The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (36 page)

Without a man like Pang Boon, I would have had no overview of party activities. Inevitably, the branches reflected the mood of Middle Road, where Lim Chin Siong and Devan Nair were pressing us to take a stand against the increasingly clear-cut anti-communist policies of the Tunku’s government in Kuala Lumpur, which gave no opportunity for the MCP to operate constitutionally. I therefore issued a PAP statement attacking the Alliance government in the Federation. It was a momentous decision. For the first time, we were touching upon sensitive issues in Malaya.

We argued that the Tunku’s policies would “put race against race and class against class”, that the building up of a force of 500,000 to intensify the fight against the communists would make it “clear that the army and gendarmerie will be predominantly if not wholly Malay and that these Malay forces will be used to police predominantly Chinese quarters and workers”. The dangers of racial friction and conflict between Malays and
Chinese were already present. The anti-communist stand would also pit the workers of all races against “European, Chinese and Indian employers backed by Malay feudalists in the Federation government”. It was “concealed colonial control because after the Tunku’s taking over defence and internal security and finance, the British have successfully hidden themselves behind the Alliance ministers”, exercising real power through their armed forces and the chief secretary’s control of police and administration.

The following day, the Tunku hit back. He made it clear that he would have no truck with the communists or the PAP. It was not his policy to look for “spurious popularity” through facile appeals to anti-British sentiments. “My determination is to see our government function free from interference from subversive elements. I am therefore resolute in my determination to maintain law and order in this country,” he said. But the most meaningful response came from Tan Siew Sin, later finance minister, then publicity chief of the MCA: “Tunku Abdul Rahman also realises the indiscriminate use of Malay forces in the prosecution of the Emergency may lead to racial conflict, especially as such forces will probably be deployed in rural areas where the population is predominantly Chinese …” As the Tunku’s Chinese partner, he was alive to the danger to himself and to Malaya if there were a communal bloodbath.

The PAP had touched a raw nerve, but there was no way of avoiding this open clash. We were in a united front with the communists and the Tunku was going to carry out exactly the same policies as the British in suppressing them, using British methods but this time backed by Malay nationalism. I did not understand the strategy of Lim Chin Siong’s superiors. They must have known that a purge was coming and their key operators would be swept up. Yet they had taken a more conspicuous position in the PAP, and were pressing the non-communists to adopt a hostile stance against the Tunku, which would only increase the chances of a crackdown. I concluded that the MCP leaders in charge of Lim Chin
Siong and Fong Swee Suan were uncertain what course Lim Yew Hock would take, and had decided to use them to test the ground. For their purposes, the two open-front leaders were expendable. Their key cadres they kept under cover, and their main battleground was not Singapore but Malaya, where the Tunku and his mass base of Malay supporters were their major adversary. If what they wanted in Singapore was a safe haven where they could build up their strength for the fight across the Causeway, their provocative policy did not make sense. My immediate concern was to discover what action Lim Yew Hock and his backroom boys in Special Branch and the chief secretary’s office were planning – as he put it on 6 September in the Assembly – “in the best interest of Singapore”.

I did not have long to wait before the government moved. On 19 September, it dissolved the pro-communist Singapore Women’s Federation and Chinese Brass Gong Musical Society and detained six CUF leaders, including the president of the Singapore Factory and Shop Workers’ Union (SFSWU) and three prominent militants connected with the Chinese middle schools – a dean of studies, a dean of discipline (sic), and the chairman of the Singapore Chinese Primary School Teachers’ Association, one of whom was to be banished to China. Lim Yew Hock told the
Straits Times
, “We have decided on strong action to counter the growing menace of communist front organisations. We have decided to check the ‘covert penetration’ of reputable associations by the communists and their sympathisers.” In a statement, I declared, “the sudden and arbitrary action gives rise to the gravest concern. We are investigating the matter.” Lim Chin Siong and Fong were dissatisfied with the lack of outrage and passion in my statement. They wanted condemnation and opposition by all possible means, but I was not forthcoming.

On 24 September, the government deregistered the Singapore Chinese Middle School Students’ Union (SCMSSU) and 5,000 students took over
their schools in protest. Masked sentries appeared at their gates, covering their faces with handkerchiefs every time police radio patrol cars cruised by, telling parents who called to collect their children to go home and return with food and clothing for them instead. The press reported that the teachers were “helpless”, and one principal, himself a fellow travelling Chinese chauvinist, described the students as “uncontrollable”. But when Chew Swee Kee, as minister for education, told them they would have to face the consequences if they did not resume their classes in an orderly manner, some decided to go home. Wisely, for this time the government left no doubt that it meant to sweep the board, and Lim Chin Siong and Fong themselves could not have misread the signals as anything other than the end of one phase in their united front offensive.

The next day, four organisations connected with the Chinese schools were banned, including the Singapore Chinese Primary School Teachers’ Association and the Singapore Chinese School Parents’ Association. One week later, the police arrested Robert Soon Loh Boon, who was chairman of the banned students’ union, and on the same day picked up a paid secretary of the SCMSSU, who was also the first member of the PAP executive to be detained by the government.

