Out in the Midday Sun

by Margaret Shennan

  In the course of their career, all administrative officers had some contrasting experience of working in rural outstations – the essence of the ‘real Malaya’ – and of undertaking general responsibilities and political paperwork in Kuala Lumpur, Penang or Singapore. However, promotion came more readily to the Malay-speakers, and instinctively the high-fliers progressed along this royal road to the Secretariat. To become addicted to the ulu like Hubert Berkeley was frowned upon, while to opt for specialization in the Labour Department or the Chinese Protectorate was considered perverse, as Purcell, a scholarly ex-serviceman, discovered. He was attracted by the idea of mastering Chinese and studying one of the great civilizations of the world, but was quickly disabused by his superior, who warned him he would never become a Governor or even a Resident. Instead, he would ‘merely be a specialist!’ Brilliance and expertise were not highly prized in a system requiring, as Purcell put it, ‘the industry of the Benedictine, the orthodoxy of the Dominican, the diplomacy of the Jesuit, and the silence of the Trappist on all controversial issues’.39 Purcell quickly worked out that the Eastern cadets fell into two categories, the ambitious and the nondescripts, and despite being clever (as well as ambitious) he achieved success. But Sjovald Cunyngham-Brown, contemplating his own career, concluded he would have done better ‘bowing at the doors of the mighty, marrying a nice girl, seeking a post in the central Secretariat and becoming a Freemason’ – a neat dig at the ambitious Residents and fast-track-men in Singapore who leapfrogged over their peers in pursuit of well-defined goals, honours, high office in London or the Empire, plus a knighthood.40

  The Head Office men had a reputation for being, in the words of a former Governor, ‘pedantic and narrow-minded bureaucrats who spent their days penning tiresome and unnecessary minutes’ as increasingly they took the limelight away from the District Officer.41 Charlotte Cameron, touring the East in 1922–3, observed them at play in Singapore, at their yacht races and their dinner parties, where white was always the predominant fashion colour. On the other hand, the men of the technical and specialist branches of the Colonial Service – doctors, agriculturalists and so on – integrated in the community. According to one of their number, they were

  university graduates, selected by interview; they were generally sent on postgraduate courses at government expense before taking up their posts. The Police and Customs cadets, however, began younger and were selected soon after leaving their public schools. In the police there were two ranks: the superintendent and higher corresponded to officers and wore military ‘pips’ … the inspectors were of the warrant officer type and were separately recruited.42

  While there was certainly criticism of the Service from within, the record of some of the specialist sections was good, according to one officer, John Soper. In the late 1930s his department, Agriculture, was ‘justifying its existence and was well on the way to doing better’; Drainage and Irrigation ‘deserved praise’ for doing ‘a tremendous amount of work, much of it extremely valuable’; the Fisheries department ‘was beginning to produce good results’; and Forestry was ‘run by capable men on up-to-date lines’. But, if any deserved high praise, it was the Medical and Health branch of the Service:

  The work of this department … probably ranks highest amongst the achievements of the administration in this country. Malaria was almost completely under control in the large towns and was being well suppressed in nearly every small township. Cholera was practically excluded by an efficient quarantine organisation and outbreaks of small pox were extremely rare. The large hospitals were well-equipped and well patronised. Vernacular schools were subject to medical and dental inspection. Maternity and infant welfare clinics were springing up and were doing good service. Midwives were all trained and registered …

  As to the Public Works Department … which was responsible for the construction and maintenance of all government buildings, roads, bridges, waterworks etc. [it] came in for more kicks than ha’ pence. True some of their senior members were not ideal organisers and administrators, true all their work was not perfect … but taken as a whole they did a good steady job under a continual fire of nagging.43

  Officers quibbled with government accountancy methods which required that ‘Even the fitting of a water tap in a sub-overseer’s quarters had to be charged separately to the correct sub-head of expenditure’, but there was an official consensus that ‘The system went easily and well in its time-worn grooves – familiar, tried, efficient, and therefore complaisant [sic], as such systems are bound to be.’44 ‘Most of us in the M.C.S., I feel, accepted the framework in which we had to operate as preordained,’ an ex-member admitted.45

  The system included what a satirist referred to as ‘an ingenious cumshaw called allowances’, and mention of cumshaws (or backhanders) raises the uncomfortable subject of corruption.46 According to the official line, venality did not exist in the Malayan Civil Service, nor in the technical services. Belief in the incorruptibility of officials was touching: ‘there was one thing that was common to all these men [Europeans] – They were EXPECTED TO BE HONEST. That is why they were sent out to Asia – to be honest,’ argued Guy Hutchinson.47 However, Hugh Bryson conceded that ‘There was considerable corruption among the Malay officials [in the 1920s] or at least nepotism in excelsis.’48 And, if some blatant practices, such as ‘government servants getting their “rake-off” from land concessions’, had been stopped, the system of payment to contractors for road building and the scandalous suppression during the 1930s of the Prai port and rail terminus by vested interests in Penang were deplored by John Soper.49 Guy Madoc admitted there had been ten vacancies in the police service in 1930.50

  The police were one of the specialist services to come under criticism. According to John Soper:

  the lower ranks of the Police force were thoroughly rotten: the places at which inspectors of police were usually stationed were tabulated according to their bribe value, and some ran to over $300 per month, made up of small sums from a large number of concerns which did not wish their activities to be watched too closely. There was also a very doubtful racket over Chinese immigration which was never investigated, but the fact that immigration was rigidly confined to certain shipping lines and that a passage to Malaya from China cost more than ten times a similar passage in the opposite direction is very significant. The men who could allow such a state of things to continue were either utter fools unworthy of the position they held or were receiving a nice little share of the profits from the companies concerned.

