The 1963 election was a watershed for the communists. Soon after the results, two Barisan candidates who won – Chan Sun Wing, my former parliamentary secretary, and Wong Soon Fong, who had subverted the Works Brigade – dived underground. They must have expected to be picked up the moment the Barisan lost. But for the moment our sights were elsewhere. We had decided to make an example of prominent figures who had acted as front men for the communists, believing that their wealth and standing in the Chinese-speaking community gave them immunity. Number one on the list was Tan Lark Sye, then honorary president of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and the founder of Nanyang University. I had made a mental note to deal with him when the government had the political strength. Now we no longer needed to tolerate his spouting the communist line in the press, using his position in the business world as a shield.
The day after the election, we started proceedings to cancel his citizenship, which had been acquired by registration. A statement from my office read:
“The government has decided that no man, whatever his wealth, status and standing, shall with impunity play stooge to the communists and jeopardise the peace and prosperity of Singapore and the amity and unity of the races of Malaysia. … He had openly and blatantly intervened in these elections by signing statements drafted by these communists standing as Barisan Sosialis candidates denouncing the government, using as cover his so-called protection of Chinese language, culture and education.”
This action would have been unthinkable earlier. We were then fearful of alienating the Chinese-speaking voters, especially as the vernacular press would distort the issue and make it appear directed against businessmen who supported the cause of Chinese culture. Now the time had come to deal with him. Tan Lark Sye was helpless. No Lim Chin Siong with his unions came to the rescue, there were no protests in the newspapers, no demonstrations. We were neutering him politically. Asked to comment the next day, he had nothing to say. He had gambled and lost. He never regained his prominence.
A few days later, at a lunchtime meeting at Fullerton Square, I cleared the way for the post-election, post-merger situation: “I am giving the Plen two weeks. If he is still here, will he please get out; security is no more in my hands.” I added that it was now controlled by the central government, and I had to make his identity known to Ismail. From interrogation of communists who had fled to the neighbouring Riau Islands but later returned, Special Branch discovered years later that the Plen had already left Singapore soon after the referendum. He had remained in the Riau Islands, which were Indonesian, and from there directed his underground subordinates in Singapore through couriers. Travel by ferry or outboards between the two would have taken only two to four hours, and it was easy to escape detection because fishermen sailed to and fro all the time. So I was not exaggerating when I warned that the struggle against the MCP was not over, that they would continue to fight their enemies by fair means or foul and would prove hard and tricky to deal with. Nothing had changed – except one thing; I was no longer in charge of the police.
This point was driven home the next day when Special Branch, now under Federation orders, arrested 20 Nanyang University undergraduates, three of whom had fought unsuccessfully in the election as Barisan candidates. Students on the campus rioted, and a large crowd of them attacked the convoy taking the prisoners away. Two police vans of the riot squad were waiting outside the gates, and, using loudhailers, the police ordered the demonstrators to disperse. When they did not do so, the riot squad moved in; the students threw bottles and stones at them, injuring the two drivers.
They had not yet learnt that Special Branch now took orders from a new government in Kuala Lumpur, based on a Malay majority with no inhibitions about dealing with Chinese students. Several thousand workers from seven big SATU unions, which had already been asked to show cause why their registration should not be cancelled, were driven to a meeting at the university campus in more than 100 lorries and buses. They still acted as if big mass rallies would intimidate the government. Members of the Naval Base Labour Union went on strike, led by supporters of Sidney Woodhull, now in detention, and 500 Nanyang University students sat down on the Padang opposite City Hall while their leaders presented a six-point petition to Chin Chye, talking as if the Barisan were still poised for victory as the next government. The following day, workers in the bus companies and in the many firms with unions affiliated to SATU called a two-day general strike.
A few hours before it began, 14 SATU officials were detained, including S.T. Bani, who had won in the Crawford constituency against Kenny Byrne. A crowd of a thousand workers then tried to march to the ministry of home affairs from the Padang but were dispersed by the riot squad, and by evening, some of the unions had begun to dissociate themselves from the strike. The neutrals were taking heart. They could see no future in playing the old games. As the strike petered out, the leaders called it off.
