An uneasy alliance
The Labour Front had a landslide victory in the 1955 general election, and David Marshall became Singapore’s first chief minister. The PAP put up four candidates, two of whom were pro-communists. Lee won comfortably in Tanjong Pagar, while Goh Chew Chua, a non-communist, took Punggol-Tampines. Bukit Timah went to Lim Chin Siong, a former Chinese High School student who headed the Singapore Bus Workers’ Union and had communist links. Devan Nair, the other pro-communist, lost in Farrer Park.
The PAP’s close association with pro-communist elements within the party was to set the stage for the latter’s battle with the democratic socialist camp which Lee represented. Much of the struggle was carried out within the PAP itself as both sides tried to wrest control of the leadership. But there were also larger battles in the streets, in Parliament and, ultimately, in the ballot boxes of the ’50s and ’60s. Throughout these battles, Lee was to witness up close the workings of his pro-communist partners who were already masters at mobilising the ground and capturing control of the trade unions and student bodies in the Chinese language schools. In contrast, the PAP entered the fight largely as novices of the game.
“We were innocents. We were learning about how to form a political party. These people had been working since 1922 at methods, Leninist methods, highly organised, tightly controlled, secretive, with an armed force to create a chaotic situation in which they are the one organised group that can capture power. So they are formidable. So they had their acolytes and their supporters in the schools, in the old boys’ associations, in their cultural groups. Oh, you name them, they’ve got them. And the success of China was, of course, a tremendous example.”
For Lee, the lessons came thick and fast. They were years of learning very quickly the art of political street fighting without which he would not have survived. Many of those battles were within the very heart of the PAP leadership, and defeat would have been fatal. There was, for example, the time when Lee almost lost control of the central executive committee of the party.
Devan Nair – A founder member of the People’s Action Party who became a union chief and Singapore’s third president in 1981.
The Chinese middle school students’ riots of the 1950s. “These were the idealistic young men and women, largely from the Chinese middle schools … They were new men fighting under different conditions with different methods and tactics to create a communist Malaya,” said Lee of these youngsters.
“In 1954, when it [the PAP] was formed, we, the non-communists, were in complete control of the party. The only persons who would press the communist point of view were Fong Swee Suan, Chan Chiaw Thor and Devan Nair, three out of twelve members of the central executive committee. After the election of the new central executive committee in 1956, pro-communist strength in the party had increased to four out of the twelve members. They were Lim Chin Siong, Devan Nair, Chia Ek Tian and Goh Boon Toh.
“At that time there was a subcommittee to redraft the constitution of the party. The communists through James Puthucheary were pressing very hard for a constitution which would allow the branches complete control in the party and allow all branch committees to nominate members to the central executive committee. Such a constitution would in effect mean that the communists would be able to capture the party. Penetration of the branches of the party is a relatively easy matter because branches are open to everybody to join and participate in without serious checks. And from time to time these branches do come under communist control and manipulation. Unfortunately for them, while they were pressing to capture the party, they were also planning to capture the trade unions. In 1956 they were all detained in a purge which was accompanied by riots and arson. That was the end of their attempt to change the party constitution and capture the PAP.
“But again in 1957, the pro-communists tried to capture the party. To do this they made use of membership admission cards to the annual party conference, which had been posted to members who had given trade union premises as their addresses. They used these cards and brought in non-members and finally succeeded in voting in six out of the twelve members of the central executive.
James Puthucheary – Former union leader with pro-communist sympathies, who later joined the left-wing group of the PAP.
“… in August 1957 there was a minor crisis in the PAP when my colleagues – Toh Chin Chye and myself and four others – refused to take office in the PAP, for to have done so would have been to lend cover to the six who were pro-communists. For we would not have been able to get a decisive vote to carry through our non-communist policies. For a short while, Tan Chong Kin became the chairman of the party and T.T. Rajah the secretary-general. Again unfortunately for them, they were planning also to capture the TUC [Trade Union Congress]. They got involved in a purge in which five out of the six pro-communist members in the central executive were arrested. Three of the five were banished to China.
“After this experience we amended our party constitution to make sure that the party cannot be so easily captured. We instituted two classes of members – ordinary members and cadre members. Ordinary membership is open to all and secret penetration by communists into this group is easy if they send in their people who are not yet well known. But only those who have proved over a period of time that they are sincerely and honestly with the party can become cadre members. An election of the central executive committee is only by cadre members.”
(Speech broadcast on September 20, 1961)
Lee also witnessed the ability of the communists to create unrest to undermine the government in power. One such incident took place in October 1956, when the Labour Front government told the Chinese High School and Chung Cheng High School to expel 142 students on grounds of subversion. Students staged a strike, supported by youths from other schools and even parents of these youngsters, and riots and panic spread to the city. The authorities, helped by army helicopters and armoured cars, contained the riots.
