The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (38 page)

There was no attempt to disguise the unpalatable fact that this was not independence, and that sovereignty remained with the British. As I was to point out later, that meant they would be able to revoke the constitution at will, and there would be sufficient British military forces in the country to make any such revocation possible. The debate was plain sailing, especially as David Marshall was absent in Borneo on legal business. The Tunku had told Lim Yew Hock that he was willing to have a representative sit on a proposed tripartite Internal Security Council; and Lennox-Boyd was now willing to accept this, subject to a careful definition of what the council could and could not do.

However, Lim Yew Hock had been unwise in committing himself to early polls in August 1957. Only after careful preparations should the dice be thrown again in a general election, especially since this time round the stakes would be higher. The all-party committee had agreed that under the new constitution there should be a multilingual Assembly;
there should also be a new citizenship law that would enfranchise between 200,000 and 300,000 people, most of them Chinese who had resided in Singapore for at least eight out of the past ten years. Speaking in the Assembly on 5 May, I made the PAP position clear: this law must be passed and the new citizens eligible to vote and stand as candidates before general elections were held, even though the process would take at least one year, and possibly a further three months.

After Marshall’s experience with a 13-member delegation, Lim Yew Hock reduced his to five – two from the Labour Front, one from UMNO, one from the Liberal Socialists, and myself representing the PAP. This was a nuts-and-bolts conference. The proposed constitution provided for a Legislative Assembly of 51 elected members from whom the prime minister and the other ministers would be chosen. The Assembly would have jurisdiction over all matters except foreign affairs and defence, but where internal security and defence overlapped, the power would reside in an Internal Security Council. This would consist of three British members, one of whom would be the chairman; three Singapore members, one of whom would be the prime minister; and one representative from the Federation of Malaya. Singapore would have a head of state called the Yang di-Pertuan Negara, instead of a British governor.

Lim Yew Hock left the drafting of the proposed constitution to Walter Raeburn QC, but I had to read the documents to make sure that if and when the PAP formed the government, we would be able to work it. There was only one contentious issue. At the 15th plenary session, Lennox-Boyd said that Her Majesty’s Government would not allow Singapore to come under communist domination, and that he felt sure the Singapore delegation did not want this to happen anyway. He had therefore introduced a non-negotiable provision to bar all persons known to have indulged in or been charged with subversive activities from running as candidates in the first election to be held under the new constitution. I objected to this, saying that “the condition is disturbing
both because it is a departure from democratic practice and because there is no guarantee that the government in power will not use this procedure to prevent not only communist but also democratic opponents of their policy from standing for election”.

I was speaking for the record. In fact, Lim Yew Hock had quietly raised this matter with me back in Singapore after he had seen Lennox-Boyd in London in December, and Lennox-Boyd had already invited me to have tea with him alone at his home in Eaton Square to discuss it. After some social pleasantries, he asked me what would happen if my comrades who were in prison, like Lim Chin Siong, were to stand for the next election. I said he would win and his opponents in Bukit Timah constituency would lose their deposits. He expressed surprise.

“In this country,” he said, “when we arrest a person under Regulation 18D (the equivalent in wartime Britain of our Emergency Regulations) he is distrusted by the electorate. Oswald Mosley – leader of the pro-Nazi British Fascist party – had been a member of parliament. After he was arrested and detained, he never won a seat.”

I looked at him sadly and said, “In your country, such people are considered traitors, collaborating with the enemy. In Singapore, when you are locked up by a government with a British governor and a British chief secretary in charge, you become a martyr, a champion of the people. Your popularity increases.”

“Would you agree if I imposed this provision, that they be excluded from the first election to give the first elected government under the full internal self-government constitution a cleaner slate to start with?” he asked.

“I will have to denounce it. You will have to take responsibility for it,” I answered.

“My shoulders are broad enough,” he said.

Indeed they were, physically and metaphorically. I told him I would have to protest, but emphasised that that would not necessarily be the
end of the talks – I thought to myself that Singapore’s constitutional progress could not be held hostage by Lim Chin Siong, Fong Swee Suan and the Middle Road group.

I had already had the advantage of observing Lennox-Boyd for over a month at the first conference in 1956. He was an impressive figure. Physically he was a giant of a man, over six foot six tall, broad, big and hefty. His enormous vitality showed in his voice, facial expressions and body movements. He dressed well, always with a flower in his buttonhole. He spoke with a public school accent but, in his very upper-class way, he was friendly and sociable and had a knack of putting people at ease. I respected his intellect and liked his forthrightness. At that time, the Colonial Office was under great pressure, with one colony after another demanding independence. Nevertheless, he found time to host the Singapore delegation one Sunday at Chequers, the prime minister’s country home put at his disposal. He had just bought a Polaroid camera, then quite a novelty, and enjoyed taking pictures and giving copies immediately to us. I was given one showing all of us gathered at the door of Chequers with John Profumo, who was then a junior minister, as well as himself.

So when I met him at his home that afternoon, I was confident I could speak my mind. If I had felt he was sharp in his dealings, my reply would have been guarded. As it was, I spoke candidly and he understood that I would not break up the conference because of any bar against the detainees’ standing as election candidates. What I learnt only 38 years later from documents was that Lim Yew Hock had already told the governor of Singapore that “neither he nor Lee Kuan Yew could possibly take this up themselves during the March talks”, but “neither he nor Lee Kuan Yew would demur if the secretary of state laid down this condition”, and this had been passed on to London. When Lennox-Boyd sprang the condition at the session on 10 April, therefore, it was no surprise to either Lim or me or, I suspect, to the other members of the all-party delegation whom he had also been seeing privately.