At a meeting of the Legislative Assembly on 2 October, I moved to censure the government for the arrests and banishments. It was pro forma. The motion was defeated. I knew Lim Yew Hock had to proceed with the clean-up. He could not waver the way Marshall had without coming to grief. Accordingly, Chew took the offensive. He hit out at parents and others who condoned the student disorders. Two high school teachers were sacked and nine more given warnings, including a principal and a school supervisor. Two boys and one girl were arrested, and one of the boys banished as he had not been born in Singapore. Chew also handed the schools a list of 142 students to be expelled. Meanwhile, 742 others came forward to back the government’s campaign to wipe out subversives.

A standard protest camp-in followed on the night of 10–11 October, supported by the SFSWU, and with the writing on the wall, the pro-communists went all out to extract the maximum political price from Lim Yew Hock for the break-up of the CUF. They worked hard to involve the masses emotionally with leaders whom they expected to be arrested and with the organisations they expected to be banned, persuading them to feel personally harmed and dispossessed. To broaden the campaign of agitation, Lim Chin Siong and Nair had got Jamit Singh to call a meeting of a “Civil Rights Convention” of 95 trade unions on 28 September, at which 700 delegates claimed to represent 200,000 members. Nair was elected chairman, and their aim was to rouse the people against the British and their “shameless colonial stooge” Lim Yew Hock, who had had the audacity to ban several CUF organisations that week. But it was the usual collection of pro-communists, the same coterie of old united front supporters.

Undeterred, the government kept up the pressure. On 10 October, the police arrested four student leaders of the deregistered SCMSSU, and three days later, shut down the Chinese High School and Chung Cheng High School. Then, on 16 October, the government opened emergency schools for 400 students to continue their studies, and more joined the scheme in the days that followed. A week later, a delegation representing what it called the Singapore Freedom-Loving Students of Chinese Middle Schools presented Lim Yew Hock with a red banner, and the next day the chief minister himself made a radio broadcast giving an ultimatum to the defiant students still camping in the two schools to clear out by 8 pm the following day.

That evening, 24 October, the PAP held a rally on an open field at the Beauty World amusement park along Bukit Timah Road to protest peacefully against the arrests, with Lim Chin Siong, Nair, Chin Chye and myself on the same platform. But when the meeting dispersed, Lim Chin Siong’s union supporters piled into a fleet of lorries and headed for the
Chinese High School two miles down the road. As I drove home later, I saw that the gates of the school were swarming with police and hundreds of parents and relatives were milling around them, their cars parked along the road. The communists wanted the largest possible audience for the showdown, timed for that night. I had a feeling it was going to be a nasty and bloody business. Everybody expected broken heads and broken bones. Yet when I passed the nearby University of Malaya hostels, some students were gleefully blowing football referee whistles, excited at the prospect of the fun and games soon to begin. I cursed the idiocy, ignorance and naivety of those English-educated students. They did not know what a dangerous position they were in. If the faceless men behind the Chinese middle schools won, they would be the first to be brainwashed and become the new dispossessed.

As it happened, the rioting began outside the Chung Cheng High School in Goodman Road, where a mob of four to five hundred clashed with the police and attacked the Tanjong Katong Post Office and Geylang Police Station. Then the restless crowd of more than 4,000 outside the Chinese High School became violent, overturning three police cars and setting two others alight. When the police charged and dispersed them with tear gas, they scattered, but the rioting spread downtown to Rochor Road and other parts of Singapore. At midnight, the government imposed a curfew.

At dawn the next day, the police gave the students ten minutes in which to leave the schools with their parents; when they failed to do so, the police moved in, breaking down the barricades and lobbing tear gas at those manning them. At Chung Cheng High School parents had linked arms to protect their sons and daughters, but now they panicked, some jumping into the school pond and others fleeing. When the students tried to march into the city, they were stopped by roadblocks. Rioting continued throughout that day and night, and Middle Road bus and factory workers went on strike. However, with tight police and military control at key junctions and helicopters overhead fitted with loudspeakers to intimidate the mob, the situation never got out of hand.

A car set on fire by rioters during communist-instigated clashes in October 1956.

The police and the military had been fully prepared and there was close coordination between them. Helicopters and armoured cars had taken up positions before daybreak. Military roadblocks were in place and mobile riot squads on the alert. There was no real threat to security. But the riots, arson and bloodshed had given the government reason to arrest and detain all their main targets within the next 24 hours, a total of 219 persons that included leaders of the Middle Road group – Lim Chin Siong and Fong, and among the English-educated, Nair, Woodhull and Puthucheary.

The riots left 13 dead, 123 injured, 70 cars burnt or battered, two schools razed, and two police stations damaged. The police arrested 1,000 people, including 256 secret society gangsters. The next evening, Lim Yew Hock made a special radio broadcast in which he declared, “We are liberating trade unionists, farmers, teachers and Chinese associations from a form of political exploitation.” The
Straits Times
carried it under the headline “Operation Liberation”.

The new chief minister had put himself in a no-win position. I had believed from the start that the government had been making a strategic mistake in focusing action on the middle schools, especially the Chinese High School and Chung Cheng High School. These two were the Eton and Harrow of the Chinese-speaking world in Singapore and Malaya, and parents throughout Southeast Asia aspired to send their children to them as boarders if they could afford it. Why had Special Branch acted as they did? By concentrating their preliminary actions and therefore the limelight on the students, they had led people to believe that Lim Yew Hock was attacking the entire Chinese education system. That perception was disastrous for him.