  And

  Mines: Without a doubt was the rottenest department in the country. For many years it was well known that almost all the officials took bribes, in fact not to do so was to deny oneself promotion. Nevertheless it was not until 1940 that the pressure of public opinion became so strong that the higher authorities could abstain no longer from taking proceedings. Several prominent members and ex-members received terms of imprisonment, others were fined … it is difficult to decide who were the worst offenders, the officials who took the bribes as a matter of course or the higher administrative authorities who allowed the scandal to continue unchecked: it may be that some of the latter had guilty consciences and feared a ‘tu quoque’.51

  There were some who blamed unofficials in private enterprise for corrupting officials. The official ‘has picked up from the merchant the knack of passing on the blame for things’, a satirist suggested.52 Others deplored the influence of the Singapore–London commercial axis upon government, and the fact that, in the words of one insider, ‘The trend of general policy was heavily biassed by the opinions of leading business men, and was governed more by temporary economic and financial considerations than by any higher ideals or world concepts.’53 Civil servants were advised to avoid lateral thinking:

  Taken as a whole there was a strong inclination towards the status quo, an unwillingness to act for fear of making mistakes with the result that action was only taken when circumstances became overpowering, so that in
stead of sins of commission those of omission were numerous but overlooked. This outlook on life meant that only short term problems were tackled, and those with only a very limited outlook. Initiative and ideas in a junior … were usually frowned upon.54

  So, too, were political views – especially radical opinions that ‘our job was to teach the Malays and prepare them to take over from the European administrators’. A few natural democrats like Gerald Hawkins might talk of self-government among friends, but, as Hugh Bryson saw it, ‘this move towards independence was not a policy that was given any official public support; in fact I think it would probably have got a Civil Servant into trouble if it had been charged against him that he was inciting the local people to assert their desire for freedom from British guidance’.55 Instead, in self-defence, civil servants kept their heads down and worked longer hours, aware that they were increasingly under scrutiny. George Orwell, himself a colonial official for a time, wrote that:

  By 1920 nearly every inch of the colonial empire was in the grip of Whitehall. Well-meaning, over-civilized men, in dark suits and black felt hats, with neatly rolled umbrellas crooked over the left forearm, were imposing their constipated view of life on Malaya and Nigeria, Mombasa and Mandalay. The one-time empire builders were reduced to the status of clerks, buried deeper and deeper under mounds of paper and red tape.56

  The complaint that ‘the D.O. was smothered in paper, seldom left his office, and … was rarely seen outside his head-quarters town’ was made repeatedly.57 Returning to Klang as District Officer in 1927, Walter Stark, for instance, found little satisfaction in the office routine of responding to letters, chairing meetings and checking Treasury books amid frequent interruptions and telephone calls. The trouble was, according to John Soper, that

  The conduct of all government business was governed by a mystic volume entitled ‘General Orders’; in this could be found the answer to any question, always provided that one had patience and a good clerk. Unlike the law of the Medes and Persians, these regulations were always changing: an amendment slip would arrive on average once a week, and the volume was very rarely revised and brought up to date. In an efficient office therefore most of the original pages were pasted over or interleaved with countless slips, many of which merely cancelled one another, and it was often difficult to arrive by the correct answer: in an inefficient office the slips were merely lost, and one was always behind the times. It should have been possible to devise a more permanent code.58

  Despite the razzamatazz surrounding his office, there were times when even the Governor was just ‘a human postbox for receiving the instructions of the Home Government’.59 On the other hand, there was always someone who gladly suffered the tedium of bureaucratic minutiae in order to get on. It was said that as Colonial Treasurer and later Acting Chief Secretary M. B. Shelley ‘revelled in the pomp of office … He loved his uniform and sword, his intimacy with the governor, the deference and the prefix “Honourable” he received as a member of the federal council, and his close association with merchant princes.’60 So the wheel comes full circle. Though they defended their special ‘interests’, officials and unofficials on the governing councils – all ‘Honourable’ men – were kindred spirits from the same social elite.

