The 1963 Operation Coldstore in Singapore: Commemorating 50 Years

By Poh Soo Kai, Tan Kok Fang and Hong Lysa

Operation Coldstore remains the most contentious event in the history of postcolonial Singapore. Despite attempts by the state to silence ex-detainees, by warning that they would not be permitted to rewrite the state's official version of history, the authors in this volume have done just that.

They have placed on record their own perspective of events. The autobiographical element in the narratives brings to life what these individuals went through as left-wing political actors who responded to the call of anti colonialism and the challenge of shaping a new society. Their accounts of life in prison are a sober reminder of the deprivations and tortures inflicted to break their spirit. These stirring accounts are supplemented by academic contributions that provide contextual depth to the historical events and a critique of history writing in Singapore.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Function 8
• Release date: Jan 14, 2024
• ISBN: 9789811891168

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The 1963 Operation Coldstore in Singapore

The 1963 Operation Coldstore in Singapore

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, 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.

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The 1963 Operation Coldstore in Singapore

Editorial copyright © 2013 Poh Soo Kai, Tan Kok Fang and Hong Lysa

Individual chapters copyright © 2013 Individual authors

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Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

The 1963 Operation Coldstore in Singapore: Commemorating 50 Years / Edited by Poh Soo Kai, Tan Kok Fang and Hong Lysa

Includes index

ISBN: 978-967-0630-10-6

1. Operation Cold Store.

2. Detention of persons–Malaysia.

3. Political prisoners–Singapore.

I. Poh, Soo Kai. II. Tan, Kong Fang III. Hong, Lysa.

365.4509595

Copy-editing by Gareth Richards

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

ISBN: 978-981-18-9116-8 (eBook)

Contents

List of Appendices, Tables and Photographs

List of Abbreviations and Acronyms

List of Contributors

Preface

Introduction

Why Operation Coldstore Matters

PART I : FROM THE RECORDS

Chapter 1

Operation Coldstore: A Key Event in the Creation of Modern Singapore

Geoff Wade

Chapter 2

‘Flesh and bone reunite as one body’: Singapore’s Chinese-speaking and their Perspectives on Merger

Thum Ping Tjin

Chapter 3

Of Six-day Weeks and 3–3 versus 4–2 Systems: Disciplining Teachers for the New State

Hong Lysa

PART II : FOR THE RECORD

Chapter 4

Living in a Time of Deception

Poh Soo Kai

Chapter 5

‘I would never lift one finger to justify my own detention’

Lim Hock Siew

Chapter 6

‘How could I die, the fight is not over’

Said Zahari

Chapter 7

‘I won them back one by one’

Tan Jing Quee

Chapter 8

The True Story of a Singaporean

T.H. Haw

Chapter 9

Standing on the Moral High Ground

Tan Kok Fang

Chapter 10

Imprisonment, Expulsion and Banishment: The Fate of Student Activists in Singapore’s Tertiary Education Institutions

Koh Kay Yew

Chapter 11

Interview with Lee Tee Tong: Blue-collar Worker and Labour Activist

Loh Kah Seng

Chapter 12

A Brief History of the Singapore Bookshop, Publication and Printing Press Workers’ Union

A Group of Former Union Members

Chapter 13

From the Emergency Regulations 1948 to the Internal Security Act Today

Teo Soh Lung

Chapter 14

The Historical Truth Will Be Revealed: Political Detainees in Singapore, 1950–2013

Loh Miaw Gong (Loh Miao Ping)

Appendices, Tables and Photographs

Appendices

1.1 Top secret cablegram from Australian High Commission: Singapore constitutional talks, 10 April 1957 70

10.1 Students’ National Action Front declaration on university autonomy and academic freedom 363

10.2 Joint statement issued by the banished students of the University of Singapore, 6 December 1966 365

Tables

3.1 Primary school leaving examination results, 1959–1962 139

8.1 Subjects taught at Chinese High School, Singapore 317

14.1 Political detainees in Singapore, 1950–2013 432

Photographs

1 Visiting Algerian delegation

2 Poh Soo Kai and Elwyn Jones in Chinatown

3 Union premises on Middle Road

4 Mass rally on the referendum

5 May Day

6 Labour union members at play

7 Cover of trade union annual

8 T.H. Haw’s prizes

9 Outside Nanyang University Library

10 Reading Fajar

11 With Chia Thye Poh

12 Annual lunch gathering of former political detainees

13 Public gathering, 2 February 2013

14 ‘Solidarity forever’

