Remembering Lim Chin Siong and the Socialist Wave
in Malaya & Singapore in the 1950's and 60's

The socialist wave of the 1950s and the 1960s, led by Lim Chin Siong and others in Singapore, was essentially to end colonialism in Malaya, including Singapore, that is, it was for MERDEKA AND DEMOCRACY.

We the left wing socialists decided to take, and adhered to the constitutional path.

We were defeated when the British colonial government played on communal lines.

And they found successors who continued with that legacy. In both Singapore and Malaysia today, we the citizens are still marked by our race.

This racialization was rejected by the anti-colonialists of the immediate post war period who formed the Malayan Democratic Union in 21 December 1945. Its members fought for a nationalism that did away with racial categories. It was the first political party formed after World War ll to take this stance.

The Malayan Democratic Party or MDU stood for unity of Malaya and Singapore. And its reference point was the People's Constitution of September 1947 that it drafted. .

This People's Constitution was accepted by a joint nationalist movement of Malays and non Malays under the umbrella of PUTERA AMCJA

The enigmatic but now largely forgotten A SAMAD ISMAIL was instrumental in forging this historic unity between the nationalist Malays and the nationalist nonMalays.

Not an easy task in the prevailing atmosphere of that era where the British practiced a racist policy of divide and rule.

A SAMAD ISMAIL was in the Malayan Democratic Union. In that league of the MDU, were no less illustrious figues like Lim Kean Chye and William Kuok.

SAMAD was also assistant editor of Utusan Melayu. In its early days Utusan was a fiercely independent and anti-colonial, pro-rakyat paper.

The paper promoted a democratic and non-racial Malaya, including Singapore, through galvanizing progressive Malay nationalist opinions.

To put pressure on the British to accept the People's Constitution, the coalition of PUTERA AMCJA organised the pan Malayan economic strike of 20 October 1947 known as Hartal. It was a show of historical and peaceful unity of all races of Malaya and Singapore.

But the British disregarded the People's Constitution and the Hartal strike. They succeeded in breaking up this unity with the formation of UMNO, a race-based party, and declaring Emergency rule.

Indeed, communalism was and remains our Achilles heel, our weakest point.

So when on 21 February 1953, Dr Rajakumar and other friends and I formed the Socialist Club of the University of Malaya then located in Singapore, we recognised the reality that our people were split along communal lines -- a reality we continue having to face head on today.

Hence the memorandum of the Socialist Club's founding, published in March 1953, did not deal with socialism, but focussed on communalism as a hindrance to nation building.

Our hope was that the working class, the poor and oppressed, the insecure and precarious groups, would unite for their salvation, realizing that this salvation can only come about with the formation of a democratic and non-communal state and nation.

And we found an ally in Lim Chin Siong, the undisputed leader of the leftwing labour union movement in Singapore.

Incredible as it may be to those used to the smear that the Chinese-speaking left were chauvinists, Chin Siong forged very close ties to Said Zahari, Usman Awang, Ahmad Boestamam and Mohammad Ishak, to name the more prominent poliltical leaders.

Samad Ismail, Usman Awang, Said Zahari and Syed Husin Ali all wrote tributes to Chin Siong in Comet in Our Sky: Lim Chin Siong in History, which Tan Jing Quee and S Jomo edited in 2001.

Like the MDU, Chin Siong and his comrades readily accepted Malay as Singapore's national language. The largely Chinese majority leftwing unions ran Malaylanguage classes for the workers. Students and workers attended national language classes with fervour as the commitment to a Merdeka nation. Chin Siong himself studiously studied and mastered the language.

Syed Husin Ali recalled that Chin Siong proved himself to be proficient not only in spoken Malay, but he wrote articles in the Malay too.

