Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas

by Han Fook Kwang

  I shall return – Lee’s first political speech

  Every drop counts. If not for the efforts of nationalistic Indians, the vast subcontinent would not be ready for Mahatma Gandhi and his fight for Indian independence, said Lee in his first political speech.

  “What actual steps we take when we get back will depend on the political temper at that time. Whether we can openly advocate and propagate our views or whether we should be more discreet and less vociferous is something that can be answered only when the time comes. … We must break the soporific Malayan atmosphere and bring home the urgency of the problems facing us. We must break down the belief that we are inferior and will always remain inferior to the Europeans. If every returned student makes known his convictions to his own immediate circle, the cumulative effect will be tremendous. A small pebble dropped in a pond can cause extensive ripples. Without the countless unnamed Indian patriots who did their share in awakening a sense of national pride and dignity and independence, there could have been no Congress Party, no Gandhi, no Nehru and no Indian Republic.”

  Lee’s speech in January 1950 at the Malayan Forum in London is remarkable in several respects. It was the first political speech he made of which the full text is still available. It is hence of some historical significance. More important, it sets out for the first time the thoughts of a 26-year-old man, studying in one of his colonial master’s best universities, about what his and his contemporaries’ role should be in shaping their country’s future when they returned. There can be no doubt that as much as Lee was calling on the audience to take destiny into their hands, he was also making known his personal stand that that was what he intended to do back in Singapore.

  Lee’s message was a simple one: English-educated Malayan students were in the best position to take over from the British administration in a smooth transfer of power. If they did not, independence would still come to the people of Malaya and Singapore but the changeover was likely to be violent, precipitated by the communists who were the most tightly organised political force in the country. As he saw it, the problem was complicated by the division among the races. Indeed, while it was only a matter of time before independence was obtained, it would have come sooner if there had been a more homogeneous population.

  How to obtain independence and maintain the delicate harmony between the races? Segments of the Chinese population were already drawn into the communist movement which was almost entirely Chinese-dominated. But the reality for this group was that the British would never allow it to capture power in Singapore as that would mean the unacceptable loss of a strategic outpost of vital importance to the Empire. Under the circumstances, Lee argued that the English-educated, especially those who had studied in British universities and would assume leadership positions when they returned to Singapore, were best placed to manage the transfer of power.

  Seven months after making the speech, in August 1950, he returned to Singapore. And true to those words, he would, in the nine years up to 1959 when he became Singapore’s first prime minister, pull it off.

  (Text of speech “The returned student” on page 256)

  Against this backdrop, a discussion group called the Malayan Forum was formed in 1949 in London. Its members, students in British universities, included Lee, Tun Abdul Razak (who would succeed Tunku Abdul Rahman as prime minister of Malaysia), Goh Keng Swee (founder and first chairman of the Malayan Forum) and Toh Chin Chye. They believed the time had come to organise a broad-based pan-Malayan movement, led by English-educated intellectuals fired by a desire to end British rule and to further the socialist ideals of achieving a more equal society. Lee argued in a speech, his first political speech for which a written text is available, that if they did not take action, the changeover would be a violent one involving the CPM.

  Back home

  Lee returned to Singapore in August 1950, joined the law firm Laycock & Ong at a salary of $500 a month, and quickly established himself as a formidable lawyer. But it was his legal work with various trade unions that thrust him in the public eye. These were busy years for unionists as they fought for better pay and rights against policies that discriminated against locals. As legal adviser to several unions, Lee cut his political teeth.

  “At the beginning of January or February ’52, A.P. Rajah sent the postmen over. They were politicians, Progressive Party. The postmen had a grievance against the government and had been to see them. They didn’t have the time or they couldn’t do it so they sent him [a representative] over to Laycock & Ong. I asked Laycock whether I should take it on; he said, go ahead. I took it on. And they went on strike. I handled the strike, that was how it began.

  “And from then, I went from one union to another because I received considerable publicity out of it. I handled all the press statements, I handled the negotiations. It came to a successful conclusion, so I established my competence.

  “Then there were a series of other unions, Singapore Harbour Board, Naval Base, and so it went on. Of course, I suppose Laycock must have believed that all this was capital for the Progressive Party, but actually, it was capital for the PAP, although it wasn’t formed yet.

  “In all this work, we were meeting regularly – Goh Keng Swee, K.M. Byrne, myself, Rajaratnam. So we took on all this other union work. I alone couldn’t do all the salary scales, so I had K.M. Byrne, an establishment officer who knows all about salary scales; he helped me so I had the end product just to present.

  “They also started the Council of Joint Action, government unions, because the expats gave themselves a big salary. And in order to fight expat pay, just with the local officers, there was no weight. So we built it into a big issue, pay for everybody, including the lowest paid, so that organised the whole government service, from daily-rated upwards. That became another powerful mass base, workers in government service. So in that way, we built up.”

