Life was not all simple pleasures, however. Every now and again my father would come home in a foul mood after losing at blackjack and other card games at the Chinese Swimming Club in Amber Road, and demand some of my mother’s jewellery to pawn so that he could go back to try his luck again. There would be fearful quarrels, and he was sometimes violent. But my mother was a courageous woman who was determined to hang on to the jewellery, wedding gifts from her parents. A strong character with great energy and resourcefulness, she had been married off too early. In her day, a woman was expected to be a good wife, bear many children, and bring them up to be good husbands or wives in turn. Had she been born one generation later and continued her education beyond secondary school, she could easily have become an effective business executive.
She devoted her life to raising her children to be well-educated and independent professionals, and she stood up to my father to safeguard their future. My brothers, my sister and I were very conscious of her sacrifices; we felt we could not let her down and did our best to be worthy of her and to live up to her expectations. As I grew older, she began consulting me as the eldest son on all important family matters, so that while still in my teens, I became de facto head of the family. This taught me how to take decisions.
My maternal grandmother had strong views on my education. In 1929, before I was 6, she insisted that I join the fishermen’s children attending school nearby, in a little wood and attap hut with a compacted clay floor. The hut had only one classroom with hard benches and plank desk-tops, and one other room, which was the home of our scrawny middle-aged Chinese teacher. He made us recite words after him without any comprehension of their meaning – if he did explain, I did not understand him.
I complained bitterly to my mother, and she made representations to my grandmother. But a young woman of 22 could not overrule an experienced matriarch of 48 who had brought up nine children from two marriages, and was determined that I should receive some education in Chinese. My grandmother allowed a change of school, however, and I was sent to Choon Guan School in Joo Chiat Terrace. It was a mile away from home, and I walked there and back every day. This school was more impressive, a two-storey wooden structure with cement floors, and about 10 proper classrooms with desks for 35 to 40 pupils in each class. The lessons in Chinese were still tough going. At home I spoke English to my parents, “Baba Malay” – a pidgin Malay adulterated with Chinese words – to my grandparents, and Malay with a smattering of Hokkien to my friends, the fishermen’s children. Mandarin was totally alien to me, and unconnected with my life. I did not understand much of what the teachers were saying.
After two to three months of this, I again pleaded with my mother to be transferred to an English-language school. She won my grandmother’s consent this time and in January 1930 I joined Telok Kurau English School. Now I understood what the teachers were saying and made progress with little effort. The students were mostly Chinese, with a few Indians among them, and some Malays who had transferred from Telok Kurau Malay School.
My parents were concerned at my lack of diligence, and my mother gave Uncle Keng Hee the task of making sure I was prepared for the next day’s lessons. Three evenings a week before dinner I had to sit with him for an hour. Even then I thought how absurd it was that the least scholarly of my uncles should be deputed to see that I did my homework.
I was given a double promotion from primary 1 to standard I, leapfrogging primary 2. At the end of standard V, after seven years of primary education – six in my case – we all sat an island-wide examination to vie for places in government secondary schools. In my final year, 1935, I made the extra effort. I came first in school and won a place in Raffles Institution, which took in only the top students.
Raffles Institution was then, and still is, the premier English-language secondary school in Singapore and carries the name of its founder. It turned out small groups of well-educated and outstanding men, many of whom won the Queen’s scholarship to go to Oxford, Cambridge, London, Edinburgh and other British institutions, to study medicine, law and engineering.
In 1936, I entered Raffles Institution together with about 150 top students from 15 government primary schools. Admission was on the basis of merit. Students were of all races, all classes and all religions, and included many from Malaya. The early headmasters were Englishmen who modelled the institution on the English public school.
The syllabus prepared students for the empire-wide examinations for Junior Cambridge and Senior Cambridge School Certificates. The textbooks, especially those for English language, English literature, history of the British Empire, mathematics and geography, were standard for all the colonies, adapted I suppose from those used in British schools. The teaching was entirely in English. Many years later, whenever I met Commonwealth leaders from far-flung islands in the Caribbean or the Pacific, I discovered that they also had gone through the same drill with the same textbooks and could quote the same passages from Shakespeare.
