The Fajar Generation: The University Socialist Club and the Politics of Postwar Malaya and Singapore

By Poh Soo Kai, Tan Jing Quee and Koh Kay Yew

The University Socialist Club (USC) was formed in February 1953. In the 1950s and 1960s the USC and its organ Fajar were a leading voice advocating the cause of the constitutional struggle for freedom and independence in peninsular Malaya and Singapore. In May 1954, the British colonial government arrested the entire editorial board of Fajar and charged them with sedition. In the subsequent high profile trial the Fajar Eight, as the members of the board had become popularly known, were acquitted. The monthly periodical continued to be published until it was banned in February 1963, following the massive wave of political arrests codenamed Operation Cold Store.

This collection of essays by leading members of the USC provides a timely documentation and narrative of the personalities who contributed to the struggle for freedom and independence in both countries.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Function 8
• Release date: Dec 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9789811891175

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The Fajar Generation

The Fajar Generation

The Strategic Information and Research Development Centre (SIRD) is an independent publishing house founded in January 2000 in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia. The SIRD list focuses on Malaysian and Southeast Asian Studies, Economics, Gender Studies, the Social Sciences, Politics and International Relations. Our books address the scholarly community, students, the NGO and development communities, policymakers, activists and the wider public.

SIRD also distributes titles (via its sister organisation, GB Gerakbudaya Enterprise Sdn Bhd) published by scholarly and institutional presses, NGOs and other independent publishers. We also organise seminars, forums and group discussions. All this, we believe, is conducive to the development and consolidation of the notions of civil liberty and democracy.

The Fajar Generation

Copyright © 2010 Poh Soo Kai, Tan Jing Quee, Koh Kay Yew

First published in 2010 by

Strategic Information and Research Development Centre

No 11, Lorong 11/4E, 46200 Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia.

Email: [e-mail]

Website: www.gerakbudaya.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Perpustakaan Negara Malaysia Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

The Fajar Generation: the University Socialist Club and the Politics of

Postwar Malaya and Singapore / editors Poh Soo Kai, Tan Jing Quee, Koh Kay Yew.

Includes Index

1. Universities and colleges—Malaysia—Societies, etc.—History.

2. Universities and colleges—Singapore—Societies, etc.—History.

I. Poh Soo Kai. II. Tan Jing Quee. III. Koh Kay Yew IV. Title

378.109595

ISBN 978-983-3782-86-4 (PB)

ISBN 978-983-3782-87-1 (HB)

ISBN 978-981-1891-17-5 (eBook)