15 Photographing the detainees’ list

16 Loh Miao Ping at work

Abbreviations and Acronyms

Contributors

HAW THAR HEONG (T.H. Haw) was born in Singapore in 1938 and received his primary education in Chinese- and English-medium schools. Prior to graduation from Chinese High School in 1961 he was elected as chairman of prefects’ meetings of graduating classes in relation to the hasty implementation of the restructuring of Chinese secondary schools that subsequently landed him in detention. He was detained during Operation Coldstore for about two years while a student of international law and international relations at the University of Singapore and holding a part-time job as a secretary of a trade union.

HONG LYSA, formerly with the History Department, National University of Singapore, continues with her research interests independently. She is coauthor of The Scripting of a National History: Singapore and its Pasts (2008). She is a founding member of the e-journal s/pores: new directions in Singapore studies (www.s-pores.com), now into its sixth year, and comments on minimyna.wordpress.com when matters relating to history are raised in the local press. She coedited The May 13 Generation: The Chinese Middle Schools Student Movement and Singapore Politics in the 1950s (2011), and was a member of the team that translated He Jin’s novel Ju Lang (2004) into English as The Mighty Wave (2011).

KOH KAY YEW was secretary general of the University Socialist Club, University of Singapore 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 the Nanyang University Political Science Society, Polytechnic Political Society and the University Socialist Club. He was a member of the Malaysian students’ mission to Africa just prior to Singapore’s separation from Malaysia. He has lived in Asia, Europe and North America over the past 30 years, working in the aviation and hospitality industries. He is coeditor of The Fajar Generation: The University Socialist Club and the Politics of Postwar Malaya and Singapore (2010).

LEE TEE TONG was born in Hainan and left for Singapore as a child with his uncle. He became a Singapore citizen but his citizenship was revoked and he is now a permanent resident. Coming from a poor family, he had only four years of primary education. He worked in a number of factories and construction sites. Between 1950 and 1961 he joined the Sawmill Workers’ Union and was a secretary of the Singapore Bus Workers’ Union. He was a Barisan Sosialis candidate in the 1963 general election and won in the Bukit Timah constituency. Less than three weeks later, on 8 October, he was detained under the Internal Security Act and has never set foot in Parliament House. On 15 February 1980 he was transferred to Pulau Ubin, where he was placed under house arrest. He was freed on 1 June 1981.

LIM HOCK SIEW (21 February 1931–4 June 2012) studied at Raffles Institution. He was member of the University Socialist Club, University of Malaya, and was involved in the Fajar Defence Fund. He was a founding member of the People’s Action Party and the Barisan Sosialis, and editor of the latter’s paper The Plebeian. He was arrested in Operation Coldstore and detained for 20 years. In 1972 he issued a statement putting on record that the Special Branch had offered to free him if he would sign a declaration that implicitly justified his detention. After he was freed he continued to condemn the Internal Security Act and the illegitimate nature of his detention. His speeches have been circulated in the social media and have inspired a younger generation of Singaporeans.

LOH KAH SENG is an assistant professor at the Institute for East Asian Studies, Sogang University, South Korea. He works on little-studied subjects in the history of modern Southeast Asia. His present research investigates the transnational and social history in the making of Southeast Asia after the Second World War. He is the author of several books including Squatters into Citizens: The 1961 Bukit Ho Swee Fire and the Making of Modern Singapore (2013), and coauthor of The University Socialist Club and the Contest for Malaya: Tangled Strands of Modernity (2012). He was previously a school teacher and continues to speak to students and teachers about the joys and challenges of studying the past.

