The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (37 page)

The Rendel constitution did not give him control of internal security. That was in the hands of the chief secretary and the governor. But for
political reasons the chief secretary chose not to act against the communists. Instead, Lim Yew Hock had allowed himself to be persuaded by his security officials to take the responsibility for the clean-up. In consequence it was not difficult for the communists to portray him as a tool of the “colonialist imperialists”. The British and Americans compounded his vulnerability by praising his courage and boldness. The first to do so was Lennox-Boyd: “The communist snake has been scotched but not killed … in Singapore, courageous and competent ministers are facing up to their problems in this vital corner of the free world.”

Next to congratulate him in glowing terms was the US State Department, and the Australians were not far behind. Little realising how much damage his reputation had suffered with the Chinese-speaking mass base, Lim Yew Hock made the further mistake of trying to emulate communist tactics. He arranged for a 50-man delegation representing 150 organisations claiming 150,000 members to pledge him their support. But the local participants – the counterpart supposedly of the CUF – were too feeble to be convincing, and when prominent Englishmen like the president of the Ex-Servicemen’s Association, the British bishop of Singapore and the British president of the Singapore Chamber of Commerce joined in, it only intensified the impression that he was acting in the interests of the West.

I resolved that if ever a PAP government were faced with this problem, I would never make the same mistakes. I would think of a way of obliging the parents themselves to grab their children from the schools and take them home. Special Branch could pick up the leaders after the students had dispersed. It would have been less damaging if Lim Yew Hock had first arrested the key united front operators in the trade unions and cultural societies. The unions themselves could then have been left to carry on. The leaders left at liberty would want to appear militant and not cowed, and would soon have been tempted to act illegally, whereupon the government could have deregistered their unions.

Marshall had taught me how not to be soft and weak when dealing with the communists. Lim Yew Hock taught me how not to be tough and flat-footed. It was not enough to use administrative and legal powers to confine and cripple them. Lim did not understand that the communist game was to make him lose the support of the masses, the Chinese-speaking people, to destroy his credibility as a leader who was acting in their interests. They were thus able to portray him as an opportunist and a puppet acting at the behest of the “colonialist imperialists”. Of the two, the more valuable lesson was Lim Yew Hock’s – how not to let the communists exact a heavy price for putting them down.

Only after the dust had settled from the government’s purge of the communist ringleaders did the second-tier leaders whom Special Branch had not picked up peek out of their foxholes. They ventured out to see if they were going to be arrested. They were not. Several came to see me in my office at Malacca Street, and I asked Dennis to accompany them to their various branches to take an inventory of the damage, recover whatever property was still there, and put caretakers in charge. Dennis went down to Bukit Timah and Bukit Panjang, where he reported the premises to be in shambles; the smell of tear gas still hung around amid the disorder of ransacked furniture and stationery, and slippers and shoes lost in the mêlée of the arrests.

One leader confessed to being extremely worried – some $120,000 of union funds kept in a tin trunk and locked up in a back room at the Middle Road headquarters had disappeared. The money had been withdrawn from the bank at the last moment. I believed it had been taken out to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Registrar of Societies once the SFSWU was deregistered. That had not happened yet, but as it was only a matter of days before Special Branch would look through the union’s accounts and find the money missing, I decided as its legal adviser to report the loss immediately.

Lim Chin Siong had committed a crime by withdrawing almost the total amount for purposes not in accordance with the union’s rules, and by not being able to account for it. But when I went to see him at the Central Police Station where he was being held for interrogation, he feigned ignorance. He said the cash was in the back room three hours before the premises were raided in the early hours of 27 October. The only other person who knew it was there was the union treasurer. I had seen the treasurer at Changi Prison before seeing Lim. He said there were only two keys to the locked room, one with him, the other with Lim. As far as he knew, the money was in the room at the time of the police raid.

All interviews with detainees under the Emergency Regulations took place in the presence of a Special Branch officer. I could not understand, therefore, why Special Branch did not pass the interview records to the attorney-general’s chambers so that the culprits could be prosecuted for criminal breach of trust. They had withdrawn $120,000, spent $20,000 on items they could not account for precisely, and “lost” the rest. The government could have portrayed Lim Chin Siong, his treasurer and his president as thieves, not the revolutionary martyrs they became once detained for a political cause.

Instead, the Registrar of Trade Unions asked them on 21 November to show cause why the SFSWU should not be deregistered because not only was it “used for purposes inconsistent with its objects and rules” but also as “the funds of the union were not expended on objects authorised by the rules”. In his statement to the registrar, Lim said he had decided that the union funds, then amounting to about $150,000, should be prevented from falling into government hands and should be kept aside to be used later for the benefit of the workers. The story he then told was quite different from the one he had given me in front of a Special Branch officer, but in essence the conclusion was the same: “We kept the notes in a metal suitcase in a room at the back of the union’s premises in Middle Road. That was the last I knew of the
whereabouts of these notes. Someone must have stolen the money from this room since my arrest at 2 am.” This would have been no defence had the charge been criminal breach of trust. But the government chose to detain him under Emergency Regulations.