Cover design and layout by Janice Cheong

Printed by Vinlin Press Sdn Bhd

2, Jalan Meranti Permai 1,

Meranti Permai Industrial Park,

Batu 15, Jalan Puchong,

47100 Puchong, Selangor, Malaysia.

Contents

Foreword by Lim Kean Chye

Dedication and Acknowledgements

Preface

List of Contributors

List of Abbreviations

List of Photographs

Introduction

Poh Soo Kai, Tan Jing Quee and Koh Kay Yew

1 Genesis of the University Socialist Club

POH SOO KAI

2 The Legacy of the Socialist Club of the University of Malaya: Influences and Reminiscences

JEYARAJ C. RAJARAO

3 May 1954

EDWIN THUMBOO

4 The Socialist Credo

AGOES SALIM

5 My Reminiscences

AHMAD MUSTAPHA

6 M.K. Rajakumar: A Great Man, A Great Friend

SYED HUSIN ALI

7 Six Profiles

POH SOO KAI, TAN JING QUEE AND KOH KAY YEW

8 Background and Impact of the Fajar Sedition Trial

TAN JING QUEE

9 Dr Lim Speaks from Prison

LIM HOCK SIEW

10 Detention in Operation Cold Store: A Study in Imperialism

POH SOO KAI

11 Miscellanies

POH SOO KAI

12 Coming of Age in the Sixties

KOH KAY YEW

13 Merger and the Decimation of the Left Wing in Singapore

TAN JING QUEE

14 The Future as History

POH SOO KAI

Appendix I

The Founding Declaration on Communalism

Appendix II

Aggression in Asia

Foreword

On 10 May 1954 Fajar, the organ of the University Socialist Club (UCS), published an article entitled ‘Aggression in Asia’. It condemned Western imperialism. And it criticised the so-called Emergency Regulations which had established a police state and introduced the South African terror weapon of the concentration camp into Malaya disguised as the ‘New Village’. The revealing article reflected the influence of the British Labour Party, with quotations from Aneurin Bevan, the former minister and leader of the party’s left wing, and his wife Jennie Lee, presented with respectful admiration. But ‘Aggression in Asia’ enraged the colonial bosses of Singapore. If the likes of Aneurin Bevan were tolerated at home, his ideology was most certainly not for export. It had to be shown, in that faraway outpost of empire, that it was sedition to plead the cause of independence and to deny the benefits of colonial rule. The Fajar boys had to be taught a lesson. They were brought to court in a sensational case which had the unhappy consequence of creating a false reputation as a progressive fighting cock for a lawyer called Harry Lee Kuan Yew.

The boys were lucky. It was a time when the independence of the judiciary had not yet become a joke. The magistrate trying the case threw it out. He was Freddie Chua, whose polite exterior masked a man with a will of his own, one who treasured the independence of a judge, however low in the court hierarchy. It was this same judge who was chairman of the appeals tribunal (in the days before the same Harry Lee abolished such appeals) which heard my application to quash the 1987 order for my detention. After abruptly refusing the colonial secretary’s application to be heard, the tribunal ordered my release, though in compromised terms which confined me to the island of Singapore.

The bold pioneers of the UCS proved to be no ordinary run-of-the-mill college graduates. They disdained safe jobs and instead chose careers that made no promises and were decidedly risky: Sydney Woodhull went to the Naval Base Labour Union, James Puthucheary to the Singapore Shop and Factory Workers Union, Jamit Singh to the Singapore Harbour Board Workers’ Union, A. Mahadeva to the Singapore Journalists’ Union, Lim Shee Ping to the Business Houses Union, Ho Piow to the Seamen’s Union, Kua Boo Sun to the Teachers’ Union. Linda Chen got involved with women’s organisations and the women’s rights movement. USC members were also the organisers of the Pan Malayan Students Federation (PMSF).

These people did not fade out after graduation. Poh Soo Kai went on to become the executive secretary and treasurer of the Malayan Socialist Conference. They became co-executives of the pro-colonial Lee Kuan Yew in the People’s Action Party (PAP) – which included the right wingers of the Malayan Democratic Union (MDU) such as Goh Keng Swee, Yong Nyuk Lin (now a brother-in-law of Lee Kuan Yew) and Lim Kim San – only to be detained and then released in a game of cat and mouse by the pre-independence government of Lee, then jailed once more, this time by their former ally. Undaunted, these indefatigable young men marched on to form the Barisan Sosialis (Woodhull was vice-chairman, Lim Shee Ping on the committee, Lim Hock Siew was editor of the party magazine Plebeian) and would have taken over the government had they not been once again imprisoned: Lim Hock Siew for 16 years; Poh Soo Kai for 15 years until 1973 and again three years later; others included Jamit Singh.

These students are sometimes called the successors to the MDU. But this is inept. The MDU was not a ‘left’ organisation simply because the main current of events was for either independence or self-government, which was the MDU’s objective. The MDU was an association made up of a diverse group of English-educated individuals united in their opposition to the restoration of the colonial rule that followed on the surrender of Japan in 1945. Its founders included Philip Hoalim Sr, a pugnacious lawyer who kow-towed to no one and was very often in the magistrate’s court, charged with assaulting some arrogant white person who had insulted him; John Eber, an ‘aristocrat’ of Eurasian society, from Harrow and Cambridge but barred from the Tanglin Club even though his mother was English; Lim Hong Bee, a Queen’s Scholar and a pacifist of the Peace Pledge Union. I was the last of the four, a Cambridge University graduate, nursing an inflated ego for having been the president of the Cambridge Chinese Students Society, the first Malayan on the committee of the prestigious Union Society, and cocky with the reputation of having rejected a coveted offer from Kingsley Martin to join the staff of The Statesman and Nation, driven by the desire to ‘do something’ in lively Singapore, so different from the somnambulant Penang where I came from.

