there was always an element of risk on the road until about the middle-to-late 1950s, particularly away from the towns and main arteries … I solved the problem by learning to fly and did as much of my official travelling as I could that way, as most estates built their own air strips. Pay rolls and other important matters were also delivered and dealt with by air. As more and more areas were declared ‘white’, armed escorts for Europeans on estates and mines were allowed to run down.52
Until independence, however, the risk of an isolated attack remained. Muar, Johore, had a notorious reputation, and Craigielea Estate, where veteran planters Harper Ball and Simpson had been murdered in 1948, was the scene of a desperate last attack in May 1957, as Assistant Robert Duffton recalled:
Eight terrorists had been lying in an ambush position by the Estate roadway. The twenty-two men in the group had been rotating the positions between them for some three days. It was thought that as there had been no incidents for some time the [Communist] hierarchy had instructed that something be carried out in the area to maintain their status. The road was used by police vehicles supplying linesite posts, army vehicles moving out or army patrols moving into the jungle. It just happened that I stopped right on the ambush point to inspect some replanting work and an opportunity arose for them to make the headlines … I was shot at, at some thirty yards’ range but managed to get away into a swamp. A boy beside me got shot in the arm and two wheels of the tractor were punctured. The Estate Manager drove along the road unaware I had been shot at, and he actually drew the pursuers off me. He also escaped into a nearby swamp but his bodyguard was injured. Finally, another assistant, who heard the initial shooting, came to investigate, and fortunately the terrorists decided it was time to quit and withdrew, saving the Manager who was struck in the swamp. As far as I know it was the last ambush of an expatriate in the Emergency.53
The experience of civilians in the main towns varied, depending on their proximity to a ‘black’ or ‘white’ area. Taiping, for instance, was on the border between two such areas, and there were Communist units operating within striking distance, an Englishman teaching at the King Edward VII School recalled. He and two doctors with whom he shared a house were always wary: ‘when we came home at night we always came up the back stairs, through the back door and we didn’t turn the light on … since you would have been silhouetted against the door and someone might have had a shot at you from the jungle which was only about 100 yards away. There was always a risk until 1960.’54 In the late 1950s, at the northern exit from Taiping, the main road to Butterworth carried a large sign indicating ‘You are leaving the British protected zone’, and troops always carried side arms. However, life in Kuala Lumpur was unrestricted after 1955, although the Bartons, who enjoyed Sunday walks, had a disconcerting experience while out with friends climbing a prominent rock known as the Tiger’s Tooth. Dermot Barton explained, ‘We were all dressed in jungle green and I was in front of the party on the way back and came round the corner and suddenly found myself looking down rifle barrels – a very frightening moment.’ In fact they had been spotted by a policeman, who had sent out a patrol to investigate: ‘they were going to shoot first if we were CTs’.55 Penang remained a ‘black’ area – surprisingly, perhaps, as an English resident observed, ‘we didn’t get a lot of terrorist activity on the island … [but] It was always a bit tense when we went over on the mainland.’ On the other hand, ‘we did have one spell when it wasn’t safe and we had a curfew’. This created practical problems for the staff of the St Nicholas’ Home who had to pick up the blind children by school bus. ‘We were told if we were challenged, “Stop!”’ In the long run, ‘when you’re living with it, you say, oh, another bus burnt down upon the road the other day, but you sort of take it in your stride’.56
In the towns, social life maintained many of the pre-war traditions. In Taiping ‘there was a club to which of course you were bound to belong. The New Club was almost 100 per cent European, and if you were a government servant you entered automatically. It offered all sorts of things: tennis, dramatics, Scottish dancing, celebrations for St George’s Day and St Patrick’s Day – ways in which Europeans tried to pretend they weren’t too far from home. Bridge Club in the evening, mah-jong – that was terribly well supported.’57 In Penang, too, ‘the big social occasions of St George’s, St Patrick’s and St Andrew’s nights were celebrated with formal dinners held at the E & O Hotel’, Norman Price recalled. As an adolescent, he found interests in model aircraft and motorcycles, but he could not avoid the disadvantage that had always dogged young men in Malaya:
A small community in a colonial setting had severe restriction for an adolescent youth becoming sexually aware. A young girl might get a distorted view of her own popularity and the severity of competition for a boy might lead to complexes. There was very little social integration between ANY of the various racial groups that might otherwise redress the situation.58
Curiously, in the culture of a Malay state like Kedah this problem had never assumed the same magnitude for Englishmen in their twenties. ‘As a bachelor, most of my girl friends were Asian,’ one remarked, although he married an English girl with a similar Malayan background to his own.59 But a young oil executive, Edward Morris, who worked at various times in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh and Penang from 1952 to 1958, was very conscious of the disproportionate number of young European men to young European women. However, in many businesses company policy remained unyielding on the matter of liaisons with Asian women, and an offending employee would be swiftly removed from the scene.
