The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (17 page)

At the end of June, Choo wrote that she had taken a Class I diploma. She now stood a good chance of winning the Queen’s scholarship to study in England. I was optimistic. Towards the end of July came the best news of all, a cable from Choo that she had been awarded the Queen’s scholarship. But the Colonial Office could find no place for her in any university for the academic year beginning October 1947. She would have to wait until 1948. Stirred to action, I puzzled over how to get her into Cambridge

I looked up Mr Barret, the chief clerk at Fitzwilliam. He was a tubby, competent and experienced man in his late 40s. He had seen hundreds of young students come and go. He knew that the censor liked me. I told
him of a lady friend in Singapore, very bright, who had won the top scholarship to study in England. She wanted to read law. How could she get into Cambridge in time for the Michaelmas term? With a twinkle in his eyes he said, “You know the censor knows Miss Butler, the mistress of Girton, very well. Now, if you could get him to speak to the mistress of Girton, that could make a difference.” I was excited at this possibility.

There were only two months to go before the new academic year began. I asked to see the censor. Not only did he see me, he was also willing to help. On 1 August, he wrote to Miss Butler, and for good measure to the principal of Newnham, the other women’s college in Cambridge. Both replied immediately. Newnham offered a place in 1948. Miss Butler was more positive. She was willing to offer a vacancy in October 1947 that Girton kept for special cases, provided Choo had the qualifications for admission. Thatcher wrote sending me both replies. I dashed off to the Examinations Syndicate near Silver Street along the river Cam. I gave them the year Choo had taken her Senior Cambridge – 1936. They traced her results and gave me a certified copy – she was the top student of her year.

I then wrote and asked to see Miss Butler at Girton. She was willing to see me, and I turned up at the appointed time on the morning of 6 August. I told her that my friend, Miss Kwa, was a very bright girl, brighter than I was, and that she had come top of the list, ahead of me in Raffles College on many occasions. I added that I had come up to Cambridge one term late and taken a First in my Qualifying One examination, and I had no doubt that she would do likewise. Miss Butler was a friendly, white-haired lady with glasses, somewhat plump and benign-looking. She was amused at this young Chinese boy talking in glowing terms of his lady friend being a better student than he was, and intrigued by the idea that perhaps the girl was exceptional. That same day I cabled Choo: “Girton accepts. Official correspondence following. Get cracking.”

She boarded a troopship in Singapore in late August. I was waiting impatiently at the docks when she finally arrived in Liverpool in early October, and was overjoyed to see her after a long year of separation. We went off at once to London by train and after five days there we went on to Cambridge.

By now, I had got myself organised and knew my way around. But there were new problems. Mr Pounds, the junior tutor and bursar of Fitzwilliam, had given me rooms some three miles to the south of Cambridge. I was aghast. Girton was to the north of town. I tried hard to get a room nearer to Choo but to no avail. Mr Pounds was unrelenting. I appealed to the censor. His reply was fatherly, but spiced with a touch of dry humour:

“My dear Lee,

“… You plead that it is a long way to go to see your fiancée, or your wife as apparently you hope she will become. Not really so far as you make out, especially if love supplies the motive power. I don’t know whether you read the great myths, but you will remember the gentleman who swam the Bosphorus every night to see his lady love. Going to Girton is a slight thing compared with that. Unhappily, the gentleman got drowned in the doing it (sic) one fine evening, but I doubt whether you need die of exhaustion on the road. If, however, you can find rooms near Girton, we will do our utmost to cooperate with you and get them licensed, so if you like to come up and look round, do so.

“By the way, I am not sure that Girton will appreciate you marrying the young lady so quickly, as they will very naturally and properly assume that in the first light of love there will be very little work done. But I am too old to offer advice between a man and the light of his eyes.

Yours sincerely,

W.S. Thatcher”

A week later, I found a room near Fitzwilliam at Captain Harris’ Stables. Captain Harris kept horses and foxhounds. I was his one student boarder. He charged an exorbitant price, some £9 a week just for bed and breakfast, with baths and everything else extra. I had no choice. It was convenient. I was to stay there for the next two years until I came down from Cambridge in the summer of 1949.

Now it was Choo’s turn for culture shock. She was not accustomed to the thick woollen suit she had bought with her clothing coupons, the heavy overcoat, and later the fleece-lined boots for winter. They weighed her down. And Girton was two miles from town. She could not cycle, and had to take a bus. Her sense of direction was never good. It was her time for disorientation.

After a few weeks of hectic adjustments, she told me she found me a changed man. I was no longer the cheerful, optimistic go-getter, the anything-can-be-done fellow, bubbling with
joie de vivre
. Despite the favour I had been shown, particularly the kindness of Billy Thatcher, and my happy mood during the glorious summer of 1947, I appeared to have become deeply anti-British, particularly of the colonial regime in Malaya and Singapore, which I was determined to end. One year in London and Cambridge had crystallised in me changes that had started with the Japanese capture of Singapore in 1942. I had now seen the British in their own country and I questioned their ability to govern these territories for the good of the locals. Those on the spot were not interested in the advancement of their colonies, but only in the top jobs and the high pay these could give them; at the national level they were primarily concerned with acquiring the foreign exchange that the exports of Malayan rubber and tin could earn in US dollars, to support an ailing pound sterling.

After Choo’s revelation, I began to examine myself to see how it had happened. It may have begun with my experience of the colour prejudice of the British working classes, the bus conductors and conductresses, the salesgirls and waitresses in the shops and restaurants, and the landladies
in Hampstead I encountered in my search for digs. Several times I had gone to houses listed in “rooms vacant” notices near Swiss Cottage tube station, only to be told, once they saw that I was Chinese, that the rooms had already been taken. Later, I pre-empted such problems by telling them on the phone that my name was Lee, spelt “L, double e”, but that I was Chinese. If they did not want a Chinese, they could put me off then and save me the bother of travelling to their door.