The mood of the Malayan towns immediately upon the Japanese surrender was celebratory with news of the setting up of a United Nations organisation and the victory of the towering Soviet Union which had smashed the much-feared German army at Stalingrad. British soldiers, untainted by the colour bar, drank beer with the locals and sang Soviet songs. But a sombre mood followed, weighed down by the memory of the treacherous British abandonment of Penang. The resentment against the colour bar had increased in intensity after the 1942 surrender and the long Japanese regime that followed. At the same time a feeling of self-discovery and self-confidence had grown in the English-speaking world which the British had cultivated and leaned upon. The Raffles College graduate Lim Ewe Hock’s sensational article in The Monsoon gave word to this change: ‘ ... my education taught me to be a clerk, the spirit of the times put its shackles on me, the economic and social condition drew me inevitably and relentlessly into clerical drudgery. I learned how to make a living but I was not taught how to live’. After the war, ‘[i]t was only through a baptism of war and suffering that I regained my soul and returned to the East. I recovered my sight. I can see now that my country is Malaya, though my blood is Chinese and my education English. And that I have an active part to play, however small, in the rebuilding of a new and better Malaya for my children’s children’.

The civil service was still barred to non-whites; white only clubs remained white; and it was not unexpected that sometimes whites ordered non-whites off the pavement in Raffles Square, off the tennis court. There was a floating of ideas about justice and equality and fair play. An anti-colonial ideology to which the MDU gave expression emerged as a major force; but a minority group, led by the English lawyer John Laycock, and his favourites, C.C. Tan and A.P. Rajah, welcomed the 1945 restoration.

The MDU read the pulse of the country correctly. A swarm of recruits rallied to its banner, eager to end the colour bar and move forward to gaining self-respect by achieving self-rule. First came the Raffles College graduates. There was P.V. Sharma, a junior badminton champion and a Bartók enthusiast, who unsnobbishly championed the cause of the lowly-regarded normal-trained teachers and organised a union for them with Devan Nair as secretary. Then there was Seow Cheng Fong, a well-known Shakespearean actor of the school stage, consigned to an inferior status with low pay compared to the white teachers who lived in bungalows in contrast to Asian terrace houses. There was also the arrogant and loud-mouthed Yong Nyuk Lin, now a company executive, cursing his luck for not having been born rich, and Lim Kim San, helping his father at his petrol station, eager for an end to colonial apartheid. There was Goh Keng Swee, a notorious tormentor of college freshmen. He served in the MDU’s economics committee, a brilliant economist who harboured an unspoken contempt for the college economics professor, known to be his inferior. He could be described, together with Lim Kim San and Yong Nyuk Lin, as one of the conservatives in the MDU. But he was a minority voice in the committee, voting against Singapore making its own tyres and manufacturing chemical fertilizer. During the evening beer sessions (and there were many he and I had together) he sang the praises of Hitler and advocated castrating men who produced mediocre children, inspite of being frequently reminded by friends who knew the family that one brother was a clerk and a sister a telephone operator in the municipality of Malacca. The appointment of Eu Chooi Yip as general secretary pulled in more graduates. This humble man, then ill with tuberculosis who had resigned from the plum job of assistant commissioner of labour, was popular in college, a fact demonstrated by many graduates visiting the office of the MDU, then located above the Liberty Cabaret.

Fed by the enthusiasm of the graduates and the teachers the influence of the MDU spread rapidly and gathered momentum when it established Singapore’s first cooperative stores, selling everything from Max Factor lipstick to controlled items like rice, which it sold as appointed dealers of the British Military Administration who were confident that ‘troublemakers’ would not play the black market. Its weekend sales van, driven sometimes by Eber and sometimes by Sharma, was an instant sensation; its volunteer salesgirls like Alice Woon (who married Goh Keng Swee) and the sister of Loke Wan Tho (wife of the president of the municipal council Louis McNeice) made headline news. Recruitment gained momentum when the British Military Adminstration announced that it had no objection to municipal clerks joining the MDU. Government clerks started coming to our meetings. Clerks from the commercial houses joined the revamped Clerical Union with Lim Yew Hock as its secretary. We were even invited by the cabaret girls to form an association for them.