Although post-war life in Singapore (and to some degree in Penang) was dogged by strikes and student unrest, John Loch found it offered him ‘a wonderful social life and a wonderful introduction to the Far East’.60 Even the Emergency did not disrupt the habit of taking local leave. Except when there were terrorist scares, the hill stations remained popular. Those who liked the sea chose Pangkor Island or Port Dickson. Penang and Singapore, even trips to Australia, also had their appeal. Weekends brought the prospect of relaxing or getting together with friends. Susan Tanner (nee Malet), who joined the Colonial Nursing Service in 1956, still pictures the great crowd of men and wives at Singapore Cricket Club, gathering for Saturday lunch after work ended, and how she relished the delicious ikan molet! To Jeremy Darby, a young bachelor and commercial executive who came out in 1952, Singapore provided endless fun:
We lived the life of Riley. We were looked after by servants. We had a nice garden. It was easy to get into clubs – Tanglin, Singapore Yacht Club … It was a very leisurely life. We knocked off at five o’clock. No overtime … Every Saturday night we were dancing at Tanglin Club or the Swimming Club or somewhere, always in black tie, of course – we even wore black tie to go to the cinema in those days in Singapore.
In 1957 Mr and Mrs Darby were in Kuala Lumpur, still ‘living a life of great splendour’ in a beautiful house.61
For Jonathan Coates, memories of childhood in 1950s Kuala Lumpur were equally idyllic. ‘One remembers the sunshine, one remembers lots of parties, for grown-ups and children, everyone joining in. One remembers picnics and barbecues. School was fun. One little school I went to was called Mrs Heinz’s School, simply because a lady called Mrs Heinz ran it.’62 As a child in 1950s Taiping, Peter Rowe had vivid memories of an annual treat. There were Auster aircraft at the garrison camp where his father was Education Officer, and every Christmas they watched as a soldier dressed as Father Christmas would parachute from an Auster into the camp with a sack of presents, one for each child.
Since the start of the Emergency there had been changes in the provision of private education for British children. The Pensionnat Notre Dame became a convalescent hospital for British soldiers and the school was transferred to temporary buildings. But British parents as a whole were reluctant to send their children up to Cameron Highlands, and Tanglin School ceased to function. However, in 1952 an idea first considered in the 1920s for a school for planters’
children was revived, and in 1955 Uplands School opened on Penang Hill with an intake of fifty-two pupils. The number rose quickly to 120 and remained at a steady 100 for a good many years. At the same time the regular pre-war Blue Funnel service to Western Australia was back in business. The Gorgon and the Charon became very familiar to sons and daughters from Malaya, whose parents, instead of exiling them to Britain, sent them to Australian boarding schools so they could return for school holidays.
In the Federation, the large Army presence helped to sustain colonial traditions. Jim Winchester, planting in Pahang in 1951-3 while the Emergency was in full swing, remembered ‘a company of Gurkhas, commanded by two British officers, camped astride the road from the Gap down to Raub, miles from anywhere. I called in once, just on dark, on my way back to Kuala Lipis from K.L., to find that, even in such an out-going place, the officers dressed for dinner in white monkey jackets, dress trousers and black ties. Very British.’63 The senior managers in the British community were keen to maintain good public relations with the Army. Mrs Loch accepted ‘one did quite a lot of entertaining of the officers from the regiments – our job was to lay on Christmas parties and so on.’64 Working on the State War Executive Committee with military officers, J. S. Potter was won over from his initial scepticism. ‘I appreciated the Guest nights at the various messes: particularly 13/18 Hussars and 1/7 Gurkhas and 17 Division. Hospitality which we always tried to return in full measure.’65 In the Far East the regiments zealously preserved their rituals of guest nights and dining-in nights, and proudly displayed the regimental silver.
