Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas

by Han Fook Kwang

  Lee would get to see a great deal more of them in the years to come. His encounters with the communists, his close association with some of them, their working together to boot out the British, and his later battles with them for the hearts and minds of Singaporeans are now part of Singapore’s political history. If the Japanese Occupation provided him with his first political education in how power poured out from the barrel of a gun, his dealings with the communists in the ’50s and ’60s showed him a more subtle approach to gaining political power.

  Of course the communists, as they revealed immediately after the Japanese surrender, were as adept in the use of gunpowder to get their way. But that was a short-term measure. In the longer drawn-out battle to win over Singaporeans, they would demonstrate to Lee and his colleagues that they had already mastered the tricks of the trade. For Lee, it was an unforgettable lesson in how a tightly organised group of committed men and women, fired by the heady idealism of the Left and the exploits of Mao and Stalin, could mobilise the ground, wreak havoc in the streets at the drop of a hat, and capture the popular imagination of youths and workers in Singapore.

  And they almost pulled it off. That they did not, and were eventually outmanoeuvred by the PAP, is a testimony to Lee’s own political skills and some good fortune. If it had turned out differently, it would have changed completely the course of Singapore’s history, and perhaps the region’s too. Of this there can be no doubt.

  But there is more to it than this seemingly obvious fact. Singapore’s history was altered not just as a result of the PAP’s victory against the communists. Lee believes that the battles themselves were the defining moments, that they provided the necessary plots and subplots in the story of Singapore’s survival as a nation. And – more importantly – that without the struggle against the communists, Singapore would not, could not, have survived the subsequent tests of nationhood. The story of Lee’s encounters with the communists is hence as much a story of his making as a politician as it is of Singapore’s struggle for survival.

  “When you come out alive out of such an encounter, you are no longer a political innocent, you’re a veteran of a real battle. Very few things will be new. You have gone through fear, near-defeats, terror, you have had tricks played on you and you somehow scramble out of them, many skirmishes. And at the end of it all you are battle-scarred and pretty resolute yourself inside because that was the only way we could have survived.”

  Seeds of communism

  In 1922, a year before Lee was born, the Chinese Communist Party set up an office in Singapore under the banner of the Nanyang Communist Party. Its aim was to establish a Communist People’s Republic in Singapore and Malaya, and to do this it planned to infiltrate trade unions and other mass-based bodies. In 1930, a separate Malayan Communist Party, the MCP, was founded to take its place. The MCP cultivated all races into its fold. Feeding on the Depression of the 1930s, it fomented labour unrest that culminated in a strike of 6,000 workers in Selangor in 1935. From the 1930s, the party was involved in clandestine politics with the communist operators hiding behind innocent fronts such as trade unions, coffeeshop associations, restaurateurs’ associations, musical groups and old boys’ associations.

  The fall of Singapore to the Japanese in February 1942 forced the communists to retreat into the jungle. There, they became members of MPAJA, which received military aid and training from the British. By the time the Japanese surrendered, MPAJA was an intimidating force said to be 10,000-strong. The British Military Administration decided to disband MPAJA but the jungle fighters gave up only their heavier weapons. The communist leadership decided that the day to rise in revolt had not yet come.

  At the start of 1946, the MCP issued a modest programme in which they spoke only of self-rule and the creation of a fully-elected Malayan national assembly. For the first time, the party emerged as a legally recognised political force. It was not for long.

  Some factions called for more radical action against the British, and industrial strife was orchestrated. When the police arrested the ringleaders and raided their headquarters, the communists struck back with fire and bombs. In 1948, the Malayan government issued an ordinance stipulating that membership of a federation of labour must be limited to trade unions of workers in similar crafts. This frustrated the communist method of slipping their men into these bodies and creating unrest.

  The communists retreated to the jungle and started an armed insurrection. When, in mid-June, they shot dead three British estate managers and two Chinese in cold blood, the British declared an Emergency. The police were given special powers to arrest and detain suspects without trial, to search houses and seize documents without a warrant, and to impose curfews and close roads. The communists were now branded “terrorists”.

  In 1949, the first Chinese communist flag to make its appearance in Singapore flew alongside the Union Jack, at the premises of the Mayfair Dramatic and Musical Association in Robinson Road.

  “That was a fierce and grim revolt. The angry young men from the Chinese middle schools, who hated colonialism and the British, joined the communists to rid the country of British imperialism.

  “In those tough years, 1949 and 1950, we got our first taste of the practical realities of politics. We had learned the theories of socialism, communism and capitalism in books, and read the histories of revolutions. But we now began to understand the meaning of revolution in terms of life and blood, liberty and incarceration, hate and fear, love and comradeship.”

  (Speech broadcast on September 15, 1961; text on page 266)

  Uniformed policemen assemble for a raid on a communist hideout in Changi in 1947.

  Embracing the communists

  Back in Singapore in August 1950, with a double first degree in law from Cambridge, the 27-year-old Lee Kuan Yew joined the firm of Laycock & Ong in Malacca Street. Confident, energetic and with a tongue as sharp as his gaze, he quickly gained fame as a lawyer championing the rights of workers.