The British people I met at the upper end of the social scale – the professors and teachers, the secretaries and librarians at Cambridge and at the Middle Temple – were cultured, polite and helpful, if a little reserved. The British students were by and large well-mannered, even friendly, but always correct. But of course there was colour prejudice when it came to competition for places on sports teams, for college colours or university “blues” and “half blues”. Singaporeans and Malayans were very good at badminton, which rated a half blue, and in fact they did win some; but it was almost impossible for an Asiatic to get into the team for a major sport like cricket, rugby or, most prestigious of all, rowing.

The discrimination may not have been due entirely to colour prejudice. It was the class system – another strange phenomenon for someone coming from a young, mobile society of migrants. Even among the white students, those from the “right” public schools had the advantage. And like the rest, they coveted college colours because they would prove an asset in the future, when they could list them on their CVs. They were stepping stones to great things – anyone with a rowing blue had his career made. Similarly, being president of the Cambridge Union Society helped one to become a prospective candidate for a Labour or Conservative constituency, or to get a job in the research department of one of the parties.

There was also keen rivalry among Asiatics, mostly Indians, for election to office in the Union Society, but in their case it was difficult
to understand, since by 1947, India and Pakistan were on their way to independence. One Ceylonese student at Trinity Hall got as far as being elected secretary of the Students’ Union. I wondered how that would help him become a leader in a free Ceylon.

I was not interested in these extras. I decided to concentrate on getting my First, because that would make a difference when I went back to Singapore.

Meanwhile, Choo and I discussed our life in Britain with an eye to the future. We decided that it would be best if we got married quietly in December during the Christmas vacation, and kept it a secret. Choo’s parents would have been most upset had they been asked; Girton College might not have approved, as the censor had reminded me in his letter; and the Queen’s scholarship authorities might have raised difficulties. We were already mature, in our mid-20s, and we had made up our minds. Unaware of our true motive, a friend who came from that part of England recommended an inn at Stratford-on-Avon as a place to spend Christmas and to visit the renowned Shakespeare theatre. Once we arrived, we notified the local Registrar of Marriages of our intention, and after two weeks of residence were duly married. On the way to Stratford-on-Avon we had stopped in London, where I bought Choo a platinum wedding ring from a jeweller in Regent Street. But when we went back to Cambridge, she wore the ring on a chain around her neck.

Despite this change in our lives, we worked systematically and hard at our studies. I wanted to make sure that I kept up the standard I had set for Tripos I. But Choo had a difficult time coping with a second-year course. The examinations came around again in May 1948, and in June the results were posted at the Senate House. I had made my Class I on the Tripos I honours list. Choo was placed in Class II in Law Qualifying Two. She was disappointed. But it was not a Tripos and did not really count. I consoled her, and we decided to take a two-week holiday on the
Continent. Avoiding tour groups, we arranged to spend five days in Paris, then a week in Switzerland.

One particular incident in Lugano has stuck in my mind to this day. The hotel receptionist looked at me and asked whether I was Chinese.

I said, “Yes, but from Singapore.”

He said, “Ah, Chiang Kai-shek.”

He did not know the difference. I was not very proud of Chiang Kai-shek. He was being chased out of mainland China by the People’s Liberation Army. But I had grown to expect this stereotyping of me as a Chinaman by Europeans. We still had the best holiday of our lives, sightseeing, walking, eating, and drinking beer, wine and champagne.

In October, we were back in Cambridge for our final year. We attended lectures, wrote essays and assignments for supervisors, and read in the library or in my room at Captain Harris’ Stables. But life was not all work. At weekends and on some evenings I would cycle to Girton, and Choo would cook Singapore dishes on the one gas ring in the gyp wing. I would invite Yong Pung How and Eddie Barker, also a Queen’s scholar from Raffles College and reading law. Sometimes, my whole week’s ration of meat went into a curry, or Choo would make marvellous fried
kway teow
, using fettucine, chicken in place of pork, and paprika in place of chillies.

By now, we were well-adjusted and had established good contacts. I had arranged to be taught by some of the best law supervisors in Cambridge. They were fellows of Trinity Hall, then the leading law college, but after I was placed in Class I at the end of my first year, I was able to persuade them to supervise me although I was at Fitzwilliam. My best supervisor was Trevor Thomas. He had a crisp, clear, methodical mind.

I also became friends with a few British students. Some were activists in the Cambridge University Labour Club who later stood as Labour Party candidates in the 1950 general election; others went on to different branches of the law and became distinguished professors in international
law, comparative law and industrial law. They were a bright bunch and good company.

In February 1949, I represented Cambridge in a moot (formal disputation) at Oxford before a Justice Sellers. The other student lawyers did not seem to grasp the niggling point of law at issue, and once I grappled with it, Sellers’ face lit up. When he delivered judgement, he complimented me. But I did not participate in any Cambridge Union Society debate. I did not think it wise to speak my mind before I had settled with my friends the line we must take when we got back to Singapore.

However, when I was in London I went to the House of Commons on several occasions to listen to the speeches. Some of the Labour MPs were friendly towards colonial students (unlike the Conservatives, who frowned on their desire for freedom). Fenner Brockway, the member for Eton and Slough, would meet me in the Great Hall at Westminster to give me my ticket for the Strangers’ Gallery. Stanley Awbery (later Lord Awbery) was like Fenner Brockway, a supporter of colonial underdogs. Labour had some notable speakers. I remember, on my first visit in 1947, watching Stafford Cripps cut strips off the Conservative shadow colonial secretary as if with a rapier. He had a brilliant mind.