The MDU in the first few months of its existence had already become the leader of popular opinion. The British recognised this when they invited me to be a member of the advisory council of the British Military Administration which I quickly rejected as a retrograde step, recalling that members of the legislative council of the Straits Settlements were appointed only after election by their respective chambers of commerce. (I often wondered why the Malayan Communist Party agreed to Wu Tian Wang’s membership, why it was silent on major issues, a mystery solved when we learnt that the Party was paralysed because its secretary general turned out to have been a triple agent).

The MDU’s dominant role came to be respected by the great trade unions, women and youth organisations. It became an active partner of the immensely popular Malay Nationalist Party and the organisations led by it. It was the ideas and organisation centre of the anti-colonial movement. Its great achievement was the formation of the All Malaya Council of Joint Action (AMCJA) and the alliance with Pusat Tenaga Rakyat (Centre of People’s Power, PUTERA), the Federation of Malay organisations. The acceptance by Tan Cheng Lock, that most British of the ‘King’s Chinese’, of the post of chairman moved the boundaries of influence to the King’s Chinese as well as the chambers of commerce. His chairmanship and the influence of Lee Kong Chian helped to lead to the support of the People’s Constitutional Proposals and the successful hartal – the Gandhian general strike, proposed by Tan Cheng Lock. I cannot leave mention of Loke Wan Tho, the multimillionaire, one of my earliest confidential financiers of the MDU’s Malayan Standard.

The British panicked. A circular, issued by the chief secretary to the government on 19 September 1947, warned: ‘Whatever a hartal might signify in Malay, the Chief Secretary desires to make it quite clear that if any Government servant absents himself from his duties in the public service with the real or ostensible object to bringing pressure to bear on Government on a political issue, not only will such officer forfeit his pay for the period of his absence, but he will be dealt with under the disciplinary regulations of the service’. Cracks too had appeared in yet another of the pillars of empire, thought to be invulnerable to the damned troublemakers.

The British had come to the end of their patience. Their loyal supports were crumbling. First, Malay nationalists were rounded up and interned, then the Indian and other trade unionists, after which a cleaning-up war was launched to look after the rest. This is the real history leading to the launching of the war in 1948 – called the ‘Emergency’ for insurance reasons – a history distorted by imperial historians and their colonised copycats. It was in 1951 that the British, using the Preservation of Public Security Ordinance (PPSO), detained the leaders of the MDU and many more on the island of St John’s Singapore. The arrests included the University of Malaya’s Malayan Orchid group comprising Joseph K.M. Tan, Lim Chan Yong, Yap Kon Puck, Ong Cheng Piao, James Puthucheary, Tan Seng Lock and Dollah Majid. When that ‘final victory’ was achieved preparations could be made for the grooming of the local successors to empire.

But was it a final victory? The British had underestimated the opposition. The cloud of fear quickly dissipated. Fajar and its aftermath were to teach them the lesson that rebellions cannot be put down. Though the ‘winds of change’ were blowing the Singapore Naval Base was never to be surrendered. The British struck again in 1963, under cover of the tripartite Internal Security Council, smashing the Barisan Sosialis and establishing a regime which was to practice its meanness and spite on the lonely and defenceless J.B. Jeyaretnam.

This informative collection of articles, from the time of Fajar to the dream of the future by Poh Soo Kai, is a must read for all who care for the history of the people, who aspire to a future of social justice and fair play. Soo Kai and his friends live in hope, an encouraging sentiment, stifled by the unanimity of the cemetery. But let them look north where a socialist party struggles to survive in a world of the Internal Security Act.

Lim Kean Chye

Dedication

This volume is dedicated to all former members of the University Socialist Club and to those who were associated in one way or another with USC or its organ Fajar and its subsequent publication Siaran Kelab Sosialis during the entire period of the existence of the USC – from February 1953 until its dissolution in 1971.

