The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (54 page)

Three days before polling, I said that whether the North Borneo states were coming in or not, “we must strive for a merger between Singapore and the Federation under two requisite conditions – freedom in our education and labour policies”. I knew that unless we excluded these from federal control, we could never get a majority in Singapore to support us. Malaya’s education policy was being implemented against the protests of Chinese schools and Chinese chamber of commerce committees in the peninsula because they would have to replace instruction in Chinese and English with instruction in Malay to qualify for government aid. This would have been totally unacceptable to the non-Malays in Singapore. Even the English-educated would have rejected merger on that basis, and the Chinese-educated would have resorted to violence.

As for labour, Malaya had a tougher policy
vis-à-vis
the trade unions, mainly because they were bent on stamping out communist subversion, but also because they did not believe in militant unionism and had taken harsh measures to curb excesses in picketing and bargaining in industrial disputes. If the ministry of labour and ministry of home affairs in Kuala Lumpur had control of the registration and dissolution of trade unions, the workers and union leaders in Singapore would surely oppose Malaysia.

Suddenly, two days before polling, eight PAP assemblymen signed an open letter asking Chin Chye, as PAP chairman, to declare the party’s support for the statement of the “Big Six” and to call a conference of the party’s 51 branches to examine its current role in the present political situation. Out to undermine public confidence in the leadership and affect the voting, they repeated Lim Chin Siong’s demands: release of political detainees, abolition of the Internal Security Council, genuine full internal self-government. Since I was not giving way, the Plen was determined to make the PAP lose Anson.

On the eve of the election, I publicly asked the three political secretaries – Lim Chin Siong, Fong and Woodhull – to resign. I said these three and the eight assemblymen wanted to force the PAP to accept their line, otherwise they would “overthrow the leadership and capture the party to use it for their purposes … What is clear is that in order to stop merger, the six trade unionists are prepared to go to any lengths – even to destroying the party with which they are ostensibly associated.” In a last-minute effort to swing the votes away from the PAP towards Marshall, they pulled out all the stops. Even my own branch secretary turned against me, and since he worked in the Singapore Harbour Board and had influence in Anson, which is adjacent to the port, he cost us many votes with the Chinese dock workers. On polling night, 15 July, Marshall won by a small margin of 3,598 votes (43.3 per cent) to Mahmud’s 3,052 (36.7 per cent), the SPA taking 17.8 per cent. At his flamboyant best, Marshall taunted me in his victory speech: “Resign, and may you in your retirement learn humility and humanities so that in the years to come your undoubted ability may unselfishly and honestly serve our people.”

I was too preoccupied with the coming battle to respond to him. The communists had demonstrated once again that they had penetrated the higher ranks of the trade unions and the party so effectively that they could split the PAP vote at short notice, switching popular support to someone known to be unstable and undependable. In a letter addressed to Chin Chye as chairman of the PAP on 17 July, I offered to resign as prime minister. I saw “the opening of a test of strength between the non-communist left and the communist left” together with a danger of “industrial unrest for political objectives”. Lim Chin Siong and his comrades would try to coerce the party and the government into abandoning Malaysia, and the party needed to be united behind its leader.

On the same day, Chin Chye replied that the central executive committee had been unanimous in choosing me as prime minister after the general election.

“The call for your resignation as prime minister by our opponents is only to confuse the people over the vital issue of merger between Singapore and the Federation, an objective upon which the party was founded and from which we cannot deviate. Suggestions have been made that I should be the prime minister in your place. Let us not be deceived by this attempt to split the unity of the party and its leadership.”

We knew we were headed for a showdown. After we lost Anson, I had to make sure that every PAP assemblyman and party member knew this and would support us. The battle was now joined. We had come to a parting of the ways with our own left wing. We wanted to purge the party of any waverers in the Assembly, and compel the communists to fight us in the open. We decided to call for a vote of confidence and force an open break before they had time to rethink their strategy.

