, education, the imparting of knowledge and skills, the inculcation of values and the forming of new habits, could raise performance. “Given the human attributes of a given population, and the training, skills, knowledge, education and discipline of a people, it is left to the one to two per cent of the population who are in positions of leadership, to make the population give of its best. “This means”, said Lee Kuan Yew, “organizational coherence, and that spirit of keenness which is necessary for high performance. When this one to two per cent of a people in positions of leadership are completely committed to the whole community, to share in their successes and failures, in their triumphs or defeats, then, and only then, will this leadership have that moral strength to arouse in their people that enthusiasm and drive to excel and to achieve.”
Only a small portion of those who had received tertiary education would assume positions of leadership. The majority had to play their part in the administrative or corporation machine. On the other hand, many who had not been to institutions of tertiary education would, in fact, play decisive leadership roles. But with universal education, it meant that the majority of the people in positions of leadership would have had tertiary education. The broader the base of people with twelve-plus years of education, naturally the better the quality of this one to two per cent. One of the problems of the newly independent countries like Singapore, was that independence was usually preceded by a mass movement in which everyone’s expectations were raised. Independence was also usually accompanied by a system where one man was given one vote, regardless of his educational standard. This meant that after independence, the political leaders had to face pressures to level down and narrow the differentials in rewards between people with unequal qualifications and ability, people who made unequal contributions to the economy. This could result in a brain drain. Those with internationally recognized qualifications had the mobility to cross national frontiers in search of better jobs. So, when standards of education, medical, health and recreational facilities were lowered as a result of a rapid and vast expansion to cater for the needs of everybody, social and economic conditions might drop to a level where it was no longer possible for intelligent people to believe that these standards would ever go back to what they were, let alone to rise to what they are in the developed countries of the West. “When personal rewards, professional satisfaction, and expectations of a better life for their children cannot reinforce or sustain loyalty to the group, then considerations of personal or family survival override duty and obligation to the community.”
Fortunately, Singapore had been able to go through this difficult post-independence phase without serious disruption of the social fabric. “On the other hand, we have been able to offer opportunities for positions of command, and so opportunities for fulfilment and satisfaction. Because we are a new society, largely of immigrant stock, with a short history, the future will be decided by whether this one to two per cent consists of ‘stayers’ or ‘quitters’. With established societies, there is no question of quitting. People stay and fight for what they have inherited, if for no other reason than sheer force of habit. This generation, yours and mine, has got to start this habit. We must decide as a community that we will see our problems through. It is only when we stay and solve our problems, and not quit and so dodge unpleasantness, that we can make a better future for all. The mass of people everywhere has to stay and face whatever is coming. But in a new society, the determinants are those who can leave, but do not, and help make things better for the majority.”
Lee Kuan Yew made a plea for more gracious living in a public speech on 25 October. He said that while people were busy striving to achieve greater economic growth, to offset British military expenditure which would be reduced to zero in 1972, (1965—twenty per cent of GNP, 1968—eleven point one per cent), and to create more rewarding jobs, sight must not be lost of social and cultural goals that were nearly as important. Otherwise life could become mean and ugly. While spectacular rates of growth (twelve per cent in 1968 at current prices) were achieved “there could be very little of the gracious or the beautiful in our lives”. Lee believed that at the end of each day’s toil one of the most important purposes of all the planning and effort was that life should be more than just existence, more than just the business of making a living.
The Prime Minister said that social objectives which could raise the quality of life must accompany the hard-headed pursuit of economic and security objectives. “Our surroundings, the home, the factory, the shops, the roads, the whole of our environment must be improved, not just for a few in their villas and bungalows in the more wooded sections of Singapore, but for everyone, whether in government-built flat or kampong. A pleasant city, clean and green, with parks and gardens, music and paintings, drama and light entertainment. With over fifty school bands of fifty players, ultimately nearly 130 bands, one for each secondary school, we should in five years’ time get together between 150 and 200 instrumentalists for a symphony orchestra.”
