A History Of Thailand

by Baker Chris

  He was strongly attached to the traditional social order and horrified at attempts to re-engineer society through state power from above. He was horrified too by the levelling implications of Buddhadasa’s this-worldly Buddhism and engaged the thinker in public debate on radio. He wrote a Thai adaptation of the Don Camillo stories, pitting traditional folkish Buddhism against communism. He supported a classic division of powers (executive, legislative, judicial) to act as a check on the abuse of authority, and saw the monarchy, equipped with both moral and constitutional power, as the surest bulwark against dictatorship. He believed the government had to redistribute income to remove the poverty that allowed communism to take root. He and his brother Seni both wrote essays idealizing the Sukhothai era as a liberal society under a paternal king. Kukrit represented a marriage of free-market capitalism, elitist democracy, exemplary monarchy, and paternalistic government which appealed to many businesspeople and urban middle class as a route beyond military rule.

  In late 1973, the king hand-picked a National Convention that in turn elected a National Assembly to serve as an interim parliament and constitutional convention. The constitution completed in 1974 was modelled on Pridi’s 1946 version, but with an appointed Senate and other checks. At elections in 1975, socialist parties won a third of the seats in the northeast but very few elsewhere. Military figures backed conservative parties like Chat Thai (Thai Nation) but had to stay in the background. Businesspeople and professionals each supplied around a third of the MPs. No party dominated and forming a coalition proved difficult. Kukrit eventually succeeded because of his personal popularity, even though his party had won only 18 seats.

  Kukrit sought to moderate the radical demands for social change and create space for the old social elite and new business elite to negotiate a mutually acceptable accommodation, free from the polarized logic of the Cold War, the predatory designs of the generals, and the revolutionary ambitions of the radicals. Since 1968–69, the USA had effectively faced defeat in Vietnam and begun to wind down its operations. Nixon had visited Beijing and committed to removing US troops from Vietnam. Initially, this increased Thailand’s importance as a base for guarding the withdrawal. US troops and aircraft were moved from Vietnam to Thailand. Thai troops joined operations in Laos and Cambodia. But resentment against the USA inside Thailand increased. Kukrit opened negotiations with the USA to withdraw troops. He travelled to Beijing to meet Mao Zedong and restore relations with China. He quietly withheld support from the students’ attempts to build labour and peasant organizations. He launched a scheme to distribute development funds directly to the grassroots level as a way to relieve poverty and hence halt the spread of communism.

  In the fledgling democratic politics, this centrist agenda commanded large support. But it was undermined by a campaign of right-wing terror.

  Rightists

  A right-wing reaction began in late 1974 and built over two years. Hard-liners in the military, raised on Cold War ideology and US patronage, could not accept any solution other than a military defeat of the guerrilla forces. They tried to quash alternative political solutions, and branded even the military officers who supported such strategies as communist. They were increasingly alarmed by the spread of ideas and organizations that challenged the military’s ideal of a controlled, orderly society – especially the PFT’s ability to build a widespread peasant organization, the success of strikers in winning wage and other concessions, the possibility of monks lending legitimacy to popular movements, and students’ adoption of Marxist ideas and vocabulary. They feared that urban protest would link with rural guerrilla forces and Indochinese revolution. They campaigned for the US troops to stay longer or hand over key weaponry. During 1975–76, business, the palace, and a broader urban middle class abandoned the project to found parliamentary democracy and lent tacit or open support to a military solution.

  In late 1974, the ISOC and the Interior Ministry supported the formation of Nawaphon (New force or Ninth force), a propagandist campaign to rally support for the army around the symbols of nation and monarchy. The organization convened meetings of businesspeople and officials in the provincial towns and asked them, ‘Do you love your king? Do you love Thailand? Do you hate communism?’ By late 1975, Nawaphon claimed a million members. Two ISOC officers formed the Krathing daeng (Red Gaurs), a vigilante movement that, from early 1975, recruited vocational students and disaffected urban youth to break up demonstrations with sticks, guns, and grenades. Between April and August, 17 leaders of the PFT were murdered (three others had been killed earlier), resulting in the collapse of the organization. After Kukrit’s government quietly stepped back from earlier attempts to arbitrate industrial disputes, strikes were broken up by bombs, gunfire, gangs wielding chains, and even a fire engine driven into a crowd (Figure 18). Over nine months, 8100 workers were dismissed, mostly for strike activity, and several leaders were arrested as ‘communists’.