23. Eden Hall Tea Party

I tabled a motion of confidence in the government on 20 July 1961, to sort out the goats from the sheep in the Assembly.

On 18 July, only two days before the vote of confidence, Special Branch had reported that Lim Chin Siong, Fong Swee Suan, Sidney Woodhull and James Puthucheary had been to tea with Selkirk at Eden Hall. This was very odd. Faced with a crisis and an imminent rupture with the PAP non-communists, Lim and Fong were consorting with their arch-enemy, the British. I concluded they were sounding them out to discover whether, if their pro-communist proxies in the Assembly were in the majority, they would be able to take office. Keng Swee, Chin Chye, Raja and I decided that the British would welcome the chance to widen the gap between us so that there could be no reconciliation, no regrouping of the united front between the non-communists and the pro-communists in the PAP in the future. This suited us. The pro-communists had been an albatross around our necks. But we had to be careful how we ditched them. If we appeared opportunistic, dropping them after we had made use of them, we would lose the Chinese-speaking ground. Merger was the perfect issue on which to break.

Since their first statement on 4 June 1959, declaring unequivocal support for an independent, democratic, non-communist Malaya, and for Singapore achieving independence through merger, they had committed themselves to this policy again and again. Now they would be breaching the clear understanding upon which the PAP and the CUF had fought and won the election. If we could not survive a split over such a clear-cut issue, we would never survive anyway. We felt released from a very heavy burden. No longer did we have to give them cover. We would
either succeed on our own or pack up. However, we could not thank the British for their ploy to get the communists to bid for power on their own; that would make us appear their accomplices. Instead, we decided to make the British appear the accomplices of the pro-communists. That was the line I took in the debate on the vote of confidence:

“Dinner parties, cocktails and luncheons led to friendly fraternisation between the British Lion and Messrs Lim Chin Siong, Woodhull and company. The pro-communists were led to believe that the PAP were wicked obstructionists, and that the British, wise and statesmanlike people, were prepared even to envisage a new ‘left’ government emerging in Singapore even more left than the PAP, provided their military bases were not touched. What has happened is that the British have become their own
agents provocateurs
. And how well they have succeeded! Quietly and insidiously they have instigated the pro-communists to attempt the capture of both the PAP government and the party. Young and inexperienced revolutionaries were so taken in that, in a crisis, Lim Chin Siong, Woodhull and Fong Swee Suan looked to the UK commissioner for consultations last Tuesday, the 18th, at Eden Hall, the home of the British imperialists’ representative.

“Sir, we felt that something curious was going on and we therefore kept the residence of the UK commissioner under observation. Lo and behold! The great anti-colonialists and revolutionaries turned up for secret consultations with the British Lion. … And the British may also have hoped that under attack and threat of capture, the PAP would fight back and finally suppress the communists, something they have so far failed in persuading the PAP to do. Meanwhile, to the PAP, the British had suggested that we should take firm action against the mounting subversion. In fact, a plan was to have been drawn up which would have culminated in an act leading to open collision with the communists in which the PAP either remained in office, and so became committed forever to defend British colonialism, or resigned, in which case a non-communist government not amenable to British pressure would have been got rid off.”

Several of our Chinese-educated assemblymen had asked me to withdraw the motion of confidence. I believed Lim Chin Siong and Fong wanted time to consider the implications of all this. I decided to press the issue since I had enough assemblymen to enable us to see merger through by 1963. I wanted PAP assemblymen to stand up to be counted.

Chin Chye made our position clear when he read extracts from a paper that Singapore government ministers had written and presented to the Internal Security Council at its first meeting on 12 August 1959. The paper explained our position as “non-communists”, while pinpointing and isolating Lim Chin Siong as our main communist enemy. It identified Lim as someone the British knew to be the most important front man for the MCP, yet the UK commissioner had received him at Eden Hall just two days before his supporters in the Assembly voted against the motion of confidence in the government.