Acknowledgements

We would like to gratefully acknowledge the assistance of all who have helped us in one way or another in putting together this volume of essays. We apologise for any unintended omissions. We acknowledge our special thanks to the following:

Mr Lim Kean Chye, for the foreword in this collection.

Dr Lim Hock Siew, for his kind comments on the back cover of the book.

Professor Edwin Thumboo, for permission to reprint his poem, ‘May 1954’.

The editorial board of Aliran Monthly, for permission to reproduce the chapter by Dr Syed Husin Ali which originally appeared in vol. 28, no. 10 (2008).

Dr V. Selveretnam, Victor Oorjitham, Satwant Singh Gill, Chow Sing Yau, Peter Yip and Amir Dastan.

All contributors who have spent time and effort to record their impressions and recollections for this volume.

Chong Ton Sin, managing director of SIRD, for his support, Janice Cheong for her work on the layout, design and book cover, and Ismail Gareth Richards for his editorial input.

Rose and La Pyae Lynn for their constant support for this project.

Zhang Yuwen and Koh Yishi for assistance in typing the drafts.

Preface

There is a growing interest among the young regarding many aspects of our recent past. This can be perceived from the questions and views which are widely articulated in the internet and in local dramas and other public spaces and events. This is a healthy development. Hopefully it would open the way to a more objective review and analysis of the diverse trends and movements that have contributed to the emergence of our nation state.

It is now nearly 45 years since Singapore attained its separate independence on 9 August 1965. Many changes have taken place, not least of which was the total obliteration of all opposing accounts to the singular version of the Singapore story. It is therefore not surprising that the younger generations who have grown up in this period are now restless to seek wider answers to the complex story of our emergence as a nation state. It is only to be expected that they should now search for a deeper understanding, and for a comprehensive and more objective account of the events, circumstances and personalities who participated in the debates and struggle to arrive at the present juncture of our history.

This volume is a modest attempt to cover a small facet of some of the men and women who contributed to the anti-colonial struggle. Many of them have been forgotten, sidelined and marginalised. In our opinion this has contributed to a diminution of the political sensitivity of a genuinely open democratic political culture. The group of men and women in this study are the English-educated intellectuals who organised themselves into the University Socialist Club from the early 1950s. Many had thrown themselves into the anti-colonial struggle through the publication of their monthly organ Fajar and direct political participation in the trade unions and various political parties in both Singapore and peninsular Malaya.

We believe there is a research project currently being undertaken by a group of young scholars, examining the role and history of the University Socialist Club. We extend our good wishes to this group of researchers and writers. We hope that their endeavour will contribute to a wider understanding and appreciation of the role which the University Socialist Club played in our recent history. This volume, however, is different in form and spirit from the project undertaken by these young scholars. The most fundamental difference is that the essays in this volume are all written by those who were closely connected and identified with the leadership of the club, with Fajar and its successor, Siaran Kelab Sosialis. Their insights hopefully capture the mood and spirit of the times they lived through. Whatever their deficiencies in terms of academic scholarship is more than compensated by their direct knowledge and experiences of the events they narrate. In this sense, this volume of essays may complement the more academic studies presented by others.

Taken together, the essays in this volume add considerably to a deeper understanding of the contributions made by this whole generation of English-educated intellectuals who lived through the historic times in Singapore’s search for a national identity and independence. It is clear from reading their texts that much of the agenda and programme which they set out to accomplish has not been entirely fulfilled. Their fundamental belief in a united, multiracial society comprising all the ethnic communities living within a unified territorial unit in peninsular Malaya, including Singapore, and their vision of a more just and equal society have clearly not yet come to pass. These goals still await realisation by a new generation who may be similarly inspired to believe in the vision which the earlier generation had articulated and fought for.

Poh Soo Kai, Tan Jing Quee and Koh Kay Yew

Singapore, 9 August 2009

List of Contributors

AGOES SALIM graduated from the University of Malaya, Singapore and subsequently obtained his PhD from the University of Wisconsin. He is an economist and was first secretary-general of the National Unity Ministry. He was on the public service secretariat of the National Operations Council following the 1969 racial disturbances and helped draw up both the rukun negara and the New Economic Policy (NEP). He is also former chairman of Bank Pertanian from which position he retired to start his own private business.