Officers’ privileges extended to the young Second Lieutenant on jungle patrol boasting how ‘I enjoyed the magic carpet of S55 choppers taking us out of the filth and swamp to a Mess dining-in night.’ Yet there was still an entrenched attitude to class, which manifested itself in the social distinction between commissioned and non-commissioned officers; to the anger of one Royal Army Service Corps corporal, ‘the British planters and their families adopted a superior attitude towards us’.66 Perhaps memories of the BMA’s disastrous public relations persuaded the Army to separate the ordinary British soldier from the English community. But with democracy now the common credo, inevitably there was resentment. As the intelligent National Servicemen from home observed for the first time institutions like Robinson’s (the Harrods of Kuala Lumpur) or the Padang in Singapore, where cricket was played with the solemnity of Lord’s, he was bound to conclude that ‘The post-war British colonial caste still had a good conceit of itself.’67
If there was any consolation, it was that young civilians were also smarting in the 1950s from out-of-date conventions. A new Harrison & Crosfield’s executive knew he ‘was generally regarded by the older bank managers and colonials as “one of those ghastly new first tour assistants”’! While playing rugby for Klang Club, he discovered the drawbacks of its famous long bar. ‘We youngsters were not permitted to drink at the right hand end of the bar as this was “reserved” for higher government British colonials together with senior commercial managers.’68 Time, however, was with the democrats, who rejected some of the old ways. Geraldine Kaye, teacher and writer, and her husband, an academic at the University of Malaya, decided not to join the Tanglin Club. ‘We had strong feelings that there ought not to be an exclusive European club and that, if there was, we didn’t want to belong to it. But we did belong to the Singapore Swimming Club … We used to socialize with other European and Chinese people there … we used to have square dances for students.’ Their circle of friends included an Indian family down the road and two Eurasian families, and a great many Australians and New Zealanders on the University staff. An exclusive colonial society ‘wouldn’t have been our sort of scene’, Geraldine Kaye admitted. ‘We were pro-independence.’69
They were not alone in being relaxed about the future. The social scene was changing. The old-style European community in Malaya was turning into a new-style Commonwealth one, partly because ‘there were a number of different Commonwealth nations represented in the military establishment. Britain, Australia, Fiji and, I think, New Zealand all contributed either army, air force or naval detachments,’ Jim Winchester recalled.70 ‘When I returned in 1950,’ observed Roger Harrett, a salesman with Malayan Tobacco Distributors, ‘Independence was only a matter of “when”. All races had mixed in Kedah, pre-war and post-war, and perhaps the only difference was we were less patronising than our forebears … The races generally mixed much more after the war.’71 Upcountry British managers drew their friends from all sectors of local society, which included many Asians. There was no discernible racial antagonism in this mixed community. The predominance of aristocratic, paternal leaders was reassuring: Tunku Abdul Rahman, successor to Dato Onn at the helm of UMNO; Sir Cheng Lock Tan, elder statesman of the Malayan Chinese Association; the Sultans themselves. Those British who had dealings with the Tunku spoke of him with respect and warmth. (Post-war rumours that he had collaborated with the Japanese were dismissed.)72 ‘A wonderful human being … one of the most charming men I have ever worked with – a delight’ was the verdict of one civil servant who kept in touch with him until his death.73 And ‘a remarkable man … he had incredible intuition. A very, very friendly man’ was the opinion of another.74 As to Sir Cheng Lock Tan, a British officer in Chinese affairs who worked with him in Malacca found him ‘a benign old gentleman’.75
Although the principle was accepted, the timetable for independence was still unclear when the coronation of Queen Elizabeth took place in 1953. In Penang it ‘was a wonderful time, because all the groups had their own celebrations – the Buddhists, the Hindus … of all of them … there were all sorts of high jinks,’ a teacher at the Blind Home remembered. In the afternoon, the children at St Nicholas’ Home held their own garden party, and later they were invited to a colour film about the coronation. Despite their disability, ‘they just soaked up the atmosphere and they could hear the cheering and what was happening in London. They were thrilled to have been there.’ Meanwhile, on Coronation Evening, the staff were invited to ‘a big “do” at the Residency. We had a real ball. The shops ran out of long gloves for the ladies. It was a real dressy affair.’76 In Negri Sembilan, J. S. Potter ‘was amazed at the great local enthusiasm. Mr Sheppard, the British Adviser, went to great trouble in staging an elaborate and most successful Pageant at the residency.’77 In the federal capital there was ‘an enormous military parade on the padang. And there was a very big celebration of local culture in the Lake Gardens, with Chinese dragon dances and fireworks … people of all races entered into it,’ Dermot Barton recalled.78 In Malacca the priests and trustees of the ancient Cheng Hoon Teng Temple held a special service of celebration.