But although the Lim Yew Hock government restored order, it was, to ordinary people, seen as nothing more than a stooge of the British. And so the communists achieved exactly what they had set out to do.
Tremendous munching at Happy World
Gay World, once called Happy World, where mass communist activities were staged. It has since been demolished.
Chief among the strengths of the communists was their ability to rally supporters, in particular the energetic Chinese middle school students of the 1950s. Lee recalled one incident in an interview with the authors:
“The dynamism, the drive, the idealism, the organisational capabilities – oh, it was tremendous! Most impressive. Their ability to move thousands of students to picnics, to meetings. It was a very impressive demonstration of mass organisation and mass discipline.
“I will give you some memorable vignettes. Once, we had a meeting at the Happy World; there was an old stadium there, probably it could have taken about five thousand or so. They must have packed it with about seven or eight thousand. It was in the middle ’50s. This was soon after I met them in ’54.
“And the emcee barked out orders like, you know, a sergeant major on parade. Everybody obeyed. Then they passed up peanuts and apples or whatever, little parcels up the aisle, and they were all distributed by hand, one to the other. Then they said, ‘Rest, we’ll eat now.’ So there was tremendous munching going on. And they colected all the peel and put it back in the paperbags and collected it back and carried it away.
“I watched this with tremendous awe, that they brought about this discipline, grouped together. Buses came from all over the place, all over Singapore, met there. And then they disappeared after the meeting, back to the buses and back to their schools and home.
“Of course, at that time, I did not know, which I later knew, that the logistical organisation and so on were done by overaged students, those who had stayed on. Because of the war, there were many overaged students in the Japanese period with no schooling. So these overaged students staye
d on.
“They were bright students … [they stayed] not because they couldn’t pass. But they stayed on in order to nurture younger generations of cadres to recruit into their ranks. And they used the young ones to be the emcees and to be in the public limelight. They were, in fact, planning the operations behind the scenes. But even so, they were not old people, they were probably in their late teens or early 20s. So it was very impressive.”
Watching the communist magician
Working so closely with the communists gave Lee an insight into the way they worked, methods he would use later to great effect himself. It was evident to him, for example, that chief among their strengths was how just one person could mobilise thousands through slowly and consistently winning over their confidence.
S. Woodhull – Former union leader with pro-communist sympathies, who later joined the left-wing group of the PAP.
Jamit Singh – One of the “Big Six” of the trade union movement in the 1960s. He joined the other five in calling for the scrapping of the Internal Security Council.
“How one person can manage 5,000. You only need to get one person. The key person must be on your side – he’s the organiser. And you’ve got a whole group on your side …
“One key union was the bus workers. When they go on strike, the whole city is paralysed. All they had was nominally Fong Swee Suan. Lim Chin Siong was helping but Fong was there in the bus workers’ union all the time. He’s the key organiser, very quiet, humble man who worked hard, very dedicated. So the workers are totally committed to him, the active workers. Having won their confidence, he then brought in – I would say not communists, but activists, generally sympathetic to the communist cause … I think that when he started in ’54, just a handful of them. And he was the key player, he’ll call a strike and that’s that.
“So similarly, having learnt from that, I put in Jamit Singh in Harbour Board, I put Woodhull in Naval Base. They were people willing to work for less than in the private sector. It was work you did for a cause. No office hours, you’re running around all the time, it takes a lot of time, you must like it. You know, it builds a tremendous ego because you can make a speech and everybody cheers you. But you must have a political objective at the end.
“So really, when you say you’re fighting for the hearts of the people, you’re fighting for the loyalties of key players.”
Fong Swee Suan (left) and Lim Chin Siong. “He is the key organiser, very quiet, humble man who worked hard, very dedicated. So the workers are totally committed to him … He’ll call a strike and that’s that.” That was Lee’s impression of Fong Swee Suan.
The Plen moves into action
The Plen of the Malayan Communist Party, Fang Chuang Pi, in a picture taken in 1963.
Lee was to meet many communists, and among them was Fang Chuang Pi, an envoy of the Communist Party of Malaya. Lee nicknamed him “the Plen”, short for Plenipotentiary. He recounted in a radio speech on September 22, 1961, how he met the man.
“In March 1958, before I went with the All-Party Merdeka Mission to the London talks, someone whom I knew to be connected with the communist organisation approached me and arranged for me to see a man who he said would like to see me and discuss some matters.
“I met him in Singapore one afternoon on the road between Victoria Memorial Hall and the Legislative Assembly and took him to a room in the Legislative Assembly. He was a Chinese-educated young man several years younger than myself – an able and determined person.
“He told me that he was a representative of the Communist Party in Singapore. I told him that I did not know who he was and I had no way of knowing the truth of his claim. He explained that his purpose in seeing me was to establish cooperation between the communists and non-communists in the PAP … We spoke in Chinese. Sometimes I used English words to clarify my meaning and I found that he understood English.