  Figure 18: In 1974, women workers at the Hara factory resisted being laid off by seizing control and running the plant as a cooperative. This poster from June 1975, amid rising right-wing violence, is headlined ‘Hara workers need help’.

  The Village Scouts Movement had been founded in 1971 by the Border Patrol Police to combat communism through rural organization and propaganda. It conducted camps in which villagers listened to nationalist lectures, played team games, sang patriotic songs, joined in emotional pledging rituals, and were rewarded with a neckscarf and pin from the king. In early 1976, it moved its activities into Bangkok and other urban areas. In the previous April, Saigon and Phnom Penh had fallen to the communist forces, and on 2 December 1975 the Laotian monarchy had been abolished, increasing the sense of panic in the Thai elite and middle class. Over 1976, around 2 million people – including businesspeople, officials, and society wives – attended the Village Scouts recruitment sessions. It had become ‘an urban-based movement funded by economically and politically nervous fractions of the middle and upper classes’, which ‘increasingly took on a fascist character’.23

  From early 1976, the military propaganda and street violence were directed against the stumbling attempts to establish democracy. Army-controlled newspapers and radio stations condemned parliament as another route to communist victory. The army chief forced Kukrit to dissolve parliament rather than take a socialist party into the coalition. A television programme fronted by an anti-communist judge, Thanin Kraivixien, attacked the ‘inseparable trio of communism, student activism and progressive politics’.24 In January, Phra Kittiwuttho, a monk associated with Nawaphon, proposed that the government resign and make way for a National Reform Council – essentially a coup proposed from within the monkhood. In February 1976, a US-educated lecturer heading the Socialist Party was shot dead. At the April elections, the pro-military Chat Thai Party campaigned on the slogan ‘Right Kill Left’. Thirty people were killed and one leftist party office was firebombed. Kukrit was defeated at the polls, but his brother Seni became premier as head of the Democrat Party and followed a similar reformist agenda. The military and its political friends promptly manoeuvred to split Seni’s party. In June, Phra Kittiwuttho said it was not sinful to kill communists: ‘It is the duty of all Thai…It is like when we kill a fish to make curry to place in the alms bowl for a monk. There is certainly demerit in killing the fish, but when we place it in the alms bowl of a monk, we gain much greater merit.’25 Under challenge he repeated that it was legitimate ‘to kill some 50 000 people to secure and ensure the happiness of 42 million Thais’.

  The military-orchestrated campaign portrayed any advocates of political or social change as ‘communist’, ‘un-Thai’, and treasonous ‘enemies of nation, religion, and king’. Those trying to find a middle ground, including the Democrat government and several senior soldiers and officials, were condemned as ‘communists’ and often threatened with violence.

  The finale only needed a trigger. In August 1976, Praphat, one of the ‘three tyrants’ exiled after 14 October 19
73, returned to Thailand but left after students protested and two died from Red Gaur attacks. On 19 September, Thanom, the former premier, returned in monk’s robes and was ordained in Wat Boworniwet, the wat most closely associated with the palace. The king and queen visited him. Some days later, two workers putting up posters protesting at Thanom’s return were lynched. A rightist newspaper carried pictures of a student dramatization of the event, and claimed one actor had been made up to look like the crown prince. An army radio station broadcast a repeated call for people to kill students in Thammasat University. Units of the Border Patrol Police were brought into the city, along with several Village Scouts and Red Gaurs. Early on 6 October 1976 they began firing rockets, handguns, and anti-tank missiles into Thammasat University (Figure 19). A handful of students who tried to escape were brutally lynched, raped, or burnt alive outside the university. Officially, 43 students were killed, and two policemen. Over 3000 were arrested on the day, and some 5000 later. That evening an army faction took power by coup. The television presenter and anti-communist judge, Thanin Kraivixien, became prime minister and announced a 12-year hiatus before the return of constitutional democracy. Books were banned and burned, journals closed, publishers harassed, and political meetings outlawed.