Dr Lee Siew Choh charged that once again I was using the communist bogey to divert attention from, instead of attending to, the issues at hand. But the world had changed. Woodhull and Puthucheary were released from detention on 28 November. They announced that they were staying out of unions and politics for good. Woodhull declared, “Experience has shown me that communist activity has mucked things up for the non-communists.” As for Puthucheary, he wanted “nothing more to do with communism, to which I am opposed”. Woodhull and Puthucheary were leftists who prided themselves on being Marxists. They were not communists; indeed they would never have been accepted into the MCP. They lacked the necessary steadfastness and would have been a security risk to any cell they were part of. They were political dilettantes who enjoyed the cocktail circuit where they held forth.
Violence had also come from another direction. A few days after the election, an Indonesian saboteur had exploded two bombs within 72 hours of each other on the south coast near Katong Park. Confrontation was now a reality. But an even more ominous development was beginning.
The day after the election, the Tunku had expressed shock that Malays in Singapore who had always supported UMNO had voted for the PAP. “I think there must be a few traitors amongst the members who have brought about this change of heart of the people here,” he said. On 27 September, he came down to a rally organised by Singapore UMNO at Geylang Serai, a Malay settlement, at which he again criticised “certain Malays” (i.e., pro-PAP) who had “betrayed UMNO” in the election. “In future, I will play an important part in elections,” he said. He went on to say that the control of Singapore was not in the hands of Mr Lee or the PAP any more, but with the central government in Kuala Lumpur.
Accompanying the Tunku was Syed Ja’afar Albar, who wanted to make sure that the Malays who had been “misled” into voting for us would be made to return to the fold. In his speech, he warned me that the people could only be fooled once, and vowed that he would fix Singapore at the proper time. Local UMNO leaders began to talk in truculent terms. They felt they were the masters now. The American consul-general, Arthur H. Rosen, reported to Washington that “passions were … stirred by a violent anti-PAP speech with strong racist overtones by Ja’afar Albar”. They burnt an effigy of me before a screaming crowd.
At the time, I did not take much notice. I thought it was just post-election morale-boosting. I did not then understand the nuances of Malay talk and it took me another nine months to grasp the real implications. Little knowing that this was the prelude to a bitter campaign of hate, which would come to a head in Malay-Chinese riots, I had blithely told the crowd at a rally in Fullerton Square that time would heal hurt feelings. I had had to say some harsh things before and during the election, but my task now was to reestablish good relations and mutual confidence with Kuala Lumpur. I was sure Singapore would then hum with industrial activity and be the prosperous hub of Malaysia. I promised that the government would cooperate with the centre on a fair and equal basis, not as servant with master.
I was still talking in terms of UMNO and the PAP fighting our common enemies, the MCP with their united front supporters and Sukarno’s Indonesia, which was under communist influence. I did not know that the Tunku’s lieutenants, like Albar, thought differently. They left the British to protect them from the Indonesians. For them, it was more important to deal with the enemy within – the PAP, which, unless stopped in its tracks, would start to win over Malays from the kampongs in Malaya itself.
Speaking at City Hall on 29 September, I had said, “We understand that for the next two decades the prime minister of Malaysia must be a Malay. There are 43 per cent Malays, an indigenous people, 41 per cent Chinese, 10 per cent Indians and 6 per cent others. We are not out to capture power in Kuala Lumpur. We want to cooperate and work in the common interest of Malaysia.” But I referred to the MCA leaders Khaw Kai Boh and Tan Siew Sin dismissively, and the Tunku disapproved of this. The next day, he responded by saying that although the MCA represented the Chinese community, they had not lost sight of national interests, and their ability to care for both at the same time had contributed much towards the success of the Alliance at elections; UMNO, the MCA and the MIC must stand together. He was signalling that he was not willing to give up his Alliance partners. I did not understand until nearly a year later that if the PAP wanted to join the Alliance as part of a coalition it must accept the role of an MCA, and bring the Chinese around to cooperating in the national interest to further UMNO’s programme, which basically was to help the Malays.