The debate on the vote of confidence went on from 2:30 in the afternoon of 20 July through the night, with only an hour’s break for dinner, till 3:40 am the next day before the vote was taken. There was as much activity in the Members’ room and in the committee room as in the chamber itself. The pro-communists were hard at work trying to get as many PAP assemblymen as possible to vote against the motion. They already had eight. We expected several more to defect; the question was, how many. We needed at least 26 to govern without a coalition. And a coalition government would have been a disaster. It would mean taking in the SPA or the UMNO-MCA Alliance, both tainted by corruption. We would lose our most valuable political asset, incorruptibility.

We decided to lift the party whip and let all vote as they wished. We needed volunteers, not conscripts, for the nasty fight ahead. The pro-communists soon gave up trying to win over the Malay and Indian assemblymen, and concentrated on the bilinguals and the Chinese-educated. But they needed time, and many approached the whip, Lee Khoon Choy, to ask that the vote be postponed until the next day. We
refused. So they filibustered, making long, repetitive speeches to drag out the proceedings.

Among those they were working on were three very disparate Chinese-educated Members who had not succumbed to the lure of communism. The bravest of these was Chor Yeok Eng. He lived in rural Bukit Timah, a communist-infested farming area. He was physically at risk, but he stood firm. So did Chan Chee Seng, a strapping 26-year-old judo black belt who had great courage and was personally loyal to Pang Boon and me. In contrast, Lee Teck Him was a man of 55 who worked as a secretary in the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, a first generation immigrant, born in Fujian. He also stood firm. For some reason, he did not share the young Chinese high school students’ zeal for the new China. He might have had word of what had happened to his relatives there. Whatever it was, I was much encouraged that he stood by us.

We were not sure how the voting would go; we thought it might be a photo finish. Chan Chee Seng and I did a head count and were certain only of 25 – one short of a majority. And that was where Sahorah binte Ahmat came in. Sahorah was a large, overweight lady of 36, a good platform speaker in Malay, simple and straightforward. She was sick in bed in the Singapore General Hospital, where she was approached by the Plen’s sister – apparently with success, for with only a few hours to go before the vote, several Malay assemblymen also visited her and reported that she had been won over by the rebels. But at a meeting in the Members’ room during a break in the debate, Chee Seng said he had visited Sahora only the day before and was confident he could get her to come to the Assembly to vote for us. I had given up and told him not to waste time, but Chin Chye interjected that there was no harm in trying.

Sahora told Chee Seng that her Malay colleagues had been distancing themselves from her at government functions, showing that they despised her. So she had refused to be persuaded by them to support
the government. But she liked Chee Seng and agreed to come. Chee Seng immediately arranged for an ambulance to bring her to the Assembly House, where she was carried on a stretcher to the Members’ room. From there, she managed to walk the 15 yards into the chamber just in time for the crucial vote.

Twenty-six PAP assemblymen voted for the motion, giving us a clear majority of 26 out of a house of 51 members. Had we lost the vote, the government would have had to resign. Then either the pro-communists could form a government with more defections from the PAP or there would be general elections, which they believed they could win.

Dr Lee Siew Choh, parliamentary secretary to the minister for home affairs, and his supporters who voted against the motion believed that in the long run the communists were bound to win. As we hardened our position and they beguiled him with promises to make him their leader and prime minister, he seized his big chance. He was an inveterate gambler from his days at Medical College. Broadset for a Chinese, he had physical energy and a loud voice that was overconfident and a little boastful. He played rugger and chess. On the rugger field his method was to bulldoze his way through without any deception or diversionary tactics, and he was therefore easily foiled. Keng Swee, who had frequently played chess with him, found him bold to the point of recklessness. He was always initiating some spectacular manoeuvre to break his opponent and crash through, forgetting that an experienced adversary would never be tempted to take risks when he could make a steady, relentless advance against an adventurer. This time he was embarked on his biggest gamble – prime minister or nothing.