Lee Kuan Yew revealed that in the next five-year plan, beginning in 1970, the Government would build 100,000 housing units, 20,000 units per year. They would be better designed to live in and to look at, better spaced and sited, with amenities that made for gracious living—parks, swimming pools, playing fields, recreational centres, shopping arcades. Architects and administrators could achieve higher standards through more experience, greater efficiency and an allocation of more resources into these targets: but at the same time “we must educate the families who have left the slums to leave their old habits behind and adopt new social patterns of behaviour without which life cannot be agreeable for their neighbours in these new high-rise blocks.”
He said that a consciousness of beauty and a desire to maintain and improve the beauty of the neighbourhood must be part of the new way of life. Committees would be formed to look after each block of flats. These committees would have representatives from each floor in a block. They would be able to improve the control of noise nuisance, the cleanliness of the public passages, corridors, lifts, staircases, and surrounding grounds of each block. For undertaking these social duties, committee members would be accorded certain privileges. “Gradually we should be able to re-educate the people into more considerate and cultivated living. And when they move out from the squatter huts into modern homes, they must leave their own inconsiderate ways behind. We can teach the children in the schools new habits more easily. The adults in the offices, factories, and hawker pitches, will have to be re-educated in their homes. Just as we have succeeded in eradicating hopelessness, ignorance, squalor and poverty, in the same way, so also we can create a more socially sensitive people, appreciative of beauty and the arts. It is these higher social and cultural standards which, when achieved, can improve the quality of our lives and make the toil and struggle worthwhile for ourselves in our own lifetime.”
“Perhaps one of the first qualities necessary for progress”, Lee Kuan Yew told the Science Council on 29 October, “is a willingness to face the truth. As individuals, Singapore scientists can be as good as any in the world. But their opportunities to get to the top in any of the frontiers of discovery is limited by the wealth, in men and resources, which Singapore society can put at their disposal. Modern technology, whether in space travel, space communications, or nuclear power, demands such vast investments that only the super-powers can afford them. When results of such research are applied for the enrichment of human life, there must be massive markets, so that the research and development cost can be so spread as not to exceed twenty per cent of the price of the commodity produced in order to be economically competitive between the researching giants. Even in established products, like civilian or military aircraft, the relatively smaller industrially advanced countries of Western Europe have had, for economies of scale, to go into consortium to develop supersonics, short-haul jet air-buses and for variable geometry military aircraft. The moral for all, other than the big and developed countries, is a salutary one: that it is madness to aspire to the esoteric heights of original research in the pure sciences, and then put these discoveries to application in manufacturing and marketing for human needs.” However, because of its comparatively advanced position in education and social organization, Singapore was a useful centre for the marketing, distribution, and servicing of established innovations, those which could play an economic role in the development of the region. As the advanced post-industrial countries moved on to the sophistication of new discoveries and higher levels of technological expertise, so they must and would find it profitable to pass on or farm out the secondary expertise to countries like Singapore.
Whether it was in the repairing, building and navigation of ships, or aircraft, as the developed countries went on to building specialized high-technological-content ships (like container carriers or automated super-tankers) so they found it profitable to let countries like Singapore take over the building, first of small general-purpose freighters, pleasure craft, patrol boats, and later of even hydrofoils and eventually hover-crafts, as they in turn became older discoveries. Similarly, first aircraft and air-frames of the propellor aircraft were repaired and maintained, then turbo-props, then the old-generation jets. It was difficult to forecast what lines the advanced countries would pass on to secondary distributive centres, just as it was difficult for the technological pioneers to predict which particular areas of scientific research and technological application were the ones which would have the greatest break-through. Sometimes the best forecasts went awry, as with the development of nuclear power stations which had disappointed earlier expectations. Certain fields were obvious choices for Singapore: transportation and communications, electrical and electronic appliances, food processing, freezing and canning, extraction and processing of timber, oil and minerals.