After Sunday lunch at Chequers with (facing camera) Alan Lennox-Boyd, secretary of state for the colonies, 1957. On the right is John Profumo, secretary of state for war, facing Lim Yew Hock.

After five weeks of talks, the conference concluded successfully but on a sober note. We returned home together this time, not separately as before. When we flew into Singapore at 3 pm on 14 April, we looked not jubilant but serious, in keeping with the low-key results we had obtained. The small crowd at the airport was quiet, and the press commented on the absence of shouts of “Merdeka” normal on such occasions. Lim Yew Hock emerged from the plane first, followed by the other delegates, the last of whom was an “unsmiling Mr Lee Kuan Yew who immediately went into a private conference with Dr Toh Chin Chye”, according to the
Straits Times
.

Lim held a press conference, then the delegation left for the Padang in a motorcade, with the chief minister, alone in a green convertible, leading the way. Crowds lined the streets, but they were strangely silent. About 2,000 trade unionists who waited at Merdeka Bridge over the Kallang River burst into shouts and let off crackers, and the Singapore Trade Union Congress presented the chief minister with a framed picture and a Chinese banner of congratulations. But when the cars arrived at City Hall, where the crowd was thicker than along the route, there were no signs of welcome. As we mounted the decorated platform, a few hundred students chanted “Oompah Merdeka!” for several minutes – it was not in support of the delegation, but for those who were detained in Changi Prison.

The chief minister and the other delegates made their speeches in turn, none of them inspiring. When it was my turn, I decided to speak in Malay. I said we had been able to get only
tiga suku merdeka
(three-quarters independence), but that those who believed a small country like Singapore could gain full independence by itself must be mad; the only way to it was through merger with Malaya. I was speaking to the pro-communists, and at that moment about 200 Chinese middle school students, who had arrived in buses and lorries and marched on to the Padang to take up positions right in front of the platform, began chanting
slogans for the release of Lim Chin Siong, Fong and the rest of the Middle Road detainees. They also booed from time to time, but stopped at their leaders’ signal. It was a reminder of how strong they remained on the ground despite the loss of their bosses.

In my absence, Lim Chin Joo’s unions had been putting pressure on Chin Chye to order me to take a tougher stand in London, and to demand early elections so that they could get Lim Yew Hock’s government out and their first team of leaders freed. The MCP knew that the second team was not up to the job, but was reluctant to expose its experienced undercover cadres. I was not going to oblige them, nor was Chin Chye. While I was in London, representatives of the pro-communist unions had confronted the PAP’s central executive committee in a marathon session. The encounter lasted seven hours until 3 am, everyone sitting on wooden benches with no armrests and no backs. They had three demands: rejection of the Internal Security Council, immediate independence and – most important of all – the early election that Lim Yew Hock had mistakenly promised for August 1957. Chin Chye and Pang Boon slogged it out. The pro-communists got little satisfaction. And when a left-wing cadre I had co-opted into the committee after Lim Chin Siong had been detained reiterated their grievances at the airport on 15 April, I gave him short shrift.

The unions had stayed away from the Padang rally to show their displeasure, but I was not disturbed. A new battle was looming, this time with the second team, but I felt they would be easier to deal with. Jamit Singh was advising Lim Chin Joo on how to work legally within the system, but while Jamit had a strong voice and a fierce public-speaking style, he had no strategic sense. They were flirting with Marshall. They knew he dearly wanted early elections so that he could make a comeback, and they planned to use him to force a dissolution of the Assembly. During the debate on the London conference he was raring for a fight, knowing that this time he had the young students and the pro-communist
unions on his side. He was contemptuous of a
tiga suku busok merdeka
(three-quarters rotten independence) through which we could not achieve “human dignity and independence”, and denounced the constitution as “this deformed thing we have before us”.

He then played the anti-subversion clause. “The PAP is extremely anxious to deprive its left wing of the very people whom it pretends to befriend. We kiss Devan Nair on both cheeks and wait for Lennox-Boyd to hang him from the back!” But unwisely he went on to say that banning subversives was “a normal, intelligent and reasonable precaution … Why should we not prevent from standing for elections a person who, three of our judges say, is a man who seeks to destroy the democratic way of life we seek to establish?” This was hardly calculated to please his new friends, but he never understood that they wanted him to demand early elections precisely because that would give the first team in prison a chance to win seats, either as candidates themselves or through proxies who had not been detained.

When it was my turn to speak, I stripped Marshall of his anti-colonial rhetoric, quoting his 1956 letters to Lennox-Boyd, in which he had addressed the British secretary of state as “My dear Alan” and signed himself “Yours sincerely, David”. He was an actor, but not consistent in the roles he sought to play. I was playing for keeps. So were the communists. I made it clear that the PAP would not take office if it won the election unless the detained leaders were first released. I did not say this for the benefit of Lim Chin Siong and Fong. Chin Chye, Pang Boon and I had concluded that the Chinese-speaking ground would distrust us as tricksters if we ditched our former comrades in gaol and took office without them. The accounts had first to be squared; only then could we break with them and stand a chance in the fight for hearts and minds. It was not a political gimmick. We had no choice. We understood the values and social norms of our people and we had to be seen to have acted honourably.

Marshall hit out at every single item he could find fault with and accused the PAP of double-crossing everyone at the constitutional talks. Then he shouted across the floor to me, “Sir, I wish to go back to the people of Singapore. I will go to his constituency if he will go back to his constituency, and I will challenge him there.”