No less an authority than the poet Usman Awang valued Chin Siong for his—and I quote ‘great and very significant' contribution towards ‘the Malays and the Malay language'. Usman continued, 'Lim Chin Siong and his Chinese-educated friends in Singapore had passed a resolution to make Malay the lingua franca, the National Language and common language of communication (among the multi-ethnic communities of Malaya) at a time when even the Malays themselves, particularly elite government officials, had no confidence in the Malay language... '

Samad Ismail said that Lim Chin Siong assured the Malay population in Singapore, that with respect to self rule, he would propose to the British government that whichever party that comes into power in Singapore, 'should be duty bound to promote the political, economic, and cultural interests of the Malays'. Samad added that Chin Siong's support was genuine and not a political expedient. And that Chin Siong had always shown deep concerns for Malay problems in Singapore and the Federation.

Samad observed too, that Chin Siong 'showed genuine interest in the struggle to promote modern Malay literature and to preserve Malay traditions and culture. He made close friends with Malay writers in Singapore, especially leaders of ASAS 50 and Malay cultural movements in Singapore.' During Chin Siong's time, 'Malay and Chinese cultural activists jointly launched a campaign against the influence of 'Yellow Culture' or 'Kebudayaan Kuning''.

At the same time, the left was principled and also pushed for promoting education in non-English medium schools, in vernacular schools in mother tongues, which were neglected under colonial rule.

Early Nanyang University graduates Lim Huan Boon, Yang Gui Yi and his wife Chen Miao Hua are prominent scholars of the Malay language, producing bilingual dictionaries, and translations of Malay texts to Chinese, including the first Malay novel into Chinese.

Rather than chauvinistic, these Chinese speakers regarded acquiring proficiency in the national language as testimony of their commitment to a new Merdeka society, one which rejected race as the organizing principle of society.

Lim Chin Siong was firmly committed to working for solidarity across racial divides.

The Utusan Melayu strike broke out on 21 July 1961 in Kuala Lumpur on the issue of editorial freedom and independence from interference by the Tunku and UMNO. It was led by then editor Said Zahari.

The mainly Chinese labour unions under Chin Siong organized to support the striking Utusan workers, who ranged from office boys and clerical staff to journalists and editors

Chin Siong's unions collected donations for the striking Utusan workers in a massive show of solidarity and unity.

Said recollected that on one occasion Chin Siong accompanied him on a visit to families of Utusan strikers in the Singapore office. He chatted with them in good Malay.

(Said had also written of how when he lost his job and was banished to Singapore in 1961, he started a translation services bureau. LCS gave jobs to his company, mainly translating collective agreements between trade unions and employers into Chinese, Malay and Tamil. He also helped to edit the Barisan Sosialis organ ‘Rakyat'.)

Said and Lim were in total agreement that there would be no racial conflicts between the Chinese and Malays in Malaya without the provocation and intervention of colonialists who thrived when the people were divided, for then they could be easily ruled and exploited.

Said also recalled that in 1961 Rajaratnam told him that Chin Siong was a Chinese chauvinist—but Said stood by Chin Siong in the fight for a genuinely united democratic independent Malaya, even though he knew that it was going to cause him to be branded as a communist.

These are very significant steps in nation-building during the socialist wave of the 50s and 60s in Singapore, led by Lim Chin Siong.

The socialist wave of the 1950s and 1960s was a mighty wave. The British themselves admitted on record that the left wing was the strongest political force at the time. This was reflected in Philip Moore, acting High Commissioner's advice to Lee Kuan Yew, when Lee said that it was time for him to break with the left in the PAP around July 1961. Moore said, the British ‘had always been very chary about advising him to break with what was probably the strongest political force in Singapore'. (FO 1091/104 Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew as reported by Lord Selkirk , 5 July 1961)

Moore was carefully putting on record that this was Lee's decision to take this risky step, even though it was a move that the British had in fact been hoping and scheming for.

Lord Selkirk, UK High Commissioner to Singapore, accordingly engineered for Lee Kuan Yew to kick out the progressive leftwing force within the PAP. It was this force that founded the PAP together with Lee in November 1954. Unknown to us, Lee had been a crypto-procolonialist from very early on in his political career.