Because the particular field which Singapore would find most profitable could not be accurately pre-determined, flexibility and versatility must be built into the teaching of sciences in schools, the polytechnics, and universities. “We must avoid narrow specialization. The esoteric specialists we shall always have to borrow. On the other hand, our scientists and engineers must be management-orientated.” In spite of rapid expansion in the secondary schools and the universities, there was a shortage of executives and technologists in Singapore—men trained to analyse problems, investigate alternative solutions, assess the implications of each possible solution, and then make a decision. Lee said it used to be much worse. “In the old days, the few who went on to tertiary education were trained to be subordinates, never to take primary responsibility. Our early graduates in the administration were taught to marshall and refine facts and figures, to present them to their superiors, the British officers, who almost exclusively made the decisions. So, today, we have more jobs requiring people with judgment and decisiveness than there are the people with these attributes. So, the value for our scientists and engineers having business-management training.”
The Prime Minister said he had read with interest a recent American Aircraft Corporation report which gave the breakdown in their work force of a high-technology product as five per cent engineers, seventy-five per cent production personnel, including technicians and unskilled workers, and twenty per cent business management, including clerical staff. The best of engineers in that five per cent, without the support of the disciplined, hard-working technicians and craftsmen, would still result in poor sales, unprofitability, and failure. But, for all the best trained technicians, craftsmen, and the most industrious of clerks and workers in the world, without the five per cent professionally competent engineers, production could not get off the ground. All would remain unemployed. In Singapore at present, there were more than 4,500 professional visit and employment passes. This did not include the visiting consultants, nor the Europeans who had taken out Singapore citizenship. For everyone of these passes, there was an average of twenty jobs, on the ratio of personnel employed in high-technology products. For low-technology products, the ratio could be one to fifty jobs. “It is unlikely that in the immediate future, we shall be able to produce enough men to take over these jobs. And by the time we do so, newer and higher technology products would have been developed and passed on to secondary centres, including us. But as we catch up with the old technology, the inflow of new technology will keep up the numbers of these professional visit and employment passes. Ideally, all men should be equal. But they are not. For this reason, some become scientists, many are just workers by hand. The differences between human societies are as great as differences between the humans within a society. So long as we are able to maintain the quality of our population, trained, disciplined, skilled workers, with scientists and executives to form the sharp cutting edge, so we shall always have that extra to maintain life at a comparatively higher level, with the amenities and services comparable to that of the most advanced societies.”
Opening the National TUC’s seminar on 16 November, the Prime Minister said there was a school of thought that for rapid industrialization for an under-developed country it was better not to have trade unions. This school of thought cited Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea in support of this theory. But Singapore’s objective was not just industrialization. The development of the economy was very important. “But equally important is the development of the nature of our society. We do not want our workers submissive, docile, toadying up to the foreman, the foreman to the supervisor and the supervisor to the boss for increments and promotions.” Lee Kuan Yew added: “To survive as a separate and distinct community we have to be a proud and rugged people, or we fail. You can neither be proud nor rugged if you have not got self-respect. Self-respect is what our trade unions have and will give to our workers, that protection for a man’s right to his own dignity, his dignity as a human being, as a citizen. He may be an unskilled worker, but he is one of us. He must be prepared to fight and die for Singapore. He will neither be able nor willing to do this if he is a cringing coward.”
To understand the present, Lee Kuan Yew briefly recalled the past. “The NTUC, as we know it today, had its origins in 1952, two and half years before the PAP itself was founded. Some of us who later founded the PAP were already planning a mass base for the political struggle for independence. We worked first amongst the government and city council unions, then with the civilian employees of the armed services, then the shop and factory workers, and the bus workers. The rest is recent history. It was a highly politicized trade union leadership. The primary targets were political. Anti-colonialism, anti-exploitation by foreign capital. The basis was solidarity of all the oppressed to band together and fight for independence. Demands were issued accompanied by the threat of strike if demands were not met, and followed often by a strike even when demands were nearly all met. But with self-government and later independence things have changed. Independence gave us the power to take over whatever there was.” But it was accompanied by the responsibility to make things work, to make life better for all. “Then”, continued Lee Kuan Yew, “our moment of truth arrived. The British military forces were leaving. We wanted freedom. We have got it. Now we have to defend it, or be dominated and exploited all over again, probably much worse, for next time it will not be the British. So the mood was set for a fresh start.”