There were four grades in secondary school: standards VI and VII, Junior Cambridge and Senior Cambridge. I was not very hardworking, but I was good at mathematics and the sciences and had a solid grounding in the English language. At the end of standard VI, therefore, I was among the better students and promoted to standard VIIA, where I usually came in among the top three without much effort. I was still not very attentive in class, and tried to catch up by peeking into the notebook of the boy who sat next to me. Teo Kah Leong was not only top of the class, he kept beautiful notes of our lessons. But he would cover the pages with his hands. My form master, an Indian named M.N. Campos, nevertheless wrote on my report card these words of praise and encouragement: “Harry Lee Kuan Yew is a determined worker for a place of distinction. He is likely to attain a high position in life.”
I went on to Junior A, the best class of the standard. The form master, an Englishman called A.T. Grieve, was a young Oxford graduate with a head of thick, sandy hair and a friendly and approachable manner. He was a bachelor in his late 20s, and doing his first stint overseas. Grieve had no colour prejudice, probably because he had not been in the colony long enough to learn he had to keep a certain distance from the locals, which was deemed necessary for British dominance to be upheld. He improved my English language enormously and I did well, coming in first in school in the Junior Cambridge examinations, my first major examination with papers set and marked in Cambridge. I also won two awards that year, the Raffles Institution and the Tan Jiak Kim scholarships. Together, they yielded the huge sum of 350 Straits dollars. It was enough to buy me a beautiful Raleigh bicycle for $70, with a three-speed gear and an encased chain box—I rode to school in style and still had money to spare. But even better was to come.
I had set my heart on distinguishing myself in the Senior Cambridge examinations, and I was happy when the results in early 1940 showed I had come first in school, and first among all the students in Singapore and Malaya.
I enjoyed my years in Raffles Institution. I coped with the work comfortably, was active in the Scout movement, played cricket and some tennis, swam and took part in many debates. But I never became a prefect, let alone head prefect. There was a mischievous, playful streak in me. Too often, I was caught not paying attention in class, scribbling notes to fellow students, or mimicking some teacher’s strange mannerisms. In the case of a rather ponderous Indian science teacher, I was caught in the laboratory drawing the back of his head with its bald patch.
Once I was caned by the principal. D.W. McLeod was a fair but strict disciplinarian who enforced rules impartially, and one rule was that a boy who was late for school three times during one term would get three strokes of the cane. I was always a late riser, an owl more than a lark, and when I was late for school the third time in a term in 1938, the form master sent me to see McLeod. The principal knew me from the number of prizes I had been collecting on prize-giving days and the scholarships I had won. But I was not let off with an admonition. I bent over a chair and was given three of the best with my trousers on. I did not think he lightened his strokes. I have never understood why Western educationists are so much against corporal punishment. It did my fellow students and me no harm.
Nevertheless, I was learning to take life seriously. My parents had pointed out to me how some of their friends were doing well because they had become lawyers and doctors. They were self-employed, and therefore had not been hit by the Depression. My father regretted his misspent youth, and they urged me to become a professional. So from my early years I geared myself towards becoming a lawyer, a professional and not an employee. My plan was to read law in London.
But in 1940 the war in Europe was going badly. France was under severe threat, and about to be occupied. Going to London to study law was best postponed. Having come first in Singapore and Malaya in the Senior Cambridge examinations, I was offered the Anderson scholarship, the most valuable then available, to study at Raffles College. I decided to take it. It was worth $200 more than the other government awards and was enough to pay for fees, books and boarding, and leave something to spare.
Raffles College was founded in 1928 by the Straits Settlements government. It taught the arts (English, history, geography, economics) and the sciences (physics, chemistry, pure and applied mathematics). The government had designed handsome buildings for it, with quadrangles and cloisters constructed of concrete with mock stone facing, like those at Oxford and Cambridge but with concessions to the tropical climate.
