|
|
In truth, Lim
Chin Siong's fate was sealed right from the very beginning by the
power of the British colonialists – and not Lee Kuan's
political prowess.
Lee
saw the power in Lim Chin Siong.
The
failed 1956 Constitutional talks, Lancaster House, London. From
right: David Marshall, then chief minister (7th), Lee Kuan Yew
(2nd) and Lim Chin Siong (partially hidden).
Historian Simon
Ball said it best: 'Lee wanted an elected government but not one
that could be blamed for suppressing its own citizens.'
|
Lim
Chin Siong vs Lee Kuan Yew: The true and shocking history
Part
I: Our man
08 Jul 07
"The
men who led Singapore to self-government and independence were
swift to produce an authorized version of their struggle…,”
historian T N Harper observes, "it began with Lee Kuan Yew's
dramatic broadcasts as Prime Minister on Radio Malaya in 1961.
The plot and the moral of this story are clear: by the political
resolve and tactical acumen of its leaders, the fragile
city-state weathers the perils of a volatile age and emerges into
an era of stability and prosperity."
However, much to
the discomfort of the Minister Mentor who hitherto has had a
relatively free reign in portraying "the period as one in
which Lim Chin Siong and the left were outmanoeuvred by the
tactically more astute Lee Kuan Yew," Harper cautions that
"authoritative new archival research sheds new light on the
high politics of the period."
In other words, Lee's
bravado with which he presently speaks covers up much that took
place during those years.
In truth, Lim Chin Siong's fate
was sealed right from the very beginning by the power of the
British colonialists – and not Lee Kuan's political
prowess.
At that time British authorities were already
devising ways on how to stop Lim's ascent in Singapore's
politics. Southeast Asia historian, Greg Poulgrain, writes that
"In the Public Record Office in London are some of the
observations and stratagems pursued by both the Colonial and
Foreign Office – revealed now more than thirty years after
the events – on how to deal with this rising star, Lim
Siong Chin."
With Singaporeans becoming more educated
and the advent of the Internet, events surrounding the heroics of
Lee and his PAP during the period of independence and merger with
Malaya "no longer looks so unilinear and uncontested."
The
emergence of Lim Chin Siong
Harper recounts the
"meteoric" rise of Lim Chin Siong as a student and
trade union leader in the early 1950s who was at the heart of the
anti-colonial politics that had erupted all over Asia following
World War II.
By unifying the labour movement and
galvanizing the overwhelmingly Chinese-speaking electorate
through his formidable oratorical skills (he once told his
massive audience: "Saya masuk first gear, lu
jangan gostan!" – "When I go into the first
gear, don't you go into reverse!"), Lim captured the
attention of the masses.
And Lee Kuan Yew's too. This led
to an association between the two men and the subsequent
formation of the PAP. The anglophile Lee (Harry, as he once
wanted to be called) saw the power of his younger
Chinese-educated comrade.
Even within the PAP, "Lim
eclipsed Lee Kuan Yew and other leaders in the popular following
he commanded..."
But in his memoirs, The Singapore
Story, published in 1998 Lee Kuan Yew condescendingly
described Lim as "modest, humble and well-behaved, with a
dedication to his cause that won my reluctant admiration and
respect."
The truth is that Lee didn't have much of a
choice. Lim Chin Siong was at the front, back and center of a
political movement that commanded national attention. From all
accounts, Lee would have been marginalized if his parasitic
instincts had not been so acute.
Popular as he was
locally, Lim Chin Siong did not confine his politics to within
Singapore. Despite British efforts to isolate the island from
anti-imperial movements that engulfed much of Empire, Lim would
draw inspiration from liberation movements elsewhere in Africa
and Asia.
His speeches in the early 1960s repeatedly made
reference to events in the colonial world as well as to South
Africa, Korea, and Turkey. This sense of internationalism had a
"deep resonance" in Singapore.
The colonial
government countered by censoring imported reading material.
"This," writes Harper, "would continue, even
intensify, after self-government as the PAP government
increasingly saw itself as pitted against what Lee Kuan Yew was
to term the ‘anti-colonialism' of global liberation
movements."
In other words, Lee was not the hero who
led the fight for Singapore's freedom. This might come as a shock
to some but as declassified documents reveal, it was Lim Chin
Siong who insisted that Singaporeans' freedom and independence
were not for compromise.
It was also "what really
caused the British authorities to consider [Lim] such a
threat."
The talks collapse…
When
David Marshall became the chief minister after his Labour Front
won the elections in 1955, he organised a delegation to London
the following year to negotiate independence from the British.
Marshall included both Lim Chin Siong and Lee Kuan Yew in his
team.