  “At that time every genuine nationalist who hated the British colonial system wanted freedom and independence. That was a time when only weak men and stooges came out and performed on the local political stage. Fierce men were silent or had gone underground to join the communists.

  “There were the Progressive Party and their feeble leaders. There were the clowns of the Labour Party [Labour Front] of Singapore. When I met acquaintances like Lim Kean Chye and John Eber and asked them what they were doing, why they were allowing these things to go on, they smiled and said, ‘Ah well! What can be done in such a situation?’

  “One morning in January 1951, I woke up and read in the newspapers that John Eber had been arrested, that Lim Kean Chye had disappeared and escaped arrest. Shortly afterwards a reward was offered for his arrest. Politics in Malaya was a deadly serious business. These are not clowns or jokers. They had decided to go with the communists.

  Lim Kean Chye and John Eber – Leaders of the Malayan Democratic Union (MDU), formed in 1945, a party conceived by the Malayan Communist Party as its front organisation.

  “So my colleagues and I pressed on, working with the unions. The only unions able to take fierce and militant action were those with no communist affiliations whatsoever. The postmen went on strike. I acted for them. We extracted every ounce of political and material advantage out of the dispute with the colonial government and got them maximum benefits.

  “The Post and Telegraph workers wanted their salaries to be revised and backdated. The dispute went to arbitration. We helped them and exposed the stupidities and inadequacies of the colonial administration. The whole of the government civil service was organised to revolt against non-pensionable expatriation pay for the benefit of a few white men. … my colleagues, Dr Goh Keng Swee and K.M. Byrne, organised a fight against the European half of the civil service. So we went on organising the workers in their unions, rallying them to fight the British colonial system for freedom, for a more just and equal society.

  “Meanwhile, I had
got in touch with the people who were detained in the same batch as John Eber. They were the English-educated group of the Anti-British League, a communist organisation. The ABL relation to the MCP is like that of the volunteer force to the regular professional army.

  “… Then one day in 1954 we came into contact with the Chinese-educated world. The Chinese middle school students were in revolt against national service and they were beaten down. Riots took place, charges were preferred in court.

  Dr Goh Keng Swee and K.M. Byrne – Civil servants who united the civil service unions and associations behind a Council of Joint Action, to fight for improved conditions and terms of service for local officers.

  Lim Chin Siong and Fong Swee Suan – Prominent communist united front cadres, they began their careers as Chinese middle school student leaders who organised boycotts of classes and other militant pro-communist activities.

  “Through devious ways they came into contact with us. We bridged the gap to the Chinese-educated world – a world teeming with vitality, dynamism and revolution, a world in which the communists had been working for over the last 30 years with considerable success. We, the English-educated revolutionaries, went in trying to tap this oil field of political resources, and soon found our pipelines crossing those of the Communist Party. We were latecomers trying to tap the same oil fields. We were considered by the communists as poaching in their exclusive territory.

  “In this world we came to know Lim Chin Siong and Fong Swee Suan. They joined us in the PAP. In 1955 we contested the elections. Our initiation into the intricacies and ramifications of the communist underground organisation in the trade unions and cultural associations had begun.

  “It is a strange business, working in this world. When you meet a union leader you will quickly have to decide which side he is on and whether or not he is a communist. You can find out by the language he uses, and his behaviour, whether or not he is in the inner circle which makes the decisions. These are things from which you determine whether he is an outsider or an insider in the communist underworld.

  “I came to know dozens of them. They are not crooks or opportunists. These are men with great resolve, dedicated to the communist revolution and to the establishment of the communist state, believing that it is the best thing in the world for mankind. Many of them are prepared to pay the price for the communist cause in terms of personal freedom and sacrifice. They know they run the risk of detention if they are found out and caught. Often my colleagues and I disagreed with them, and intense fights took place, all concealed from the outside world because they were communists working in one united anti-colonial front with us against the common enemy, and it would not do to betray them.

  “Eventually many of them landed in jail, in the purges in 1956 and 1957. I used to see them there, arguing their appeals, reading their captured documents and the Special Branch precis of the cases against them.”

  (Speech broadcast on September 18, 1961; text on page 269)

  What Lim Chin Siong told Lee about communism

  Right: Lim Chin Siong (seated) and his leftist colleagues taught Lee the meaning of dedication to a cause. “I liked and respected him for his simple lifestyle and his selflessness. He did not seek financial gain or political glory. He was totally committed to the advancement of his cause,” Lee wrote in his obituary of this former PAP cadre, who died in February 1996.

  Lee is one of the few leaders in the free world to have worked so closely with the communists, first as comrade-in-arms, and later as mortal enemy. He told the authors what drew some of those he knew into the communist world.

  “First, they believed that they had seen the light. It’s like blinding faith, that this is the way to bring about a happy, fair society. It’s a very, very simple, a simplistic assessment, of the world. I don’t want to belittle the impact of how they became communists … But I will explain how they became what they did.