LOH MIAW GONG (Loh Miao Ping) was born in Singapore. When she was at Chung Hwa Girls’ High School in 1956 she served as the deputy chair of the academic affairs subcommittee of the Singapore Chinese Middle Schools Students’ Union. She was detained on 10 October 1956 and released three years later. She joined the labour movement and was a Barisan Sosialis candidate in the 1963 general election. She won in the constituency of Havelock but was detained under the Internal Security Act on 8 October 1963 until her release in 1970. She thus made history as an MP who was elected by the people but who was arrested before even setting foot in parliament. She is a member of the team that translated He Jin’s novel Ju Lang (2004) into English as The Mighty Wave (2011). She wrote ‘The two faces of Men in White’ in The May 13 Generation: The Chinese Middle Schools Student Movement and Singapore Politics in the 1950s (2011).

POH SOO KAI was the president of the University Socialist Club in 1954–55 and its secretary general in 1955–56. He was a member of the eight-person editorial board of Fajar that was charged with sedition. He was the assistant secretary general of the Barisan Sosialis when it was established in 1961. He suffered two lengthy periods of political imprisonment totalling 18 years. He was coeditor of The Fajar Generation: The University Socialist Club and the Politics of Postwar Malaya and Singapore (2010). He presently lives in Kuala Lumpur, doing work with the Pusat Sejarah Rakyat (People’s History Centre), an independent historical archive of the people’s struggle in Malaysia and Singapore.

SAID ZAHARI rose through the ranks as a journalist at Utusan Melayu and he was its editor-in-chief in 1959. He led the historic strike at the newspaper in support of editorial independence that began on 20 July 1961 and lasted for 93 days. He joined Partai Rakyat Singapura in 1962 with the intention of uniting the Malays of Singapore, and was elected its president on 1 February 1963. He was arrested the next day in Operation Coldstore and imprisoned without trial for 17 years. His Dark Clouds at Dawn: A Political Memoir (2001) is one of the earliest narratives of a survivor of political detention in Singapore to be published.

TAN JING QUEE (1939–2011) was a lawyer and a former political detainee. In a prolific writing career, he published a collection of poetry, Love’s Travelogue (2004), and short stories, The Chempaka Tree (2009), and was coeditor of Comet in the Sky: Lim Chin Siong in History (2001), Our Thoughts are Free: Poems and Prose on Imprisonment and Exile (2009), The Fajar Generation: The University Socialist Club and the Politics of Postwar Malaya and Singapore (2010) and The May 13 Generation: The Chinese Middle Schools Student Movement and Singapore Politics in the 1950s (2011). He was also a member of the team that translated He Jin’s novel Ju Lang (2004) into English as The Mighty Wave (2011).

TAN KOK FANG is a graduate of Nanyang University and was detained for four and a half years after Operation Coldstore. As an undergraduate he served first as editor of University Tribune, a student paper in English, and later as chairman of the foreign relations committee of the students’ union. In this position he represented Singapore students in international conferences in Switzerland and Australia. Like most of his friends from Nanyang University he devoted himself to the study of Malay during his long years of detention, thereby giving him a solid foundation for a successful career in the translation industry in later life. He holds a Master’s degree in resource economics from a Canadian university where he went to study after his release from detention.

TEO SOH LUNG is a retired lawyer. She is the author of Beyond the Blue Gate: Recollections of a Political Prisoner (2010). As a retiree, she spends her time idling with friends, reading and occasionally blogging, and managing the activities of Function 8, a non-profit organisation which seeks to facilitate the sharing of social, political and economic experiences.

THUM PING TJIN is a research fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, a visiting fellow at the Centre for Global History, University of Oxford, and coordinator of Project Southeast Asia also at the University of Oxford. His work centres on decolonisation in Southeast Asia, and its continuing impact on Southeast Asian governance, politics and international relations. Recent publications include ‘The new normal is the old normal: lessons from Singapore’s history of dissent’, in Donald Low (ed.), Singapore Contested: Reframing Debates in the New Normal (forthcoming) and two chapters in Studying Singapore’s Past: C.M. Turnbull and the History of Modern Singapore (2012).