  By the time of the first general election, which the People’s Action Party contested in 1955, its mass appeal was such that it was able to win three of the four seats it contested. Lee won his seat at Tanjong Pagar. The years 1955 to 1959 were eventful ones for the PAP and Singapore. For the party, they were years when its mass base, especially with the Chinese-educated ground, expanded considerably. In opposition in the Assembly, the PAP was able to exploit the weakness of the Labour Front government, led first by David Marshall and later by Lim Yew Hock.

  I chose Tanjong Pagar because …

  Lee waving to residents and passers-by while going on his rounds of Tanjong Pagar constituency during the 1968 hustings.

  Lee has held the Tanjong Pagar seat for 42 years and 11 elections. In one of his earliest campaign speeches, in 1955, he tells the voters why he chose their constituency.

  “I had 25 divisions to choose from when the PAP nominated me to stand for elections. I chose Tanjong Pagar. The people of Tanjong Pagar have a right to know why.

  “Tanjong Pagar is a working class area. No other division has such a high proportion of workers – wage earners, small traders – and such a low proportion of wealthy merchants and landlords living in it. I wanted to represent workers, wage earners and small traders, not wealthy merchants or landlords. So I chose Tanjong Pagar, not Tanglin.

  “Mr Peter Lim Seck Tiong and Mr Lam Thian have also chosen Tanjong Pagar. But up till now they have done nothing for the people. Both of them say they have lived in Tanjong Pagar for nearly 30 years. Why then have they done nothing for the people all these years? It is only now, before the elections, that they say they want to serve you.

  “I have not lived in Tanjong Pagar. But I do not have to live here to know the hardships and problems of the people. When the printing workers of The Straits Times who live in Anson Road in the Tanjong Pagar division were on strike two years ago, I fought for them. When the postmen who live in Maxwell Road in the Tanjong Pagar division were on strike three years ago, I fought with them.

  “No one heard of Mr Peter Lim Seck Tiong or Mr Lam Thian coming out from the
ir homes nearby to help these people. I can predict that no one will hear of Mr Lim or Mr Lam fighting for the people after these elections, especially if Mr Lim or Mr Lam are not elected. But win or lose, I shall fight on for what is right, for a better life for the people in an independent democratic Malaya.”

  From those modest claims to fight for the right of the people in Tanjong Pagar for a better life, made during his first general election rally on March 17, 1955 at the East Reclamation Road ground, Lee has gone on to fight for a better life for Singaporeans.

  He is still the Member for Tanjong Pagar today, 42 years and 11 general elections on. As for that 1955 election, the PAP had three other candidates in the 25-seat contest, the first to be held under the Rendell Constitution which gave limited powers to the legislative assembly: Lim Chin Siong, Goh Chew Chua and Devan Nair. Of the four, only Nair failed to win a seat. The Labour Front polled the most number of seats, 10 out of the 17 it contested, and its leader David Marshall became Singapore’s first chief minister.

  The PAP was not alone in courting the hearts and minds of Singaporeans. The Malayan Communist Party had infiltrated the trade unions and had set out to capture the PAP itself. A dramatic battle to control the party began in earnest during the PAP’s third annual conference in August 1957, when left-wing elements succeeded in winning half the seats in the central executive committee. Their success was short-lived. In a security sweep, the Lim Yew Hock government detained 35 communists including five members of the newly elected PAP central executive committee and 11 PAP branch officials. Lee and his colleagues took the opportunity to consolidate their strength by creating a cadre system within the party. Only cadres were allowed to vote for the CEC. In turn, only the CEC could approve cadre membership. Thus Lee and his largely English-educated colleagues were able to retain leadership of the party even though most of its ordinary members were Chinese-educated.

  By the time of the 1959 election, the PAP was the strongest party around. This time there was no question of it being prepared to govern Singapore.

  “We campaigned to win. We had a great deal of anxiety about what would happen after we won because we knew the problems were there. Winning was not the problem. The other side had been destroyed. Labour Front had been destroyed. Progressive Party and the Democratic Party had joined up and joined the Labour Front. You know, all the various groups had been destroyed. It was as we analysed it, our perception of them was right, that they were not serious players. So it was really the communists versus us.”

  In the event, the PAP won a landslide victory, capturing 43 of the 51 seats. But for Lee personally, there was no exhilaration on becoming Singapore’s first prime minister.

  “We knew this wasn’t going up for first prize, we’re going to be hammered, we are in the firing zone. I believe that very few colonial territories’ leaders ever took power with greater forebodings of problems to come. Because we had seen them [the communists] and we knew their strength and we knew their intensity and we knew their capabilities.”

  The first PAP team to lead Singapore, in 1959.

  The first victory speech at the Padang

  Lee Kuan Yew became Singapore’s first prime minister when the People’s Action Party swept into power in the 1959 general election, winning 43 of the 51 seats. In this victory speech, he spoke about the challenges ahead.

