The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (34 page)

There was no loss of life or serious damage to property. But the incident left the six visiting MPs with little doubt about the volatility of
the political situation in Singapore, and convinced them that the government, even with a British chief secretary and a British commissioner of police, was not in complete command. That was no less than the truth. Marshall’s Singapore was not the Tunku’s Malaya. The Labour Front government enjoyed no solid support. It was, as Robert Black wrote to Lennox-Boyd, a “mushroom, all head, thin body, no roots”. Black’s letter described the communist threat on the island as more insidious than upcountry, and the measures taken to counter it – detention without trial, tear gas, water hoses, deregistration of unions, the banning of associations used for subversive purposes – treated the symptoms but did not cure the disease. Black wrote that although the security forces could prevent a breakdown of public services or major disorders, their methods simultaneously produced more anti-government and anti-British youngsters to join the growing ranks of the CUF organisations. Under a democratic system of one man, one vote, it was only a matter of time before the Chinese middle school students and the young Chinese-speaking workers brought in a legitimate, elected pro-communist government.

I harboured similar grim thoughts as I weighed the dilemma we, the non-communists, faced. But Marshall had limited knowledge of the real situation on the ground, and was in no way sobered or chastened by his experience. He remained optimistic that he would get something almost as good as the Tunku had obtained from Lennox-Boyd, and on 4 April, he moved a resolution in the Assembly to lay out what he expected of the British government in the constitutional talks. The operative part of this document read:

“The Assembly instructs the all-party delegation … to seek forthwith for Singapore the status of an independent territory within the Commonwealth, and to offer an agreement between the United Kingdom government and the Singapore government whereby the
government of the United Kingdom would in respect of Singapore exercise control of external defence and give guidance in foreign relations other than trade and commerce.”

I had argued with Marshall privately many times before he tabled the resolution that as long as Britain had the right to tell Singapore what to do in matters of defence, Singapore could not be independent, whatever the arrangement was. But he could not be deflected from his goal – the appearance and the sensation of independence. In seconding his motion, I said the resolution as drafted was “a euphemistic way of saying that we realised the British will not give us complete independence because then it would mean upsetting international arrangements and international bases in the world defence strategy”.

I did my best before the London conference to make sure that the next constitution would not open the gates for a communist takeover, but would give us enough room to build a non-communist government, not as a stooge of the British, but as protector of the interests of the people. Marshall never understood the need for this fine balance: to have enough power to act in the people’s interest, but to have the British in a fall-back position if the communists should get the upper hand. And Lim Chin Siong never understood that near-independence without sovereignty meant that sovereignty would be with the British government. What he wanted was quite simply to get a constitution that would enable the communists to grow and become strong.

Marshall led the all-party 13-member delegation, which consisted of five ministers and two Labour Front government backbenchers, four Liberal Socialists (the Progressives and Democrats had amalgamated in February) and two PAP. We flew in separate groups on propeller-driven BOAC Argonauts that took two nights and three days to get from Singapore to London, with overnight stops in Colombo and Karachi. I left in early April to give myself time to meet Keng Swee and to assess the situation from the British end. Lim Chin Siong travelled with me, feeling a little
lost. It was the first time he had been out of the country. But he was more fearful of being away from his mentors than of being in a strange land.

Before Lim and I took off in the Argonaut, I issued a formal PAP statement to explain why we had since modified our policy: “We wanted merger even before we reached the self-governing state … Unfortunately, the Federation chief minister could not agree to our proposal … Now we seek the maximum political advance we can achieve in Singapore alone, but will strive for a merger with the Federation.”

The only flights I had made before then had been to Kuala Lumpur and back in a twin engine Dakota. In those days air travel was for the top few, expensive and not without risk, and every journey merited a send-off by relatives and friends or party supporters. A crowd of several hundred came to see Lim and me off and we addressed them from the top of the mobile steps before entering the plane. I made it quite clear that the delegation’s aim was “not to secure full independence but 75 per cent self-government with complete self-government after five years”. Lim was standing beside me and I was making quite sure the press got it right and would not misrepresent the PAP stand.

I was to pick up new impressions. When we stopped overnight at Colombo, I was surprised to find it so well-developed. It had not suffered from Japanese occupation and looked more prosperous than Singapore. Karachi, the other overnight stop, was hot and dusty, and for the first time I saw camels working as beasts of burden, trundling loaded carts and liberally dispensing enormous droppings as they flip-flopped along the roads. But an evening outing in town gave me a chance to buy Choo several sheer silk stoles that looked like organza interwoven with gold thread. She still uses them occasionally. After Karachi, we had refuelling stops at Cairo and Rome, and finally landed in London on 17 April.

I had six days to catch up with the political mood before the conference began. The weather was beautiful. It was one of the sunnier British springs and the tulips were already flowering along the Mall.
Britain was beginning to emerge from post-war austerity. London looked cleaner, spruced up in the six years since I left in 1950, and there were many more cars on the road. There was also a new racial equation. I saw quite a few West Indian blacks working as conductors on the buses, and some black dustmen, and I noticed that Asiatics were now referred to as Asians in the papers. I was told that sometime in 1953 the British press had started to use “Asian” because “Asiatic” had a touch of condescension or disrespect, and the change was a concession to the people of India, Pakistan and Ceylon, now independent. I did not understand how this improved their status. When young London children called me a Chinaman or a Chink, it did not trouble me. If they meant it as a term of abuse, my business was to make them think differently one day.