The Employment Act eliminated bad practices which had crept into industrial relations from a previous phase of history. In July, 1969, a team from the World Bank assessed Singapore’s economic position. They reported in October that “in 1968 Singapore entered a new phase of accelerated growth with boom conditions in private investment, a decline in unemployment, buoyancy of government revenues, the emergence of an overall surplus of savings over investments, and a significant build-up of external reserves”. They attributed “the greater than expected success in Singapore’s drive towards industrialization” to four factors. They placed the Employment Act as the second of the factors. The Prime Minister said that legislation could prohibit and punish abuses and malpractices. But it could not give “that positive urge to work and to achieve. This urge can come only from the conviction of a people that they must, and want to give of their best. It is the consciousness of our being co-owners of the new society we are creating, that provides the drive for fulfilment. In multiracial countries like ours, trade unions have a special role in building up this spirit of camaraderie amongst the workers. Whatever our race or religion, it is what we produce that entitle us to what we get, not our race or religion. Developing the economy, increasing productivity, increasing returns, these make sense only when fair play and fair shares make it worth everyone’s while to put in his share of effort for group survival and group prosperity.”
Lee Kuan Yew told the trade unionists: “We have five years of intense effort before us. We are doing well at present. But it does not mean our problems are behind us. The same World Bank Report warns that adverse factors, like the British military withdrawal, are still the factors accountable for an expected slowdown in Singapore’s economic growth during the next three years and a resurgence of unemployment in 1972, but the size of the problem now appears much reduced and the maintenance of GDP growth of perhaps five per cent at the trough seems feasible.” It would be 1974, at least, “before we have put these problems behind us. Last year, 1968, British military spending still contributed eleven point one per cent to our GNP. In terms of GNP, the spending has gone down by half since 1965. But in terms of employment, however, it has been reduced only by one third. Unless we keep up the effort and get more industries and enterprises launched and operating profitably, about 20,000 civilian employees still to be discharged by 1971, and thousands more, serving the needs of British service families, will not find new jobs. When the British Government announced that their forces will be out by 1971, there was considerable gloom and pessimism, particularly amongst the civilian employees of the armed services. Today, the pendulum has swung to the other end. Every employee about to be retrenched knows or believes that he can easily get another job.”
Browsing through the working papers, the Prime Minister said he was struck by the buoyant and confident mood they exuded. This was as it should be provided that it was not forgotten that there was still some way to go. This was no time to talk about amendments to the Employment Act. Anomalies could be ironed out. But the principles which the Act embodied would have to be “part of our way of life”. Simply, it meant that nobody could be a passenger, carried by a charitable employer, his shortcomings shielded by his union, and his well-being and security guaranteed by a benign government.
Lee said there were two recent lessons of what happened to a people, their economy, and their standard of life when workers and the unions took liberties with their country. The French unions went on the rampage in May 1968. A year later, the French franc was devalued. The French economy was still not out of trouble. The British unions with their unofficial and wild-cat strikes could not absolve themselves from blame for the devaluation of the pound in November 1967. On the other hand, it was because of the German workers and their unions that their industrial managers did such a magnificent job. The German mark was revalued by nine point three per cent, that is, the purchasing power of the mark, in terms of foreign goods, went up. There were pressures for the revaluation of the Japanese yen. If the Japanese workers and their unions were as destructive as Japanese students, the yen would not be in this happy position of being thought to be worth more than the official rate of exchange.