Geofroy Tory’s assessment of these political trends in the new Federation was succinctly summarised in his report of 5 October 1963 to Duncan Sandys:
“But the position of the Alliance in the long term is certainly not unshakeable. Mr Lee Kuan Yew has shown in the recent Singapore elections that he is able to unite all the non-communists of Singapore, including the Malays, in a common front at the Alliance’s expense. (However,) much of his success must be ascribed to his performance as a defender of Singapore’s interests against Malaya; and it is unlikely, therefore, to bring him much credit elsewhere in the Federation.
“On the other hand, if the tale of communal grievances against the more extreme policies of UMNO becomes too long, and if for this and other reasons the Chinese wing of the Alliance weakens still further, a serious communal Chinese opposition based on the Malayan West Coast, but with assistance from the other Malaysian opposition parties, could begin to develop. Once seriously alarmed, the Malays would certainly not be prevented by constitutional forms from protecting their position, even if the cost were the bitter one of exchanging their present relatively enlightened and moderate form of parliamentary democracy for some kind of more closely guided democracy.”
Geofroy Tory was prescient. He more or less predicted what was to happen in 1965, when the Malaysian Solidarity Convention would bring the opposition parties together.
In early October, Choo and I drove up to the Cameron Highlands for a two-week break. The mountain air and the relative isolation helped me to think out our position under the new dispensation. For the next fortnight, I played golf, often alone. Walking around the nine-hole course with Choo, my half bag of clubs carried by an aborigine boy, I pondered over the problems that would now have to be tackled. We faced danger from Indonesia, but we had contained the communists for the time being. They were dazed, keeping their heads down, taking stock of their vulnerability in a new situation. They knew Kuala Lumpur was out to crush them.
We too had to adjust to a central government that openly stood for Malay interests. This we could only accommodate if the Chinese, Indians and others were given enough space. Nevertheless, when I had seen the Tunku in Kuala Lumpur five days before, I had left him in a good mood, and some questions seemed to have been settled amicably, despite all that had happened. He had spoken of closing the Bank of China and the Bank Negara Indonesia (National Bank of Indonesia) in Singapore, but added that he had not taken any firm decision and wanted to discuss the matter again. I was able to tell the press that he had promised to allow them to stay open provided they were not staffed by senior government officials from China or Indonesia.
After my return to Singapore on 14 October, I met Philip Moore and told him I had proposed that we should appoint a Malay as one of our two senators in the federal parliament. The Tunku had been pleased and had suggested the UMNO leader in Singapore, Ahmad Haji Taff. I had agreed. The other senator was to be Ko Teck Kin.
The Tunku had also wanted us to close our trade commission in Jakarta, and although I was unenthusiastic, we recalled the commissioner, leaving a junior officer in charge. Moore himself was worried that we were having secret discussions with the Indonesians in Singapore to find a way to lift the embargo they had announced. I assured him that discussions had taken place only between our traders and their officials, not with Singapore government officers. I added that I was happy with the way things had worked out with Ismail. Kuala Lumpur’s security action in Singapore had gone off well. Ismail had phoned to tell me of the planned arrest of the SATU union leaders, and asked me to confirm that this would have the support of the Singapore government. I gave him that assurance. We had then exchanged letters, which kept me in the picture on the internal security situation; my regular Saturday morning meetings with the police and Special Branch were to continue.
It was a period of deceptive calm. The new Legislative Assembly was sworn in on 22 October and the first bill passed was for elections to the House of Representatives in Kuala Lumpur. It was carried on a voice vote and we named 12 PAP and three Barisan assemblymen. As I was leaving for the opening session on 3 November, I described the PAP’s role in the federal parliament as that of a “‘cross-bencher’ – friend, loyal opposition and critic, not like the Barisan or the Malayan Socialist Front, which were destructive and disloyal”. While in Kuala Lumpur, I agreed with the Tunku that we should receive an official visit by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, the king of Malaysia, and when he came, he was welcomed with pomp and ceremony. The Tunku was a great upholder of the mystique of royalty.
I myself was not entirely happy with my time in the federal capital. The Tunku was too busy to have any effective discussion with me on our relationship, and meanwhile, there was renewed discord. In reporting a thinly veiled attack on me by Albar, the Malay press had lashed out at Alex Josey for writing an article in which he had represented me as the leader of the four million Chinese in Malaysia. This had given particular offence. Razak had also taken me to task for describing the PAP as cross-benchers, friendly but critical – how could we be both?