GEOFF WADE is a historian with interests in Asian political and cultural interactions through time and comparative historiography. He spent the last decade researching and teaching in various academic institutions in Singapore and currently resides in Canberra, Australia, where he is a frequent visitor to the National Archives of Australia. Recent edited works include China and Southeast Asia: The Republican Period and Southeast Asia (1912–1949) (2009), Southeast Asia in the Fifteenth Century: The China Factor (2010) and Early Interactions Between South and Southeast Asia: Reflections on Cross-cultural Exchange (2011).

Preface

This volume is an effort to remember the arrest and detention of 133 men and women on 2 February 1963 and in the weeks that followed, fifty years ago. In one calculated move, Operation Coldstore took away the top leaders of the opposition parties, trade unions, rural organisations, and Nanyang University student and alumni associations. It brought about the disintegration of political pluralism and open exploration among the people of Singapore for the kind of society they envisaged. The use of the Preservation of Public Security Ordinance and its successor, the Internal Security Act, has continued unabated since then.

Operation Coldstore is also about the length of the detentions, beyond the security justifications that were asserted at the time but never substantiated. The way that the legislation was put to use, without any meaningful accountability or safeguards, and the treatment meted out to the detainees should not be allowed to be forgotten. None of the detainees was ever put on trial and convicted of communist subversion, their alleged ‘crime’. The former detainees who have contributed to this volume all maintain that there were absolutely no grounds for their detention. They include those who were imprisoned for more than 15 years because they refused to sign a statement to obtain their release, as this involved having to affirm the accusations thrown at them. Half a century later they continue to press for a court trial to prove their innocence.

More than 30 years of public silence about Operation Coldstore was cautiously broken in the mid-1990s. A long list of names of former political detainees appeared in the condolence notices inserted in the obituary pages of the Chinese-language press, beginning when Lim Chin Siong’s mother passed away in 1995 and then Lim himself. Said Zahari’s memoir, Dark Clouds at Dawn (2001), and the posthumous tribute to and study of Lim Chin Siong, Comet in Our Sky (2001) followed the publication of The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (1998). It took close to another decade before the Fajar generation got together to tell its story and then the former Chinese middle school students. In this volume, the narratives of the anticolonial left-wing forces of both language streams are conjoined, as were their lives, by Operation Coldstore and subsequent detentions.

Book launches, memorial gatherings for leaders like Dr Lim Hock Siew, and public events to remember Operation Spectrum were similar efforts to recover their voices and restore the former detainees’ pride in being who they are. Early in 2013 more than 700 people turned up at Hong Lim Park’s Speakers’ Corner to mark the day, 50 years earlier, when Operation Coldstore was inflicted on our society.

This volume has been an opportunity for the former political detainees who are so inclined to leave their accounts for the record, should there be people who care to learn about them and their universe. At the same time, readers may well learn something about themselves as their fellow citizens in the process. This book could not have waited any longer. Already two of the chapters here are published posthumously; and a couple are drawn from previous publications or interviews given by individuals who are now too frail to write a new piece. The first-person narratives are supplemented by academic contributions, written independently of the former. Geoff Wade and Thum Ping Tjin kindly agreed to republish essays for the volume. The chapters by the historians provide a broader context and bring in considerations which would not have been known to the authors at the time that they were making that history. They explore how it is that the past has been presented in a certain way and try to throw light on those aspects which have been kept in the dark.

*

The task of publishing this book simultaneously in English and Chinese has been challenging. We are grateful to Ngoh Teck Nam, ‘Wu Ming’, Gan Chiu Har, Sandra Wong, William Yap Hon Ngian, Lim Pai and Lynn Seah for voluntarily undertaking the arduous work of translation. We are particularly fortunate to have the support of the veteran translator Ngoh Teck Nam, who was outstanding for the quiet, awesome way he worked in translating a substantial portion of the book. It was a pleasure and privilege to work with him. Our thanks also go to Lim Hing Gok and Loh Miao Ping for helping out as liaison, a task which required much goodwill, patience and stamina. They both also helped to vet some of the Chinese translations. Loh Miao Ping was unstinting in putting her computer skills at our disposal, and also contributed many hours of animated discussion on the finer points of the Chinese language. Heng Nguan Nerng was most diligent and resourceful in coming up with information and contacts for the list of political detainees. We would also like to express our appreciation to Chng Min Oh (Zhuang Minghu) and Yang Xiao Hei for their understanding and support. We wish them all the best in their writing endeavours. Our thanks also go to Mrs Tan Jing Quee (Rose) for her helpful initiatives, as always.