The Prime Minister concluded: “Before you discuss your future, remember how we got here—the past. You have a role to play in transforming a dependent under-developed community to an independent industrial society. It depends upon how successfully we can mobilize internal and international capital and expertise, get people to learn the skills and crafts, and acquire the managerial and marketing know-how. Only then can we produce goods and services efficiently and competitively for international customers. So whilst throwing your eye towards the far horizon, do not forget the harsh realities of today. Let us first negotiate and overcome these immediate hazards.”
The Prime Minister again dealt with the human factors in economic development when he talked to the Economics Society of Nanyang University on 12 December. Why, he asked, are some countries industrialized and others not? “Why are only two countries able to send men out into space? Is it because America and Russia have vast natural resources and huge populations? But so have China and India. Meanwhile, medium-sized countries like West Germany and Japan are expected to advance the most, industrially, in science and technology. If it is natural resources that primarily determines development, why did the North American Red Indians not achieve the high levels of the Central and South American Indian civilizations? But how is it that after the Spanish arrived in Central and South America, and the British, Dutch, French in North America, the pendulum has swung in favour of North America?”
Lee Kuan Yew said it was generally believed that a large territory with a large population meant automatic progress when exploitation by a colonial power was ended. “This is now known to be too facile a proposition in economic development. The attributes of different societies vary. Now it is reluctantly acknowledged that these attributes are a crucial factor in any transformation from backwardness to the modern technology. Moreover, it takes a long time to develop and transform an agricultural to an industrial economy, because it takes a long time to educate and train a whole population, and to adapt to the different styles of working and living in an industrial society. The Japanese have taken over 100 years from the Meiji era in 1868 to get where they now are. When they embarked on a war in 1941, after seventy-three years, they thought they had matched the technological weaponry and industrial capacity of the West. They were wrong. They were defeated not because they were deficient in the art of war, but because neither their industrial capacity, nor their military technology, was comparable to that of America. When communists point to the dramatic transformation of a feudal, agricultural, Tsarist Russia of 1917 to the powerful, industrialized, communist Russia of 1957, the year of Sputnik, they do not mention that even by 1917 Russia had developed a considerable industrial potential.”
Lee thought that nothing brought out the importance of the human factors more vividly than when comparing the spectacular results of investment in the ruined economies of Western Europe, as against the negligible returns from aid and development in new countries. Then there was the phenomenal recovery of two defeated countries. After their defeat, both West Germany and Japan were shrunken in area and resources. But both had populations highly educated and skilled in industry and technology, an abundance of scientists, engineers, technicians, and managers, all disciplined and easily reorganized. The new countries on the other hand, had largely uneducated populations, most of peasant stock, unaccustomed to the discipline and skills required on the factory floor. The speed with which Hong Kong, a territory without natural resources, had industrialized was the result of the influx of refugee capital and expertise. A cadre of ready-trained engineers and technicians, the product of over thirty years of painful development in China since the 1911 Revolution, gave Hong Kong their start.
But this was not to say that it was not valuable to have natural resources. “The oil sheikhdoms of the Persian Gulf, like Kuwait, have a per capita income higher than that of the United States of America. But 100 years from now, the chances are their oil would have dried up. Then whilst Americans have advanced to higher levels of technology, and bountiful living, unless the subjects of these Sheikhs have been educated, become skilled and trained, they would have to go back to their camels and live on dates, travelling from oasis to oasis. Worse, they would by then probably have forgotten how to ride on a camel or to make their tents, having got used to riding around in American cars and living in imported pre-fabricated houses. If Singapore were to strike oil, then our whole economic and security position will be enormously enhanced. Perhaps the knowledge that this is unlikely to happen makes us get on with the job of the lasting long-term transformation: the raising of our standards of education, upgrading the skills of our people and increasing the number and quality of engineers, technicians and managers. Developed countries can sell us their finished products on easy terms. But unless we learn to use them properly, to maintain them in serviceable condition, to make the components and fit them, we shall never make the grade.”