I was less interested in the recent losses of the CUF than in how quickly it could regroup and reorganise in the future. The MCP needed a second team of expendable open-front leaders whom they must now field if they were to retain the following the first team had built up. If among the open-front group of activists they could not find men who could do this, they might have to sacrifice some of their cadres in the underground. I waited to see how they would play it. They played it safe. They decided to field Lim Chin Siong’s younger brother, Lim Chin Joo, as the substitute who would carry the flag he had left behind at Middle Road. Lim Chin Joo had also been to the Chinese High School. But he did not have his brother’s baby-face. He was broader, grosser, less likeable, but brighter and tougher. He did not have Lim Chin Siong’s silver tongue either, which was a relief. But he was the logical choice. He symbolised Lim Chin Siong, whom the MCP wanted to have remembered as a great leader temporarily imprisoned by an unjust stooge government.

Anticipating the deregistration of the SFSWU, on 14 February 1957, the new leaders negotiated a partnership with an existing but inactive union and its affiliates, using it much as business corporations use shell companies. The Singapore General Employees’ Union had a book membership of 2,000. Lim Chin Joo took it over, the pro-communists filling 18 of the 21 seats on a joint central committee, and moved it to the old headquarters at Middle Road. Within a matter of months, the membership had risen to more than 20,000.

The branches also came back to life, but were not in the same state of frenetic activity. Some of the new cadres were amateurish; some of those who had worked with the detained leaders had taken fright and were reluctant to involve themselves further, not knowing whether there
would be further clean-ups. So the unions did not recover the surge and thrust they had developed from the middle of 1954 to the end of 1956. But I had no doubt that as long as the Chinese middle schools were churning out bright and ambitious graduates whom the political system excluded from good jobs in the public and private sectors, the MCP would have a steady flow of recruits. This was the nub of the problem – the frustration of the able and talented among the Chinese-educated who had no outlets for their energy and idealism, and who were at the same time inspired by the example of the young communist cadres in China. It was only after news of the excesses of the Cultural Revolution percolated through in the 1970s that the communist hold on them weakened.

Meanwhile, an ostentatious display of self-sacrifice by their leading cadres added to the myth. After working the whole day running around making speeches and negotiating with wicked employers, Lim Chin Siong and Fong would sleep on top of the desks at union headquarters. Their spartan lifestyle had a tremendous impact on their followers, who tried to emulate them, infecting each other with the same spirit of self-denial. Even wealthy young students who were not hard-core members wanted to identify themselves with Lim and Fong. One bus company owner’s son spent most of his time acting as an unpaid chauffeur for them, using his family car. It was his contribution to the cause. He was proud to be associated with revolutionary cadres who dressed simply, ate at hawker stalls and took very little salary for themselves since whatever was won from the employers was for the workers. How much they pocketed in order to feed more revolutionaries I did not know, but I did not see them take anything for themselves – they certainly did not live as if they had.

It was a competitive display of selflessness that swept a whole generation; the more selfless you were, the more you impressed the masses, and the more likely you were to be promoted within the
organisation from the Anti-British League to the MCP, a communist party in the middle of a revolution. With such supporters, the communists could run elections on a shoestring – there was no shortage of workers or canvassers, and cloth for banners was donated by enthusiastic supporters. I suspect that printers, too, would either print their pamphlets for nothing or charge the cost to union accounts. There was also no shortage of girls amid all this puritanical zeal, for in the back rooms of Middle Road, supposedly revolutionary young women gave themselves up to illicit love, only too happy to have such star performers as Lim and Fong as their partners. The less attractive girls settled for the branch leaders of the various unions.

In contrast, when we had to find workers, it was a real problem. We recruited volunteers from the unions and from among friends, but they all wanted to go home in time for dinner, for some function or other, or for a private appointment. There was no total commitment, no dedication as on the other side – one of their devotees would do the work of three or four of our volunteers. I used to be quite depressed by the long-term implications of all this. I failed to realise then that they could not keep it up for long. Revolutionary zeal could only carry them thus far. In the end, they had to live and bring up families, and families required money, housing, health care, recreation and the other good things of life.

One odd thing about them though, was that when they abandoned communism, as some young Chinese middle school student leaders did, they often became extremely avaricious to make up for lost time. They seemed to feel that they had been robbed of the best years of their lives and had to make up for what they had missed. It was a preview of what I was to see later in China and Vietnam. When the revolution did not deliver utopia and the economy reverted to the free market, cadres, with the power to issue licences or with access to goods and services at official prices, were the first to be corrupt and exploit the masses.

15. Three-quarters Independent

Eleven months after the collapse of the first constitutional talks, we were back in London for a second round. This second conference was held in a totally different climate. Inter-party differences had been thrashed out and solutions agreed to in principle. On 7 February 1957, Chief Minister Lim Yew Hock had called an all-party meeting, the first of eight to settle the outlines of a new constitution, and a month later a miscellaneous paper was submitted to the Assembly. Lim’s motion was realistic and modest: “To secure from Her Majesty’s Government the status of a self-governing state with all the rights, powers and privileges pertaining to internal affairs, and the control of trade, commerce and cultural relations in external affairs”.