The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (39 page)

I responded immediately, “Accepted.”

The Speaker, not a political animal, ruled this as irrelevant. Unwittingly, he was going to let Marshall off the hook. I was not going to allow that. When Marshall appeared cocky and confident, I guessed he had been assured by Jamit Singh and Lim Chin Joo of their support against the PAP. But we had decided to assert our independence, to defend our party stand, and to defy the second team of CUF leaders who were working through him. He was astounded by my prompt acceptance of his challenge, one he had recklessly tossed out without their prior agreement. He did not know I had seen through his bouncy aggressiveness.

When the House adjourned at 4 pm, I immediately called a press conference at which I announced I would send in my resignation at the end of the present session of the Assembly, and that I expected the by-election to be held within five weeks. I disclosed that, at a central executive committee meeting the previous afternoon, the PAP had already decided to challenge Marshall because we knew the line he would take. Now he had stolen our thunder, but we would still oblige him. “It is a clear-cut issue of whether the people of Singapore are prepared to accept the constitution and reject the clause on subversion or would prefer to accept the clause and reject the constitution.” The first was our position, the second was Marshall’s, and I made doubly sure that he was pinned down to it, since I knew it must be anathema to the communists.

The next day, 27 April, I announced, “Mr Speaker, sir, at the end of this motion when the votes have been taken, I shall tender my resignation as Member for Tanjong Pagar. I shall be standing in the Tanjong Pagar by-election as the PAP candidate.”

My father bringing voters to the polls during the 1957 Tanjong Pagar by-election, in his Morris Minor, the car I drove to meet the Plen.

Less than 48 hours later, after the morning sitting of the Assembly, an ashen-faced Marshall announced he was quitting politics “permanently”. He told reporters he would not contest the by-election because he feared “there might be trouble if it were fought on the colonial constitutional issue. I do not want to take the consequences of this dishonest game. Now there is such unanimity the people of Singapore should have the constitution in peace if they want it … I shall resign after the present sitting.”

I riposted, “As far as the PAP is concerned, the by-election position is unchanged. I shall resign at the end of this debate on a new constitution.”

Lim Chin Joo and the unions were taken aback. One of them issued a statement addressed to Marshall: “Your continued attacks on the PAP has caused great pain to Mr Lee Kuan Yew, officials and supporters of the party.” The union asked Marshall to refrain from fighting me in the Tanjong Pagar ward, and to fight the Liberal Socialist leader C.C. Tan in his own Cairnhill division instead. Lim Chin Joo was taking no chances. The communists did not want Marshall to retire, nor did they want either of us to knock out the other. They wanted both of us in the Assembly, with Marshall baiting, provoking and forcing me into a position more favourable to their cause. With Marshall out of the arena, they would have no prod to use on me; but with me out of the arena, they would be left with an unstable Marshall. He realised, in the 48 hours between his challenge and his retirement, that this time he would not have left-wing support. He knew that if he did not fight me, he would be humiliated but that on his own he would suffer a devastating defeat. He decided to withdraw altogether.

Nominations for the by-election were on 18 May 1957. Two candidates stood against me, a Liberal Socialist and an independent. The non-communists in the central executive committee of the PAP were determined to make this a test of our strength. We wanted to know how much
ground support we could hold in Tanjong Pagar on our own, without the communists or even against them. When the Chinese middle school students offered to canvass for me, Pang Boon turned them down. Lim Chin Joo’s unions decided to blur the issue by urging their members to vote for me, but Chin Chye made it clear that we did not need them. If they wanted to support us, it was their business. We wanted to fight and win on our own. And on 29 June, we did – with 67.5 per cent of the votes. We had defended our policy, and got it solidly endorsed. I said, “We got a higher percentage of votes in 1955 because we might have been all things to all men; now all men and all women know exactly what we stand for and a decisive majority voted for us.”

What was ominous for Lim Yew Hock was the result of the by-election in Cairnhill for the seat Marshall had vacated. The Labour Front candidate not only lost to the Liberal Socialists but polled even fewer votes than the third contender, a former Labour Front member who was standing as an independent. That did not augur well for the chief minister.

16. Flushing Out the Communists

After the PAP won the Tanjong Pagar by-election, Chin Chye, Pang Boon and I decided to tighten constitutional control of the party so that the left wing could not capture it and use us. For instead of accepting the setback and working within the changed situation until conditions became more favourable to his side, Lim Chin Joo had decided to make a bid to take over the party himself. One of the branch secretaries told Pang Boon that the pro-communists were planning to capture eight of the 12 seats on the central executive committee.