As with civilian, so too with military technology. Modern weapons were difficult to handle not only because they were all that difficult to operate, but because they took considerable engineering professionalism and technical competence to maintain in operational condition. Armed forces no longer only needed healthy, brave soldiers. Without a larger army of mechanics, technicians, electricians, artisans, engineers and scientists to keep the electronic gadgetry and complex machines in tip-top operational condition, all the potential fire-power of modern armour could become damp squibs.
Since 1965, continued Lee, it had become increasingly necessary to build a defence capability. “Without adequate security forces of our own to make a significant contribution to joint security arrangement, investments may slow down. If people believe that we are weak and defenceless, even our own wealthy citizens will move part of their capital abroad. Participation of our ablest in our defence forces is a necessary part of the process of changing patterns of education and training to meet different circumstances. Those who have made the universities owe a more than average duty to enhance our security and enrich our future. As we move to more sophisticated equipment, so our armed forces will require and train more technologists and technicians. Military technology is often more exacting and advanced than its civilian counterpart. But this in turn will help our economic growth, as this will increase the reservoir of people trained in modern technology, essential for our industrialization.” It was not easy to predict what particular manufacturing or servicing industries would become profitable in Singapore. Hence the importance of flexibility in the education and training of the young.
The pattern of change in Singapore’s economy had already been set. In terms of percentage contribution to gross domestic product, entrepot trade had gone down from nineteen per cent in 1960 to sixteen per cent in 1968. Meanwhile, in the same period, industry had gone up from eleven per cent to nineteen per cent. In the eight years between 1960 and 1968, Singapore doubled its GDP, from $2,000 million to $4,000 million. In manufacture alone, the value was more than trebled from $148 million to $506 million. “The growing industrial sector is our future. The higher the skills and expertise, the greater the value that is added to the materials processed. The greater the ‘added value’, the higher the wages.”
“Value added” the Prime Minister pointed out was very low when labour was used in industries, low in capital and technological content. An example was textiles. American, British, and West European textiles had such high labour costs that they had to be protected by heavy tariffs and quotas from competition of imported textiles from Asia. “Value added” was high in science-based industries with high capital and technological content. An example was aircraft, jumbo-jets or supersonics.
With the passage of time, what was once considered high technology could become low technology. An example was shipbuilding. At the beginning of the century, the research, development, and building of steel steam-ships was high technology done only by very advanced nations. Today, except for specialized ships, like automated super tankers and container ships, it had been relegated to low technology. Because shipbuilding was low technology compared to aircraft, American and even Canadian labour costs were too high for them to compete in the shipbuilding industry. Americans and Canadians had found it more economical to buy their ships from abroad. The Americans now considered this trend dangerous because, for national security considerations, they want to keep a work force practised in the technology of designing and building ships.
Lee Kuan Yew argued that, as a rule of thumb, the standard of living of a people could be equated with their standard of technological competence. Trade between countries reflected this difference in their standards of technological competence. When America and the West exported to Asia and Africa, they exported commodities of high technology, like machinery and sophisticated goods. When Asia and Africa exported to the West, they sent agricultural or mineral raw products, or simple manufacture, like textiles. “The moral of it all is that the relatively high standards of life Singaporeans enjoy can only be justified and continued if our standard of technological competence is comparatively high for the area. Then we are exporting to this area products with higher technological content than the products we are importing from them. Naturally, everybody wants to upgrade his skills. So we have to move on to ever higher standards, or be overtaken by our neighbours. The human qualities that made us a successful commercial centre should be nurtured, and preserved. This keen sense for the percentage return on investment will continue to serve us well, as we broaden our base with more and more industries, making products of ever higher technological content. “At the same time, other goals must also be pursued for well-balanced development. If we are not to coarsen the texture of our society, we must improve the cultural and recreational facilities, encourage appreciation of the arts and music, and create an agreeable environment that will stimulate our people for further advance up the hill seeking perfection.”