  That elite also included a group so far overlooked, namely the officers of the Singapore garrison. After the Great War, although there was only a small garrison, it played its part in the island’s European community, particularly in the social scene. The GOC Troops Singapore was a member of the Executive Council of the Crown Colony. This point is made for a good reason. The argot spoken by the Europeans in Malaya was heavily influenced by the official-speak of Singapore’s company of military officers and civil servants, and the practice of using initials as shorthand was universal by the 1920s. So Kuala Lumpur was referred to as ‘K.L.’, Kuala Kangsar as ‘K.K.’, Telok Anson as ‘T.A.’, Johore Bahru as ‘J.B.’, and so on, while the ubiquitous terms ‘F.M.S.’ and ‘U.M.S.’ meant of course Federated Malay States and Unfederated Malay States. In, time it came naturally for every European to say ‘H.E.’ for His Excellency the Governor, ‘C.O.’ for the Colonial Office, ‘M.C.S.’ for the Malayan Civil Service, ‘P.W.D.’ for the Public Works Department, and ‘D.A.I.D.’ for the Drainage and Irrigation Department. Civilian expatriates soon learned that the M.E.O. was the Malayan Establishment Office, H. & S. the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, A.P.C. the Asiatic Petroleum Company, R.G.A. the Rubber Growers’ Association, and P.A.M. the Planters’ Association of Malaya. One did not have to be in the Civil Service to know that R.C. was Resident Councillor, S.R. Secretary to Resident, B.A. British Adviser and D.O. District Officer, with a number of subordinate ranks being prefixed with ‘A.’, meaning Assistant, such as the A.D.O. or the A.A. (Assistant Adviser). On a personal level, in the 1920s Theodore Adams (later Sir Theodore) was called by those around him T.S.A. (his initials) or C.A.D.O. (Chief Assistant District Officer).

  Old hands failed to appreciate how baffling such a barrage of acronyms sounded to new civilian arrivals.61 What novice could know, for instance, that O.D.O.s were Out Door Officers of the Customs Service? In entering the curious world of British Malaya, where men were divided into officials and unofficials, the expatriate had to adjust to many unfamiliar conventions. However, in the opinion of Katharine Sim, wife of a Perak customs officer, if there was one extraordinary example of official-speak it was O.C.P.D. – ‘invariably spoken as if all one word’. The O.C.P.D. was the Officer in Charge of the Police Department, which, as a piece of coded language, arguably ‘beat all the other initials in this country of initials’.62

  9

  The Rubber Men

  ‘There is romance and comedy and tragedy in the story of rubber,’ wrote a seasoned adventurer.1 That story began in 1876 in the rainforests of the Amazon basin, when the Victorian explorer Henry Wickham smuggled out 70,000 seeds of Hevea brasiliensis and brought them to Kew Gardens. In due course a batch of twenty-two saplings of Para rubber was shipped out to the botanical gardens of Ceylon and Singapore for experimental research, and a few were passed on to the Federated Malay States, where Sir Hugh Low, an amateur botanist, carefully tended them in his Residency garden at Kuala Kangsar.

  Rubber took hold in Malaya thanks to three crucial events. First, the arrival of H. N. Ridley as the new Director of Singapore Botanical Gardens in 1888 brought a keen publicist on the scene. Then, following the devastation of Malaya’s coffee plantations by the bee-hawk moth, perceptive European and Chinese proprietors decided to experiment with rubber. And lastly the invention of the pneumatic tyre for the automobile industry sent the demand for rubber soaring. By 1896 the first estates were planted in the Federated States of Perak, Selangor and Negri Sembilan. Malacca followed suit, and later Johore too. Cash crops were interplanted with rubber; coffee was forgotten. Rubber was king. Its production surged ahead in the boom years of 1906 to 1912. Hopes for the future ran high.

  By 1920 every rubber tree in the Far East was a descendant of [Wickham’s] seeds. The trouble with the rubber tree was that it was ‘too hardy’: it flourished in Malaya … An acre of rubber from a well tended European Estate would yield, year after year, about 500 lbs of dry rubber a year … It was all too easy.2

  The pioneering plantation owners were men of means. Even their assistants – the ‘creepers’ – had to be ‘the sons of gentlemen’, as one of their number put it, and ‘must, of course, find their own passage as well as the premium … good birth and education sine qua non … Public school education preferred and good sportsmen.’3 This socially discriminating practice died hard, but, as the costs of large-scale production increased during the Edwardian boom, many proprietors were forced to float their estates as companies. This gave the old-established merchant houses of Singapore, like Guthrie’s and Harrison & Crosfield’s, a golden opportunity to enter the rubber business as company agents. Taking on the tasks of raising capital in the London market and recruiting suitable Managers and Assistants from h
ome on behalf of the company directors, they did ‘all the buying and selling of everything from a bag of nails to the cases of rubber produced’.4

  Initially rubber was not an exclusively European business.5 British planters returning home to fight for their country in the Great War left behind a number of successful Chinese planters with commercial estates of over l,000 acres and many smallholders – Malay and Chinese – who grew rubber in addition to their subsistence crops. This situation began to change after 1919. Peace brought a fresh influx of Europeans into rubber planting in expectation of high post-war demands. Malaya experienced a mini-boom, and by 1920 the country was producing some 196,000 tons of rubber – over half the world’s supply.