In the event, the coronation proved to be the last great old-style celebration of colonial Malaya. In the next two years events moved rapidly. The insurgency was brought under control with growing support from the air for military operations, the stepping up of psychological warfare, and the ‘white areas’ policy. Political innovation had started under Sir Henry Gurney, but a series of constitutional changes had to be implemented in preparation for the taking over of the administration by the Malay leadership; for, as a former civil servant put it, ‘Once the Emergency was effectively over … the next thing was Independence’ – Merdeka.79 Mechanisms were introduced to prepare the country for self-government through elections to councils, the promotion of only Asians in the Civil Service, and a policy of steady ‘Malayanization’ to replace British personnel by local people. In the Federation the Malays benefited, while in Singapore, where concurrent advances towards self-government were under way, it was the Chinese and Indians who rose to political and administrative prominence.
Singapore had escaped the terrors of the Emergency, but the island’s politics were affected by labour troubles and sectional interests. In 1950 the Malay populace were incensed over the Maria Hertogh case,80 and the anti-European rioting left eighteen dead and almost 200 injured. The change from full colo
nial rule began with the Rendel Commission in 1953, which in 1954 recommended moving towards self-government, the first elections to the Legislative Assembly to be held in 1955. The Chief Minister, David Marshall of the majority Labour Party, secured British agreement in 1956 on the principle of full self-government. Meanwhile, avoiding the party divisions of Singapore’s political scene, the prominent Malayan political leaders, Tunku Abdul Rahman and Dato Abdul Razak, with Colonel H. S. Lee and V. T. Sambanthan, shrewdly came together in a co-operative Alliance between UMNO, the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA) and the Malayan Indian Congress (MIC). Their platform of self-government secured them the local elections in 1954, and the Alliance then swept to victory in the first elections for the Legislative Council held in 1955. Their triumph brought to power as Chief Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman – a man dedicated to the end of British rule and the defeat of Communism.
To achieve the latter, the Tunku responded to peace feelers from Chin Peng, who was ensconced with a rump of supporters inside neighbouring Thailand. He offered the Communist leader an amnesty, and in late December 1955 the two men met in the English School at the Kedah town of Baling. It was a tense but carefully prepared meeting, to which Chin Peng was conducted by an Englishman who knew him better than almost anyone in Malaya, John Davis, wartime head of Force 136. It was no secret that the Communists had lost the war, but observers feared that Chin Peng would charm the Tunku into making political concessions. In fact, though Chin Peng was an impressive adversary, the Chief Minister was too astute.81 He realized that his country could never coexist with Communism, so the historic meeting proved abortive and the struggle against Communism went on. But the Baling talks proved a turning point. Aware that Britain had little to gain from clinging to her imperial role, the British government – and Colonial Secretary Alan Lennox-Boyd in particular – intimated that the continuation of the Emergency need not delay Merdeka. With Whitehall’s blessing, a constitutional commission would recommend a new constitution for Malaya. The outcome was a parliamentary democracy in the form of a Federation of Malaya presided over by a sovereign Paramount Ruler, chosen from the Malay rulers for five years. Independence Day was set for 31 August 1957.82
Out in the Midday Sun Page 38