At that critical juncture in history, the British colonial government was faced with the left wing's strong demand for merdeka, the release of political prisoners, the abolition of the PPSO (the equivalent of Internal Security laws), and more favourable trade union laws for workers to organise.

Moreover, on the ground, the British surrogate, Lee Kuan Yew was being unmasked and the PAP defeated in by elections after by elections - Hong Lim in April 1961 and Anson followed closely in July 1961.

This development forced the hand of the British. To bail Lee out of having to face the possibility of defeat in another byelection and in a general election in 1963, Selkirk activated the Merger plan for Malaya and Singapore.

However the Tunku was lukewarm about merger with a pro left wing Chinese majority Singapore. The British had to work on Tun Razak to persuade the Tunku to accept Malaysia with Sabah and Sarawak thrown in as sweeteners.

We the Singapore left made it very clear that we did not oppose merger. But Lee Kuan Yew and his group persisted on maintaining this, and the mainstream media echoed them.

Unification with the mainland was a dearly cherished aim of the people on both sides of the causeway.

However the terms of merger gave second class citizenship to the people of Singapore. Lee accepted that, in a sell-out for his own political survival.

Once Malaysia was formed, Lee kuan Yew's ambition was to replace the MCA's Tan Siew Sin in the racial alliance with UMNO. However the Tunku rejected him. Lee then took out the toxic card of championing the Chinese against Malays in Malaysia. This evil scheme was cleverly disguised under the righteous banner of Malaysian Malaysia.

Lee Kuan Yew dangerously kicked the hot button issue of racial discord up several notches in Malaysia, among many other unsavory charaters who restored to the racial card.

Indeed, the communal issue is our Achilles heel.

The Socialist Front in Malaya, as we know, did not fall for Lee Kuan Yew's gambit of ‘Malaysian Malaysia'. They reject his attempts to court them.

In concluding, I would be amiss if I leave out the geo-political landscape of the era. It was after the Second World War when peoples n nations were demanding freedom from colonial exploitation. An era when the exiting colonial powers were scrambling to install surrogates to protect their interests. The British's view of Singapore's turbulent politics was now dominated by the imperatives of the Cold War.

Therefore, at all cost, the British must maintain their military base in Singapore from where they flew Canberra bombers laden with atomic bombs aimed at a China, liberated in 1949. The military base in Singapore was also aimed at Indonesia's Sukarno, whose feet the British wanted to 'hold to the fire'. There was an understanding and a pact between the old colonial power Britain and the new imperial power America to cooperate in the region in the Cold War that they had ignited.

The socialist wave of the 50s n 60s led by Lim Chin Siong created what the British called 'a sea of hostile population' against their military base in Singapore which had to be protected by all means in this Cold War landscape. Hence the scheme of Malaysia merger to save Lee Kuan Yew. Hence, Operation Coldstore of 2 February 1963, to cripple the left wing in Singapore.

Likewise, in Indonesia, its progressives n revolutionaries were massacred in the millions in 1965, dictated by Cold War imperatives.

Yet in this dismal seemingly inescapable geo-political landscape, Vietnam defied the odds and defeated the French and American in 1975. Perhaps, they had southern China to retreat into. But a foremost factor contributing to its victory is that Vietnam was already a nation, not fractured on communal lines that the enemy can exploit.

Our hope lies in the youth of today to leave behind communal politics n build a better tomorrow for all working people, the poor n oppressed, the insecure n precarious.

Thank you to PSM for organising this talk.

Let me end with this inspirational eulogy of Usman Awang to Lim Chin Siong.

(Perhaps, Siva can recite it for me? as I am a poor orator, lacking my dear friend Chin Siong's oratorical skill!)

• Saudara Lim Chin Siong,
  Beristirehatlah dalam brersemadian yang aman dan damai,
  Pinjamkan semangatmu, pinjamkan apimu,
  Untuk jenerasi hari ini dan keturunan akan datang,
  Demi masyarakat yang adil dan dunia yang cemerlang.