The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (81 page)

Of greater importance was the light thrown on the riots by Keng Swee. He met Razak in Kuala Lumpur on 28–29 July 1964, one week after the first riots. Razak told him that he saw a way out. He was willing to set up a national government of Malaysia in which the PAP would be represented in the federal cabinet – on condition that I resigned as prime minister of Singapore; I could take up a post at the United Nations and make an effective contribution from there. After two or three years, the position might be reviewed.

Keng Swee asked whether, as a quid pro quo, Albar would be removed. Razak answered, “No.” Razak was emphatic when he told Keng Swee that he had Albar and the
Utusan Melayu
completely under his control and gave a clear undertaking to Keng Swee that he could control
Utusan
. Keng Swee made a note immediately after the meeting: “Razak admitted that his opinion was sought whether or not trouble would break out in Singapore and he had given as his opinion that trouble would not break out. He admitted that he had made an error of judgement. Had he foreseen it, he would have taken action.”

Keng Swee recorded in his oral history in 1982:

“Now, this amounts to an admission that he was involved in this whole campaign to whip up Malay racist and religious feelings in Singapore. And Albar’s entry into Singapore and his campaigning in Singapore and the support given to
Utusan Melayu
had the full backing of Razak. It could not have been otherwise.

“Now, when Razak said that in his opinion, trouble will not break out, I mean, that’s … I frankly don’t accept that. No one in his senses would have believed that this shrill racist campaign coupled with a well-organised procession of the Malays in which the
bersilat
(martial arts) groups came out in force, no one could have believed that. The outcome must be racial riots.

“In fact, some days, perhaps more than a week before the riots broke out, I remember Mr Lee was extremely worried and felt in his bones that there was going to be race trouble. Discussed it with me. I was too engrossed on economic and financial matters. I was not fully informed and appeared quite sceptical about this. Again, this is a matter of political judgement – getting the feel of the situation – which I had not. When I questioned Mr Lee very closely, he just sighed and changed the subject. He must have thought that I was very dense on these matters. And indeed I was. Well, whatever the outcome was, the riots took place, Razak was involved in it and it was clearly his intention to remove Mr Lee from office. That was the purpose of Albar’s campaign.”

37. Singapore-KL Tensions Mount

I was in Brussels for the Socialist International celebrations when the second wave of rioting broke out on 2 September. Should I rush back to deal with the situation? I decided against it. Dashing back would not make the slightest difference to how events unfolded. Once a riot had started, there was a certain dynamic and momentum to it and one needed strong police action to suppress it. So I stayed on in Brussels.

On Sunday, 6 September 1964, there was a march past of contingents from the Socialist International in Europe. I was struck by the large number of war veterans in mufti, many wearing their medals, and by the appearance at the head of each contingent of a small brass and wind band playing martial music that was obviously giving them a lift. My mind went back to February 1942, when two remaining pipers of the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders had played, first for the Australians and then for the Gordon Highlanders, as they marched across the Causeway into Singapore and captivity.

We had not been allowed to use the police band for our Singapore State Day parade in June 1964. The federal government, now in charge of the police, had decided to shut us out. We were frustrated but could do nothing about it. Seeing this great array of bands from many countries in Brussels, I decided to form them in our schools and the People’s Association. I had to keep up the morale of the people.

On my return, I told the director of the People’s Association to look for retired bandsmen from the Singapore Infantry Regiment, and got my violin-playing contemporary at Raffles College, Kwan Sai Keong, now permanent secretary at the ministry of education, to mount a crash
programme for brass bands in all secondary schools. My plan succeeded. On Singapore State National Day in June 1965, the PA band was on parade, and so were bands from a few secondary schools. We had shown Kuala Lumpur they could not hold down a resourceful and determined people. Later, we expanded the programme downwards to take in the primary schools, and then upwards to the university. Soon we had a youth orchestra. I believed music was a necessary part of nation-building. It uplifted the spirits of a people.

There was more to Brussels than brass bands. Addressing the congress, I stressed that democratic socialists in Asia could meet the challenge posed by the organisational and propaganda techniques of the communists only if they could achieve two conditions: first, reasonable living standards, and second, effective administration. Otherwise they would not survive in newly independent countries. Willy Brandt, the mayor of Berlin and the best known of the many socialist leaders I met in Brussels, heard my speech and congratulated me. The man who reacted most warmly was Anthony Greenwood, the Labour shadow cabinet’s minister for colonial affairs who was then in charge of the International Department of the party.

Greenwood was a tall, lean man in his early 50s, well-dressed and conscious of his smart appearance, yet friendly and approachable, with no superior airs. He was the right person as spokesman for colonial affairs, for he instinctively sympathised with the underdog. His father, Arthur Greenwood, had started life as a trade unionist, ended up in the House of Lords, and was proud of his antecedents. Anthony himself went to public school and Oxford, which made him an Establishment figure, but he was never apologetic about his proletarian background. A likeable man, he had a big heart. I liked him.

He spent some time talking with me about the race riots in Singapore, asking why I had not rushed home. I hinted that some Malay agitators with high-level connections were behind these troubles. He understood
and expressed approval for my cool, rational approach. He invited me to meet other British Labour leaders and attend a dinner at the House of Commons on 11 September, when all the Labour MPs and party candidates would be present. It was the annual dinner of their Parliamentary Association and would be held on the eve of nominations for the general election. I accepted and flew to London.