  “Lim Chin Siong comes from a poor family, from Kulai, Pontian, some place in Johor. And I think the father must have made great efforts, sacrifices, to send him down to Chinese High School here. And from there, he got involved with communist activities, so he became a cadre and got sent to the Bus Workers’Union.

  “At our first constitutional conference in London in 1956, he went to Colletts bookshop, a left-wing bookshop in London; they sell communist books – Karl Marx, Lenin and all the rest of it. And he bought a book and gave it to me. The Story of Zoya and Shura (by L. Kosmodemyanskaya) – I’ve still got the book. It’s a book about a young boy and a girl, a Russian book translated into English, but he must have read it in Chinese, you see. He said, ‘Lee, read this, this is a good book. I read it when I was in school. It will tell you why you must do these things.’

  “It’s an idealistic sort of … the Dutch boy with his finger in the dike, you know what I mean? It’s an appeal to youthful idealism. But I was past that stage! I’m questioning fundamentals. So really, there was no meeting of minds. …

  “It is not possible to have lengthy discussions with them because to them, you read this book and everything is in this book. They were not profound thinkers … You cannot carry on a philosophical discussion with an active communist cadre. He thinks you’re a buffoon, you’re wasting time.”

  On November 21, 1954, the People’s Action Party was formally inaugurated at the Victoria Memorial Hall to fight colonialism. The list of conveners was a mix of non-communist English-educated socialists like Lee and English and Chinese-educated political activists with communist leanings. Besides Lee, the others were Samad Ismail, the chief subeditor of Utusan Melayu, and Devan Nair, a teacher. Both men were known to the British Special Branch to be pro-communist. Then there was S. Rajaratnam, a journalist, Tan Wee Tiong, a lawyer, Tan Wee Keng, Wee Tiong’s brother and a unionist, Dr Toh Chin Chye, a lecturer, Chan Chiaw Thor, a Chinese schoolteacher, and Fong Swee Suan, a former Chinese High School student who headed the Singapore Bus Workers’ Union. To many outsiders, there seemed little doubt that, with such a line-up, a radical, left-wing party had been born.

  A union with the communists was sealed on November 21, 1954, with the formal inauguration of the People’s Action Party at Victoria Memorial Hall. Tying the disparate groups of non-communist English-educated socialists like Lee and the political activists with communist leanings was the common aim to boot out the colonial masters. “If you do not want to associate with anybody who has left-wing ideas, you’re left with crooks and opportunists,” said Lee.

  At the time, the major political players in Singapore included the Progressive Party, led by lawyer C.C. Tan and comprising mostly English-educated Straits Chinese who were successful in working within the colonial system and so had a vested interest in preserving as much of the status quo as possible. The Labour Front, headed first by David Marshall then Lim Yew Hock, was a collection of mostly English-educated individuals with leftist views. The Democratic Party was supported by the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and had a marked communal thrust, addressing mainly citizenship and Chinese language issues.

  Lee thought poorly of these politicians, dismissing them as dilettantes playing at politics. It was clear to him that if the newly formed PAP were to achieve its goal of getting rid of the British, it had to rally the people. For that, it needed a bridge to the Chinese-educated world, which was “teeming with vitality, dynamism and revolution”. Among the political players, only the outlawed communists had a line to that world.

  “David Marshall, Lim Yew Hock, C.C. Tan and A.P. Rajah – theirs was part-time politics, a diversion … They were not men of substance, they had no political convictions, no political ideas. They were not going to be a permanent political force. We knew the serious people in the ring were the communists and us and the British. That was the position and it stayed that way for a long time, and it’s that way today …

  “There was no choice. You have to enter the Chinese-educated world because that’s the mass of the votes, I would say about 70 per cent maybe, maybe sl
ightly more. The English-educated, the Malays, the Indians were, I think, at the most 30 per cent. The rest were dialect-speaking and Mandarin-speaking.

  “If you do not want to associate with anybody who has left-wing ideas, you’re left with crooks and opportunists. Theirs was such an overwhelming embrace. They had captured all the idealistic and active young; and the others were neutrals, and those against them were gangster-types or very right-wing, and not effective. So there was no option.

  “We had to look for activists, cadres if you like to call them. Supposing you go around to evangelise and convert people, how do you go? The priest has got to find supporters, isn’t it? You’ve got to find activists to sell; one to one, finally, is how you convince people. So you must have activists on your side. When you say ‘let’s organise’, you’re not just saying, ‘sign up here and please vote for me’. Somebody has got to go out and say, ‘please sign up, vote for me, you know, I represent so-and-so’.”

  David Marshall – Founder of the Labour Front. In 1955, his party won 10 of the 25 elected Legislative Assembly seats and he became the chief minister.

  Lim Yew Hock – Labour Front leader who advocated removing communist influence from the trade unions.

  C.C. Tan – In 1947, he formed the Singapore Progressive Party and was its first chairman.

  A.P. Rajah – A member of the Progressive Party in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

  Lee with the Labour Front’s David Marshall, the first chief minister of self-governing Singapore, in 1955.