I spent much of my time with Keng Swee and his coterie of lieutenants, active students who had helped him combat and defeat John Eber and his communist group in the Malayan Forum. They included among others Joe Pillay, who was to become chairman of Singapore Airlines, and Chua Sian Chin, who was to become minister for home affairs. I was encouraged that Keng Swee could find young men of their calibre who would serve us well when they got back to Singapore.

He had also made many contacts in the Fabian Society and the Labour Party. Some, like Hilda Selwyn-Clarke, wife of a former governor of Hong Kong, set out to be a friend and champion of colonial students. The Fabians were nurturing nationalists who would be good democrats, good socialists, and supporters of Britain in the new Commonwealth. Keng Swee arranged for me to have dinner with Labour bigwigs, then out of office, including Aneurin Bevan, the former minister who had introduced the National Health Service, a Welshman and a great orator. And I took the opportunity to look up old Cambridge friends of both Choo and myself, several of whom were now practising at the Bar. They gave me a feel of the mood of British society in post-austerity London, which would lead into the swinging sixties.

For over a month from mid-April, I shared a service flat with Lim Chin Siong at St James Court, where the all-party delegation was housed. We had two bedrooms with bathrooms attached and a sitting room. Meals were served in a restaurant downstairs, but breakfast could be ordered in the room. There was an old-world graciousness about that hotel, with its elegant brick buildings and ancient lifts.

I was in familiar surroundings and, being well briefed by Keng Swee and many others, I was able to assess quickly how British politicians had shifted in their thinking and attitudes. But it was otherwise for Lim. He revealed himself to be a pleasant, likeable person with no pretensions but many inhibitions, as had most Chinese-educated. He was very anxious not to commit a
faux pas
and grateful to me for giving him little tips on the social customs of the British, including their table manners – how to handle forks, spoons and knives, and to place your fork and knife together to show you had finished a course. We shared a huge Humber Pullman. There was one for each party in the delegation, but since he had no social contacts in London and his functions were all official ones to which I would also go, I used it most of the time. There was another reason, however: he did not want the driver to know when he met pro-communists on the quiet.

I wondered how he would get about. I suspected that before he left home he must have been given some telephone numbers and addresses. But the MCP did not have reliable cadres in London who were in touch with the situation in Singapore and Malaya. As far as I knew, his most important contact was John Eber, and I was reassured, for that meant he would not be getting good advice. Having no one he trusted to turn to, he was operating at a severe disadvantage, compounded by his contempt for the Labour Front ministers and other delegates. With their new clothes and loud voices, they seemed flashy, out for a good time. Lim Chin Siong was the exact opposite. He had a new suit and had bought himself a trilby because he was advised to, but he never wore it except
to go to the airport. He was modest, humble and well-behaved, with a dedication to his cause that won my reluctant admiration and respect. I wished I had cadres like him. He was like a Gurkha warrant officer in the British army – totally loyal, absolutely dependable, always ready to execute orders to the best of his ability.

He probably did not know what to make of me. I was a golf-playing, beer-swilling bourgeois, but he must also have sensed that I was not without a serious purpose. On our side, most of the business of drafting documents was done by Marshall and his Queen’s Counsel, Walter Raeburn, for Marshall approached the conference primarily as a legal problem. I considered it entirely a political one, and Lim must have noticed that I would concentrate on the key parts, like the question of sovereignty, responsibility for security and foreign affairs through the Defence and Security Council, and chairmanship of the council.

One day, between conference sessions, he went to Collet’s, the left-wing bookshop opposite the British museum, to buy a book by L. Kosmodemyanskaya,
The Story of Zoya and Shura
, which he presented to me. “Lee,” he said, “this is a very good book. I read it in Chinese when I was in school. I became different.” I was touched. He had not written me off as a pleasure-loving bourgeois after all. I thanked him and flipped through the pages. A hardback subsidised by Moscow and costing only five shillings, it told a heroic story about the German invasion of the Soviet Union and how a boy and a girl did the right thing by their country, their friends, and the Communist Party. Extolling high moral values, it had apparently inspired Lim greatly when he read it in his impressionable teens.

He was well-meaning and seemed deeply sincere. All the applause and adulation of the crowds had not turned his head. But we never developed a close friendship. Instead, we recognised each other for what we were. He knew I was not a communist and I knew that he was one. And we accepted each other as such. He needed me; I needed him. He would
trust me to be honest in money matters, and in general not to lie to him. But he did not trust me in political matters. That was the nature of our relationship. We did not deceive each other on where we stood. His English was not good enough for him to plough through the heavy conference documents, but as I wrote to Chin Chye at the time, “He is writing lengthy reports back, God knows to which person.” He was probably giving his impressions of people and assessments of their positions on important issues.

I myself was meeting and lunching with British MPs, both Conservative and Labour. The Conservatives tended to be buccaneering types, interested in the world at large and totally different from the Labour MPs, who were well-intentioned and serious-minded but parochial. One memorable lunch I had was with Fitzroy Maclean and Julian Amery. Maclean was famous for his wartime exploits in German-occupied Yugoslavia, and had written of his experiences in a book,
Disputed Barricades
, which I found fascinating. Amery, too, had a swashbuckling personality, and our acquaintance developed into a friendship. Such friends I made were to prove most valuable in the sixties when we had to fight the communists in Singapore, and even more so when we were part of Malaysia and threatened with communal repression by Malay “Ultras”. (I called them
Ultras
, after the French term for Algerian extremists.) My stay in London was pleasant and profitable. But the same could not be said of the conference itself.