  Figure 19: A wounded student inside Thammasat University after it was invaded by armed forces on 6 October 1976.

  As the violence had grown over the previous 18 months, several student, worker, and peasant activists had already left the city for the CPT camps in the jungle. Now another 3000 joined them for mixed reasons of political conviction and self-preservation. Others fled abroad.

  Resolution

  With 6 October 1976, the military and its allies had shot and bombed urban radicalism into submission. But the awfulness of the Thammasat massacre was a profound social shock that ensured it marked a new beginning as well as a terrible conclusion.

  The USA had lost the wars in Indochina – both to the guerrillas on the ground, and to the protesters at home and around the world. During 1975–76, its troops left Thailand. As a parting present, the USA gave a large dollop of military aid and continued smaller subsidies for several years. But the Thai army was now on its own. Through its control over the state, it was able to triple the defence budget over the next six years and never faced the anticipated retaliation from the Indochinese states. But the Thai army had been swollen, corrupted, factionalized, and politicized by its massive US patronage and its involvement in an ideological war. Over the next decade, military factions fought over both the spoils of power and the direction of policy. Between 1977 and 1980, there were three more coups, one unsuccessful (in 1977) and the two others resulting in successive generals becoming prime minister. For all its own propaganda, the military was no basis for political stability.

  The flight from urban repression swelled the number of armed guerrillas to a peak of 10 000 in 1979. The number of clashes also rose, with deaths rising over 1000 a year between 1977 and 1979. But the students who entered the jungle chafed under CPT discipline. Seksan Prasertkun complained that they ‘had to fight for democracy all over again in the jungle’.26 After their experience against military power and middle-class panic in the city, they doubted whether the CPT’s Maoist strategy of ‘village surrounding city’ would ever succeed in Thailand. Emerging awareness of Cambodia’s bloody experience under the Khmer Rouge further undermined enthusiasm for rural-based revolution. Moreover, during 1978–79, the communist states fell to fighting among themselves. Vietnam invaded Cambodia, and China responded by attacking Vietnam. The CPT split into pro-China and pro-Vietnam factions. The support and supply routes for the CPT’s jungle campaign were undermined. The VOPT radio station in Kunming was closed.

  In these circumstances, the centrist agenda, which had failed during 1974–76, re-emerged with both civilian and military support. The suffocatingly anti-communist regime installed in October 1976 was overthrown by the army after one year, and the timetable for restoring constitutional democracy shortened. The new government under General Kriangsak Chomanand returned to Kukrit’s policy of normalizing relations with China and bargaining for the withdrawal of Chinese support for the CPT. Advocates of a combined military and political strategy against the local guerrillas gained influence within the army. General Prem Tinsulanond, who applied the methods in the northeast, rose to army head and defence minister in 1979, and prime minister in 1980. With continued help from USAID, money was poured into schemes of rural development, while the army battered the remaining communist bases and offered amnesty to defectors. Most of the students left the jungle between 1979 and 1981. Orphaned by their former international patrons, most CPT armed units emerged from the jungles and surrendered their arms during 1982–83 (Figure 20). The remnants of the CPT were arrested when they attempted to hold a congress in 1987. The people’s war was over.

  Figure 20: Supporters of the CPT surrender their weapons to the army in a ceremony at Umphang in December 1982.

  Conclusion

  By the late 1940s, the aspirations for the nation-state held by the old aristocrats, officials, generals, and new businesspeople in Thailand’s narrow political elite were divided into two broad camps. One side upheld the ideal of a diverse, liberal, fair, and egalitarian nation achieved by the rule of law, a constitutional framework, and democratic representation. The other upheld the ideal of a strong and paternal state with the duty to protect, discipline, and educate its citizens within a hierarchic social order.