AHMAD MUSTAPHA was secretary general of USC in 1958 and became its president in 1959. During his tenure as president, USC organised the Malay National Language Seminar. After graduation, he joined the Kedah Civil Service and became the assistant district officer in the Kota Star and Baling districts. In 1965, he was appointed as political secretary to the Malaysian minister of information and broadcasting. He completed his MA in The Hague, Netherlands. In 1974, he became press secretary to the second prime minister of Malaysia, Tun Abdul Razak. In 1980, he became the general manager of Bernama, the Malaysian national news agency. He subsequently resigned to join the private sector. He is the author of the book The Unmaking of Malaysia: The Insider’s Reminiscences of UMNO, Razak and Mahathir (SIRD, 2007). He is currently preparing the publication of his second book, consisting of a collection of his essays and articles.

KOH KAY YEW was secretary general of the USC in 1964 and its president in 1965. He was instrumental in launching Siaran Kelab Sosialis, after Fajar was banned in 1963. He drafted the 17-page memorandum on ‘US Aggression in Vietnam’, signed by the Joint Activities Committee of Nanyang University Political Science Society, Polytechnic Political Society, and USC. He was a member of the Malaysian Students’ Mission to Africa just prior to Singapore’s separation from Malaysia. He has lived and worked in Asia, Europe and North America over the past thirty years in the aviation and hospitality industry.

LIM KEAN CHYE was called to the Singapore Bar in 1950 and the Malayan Bar in 1961. He comes from an illustrious family which includes Dato’ P.G. Lim and the late Lim Kean Siew, and was a fearless advocate. Lim was a founder member of the Malayan Democratic Union (MDU), which was formed on 21 December 1945. Since his retirement in 2000, he has devoted his time to editing an e-magazine entitled the Penang File, which deals with Penang history, food and culture, and his occasional biting comments and reviews on the politics of the country.

POH SOO KAI was the president of the USC in 1954/55 and its secretary general in 1955/56. He was a member of the 8-person editorial board of Fajar which was charged with sedition. He was the assistant secretary-general of the Barisan Socialis when it was established in 1961. He suffered two lengthy periods of political imprisonment totalling 18 years.

JEYARAJ C. RAJARAO was secretary general of USC in 1957/58 and became president of USC in 1958/59. In July 1966, he joined the Rubber Research Institute of Malaysia (RRIM) and became the head of publications, library and information division. He retired in 1987. For a time, he was also a part-time lecturer of history at the University of Malaya. After his retirement, he became a consultant to several listed companies. He has edited and contributed to many publications relating to natural rubber. He is the editor of Advances in Natural Rubber Research (1980-2005), published by the Malaysian Rubber Board. He is currently writing a book on The Rise and Growth of the Malaysian Rubber Development Corporation.

SYED HUSIN ALI obtained his BA and MA from the University of Malaya (Singapore) and his PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He was a former professor of anthropology and sociology at the University of Malaya (Kuala Lumpur). He is currently the deputy president of Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR). He is the author of numerous books including Malay Peasant Society and Leadership (1975), Two Faces: Detention Without Trial (1996), Ethnic Relations in Malaysia: Harmony and Conflict (2008) and The Malays: Their Problems and Future (2008).

TAN JING QUEE was president of the USC in 1961/62. He was an arts graduate from the University of Singapore and studied law at Lincoln’s Inn, London. He is co-editor of Comet in Our Sky (2001) and Our Thoughts Are Free (2009), and author of a poetry collection, Love’s Travelogue (2004) and a short story collection, The Chempaka Tree (2009).

EDWIN THUMBOO graduated from the University of Malaya in English in 1956 and obtained his PhD in 1970. He was one of the 8-person editorial board of Fajar which was charged with sedition. He was dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of the National University of Singapore (NUS) from 1980 to 1991. He is often dubbed as Singapore’s unofficial poet laureate and has published many poetry collections including Ulysses by the Merlion (1979), A Third Map (1993) and Still Travelling (2008). He was awarded the first Cultural Medallion for Literature in 1980.