  “Once in a long while in the history of a people there comes a moment of great change. Tonight is such a moment in our lives. Last Saturday saw the end of an era. This morning the new constitution was promulgated. We begin a new chapter in the history of Singapore.

  “The power of the people through their elected government is limited to our internal affairs. This is not what we really want. But it is a step forward towards merger and merdeka. But even so, tonight marks a significant break with the past. For 14 years since British colonial rule was restored after the Second World War, a series of colonial administrators have ruled and ordered our lives. True, in the last four years some of the trappings of power were transferred to local ministers. But the reality of power was never in their hands, and anyway they were weak and feeble hands, incapable of wielding power effectively on our behalf.

  “This rally tonight is symbolic of the nature of your government, a people’s government. Unlike the previous rulers, we have no compensation or abolition terms. Unlike the previous local ministers, we have no iron mines in Ipoh to provide for a rainy day. We have no personal future apart from your future. Your joys and your sorrows are ours. We share the same future, be it good, indifferent or bad. And so it is our duty to see that it is a bright and cheerful future. We held no private celebrations to rejoice in victory. Instead, we come tonight to rejoice with you. We, the people of Singapore, have decided to run the affairs of Singapore. We have come here to celebrate on this Padang and to use the steps of this building as our stage.…

  “There are many more easy changes like this which we can effect. But there are other changes which are not so quick and easy to effect. All of us want a better and a fuller life, but a rise in the standard of living of our people cannot be created overnight. The good things of life … can only come by hard work over a long time.

  “… all the planning and effort on the part of your government will not produce the desired results unless you, the people, will support and sustain the work of your government. We shall do our duty to our people but our people must do their duty to themselves and their fellow citizens.

  “Lastly, let it not be forgotten that we have been elected to govern on behalf of all the people of Singapore. The paramount interest is that of the people as a whole. There may be times when in the interest of the whole community we may have to take steps which are unpopular with a section of the community. On such occasions, remember, the principle which guides our actions is that the paramount interest of the whole community must prevail.

  “Let us work together as a more united people towards a brighter and a better future. May the next five years be happy, peaceful and prosperous years for all of us.”

  (Victory rally at the Padang, June 3, 1959)

  The battle lines were thus drawn. As Lee had predicted in his speech at the Malayan Forum nine years before, the returned students from Britain stood the best chance of achieving a smooth transfer of power from the British. But as he had also outlined in that speech, their most formidable rival for power was the communist united front, and they had not thrown their hat in the ring yet, having stayed away from the elections.

  The forthcoming battles with the communists would shape Lee the politician in a way nothing else could have done. They would be the defining political battles of his life, and Singapore’s, in its struggle towards nationhood.

  A contingent of the communist-controlled Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) going out on a victory march in Johor Bahru after the Japanese surrender in August 1945. Its killing of local people who had collaborated with the Japanese left a deep impression on Lee.

  2

  Taking on the Communists

  Fleeting figures hurtling through the night, followed by muffled shouts and groans – then a deadly silence. Peering out of the window from his flat above a petrol station at Victoria Street, the 21-year-old Lee Kuan Yew saw how communist elements exacted revenge on locals who had aided the enemy during the war.

  It was August 1945, and the Japanese had surrendered on the 15th of the month. In the weeks before the return of the British administration, the communists, who had aligned themselves to the British-trained Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) during the war, slipped out of the jungles to embark on a “dog extermination campaign”. Collaborators were hunted down, some were tied to lampposts and had their ears and noses snipped off, while others were killed summarily. Hardened as Lee was by the brutality of the Japanese during the Occupation, he found this other brand of violence and terror no less disturbing.

  “I could hear chaps being chased and being killed. The communists had come out
and were killing whoever they thought was a collaborator or an informer. It was summary justice. There was a certain streak of cruelty … Maybe they deserved to die but that’s not the way to do it. I mean, are you sure this is the chap? And you just catch hold of him, get him in a corner and bom! bom! bom! and he’s dead. So that left a deep impression on me, that these are ruthless, brutal … There was no sense of fairness in retribution.”

  The atomic bomb cut short the Occupation, and in the days before the British returned to Singapore in September, the communist-controlled MPAJA was feted as heroes by the local population. Lee saw the communists again in January 1946, marching at a victory parade outside City Hall, where Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten (the Supreme Allied Commander for Southeast Asia in World War II) and other guests had gathered.

  “Strange caps they wore. I did not take to them. They had their headquarters in Queen Street, near where Selegie House now is. They took over one compound house there. It had about it that same sort of atmosphere as the Kempeitai. The Kempeitai had knocked us around … I got the feeling that the communists intimidate people … I was instinctively driven away from them. I did not accept what they did as reasonable or proper.

  “There was a certain ruthlessness about the way they manipulated people and got friends to fix other friends and control them. And if you break away from the organisation, then they’ll fix you and destroy you. There was a … lack of humanity about it.”