Poh Soo Kai, Tan Kok Fang and Hong Lysa

17 October 2013

Introduction

Why Operation Coldstore Matters

Erasing Operation Coldstore from Memory

In 2011, during the campaign for the general election, the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) made references to the Barisan Sosialis, the strongest opposition party in the early 1960s. Perhaps for the first time the Barisan Sosialis was not depicted as a vicious pro-communist organisation. Instead, it was presented as being almost inconsequential, losing its way on account of the mistakes its leaders made. Two of the new PAP candidates were sons of former Barisan Sosialis leaders: Janil Puthucheary’s father, the former trade unionist Dominic, was detained in Operation Coldstore and banished to the Federation of Malaya; Ong Ye Kung, identified as a potential cabinet minister and from the highest ranks of the civil service, is the son of Ong Lian Teng, a Barisan Sosialis MP elected in the 1963 general election. Along with other Barisan Sosialis MPs, Ong Lian Teng resigned in 1966 in accordance with his party’s instructions to protest against the waves of arrests and detention without trial, and the PAP government’s secret negotiation of the separation from Malaysia without any reference to parliament. Ong Ye Kung learned of his father’s past political involvement only when he read Lee Kuan Yew’s memoir.

The Chinese press dubbed these PAP candidates ‘sons of the old left’. The ‘old left’ was presented in a benign light, at peace with themselves and their political past. Ong Lian Teng’s son spoke of his father, who died in 2009, as a man of principle whose lifelong concern had been to help the poor find their feet. Ong had struggled with his son’s meteoric rise in the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) and the party that was bitterly opposed to the Barisan Sosialis. According to the younger Ong, his father finally set aside his attachment to the past and gave his blessing for his son to join the PAP, accepting that this was a continuation of his own mission to improve the conditions of life of the people of Singapore. For his part, the then minister for foreign affairs George Yeo, Ong Ye Kung’s mentor, had insisted that he was not to dishonour his father’s beliefs nor go against the latter’s wishes. It was a story of father and son getting to understand and respect one another, ending with the younger Ong seeing himself as carrying on his father’s legacy. A member of the old left’s ‘second generation’ was going to be a fourth-generation PAP leader.¹

Among the enthusiastic responses of former Barisan Sosialis leaders canvassed by the press to the fielding of the two candidates, the comment of Teo Kim Leng, the 79-year-old former PAP-turned-Barisan Sosialis MP, was the most telling: ‘If former leftists and their children still hold strong feelings against what happened in the past, it will be difficult. But if they are rational and remember the Barisan and PAP today share the same objective of making Singapore a better place for all, then there will be no problem’.²

Such sound bites raise an intriguing question. If the Barisan Sosialis and the PAP today share the same noble objective, what then were their differences in the 1960s? If Ong Lian Teng and his Barisan Sosialis colleagues were steadfast in their belief of serving the people, then it must be the PAP that has moved to share this position today. The simple story of the great harmony that the newspaper report presented, between present and past, the PAP and the Barisan Sosialis, was spun by stripping history away from the narrative. This narrative reduced the deep conflicts between the two forces to differences between opposing political parties, with the Barisan Sosialis losing out when Lee Siew Choh led the boycott of parliament. However, the most effective Barisan Sosialis leaders did not lose to the PAP through any peaceful political process. They were removed from politics and society, and imprisoned via Operation Coldstore, some for prolonged periods, because they were widely expected to win the 1963 general election.