As a scholarship student, I had to stay in one of the halls of residence. It was a difficult adjustment. To suit Singapore’s hot, humid climate, the architects had designed big dormitories with high ceilings. Each was divided into 20 rooms with french windows leading to open verandas. Partitions between rooms were only seven feet high, slightly above head level, to allow air to circulate freely. This meant that noise also circulated freely above 20 rooms and around 20 verandas occupied by 20 youthful undergraduates.
Each student had to take three subjects. I read English, which was compulsory for all arts students, and concentrated on it to improve my command of the language, and to help me when I studied law later; mathematics, because I liked it and was good at it; and economics, because I believed it could teach me how to make money in business and on the stock market – I was naive! After the first year, a student had to choose one subject as his major field of study. I chose mathematics.
At the end of each of the three terms in the academic year there were examinations, and for the first of these I was the best student in mathematics, scoring over 90 marks. But to my horror, I discovered I was not the best in either English or economics. I was in second place, way behind a certain Miss Kwa Geok Choo. I had already met Miss Kwa at Raffles Institution. In 1939, as the only girl in a boys’ school, she had been asked by the principal to present prizes on the annual prize-giving day, and I had collected three books from her. She had been in the special class preparing to try for the Queen’s scholarship two years running. I was disturbed and upset. There were only two Queen’s scholarships a year for the whole of the Straits Settlements (Singapore, Penang and Malacca), and they would not necessarily go to the two top-scoring students. Above all, I feared an even-handed geographical distribution designed to give a chance to entrants from Penang and Malacca. The scholarship board might not want to give both scholarships to Singapore students, in which case coming second might just not be good enough.
I did not enjoy my first year in Raffles College as much as my first year in Raffles Institution. Ragging or hazing was then part of the initiation of freshmen and went on for a whole term. Being the top student, my reputation had preceded me, and I suppose as I was also one of the taller and more conspicuous freshmen, some seniors picked on me.
I had to sing. I had to crawl around the quadrangle pushing a marble forward on the ground with my nose. I had to walk at the head of all the freshmen wearing a ragged green tie and carrying a silly green flag. I thought it all stupid, but went through with it as part of the price to be paid for joining an institution that lacked maturity and was developing the wrong traditions. When my turn came in the second year, I turned my face against ragging and tried to discourage it, but was not successful. I strongly disapproved of those who took it out on freshmen for what they had endured when they themselves were “freshies”.
We had to attend lectures wearing coat and tie. The lecture rooms were not air-conditioned – indeed, one in the science block was an oven in the afternoons because it faced the setting sun. To be caught in a draught when I was sopping wet with sweat was a sure way for me to get coughs and colds. There was also the disorientation from having to live in strange surroundings, in close proximity with 19 other students in one block, and to eat unappetising institutional food.
After the first year I changed from “C” block to the better-sited “E” block where I was in a cooler and pleasanter room. But the disorientation must have affected my academic performance. I remember that in one term examination I did not come out top even in mathematics. Nevertheless, in the examinations at the end of the academic year (March 1941), I did creditably, and came in first in pure mathematics. But Miss Kwa Geok Choo was the top student in English and economics, and probably in history too, her third subject. I scored a little better than she did in the statistics paper, which was part of economics. I knew I would face stiff competition for the Queen’s scholarship.
There were other problems. It was only in retrospect that I realised Raffles College was my initiation into the politics of race and religion. In a British colony that made no distinction between the races, Singapore Malays were accustomed to being treated the same as others. But in June 1940, for the first time, I met significant numbers of Malays who had been born and brought up under a different system. In the Federated Malay States (FMS) of Perak, Selangor, Pahang and Negeri Sembilan, and even more so in the Unfederated Malay States (Johor, Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan and Terengganu), indigenous Malays were given special political and economic rights. In the FMS, there were only five scholarships to Raffles College open to non-Malays, whereas the Malays had a choice of more, as they did in the Unfederated Malay States. Of the hundred students admitted each year, 20 were Malays from upcountry on scholarships paid for by their state governments.