Earlier, in January, I had met the Conservative defence secretary, Peter Thorneycroft, in Singapore and told him that however resolute his government might appear, the Indonesians knew that the Labour Party could be the government after the general election in the autumn. I said that if Harold Wilson as the party leader made it clear he would honour Britain’s defence commitments, it would kill any hope Sukarno harboured that a Labour government would find intolerable a long-drawn-out campaign of harassment and give up. Thorneycroft agreed to speak to Harold Wilson on his return, and with his concurrence I wrote to Wilson in those terms.

This was now to bear fruit. Before the dinner on 11 September, I met Wilson in the room he had in the House of Commons as leader of the opposition. We talked for 40 minutes. Indonesia’s Confrontation of Malaysia was much on his mind, as were the Malay-Chinese riots in Singapore. British troops were helping to defend Malaysia and he wanted to know if the new Federation was viable in the long run. We had met more than once before and, face to face, I was able to be very frank when analysing our problems. I told him that apart from Confrontation, which accentuated the Tunku’s sense of insecurity, the Tunku and his colleagues found it difficult to give up their policy of total Malay dominance for a more balanced position between the races, although this was necessary now that the composition of the electorate had altered with the addition of Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak. I said that my colleagues and I accepted that this would take time to change, that we did not envisage a non-Malay multiracial party taking power for at least 20 years. I added that
we could not and would not accept a Malay-dominated Malaysia in which the non-Malays were there on sufferance. That would be contrary to the constitution we had agreed with the Tunku. Like Greenwood, he was reassured by my rational and objective approach.

Wilson was in high spirits. He expected to win the general election, and assured me that a Labour government would continue to support Malaysia against Indonesia’s Confrontation. He wanted Britain to do its share of containing Soviet mischief-making in Southeast Asia, and Confrontation was one such mischief that the Soviets had created by supplying arms to the Indonesians. He looked to me and the PAP in Singapore to make it easier to get this policy supported by Labour MPs. It was a warm, fraternal meeting. He poured himself a double whisky. I settled for a single, and as it was a beautiful September evening, still light around 6:30, we walked onto the terrace overlooking the Thames to enjoy our drinks. He was in an expansive mood and spoke animatedly of how he intended to run his new government. He had some of the ablest men of his generation in his shadow cabinet. He would get Britain going again by using her lead in science and technology.

It was one of the most important meetings in my life. If Labour won the election and Wilson became prime minister, I believed the Tunku would know he had to moderate his racial policies against the PAP. With Alec Douglas-Home, the 14th Earl of Home who had succeeded Harold Macmillan as prime minister, the Tunku had felt a certain affinity as between two noblemen. He was sure Douglas-Home would understand his needs and his style of government. But the Tunku would suspect Harold Wilson and his bunch of radical Oxford dons of regarding him as an anachronism, akin to the tribal chiefs of Africa. I therefore had more than a passing interest in the results of the election due that October.

There were over 600 British Labour Party MPs and prospective candidates at the dinner. Wilson, prompted by Greenwood, asked me to
speak during the dessert. I recounted the problems of Indonesia’s Confrontation of Malaysia and how stability in the region and Malaysia’s survival depended upon British resolve to prevent a larger nation from swallowing up its smaller neighbour by force. If Labour formed the next government, I hoped it would honour the obligations that the British Conservative government had undertaken. I said that given time people in developing countries would evolve a fairer and more just society, like the one in Britain of which they had read. This theme resonated with the prospective MPs, and consolidated my standing with Wilson. That was to make a crucial difference to events in Singapore in the coming year. Later that evening Greenwood told me he had given me a captive audience and I had done a superb job in winning their support for Malaysia.

I returned home on 13 September, reassured that if Labour became the government I would have friends in the party, with some of whom my ties went back to my Cambridge days in the 1940s. Most of the MPs would have heard me speak that night and, I hoped, would remember me. I was reassured by my visit to London. But when my aircraft landed in Singapore, I found a very different atmosphere. The airfield was ringed with riot police armed with tear gas and guns, while many more plain-clothes men mingled with the crowd that lined the road from the airport. The day before, the Barisan had tried to mount a demonstration of some 7,000 youths, but the police had dispersed them before they could gather, and 77 people, including one Barisan assemblyman, were subsequently charged with rioting. The demonstrators had planned to give me a hot reception.

Nor was that all. I found uneasiness within the cabinet itself. Several ministers came separately to see me, to tell me they were unhappy with the way the troubles had been handled in my absence. Chin Chye, as acting prime minister, had been nervous and imposed a curfew suddenly, without a grace period, while people were at work and students were in
schools, increasing alarm and causing chaos as everyone had to rush home. I took note of their reservations, but decided to leave things as they were. I was terribly depressed, but determined not to allow the situation to get worse by showing any sign of despair. If we were to fight and win this battle, the morale of the population and their will to resist was of the utmost importance.

A week after my return, I was to officiate at the opening of the new building of the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Hill Street. The Chinese merchants were down in the dumps, and Ko Teck Kin came to see me one evening at Sri Temasek, looking most worried. Having appealed to the Chinese-speaking to vote for alternative “A” in the referendum to join Malaysia, he felt keenly responsible for their present predicament, their helplessness when caught between Malay rioters and a Malay police force and army that were openly anti-Chinese. What could be done?

He looked at me intently and said, “We cannot let down the Chinese people.”

I told him we had our rights guaranteed in the constitution, and I had no intention of allowing this to be ignored. It was our business to unite and mobilise the people to ensure that the constitution was respected. There would be no discrimination between races, other than what was provided for in that constitution, which entitled Malays to special quotas for education, jobs, licences and contracts only in peninsular Malaysia.