This was adventurism, or what Marxist-Leninists would call “left-wing infantilism”. The pro-communists wanted to demonstrate their revolutionary resolve, not realising that they needed the respectability of the PAP more than we needed their mass support. In the minds of the people, the PAP was already established as a consistent, radical, pro-workers’ party. If we did not misplay our hand, we would always have their general goodwill and support because of the good work we had done so far. Rather than lose control of the PAP and have to start all over again, we were prepared to see the pro-communists abandon us and form another party using David Marshall as cover. Marshall’s retirement from politics was brief; he was shortly to launch a new party, the Workers’ Party. We knew that with him as leader, they would have enormous problems. He was erratic and temperamental. He did not have the political skills to keep the balance between constitutional and non-constitutional methods, and would soon get their new party proscribed.

Keng Swee, Kenny, Raja, Chin Chye, Pang Boon and I discussed this and decided to leak a story to the
Straits Times
that at the coming
conference in August we intended to pass a series of resolutions that would effectively reorganise the PAP and make it stand clearly for “an independent, democratic, non-communist, socialist Malaya”. To implement this policy, we would put ourselves up as a block of eight candidates, leaving only four seats for open voting. This was our ultimatum – we were ready to fight the pro-communists and have them leave the party. The
Straits Times
played up the story. But the pro-communists had every intention of capturing the PAP because, they knew Marshall was not a viable alternative. He might be useful for sporadic action on the flanks of the party to keep it on their track, but he would not be stable enough for the long term. It was, moreover, absurdly easy for them to organise their raid on the central executive committee. We were still innocents at the game, no match for their low cunning.

It was the practice of union members who joined the PAP not to give their home addresses but those of their unions, and we were simple-minded enough to send their admission cards there. As a result, hundreds, if not thousands, of these cards ended up at Middle Road, then the headquarters of the Singapore General Employees’ Union (SGEU) and several other unions and associations, to be used as their leaders saw fit. At the party conference on Sunday, 4 August, therefore, their supporters outnumbered ours, and the vote was split 50–50, the non-communists taking six seats and the pro-communists six.

We were faced with a dilemma. To take over the party would put us in a quandary, for we would not have enough votes to implement our policy. Not to take over would mean losing control to the communists and having the party reorganised further to our disadvantage. I calculated that Lim Yew Hock was unlikely to leave these people in charge for long, certainly not until the next general election, but that would still allow the CUF time to rebuild its strength in the unions and the party. After some discussion, I issued a statement signed by all six of us, the non-communists:

“Because three of the eight retiring members were not re-elected (there was one non-communist newcomer), we do not consider that we have the moral right to assume the offices of chairman, secretary and treasurer and their deputies.”

The pro-communists were nonplussed. They had not thought their tactics through. They had expected us to continue to front for them on the central executive committee, especially if they left us in nominal charge, holding the key positions of chairman, secretary and treasurer. But we decided to leave them in charge so that any pro-communist act they committed would be entirely on their own account. I felt certain Lim Yew Hock would never allow them to become a threat to him, but would move against them even if they had Marshall as a cover. So we were happy to let them take over all the top positions. They were not. They pleaded with us to have Chin Chye continue as chairman and myself as secretary-general, and to reassure us, they offered to let us co-opt two members to the committee while they co-opted only one, giving us a tactical majority. When we refused, they became nervous, acutely aware of their vulnerability without us as front men. After some hesitation, they filled the key offices with Tan Chong Kin as chairman and T.T. Rajah, a lawyer and a left-wing poseur, as secretary-general. I gave them six months to a year before they got into trouble. I was wrong.

Lim Chin Joo had other far-reaching plans. Jamit Singh and his working committee had opened discussions with the Singapore Trade Union Congress (STUC) to negotiate a merger with the SGEU and its affiliates at Middle Road. This could only lead to the pro-communists absorbing Lim Yew Hock’s own mass base in the trade union movement. With his STUC in imminent danger, he decided to act. On the night of 22 August, Special Branch arrested and detained 35 people – Lim Chin Joo and 12 other trade unionists, four journalists and 18 members of the PAP, including all the pro-communists on the central executive committee except T.T. Rajah. They had been in office for only 10 days. Rajah
became sick with fear and worry, and on 3 September, precipitately resigned. Whatever else the second team of CUF leaders had lacked, it was not ambition. They had wanted no less than a united front of the PAP, the Labour Front, and Marshall’s projected Workers’ Party, plus a merger that would have given them overall control of the trade unions. Instead, they received a lesson on the folly of left-wing adventurism.

By moving so swiftly after the pro-communists had taken over the party, Lim Yew Hock had put us in the dirt. We appeared to have betrayed the pro-communists by openly dissociating ourselves from their actions and leaving them fatally exposed. On 23 August, the government issued a white paper with a section on “communist penetration of the PAP”. To clear ourselves of the smear that we were involved in these arrests, I proposed a motion in the Assembly, on 12 September, deploring its inaccuracies. I pointed out that the chief minister had suppressed the most important factor that had made him move, namely that his own STUC, his mass base, was on the point of being captured by Lim Chin Joo. He had not acted as a political favour to the PAP but to save his own position at a time calculated to cause us the maximum political embarrassment.