In response to Razak’s objection to my idea of the PAP as cross-benchers, I had asked the Tunku where our MPs should sit in the House. He proposed that some of the 12 PAP MPs sit on the government side and some with the opposition. We were in an equivocal position. On my return to Singapore, I told Moore that our relationship with the Tunku and UMNO would have to be settled one way or another within two or three years of the coming federal election. The Tunku would have to decide either to drop the MCA and work with the PAP, or fight the PAP for control of the towns of Malaya.
Not that we were forgetting the countryside. On 21 December, I spoke for the first time in the House of Representatives during a debate on Tan Siew Sin’s budget. I criticised it for its lack of a broader sweep of the Federation’s problems. It was good for big business, which was centred in the towns, but would not benefit the have-nots outside them. I stressed the need to bring prosperity to the rural areas where the bulk of Malays lived as farmers. The opposition leaders in Malaya had not talked in these terms before; we had brought our Fabian thinking to bear on Malaysian problems and believed that this was the solution.
Moore reported to London that Keng Swee, who had previously been doubtful about our prospects in Malaya, was now convinced that within a year or so, the PAP would rout both the Socialist Front and the MCA. With Singapore now a part of Malaysia, Moore’s reports were sent through the new UK high commissioner in Kuala Lumpur, Viscount Head, who had replaced Geofroy Tory. Antony Head had a totally different cast of mind from his predecessor. He was a political heavyweight. A Sandhurst cadet, he was awarded a Military Cross in World War II and was a brigadier when he entered the House of Commons in 1945. He became minister of defence in Anthony Eden’s cabinet at the time of the Suez invasion, resigning when it failed. He was elevated as viscount to the House of Lords. His wife Dorothy was a great character, thoroughly undiplomatic and openly interested in politics. Head had been British high commissioner in Nigeria for three years and she was a great lover of the birds of Africa. Some of the most glorious and exotic of them, including golden-crested cranes, would wander all over the grounds and into the drawing rooms of Carcosa, their official residence in Kuala Lumpur, to leave their droppings on the beautiful chintz-covered cushions. Neither of them batted an eyelid. They would just wipe up the mess with some paper and continue the conversation. I liked both of them and we got on. Whenever I was in Kuala Lumpur, I would have lunch or dinner with him and his wonderfully eccentric wife.
Head had an understanding of the ups and downs of peoples and nations. He thought things through. While the British were resolutely holding the line against Sukarno’s now ceaseless incursions into Borneo, he cautioned me that British and Malaysians must both conduct operations in such a way that when all this was over, we would be able to live together peacefully with the Indonesians, that if we rubbed their noses in the dirt, it would make future relations more difficult. British restraint dragged out the conflict, but it did make the subsequent reconciliation easier. When Sukarno had been removed from power in 1965, General Suharto, then the de facto ruler, sent emissaries to Kuala Lumpur and Singapore to establish contact and begin to restore our confidence in Indonesia. Head had wisdom, that rare quality of learning from one’s mistakes and, better still, from the mistakes of others. He also understood the Tunku and the hierarchical structure of Malay society. It was not unlike what he had found in northern Nigeria.
It was fortunate for me that the British prime minister had decided to send a top-ranking politician from the establishment to Kuala Lumpur instead of a professional diplomat like Tory. The history of Malaysia and Singapore would have been very different otherwise. Head brought to bear his varied experience, including what he had seen of the problems in Nigeria. He knew too well the difficulties in the evolution from colonial rule to self-government and nationhood. In the two years before August 1965, I would have much to do with him. His assessments and reports to London made an enormous difference to the outcome of the tussle between the Tunku and his Ultras on one side, and my colleagues and me on the other. The Ultras pressed for a completely Malay-dominated Malaysia. We in Singapore – especially those born in or deeply attached to Malaya like Chin Chye, Pang Boon and Raja – were determined to establish a multiracial Malaysian Malaysia. This was the heart of the matter.