There was a strong sense of solidarity among the Malays, which I was to learn grew from a feeling of being threatened, a fear of being overwhelmed by the more energetic and hardworking Chinese and Indian immigrants. One Malay in my year was to become prime minister of Malaysia. Abdul Razak bin Hussain attended the same classes in English and economics as I did, but we were not close friends. He was a member of the Malay aristocracy of Pahang, and was therefore somewhat distant from the other Malay students, who looked up to him. Those I got on with more easily were commoners, two of whom played cricket for the college. Because I had many Malay friends from childhood, my spoken Malay was fluent. But I soon discovered that their attitude towards non-Malays, especially Chinese, was totally different from that of Singapore Malays.
One student from Kedah told me in my second year, after we had become friends, “You Chinese are too energetic and too clever for us. In Kedah, we have too many of you. We cannot stand the pressure.” He meant the pressure of competition for jobs, for business, for places in schools and universities. The Malays were the owners of the land, yet seemed to be in danger of being displaced from top positions by recent arrivals, who were smarter, more competitive and more determined. Probably because they did better and were self-confident, the Chinese and the Indians lacked this sense of solidarity. There was no unity among them because they did not feel threatened.
One incident stands out in my memory. In my second year, there was much unhappiness over the arrangements for the annual Raffles College Students’ Union dinner at the old Seaview Hotel. The non-Malays were incensed at the sharp and cavalier responses of the honorary secretary, Ungku Aziz bin Abdul Hamid, to their complaints. A few students started a move for an extraordinary general meeting to censure him and deprive him of office. But he was a Malay. As the collection of signatures for an EGM gathered momentum, the Malay students rallied round him, and made it clear that if he were removed, they would resign en masse from the union. This presented the non-Malays with a challenge. I was approached and asked to make the opening speech setting out their complaints against Ungku Aziz. I had not attended the dinner, and I had no personal quarrel with him. But since nobody wanted to take on this unpleasant job, I decided to do it. The meeting took place on a Saturday afternoon, and all the day students had left, probably because they wished to avoid the unpleasantness. Of those in halls of residence, the Malays turned up in force. The tension was high, and racial feelings strong.
It was my first experience of Malayism, a deep and intense pro-Malay, anti-immigrant sentiment. I made out the case in measured tones, firmly but, I hoped, not aggressively. Ungku Aziz spoke up to refute all the allegations of rude behaviour. I could sense that the crowd of some 80 students felt most uncomfortable about the confrontation. When the votes were cast, the Malays carried the day for Ungku Aziz, and the break-up never came. But the non-Malays felt they had registered their point. This incident faded from my memory. It was only later, between 1963 and 1965, when we were in Malaysia and ran into similar problems with Malayism, that I was to recall it.
But if it was a time of rivalry, it was also a time for forming lasting friendships. Many of those I first met in Raffles College were to become close political colleagues, among them Toh Chin Chye, a science student one year my senior, hardworking, systematic, quiet and consistent, and Goh Keng Swee, a tutor in economics with a first-class mind, a poor speaker but a crisp writer.
When I started my career as a lawyer in the 1950s, therefore, I already had a network of friends and acquaintances in important positions in government and the professions in Singapore and Malaya. Even if one did not know someone personally, just sharing the same background made for easy acceptance, and the old school tie worked well in Singapore and Malaya, even between Chinese, Indians and Malays. Before the days of active politics, when power was still completely in the hands of the British, I did not feel any personal animosity or resentment from the upcountry Malays. I made friends with many of them, including two Malay sessions judges before whom I later appeared.
It was the easy old-boy network of an elite at the very top of the English-educated group nurtured by the British colonial education system. We went through similar schools, read the same textbooks and shared certain common attitudes and characteristics. The British public school was not the only system that encouraged networking through manner of speech, style and dress and a way of doing things.