The chief minister fought hard, some say too hard,
to wrest power from the British in the internal affairs of
Singapore. He opposed Britain's power to appoint the police chief
who in turn had power over the Special Branch, as it was then
known. It was the Special Branch that gave the authorities the
power of detention without trial.
The idea of retaining
the power of internal security whilst granting self-government,
Marshall accused the British, was like serving "Christmas
pudding and arsenic sauce."
Lim Chin Siong supported
the chief minister on this and demanded a constitution that
transferred power to the local government with only defence and
foreign relations left in British hands.
The British
refused the demand and the talks collapsed. Marshall returned to
Singapore frustrated and, amidst condemnation by Lee Kuan Yew,
resigned as chief minister.
...Lim Chin Siong is
detained…
Lim Yew Hock took over the position
and led another visit to London the following year, which again
included Lee Kuan Yew. But this time, Marshall and Lim Chin Siong
were not part of the negotiating team.
More accurately,
Lim Chin Siong could not go because Lim Yew Hock, as chief
minister, had placed him under arrest, ostensibly for instigating
a riot.
The episode began when Chief Minister Lim closed
down a Chinese women's group and a musical association. A week
later, he banned the Chinese Middle School Union which provoked
further unhappiness with the locals.
Undeterred he
arrested Chinese student leaders and shut down more organizations
and schools, including the Chinese High School and the Chung
Cheng High School. Given the already tense situation between the
Chinese-speaking people and the colonial authorities, this was a
highly provocative act.
At that time any Singaporean
leader worth his salt could not have sat by idly. And so Lim Chin
Siong came to the fore and spoke up for the students. The late
Devan Nair, former Singapore president, joined in.
A
12-day stay-in was organised at one of the schools and Lim Chin
Siong was scheduled to speak at a nearby park one evening.
It
wasn't long before the police appeared and ringed the crowd.
Suddenly a mob started throwing stones at the police who then
charged with batons and tear-gas.
Violence erupted and
spread, with police stations being attacked and cars burned. By
the end of the chaos 2,346 people were arrested and more than a
dozen Singaporeans were killed.
The blame was squarely
pinned on Lim Chin Siong who was arrested.
But did Lim
Chin Siong really cause the mayhem? Who was the "mob"
that started attacking the police?
At that time, Chief
Minister Lim made no bones that the Lim Chin Siong was the front
man for the communists who had started the violence. Lim was
arrested by the Special Branch the following day.
Lim
vehemently denied this accusation and countered that the chief
minister was a colonial stooge. As declassified documents now
reveal, Lim Chin Siong was largely right.
Entitled Extract
from a note of a meeting between Secretary of State and Singapore
Chief Minister, 12 December 1956, the archival note recorded
that it was Chief Minister Lim who "had provoked the riots
and this had enabled the detention of Lim Chin Siong."
Poulgrain
even documents that full-scale military assistance was requested
by prior arrangement. Singapore Governor, William Goode,
acknowledged that the colonial government was not beyond
employing the tactic of provoking a riot and then using the
outcome to "achieve a desired political result."
Indeed,
Poulgrain noted that "[Public Record Office] documents show
these were the tactics of provocation that were employed in the
1956 riots that led to Lim Chin Siong's arrest."
A
few weeks after Lim Chin Siong was behind bars, Lim Yew Hock
visited London in December 1956 and was "warmly
congratulated on the outcome by Alan Lennox-Boyd, Secretary of
State for the Colonies."
And yet, in his memoirs, the
Minister Mentor concludes that the Malayan Communist Party "in
charge of Lim Chin Siong" were behind the whole affair and
that Lim Yew Hock had purged Singapore of the communist
ringleaders.
…and the talks are resurrected
And
so in the 1957 with Lim Chin Siong under detention, Lim Yew Hock
led the delegation to London. But during the negotiations, it was
Lee who "played a crucial role in sweeping away the earlier
obstacles to agreement on internal security by resurrecting the
proposal for an Internal Security Council (ISC)."
The
ISC was structured in a way that Britain and Malaya outweighed
Singapore in the outfit. Why was the PAP supportive of such an
arrangement?
Historian Simon Ball said it best: "Lee
wanted an elected government but not one that could be blamed for
suppressing its own citizens."
Even more damning was
an archival "Top Secret" document that recorded: "Lee
was confidentially said that he values the [Internal Security]
Council as a potential ‘scape-goat' for unpopular measures
he will wish to take against subversive activities."
But
the PAP continues the charade. Recall what Dr Ow Chin Hock wrote
in his letter in 1996 about the arrest of Lim Chin Siong and
other Barisan leaders: "The [ISC] had a British chairman,
two British members, one Malaysian members and three Singaporean
members. Together these four non-Singaporeans outnumbered the
three Singaporeans on the council."
In any event,
unlike the one led by David Marshall, the negotiations in 1957
had little spine and gave away too much of Singaporeans' rights.