List of Abbreviations

List of Photographs

(On unnumbered pages after page 118)

D.N. Pritt QC, senior counsel for the Fajar trial (right), shaking hands with Poh Soo Kai, with Lam Kuan Kit and Lee Kuan Yew

The celebration after the Fajar trial (from left): Thomas Varkey, James Puthucheary, Edwin Thumboo, M.K. Rajakumar, D.N. Pritt QC, Lee Kuan Yew, Lam Khuan Kit, Poh Soo Kai and P. Arudsothy

Sydney Woodhull, Lim Chin Siong and James Puthucheary

Philomen Oorjitham and Satwant Singh Gill

Wang Gungwu

Jamit Singh

Syed Husin Ali

Kwa Boo Sun

Delegation to the International Union of Socialist Youth conference, Copenhagen, 1962

Gathering at James Puthucheary’s house

Tan Seng Huat and Linda Chen

Lim Hock Siew

M.K. Rajakumar

Agoes Salim

Ahmad Mustapha

Poh Soo Kai

Edwin Thumboo

Kassim Ahmad

Tan Jing Quee

Dr V. Selveretnam

Jeyaraj C. Rajarao

Koh Kay Yew

Poh Soo Kai, Agoes Salim, Tan Jing Quee and Jeyaraj C. Rajarao

Tan Jing Quee, Peter Yip and Amir Dastan

Introduction

Tan Jing Quee, Poh Soo Kai and Koh Kay Yew

Student politics in colonial Malaya and Singapore consisted of various diverse strands, each with its own history, traditions and sets of problems. They reflected the diverse linguistic school system during colonial times. When the British first came to Malaya, they initially took over the territories of Malacca, Penang and Singapore and constituted these into the Straits Settlements, initially under East India Company rule in 1826 and then under direct British control as a crown colony from 1867. In 1874, following the signing of the Pangkor Treaty with the Sultan of Perak, the British extended their rule over the various states in peninsular Malaya through a series of separate treaties spread over several years. These Malay states came to be known under a legal fiction as ‘protected states’ which the British subdivided into two categories: the Federated Malay States (FMS), based on an agreement with Perak, Selangor, Negri Sembilan and Pahang under a common treaty; and the Unfederated Malay states – Johor, Kedah, Kelantan, Perlis and Terengganu – in which each state had its own individual treaty with the British. The general intent of these treaties was broadly similar. They conferred almost total de facto sovereignty rights on the British to rule and administer these territories, except for matters relating to Malay custom and Islamic religion. On these two matters, the Malay sultans would have reserve powers to deal with them.

Within this broad umbrella of jurisdiction, the British had created a series of grammar-type schools in the major towns. The students were drawn from the various ethnic communities and educated using the English language as the principal medium of instruction. In the English school system, the students originally studied for six years in primary school, leading to a common examination for entry into secondary school education of four years, reaching the Cambridge School Certificate examination, which was equivalent to the ‘O’ level examinations in the British system in the United Kingdom. Subsequently, secondary education was extended by another two years, culminating in the Higher School Certificate examination, equivalent to the British ‘A’ level examination. This was the 6–4–2 system in the English schools, as compared to the 6–3–3 system adhered to by the Chinese schools, i.e. six years of primary school education, three years in junior middle school and three years of senior middle school.

The English schools, both at the primary and secondary levels, were generally well-funded and managed, with the curriculum drawn essentially from schools in Britain but modified according to local circumstances from time to time. In addition to this, the British also developed Malay schools up to the primary level with Islamic religion being taught as well. Some Malay students proceeded on to secondary schools in English until completion of their ‘O’ or ‘A’ levels. At the turn of the twentieth century, the British founded the Sultan Idris Teachers’ Training College for Malay students which became the apex of the Malay education stream. The British also established the Malay College Kuala Kangsar for the education of the children of the Malay royalty and aristocracy.

As for Chinese and Tamil education, the British basically left these to be organised by the respective communities. The Chinese accordingly created primary and secondary schools based on the model in China, but the schools were managed and funded by each of the respective clans or other groups of benefactors. These schools were left to their