In the parliamentary debate on the Abortion Bill, Lee Kuan Yew on 29 December said that one of the noticeable trends in developed countries was that parents with more education had much smaller families than those with less education. This trend was also discernible in urbanized though still under-developed societies like Singapore. If these trends continued to their logical conclusions then the quality of the population would go down.
The Prime Minister said that in all societies, there were the more intelligent and the less intelligent. And he quoted extracts from an article by Professor Richard Lynn (Member of the Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin) in the New Scientist of 20 March 1969. The professor said that geneticists had come to the conclusion that intelligence was principally determined by heredity.
Lee said that it was not unlikely that many other attributes of mind and body were also inherited. “But whatever the inheritance, man, more than any other living creature, depends on nurturing and training for his capacity to mature and develop. Man needs to be reared for one-third of his life span in order to be productive for the next two-thirds. In highly developed societies, students are supported for twenty-five to twenty-seven years until they get their Ph. D.s, and then begin to repay their debt to society. His final performance is affected by diet, health and cultural, social and educational opportunities. When the less educated who are also in the lower income groups have large families, the problems they create for their children are compounded. Resources, time, attention and care, lavished on one or two children, can nurture and develop the endowments of the children to their fullest extent, when spread and frittered over six or more in the family, prevent any child from getting the chances he could have had in a smaller family. In urbanized Singapore, this can become an acute problem. Free prenatal care, post-natal health and almost free medical services have reduced infant mortality to the low rates of highly developed countries. Free education and subsidized housing lead to a situation where less economically productive people in the community are reproducing themselves at rates higher than the rest. This will increase the total proportion of less productive people. Our problem is how to devise a system of disincentives, so that the irresponsible, the social delinquents, do not believe that all they have to do is to produce their children and the Government then owes them and their children sufficient food, medicine, housing, education and jobs.”
The Prime Minister said there were certain areas of activity over which control by any government was both difficult and repugnant. “One such area is the choice of the number of children a father and mother decide to rear. One day the pressure of circumstances may become so acute that attitudes must change. Until such time, when moral inhibitions disappear and legislative or administrative measures can be taken to regulate the size of families, we must try to induce people to limit their families and give their children a better chance. The quality of our population depends on raising not only the IQ level but also getting parents to care, nurture and educate their children and to develop all those other qualities so crucial to effective living summed up in the word ‘character’. Every person, genius or moron, has a right to reproduce himself. So we assume that a married pair will want to be allowed two children to replace them. This is already the average-size family of the skilled industrial worker in Europe. In Singapore we still allow three for good measure. Beyond the three children, the costs of subsidized housing, socialized medicine and free education should be transferred to the parent. We have changed the priorities in public housing, by not awarding more points for more children. One day we may have to put disincentives or penalties on the other social services. By introducing this new abortion law together with the companion voluntary sterilization law, we are making possible the exercise of voluntary choice. But we must keep a close watch on the result of the new laws and the patterns of use which will emerge.”
Lee Kuan Yew thought it not unlikely that the people who will want to restrict their families are the better educated parents in better paid jobs. “They are the people who already understand that their children’s future depends on their being able to care for their health, education and upbringing. One of the crucial yardsticks by which we shall have to judge the results of the new abortion law combined with the voluntary sterilization law will be whether it tends to raise or lower the total quality of our population. We must encourage those who earn less than $200 per month and cannot afford to nurture and educate many children never to have more than two. Intelligent application of these laws can help reduce the distortion that has already set in. Until the less educated themselves are convinced and realize that they should concentrate their limited resources on one or two to give their children the maximum chance to climb up the educational ladder, their children will always be at the bottom of economic scale. It is unlikely that the results will be discernible before five years. Nor will the effect be felt before fifteen to twenty years. But we will regret the time lost, if we do not now take the first tentative steps towards correcting a trend which can leave our society with a large number of the physically, intellectually and culturally anaemic.”