“I asked him for proof to show me that he was a genuine representative of the MCP. He smiled and said that I had to take his word for it. I then asked him whether he had authority over the open-front communist cadres in the unions and political parties, and I gave as an example Chang Yuen Tong. Chang was then a city councillor and executive committee member of the Workers’ Party … I knew he was one of the pro-communist trade union workers.
“I told the Plen that I thought the communists were trying to make use of David Marshall’s Workers’ Party to fight the PAP … I said that as evidence of his credentials that he was a real representative of the Communist Command in Singapore and his good faith in not wishing to attack the PAP by using the Workers’ Party as an instrument, he should give the word for the resignation of Chang Yuen Tong from the Workers’ Party and the City Council and let the Workers’ Party and David Marshall go on their own.
“He said, ‘All right. Give us some time. We shall see that it is done.’ Several weeks later, in April 1958, while I was in London for the constitutional talks, I read in the newspapers that Chang Yuen Tong had resigned from the Workers’ Party and from the City Council. The MCP had given orders. The Plen had proved his credentials.”
They were lessons he would acknowledge later to be so invaluable that without them the PAP might not have survived its first term in office, and the story of Singapore might have taken a completely different turn.
“Throughout that period, what I learnt was, God, these communists really know how to fix you … I think without those learning years, four years, it’s like being on stage with the magician and watching all his tricks and knowing how some of his tricks were done, not all, because you couldn’t see all the movements. But you say, ah, that’s how he puts the rabbit in there, I see. And so he tapped it here and he changed this. So we learnt how they operated. When it came, we knew that if ever we took over, that they were going to mount it on us in a very big way. So we made a quiet note of all these dangerous things they could do to us or to anyone in power and thought of how if we were in charge, we could escape such a fate.
“I have no doubts in my mind that without ’55 to ’59, learning the job, learning about Singapore, but most of all learning how communists fixed the colonial government and fixed the Singapore government run by the chief minister and his colleagues, we would never have survived. Supposing there had been no experience of that, we had just been separate, we had just been divorced from that and run a completely non-communist group, and that we had won in ’59, we would have been destroyed. I have no doubts about it.”
The communists duped
For Lee and his colleagues, no battle was larger than that over merger with Malaysia; it was the cornerstone of the PAP’s policy on independence. It was the conventional wisdom of the day that Singapore could not survive politically and economically without being part of the larger hinterland.
On this, the PAP would clash head-on with pro-communist elements within the party who believed that merger would endanger the communist cause by increasing the likelihood of the central government in Kuala Lumpur cracking down on them. It would also dilute the Chinese majority in Singapore from which the communists drew almost all of their support. Quite naturally, they preferred the status quo, with internal security still under British control, which they could then resist under the cover of anti-colonialism.
Throughout this battle, Lee was not afraid to counter the communists by bringing the debate out into the open so Singaporeans could decide which side they wanted to support. In September and October 1961, he gave a series of 12 radio broadcasts entitled “Battle for Merger”. It was vintage Lee, in which he captured the attention of the population with his stories about how the communists operated, his first encounters with them and how they were trying to subvert the country. He explained why he took this approach to the Legislative Assembly.
“Our battle with the communists must be won by argument. We will prove that the democratic socialist forces in Singapore are honest and sincere to the people and have not and will not sell out their rights to anybody. It will also
be shown that the communists have not only been duped by the British but duped to the extent that they betrayed their PAP comrades in the nationalists-left united front.
“The battle for men’s minds cannot be won by the simple smearing of a man being either anti-communist and reactionary or a wavering bourgeoisie, social democrat or communist. Not all those who oppose the British are nationalists. Some anti-colonialists are nationalists and some are communists.
“We must also see this distinction that not all who oppose the PAP are communists; some are communists, some reactionaries, some opportunists and some merely confused. Therefore, in this battle of ideas it is necessary that we should call a spade a spade and put across truthfully and honestly the respective position of everyone.”
(Speech to the Legislative Assembly on July 20, 1961)
The approach proved effective for Lee. In the merger referendum of September 1962, 71 per cent of the people in Singapore voted for merger in the form that he had campaigned for. This was a clear signal that, in the minds of the people, he and not the communists had won the day.
The duping of the communists by the British which Lee had referred to in his speech to the Legislative Assembly was one of the major turning points of the struggle. At social events over several months in 1961, British officials met Lim Chin Siong and his friends and gave them the impression that the British would be quite happy to let them run the island so long as the British military bases were left untouched. At the same time, the British pressed Lee and the non-communists in the PAP to curb the subversive activities of Lim and company. It became apparent to Lee that the aim of the British was to get the communists to create trouble for the Singapore government, thereby forcing it to embark on a purge.
Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas Page 6