  Over the next three decades, this division was absorbed within and eclipsed by the worldwide division of the Cold War. The US patronage of Thailand accelerated the development of a capitalist economy, strengthened military dictatorship, revived the role of the monarchy, and extended the reach of the state deeper into society. The resulting disruption combined with the spread of Marxist ideology to create an opposition of intellectuals, students, peasants, workers, and peripheral communities opposed to capitalism, US imperialism, and military dictatorship.

  By the early 1970s, some businesspeople and technocrats began to seek an escape from the polarization of dictatorship and communism. Kukrit represented a new formula of liberal capitalism, limited democracy, and state paternalism, held together by the moral leadership of the monarchy and dispensing with both US patronage and military rule. This vision was suppressed in the polarization of 1975–76, but re-emerged in the shocked reaction to the 1976 massacre and guided a future course.

  Although the student idealism of 1973 was crushed – Seksan left the jungle in 1981 with the declaration, ‘I am a historical ruin’ – the activists of 1973–76 went on to have a profound effect on following decades. After felling a dictatorship and taking part in a guerrilla war, they were neither victorious nor annihilated, but allowed to return to the mainstream and resume their ascent to elite positions throughout society. Along the way they broke the moulds for academic study and creative arts, challenging the American academic portrayal of Thailand, and generating a legacy of songs, short stories, critical social science, and other cultural forms that spread ideas of democracy, social justice, and Buddhist compassion more widely through society. Among the phleng phua chiwit (songs for life), with which bands like Caravan and Kammachon stirred the student demonstrations and then the guerrilla camps, the most famous was Caravan’s Khon kap khwai (Man and Buffalo):

  Man and man work the fields as men; man and buffalo work the fields

  as buffalo.

  Man and buffalo, the meaning is so deep, so long they have worked

  the fields,

  So long they have grappled with the toil, to their happiness and

  satisfaction.

  Let’s go, let’s all go, we carry the firewood and the plough to the field.

  We endure, become heavy-hearted, and inwardly the tears fall.

  Our hearts ache and our minds burn, but we are not afraid.

  This song is about dying, about the loss of being human.

  The bourgeois take our labou
r, divide up the classes, push the

  peasants down,

  Despise them as jungly. The effect is surely dying.

  8 Globalization and mass society, 1970s onwards

  The Cold War in Asia eased after the US departure from Indochina. The USA remained Thailand’s military patron, but at a much greater distance. Thailand’s orientation to a liberal market economy, established in the American era, strengthened as the socialist alternative declined on a world scale. After an initial period of economic and political adjustment to the US departure, Thailand caught the tail of an Asia-wide boom led by Japan and the East Asian ‘Tiger’ economies. The liberalization of first trade and then finance accelerated the pace of industrialization and urbanization, and incorporated Thailand more firmly within a global economy. The close of the Cold War also transformed neighbouring countries from enemy territory into economic hinterland – as markets, and as sources of human and natural resources. In the late 1980s, China emerged from its four decades of partial eclipse, and again became a major factor in Thailand’s economy and position in the world.

  The pace of economic transformation quickened over the last quarter of the 20th century. The balance of economy and society shifted decisively from rural to urban, and from parochial to open and globalized. The peasantry declined steeply as an element in the national economy, more moderately as a factor in the demography, and very markedly in the national culture. The rural remnant became an increasingly marginalized and truculent part of a society whose dynamism was decidedly urban.

  Bangkok continued to dominate urbanization, swelling to over 10 million people by 2000 and earning the title of ‘the most primate city on earth’, over 40 times the size of the next largest place (Khorat). Business prospered. The middle class grew larger and more assertive. Millions were pulled out of the villages and across the nation’s borders to swell the urban working class. Changes in literacy, mobility, and media created a new sense of a mass society whose obvious variety undermined the official discourse of the nation.