As a result, both sides expeditiously reached an agreement for
self-government, an agreement that Marshall called "tiga
suku busok merdeka" (three-quarters rotten
independence).
But self-government was not the only
subject being discussed. On the side, the British also wanted to
introduce a clause that would bar ex-detainees, or subversives as
the authorities called them, from standing for elections.
Lee
supported such a move – one that he would surely have known
would cripple party comrade Lim Chin Siong's political career.
In his memoirs, however, Lee Kuan Yew wrote: "I
objected to [the introduction of the clause] saying that ‘the
condition is disturbing both because it is a departure from the
democratic practice and because there is no guarantee that the
government in power will not use this procedure to prevent not
only the communist but also democratic opponents of their policy
from standing for elections'."
A declassified British
memo contradicts this: "Lee Kuan Yew was secretly a party
with Lim Yew Hock in urging the Colonial Secretary to impose the
‘subversives ban'."
Perhaps this is not
surprising as the British had noted that the "present
leadership of the PAP is obsessed with the need to persuade the
politically unsophisticated masses that the PAP is ‘on
their side' and this involves demonstrating that the PAP is not a
friend of the foreigner…"
And this is perhaps
the reason why Lee told Britain's Secretary of State, Alan
Lennox-Boyd: "I will have to denounce [the clause]. You will
have to take responsibility."
London to the
rescue…again
A few months after Lee returned
from the constitutional talks in London in March 1957, the PAP
conducted elections of its executive council. Lim Chin Siong was
still under detention and could not challenge Lee for the party's
leadership.
Lim's supporters, however, outnumbered Lee's
rightwing faction and were elected to the executive council of
the PAP.
The British, through Lim Yew Hock who was by
then "viewed as an altogether more compliant tool of the
security apparatus," ordered the arrest of Lim Chin Siong's
supporters, thereby securing Lee Kuan Yew's continued control of
the party.
Harper records, that despite Lee's protests
against the crackdown of his party's leftwing, "not all were
convinced of his innocence in the matter."
In his
1998 memoirs, Lee Kuan Yew describes the fateful detention of the
PAP's leftwing leaders by giving much prominence to Lim Yew
Hock's decision while adroitly playing down the role of the
British.
After the talks in 1957, and given the
stubbornness of Marshall and Lim in the 1956 talks, the British
were persuaded that Lee was their man.
Another set of
talks were arranged in May 1958 and thereafter "there was an
unspoken assumption that the PAP would govern after the 1959
elections."
Writer T J S George repeated this
observation that "repeated [British] intervention to ensure
Lee Kuan Yew's political survival confirmed the feeling that Lee
was by now Britain's chosen man for Singapore."
Poulgrain
recounted his own experience with British intelligence officers
who were operating in Singapore in the early 1960s. One told him
about a group of officers who were listening in on Lee Kuan Yew
making a speech, railing against British imperialism.
"The
diatribe," Poulgrain writes, "brought only a jocular
response from this group, one of whom openly commented that Lee
was going a ‘bit over the top' considering that he was
actually ‘working with us.'"
The historian
states plainly that Lee Kuan Yew personified the essential
long-term interests of the United Kingdom in Singapore.
Lee
himself played up this position when he told the British
government that the PAP was really London's "best
ally."
The British agreed. Secret documents now show
that London's assessment was that Lim Chin Siong was increasingly
bringing pressure to bear on Her Majesty's Government and "unless
forestalled by Lee, may well be able to make the pressure
decisive."
Lee was grateful. He indicated that "he
and his other reputed moderates in the PAP regard the continued
presence of the British in Singapore as an assurance for
themselves."
From then on, despite the British
concerns of Lee's "totalitarian streak that rides roughshod
over all opposition or criticism", Lee's PAP and London
"became locked closer together."
Part
II: Get him!
In the next instalment read how an
emboldened Lee Kuan Yew, with British backing, officially breaks
with Lim Chin Siong. To be posted tomorrow. You won't want to
miss this.
Preview:
In his memoirs, Lee
wrote that "Lim Chin Siong wanted to eliminate the Internal
Security Council because he knew that…if it ordered the
arrest and detention of the communist leaders, the Singapore
government could not be held responsible and be stigmatized a
colonial stooge."
What the Minister Mentor did not
say, but what Harper reveals in his chapter, is shockingly
contradictory: "In mid-1961, therefore, to seek a way out,
Lee suggested to the British that his government should order the
release of all [the remaining] detainees, but then have that
order countermanded in the ISC by Britain and Malaya."
Such
a craven act was even rebuffed by the British. The acting
Commissioner, Philip Moore, stated that the British should not be
"party to a device for deliberate misrepresentation
of responsibility for continuing detentions in order to help the
PAP government remain in power." (emphasis added)
|
|