To Be the Most Left: The PAP in the 1950s

In retrospect, Lim Chin Siong’s detention without trial by the PAP seems almost inevitable from his very first meeting with Lee Kuan Yew in 1954. Lee has described the world of those educated in Chinese from the mid-1950s on as one teeming with vitality, dynamism and revolution. Lee claimed that the communists had been tapping into this world, and stated that the English-educated ‘revolutionaries’ like himself wanted to do this as well.³ This statement in fact recognised that the vitality and dynamism were organic and spontaneous, and that it was the world which Lim Chin Siong belonged to, and led. Lim and fellow trade union leader Fong Swee Suan became founder members of the PAP, and Lim was fielded in the 1955 election, winning the highest number of votes. Lee kept close to Lim. He virtually monopolised the position of legal adviser to the left-wing trade unions and the Singapore Chinese Middle School Students’ Union, tapping into Lim’s enormous support base. As it turned out, he made sure that Lim would not be allowed to be a political rival. Given Lim’s strong electoral appeal, detention without trial with the complicity of the British and the Federation of Malaya was the only way that he could be stopped.

To be left at the time when the British empire was in retreat meant being anticolonial. At its most basic, this meant a demand for equality and freedom from the ethnic, class and linguistic discrimination that was rampant in Singapore. The more fervent anticolonialists demanded the unconditional end of colonial rule without delay. The parties to the left all claimed to be socialist, which in immediate concrete terms meant largely affording greater protection to workers from the endemic exploitation they were subjected to and stronger trade unions to ensure this. Lee Kuan Yew as opposition leader rode on this momentum.

Lee and Lim Chin Siong were the PAP delegates to the all-party constitutional talks held in London in April 1956. David Marshall, who led the delegation as chief minister, had pledged to obtain complete self-government from the British. The British, however, insisted on retaining control of internal security, even as they agreed to compromise on nearly every other issue. Marshall and Lim were the only two delegates who rejected this condition. The chief minister then decided that, as the majority of the delegation was in favour of the proposed constitution, he would put his signature to the agreement and resign on returning to Singapore. Marshall subsequently recounted that Lee’s response to this was, ‘Oh no…. You are not going to be more left than me. No, no, no, if that’s your attitude, I’ll vote against. We all vote against’.⁴ Lee could not afford to be shown to accept continued British control over Singapore’s internal security while Marshall and Lim would not.

Lee’s concern then, as he put it in his memoir, was to make sure that ‘the constitution would not open the gates for a communist takeover, but would give us enough room to build a non-communist government’.⁵ This translated into the 1959 constitution with the setting up of the Internal Security Council (ISC), and the agreement that those in political detention would not be allowed to stand in that election. By that time Lim Chin Siong and other leading left-wing PAP leaders and trade unionists were in prison, detained by the Lim Yew Hock government in 1956. On the campaign trail the PAP pledged to release the detainees before taking office. This gave Lee the best of both worlds: the agreement ensured that Lim was kept out of the legislative assembly, while the PAP’s pledge to free the detainees was highly popular with the electorate.

Revolutionary Change and Subversion

Lee had been careful to keep the PAP as the most anticolonial party that the British could tolerate and was rewarded with the prime ministership in 1959. The new PAP government kept up this image.The address of William Goode, the Yang di-Pertuan Negara who was also the last British governor, to Singapore’s first fully elected legislative assembly was delivered in Malay. Its key phrases were ‘social revolution’ and ‘a more just society’.

As the new government’s plan for each ministry was sketched out, these key phrases were reiterated: industrial peace with justice as the basis for trade expansion and industrial growth through attracting foreign investment; mass health education campaigns; equal treatment in education for all the language streams; public housing for the lower-income earners and provision of water and electricity supplies to rural dwellers. The new Ministry of Culture was set up to initiate a cultural revolution no less by fostering a Malayan culture to accompany the proclaimed political and economic revolution, with the aim of creating a shared Malayan consciousness that would pave the way for merger with the Federation of Malaya.

In home affairs, however, continuity rather than a break with the past was postulated. The basic political situation in Malaya had not changed. The shooting war waged by the Federation government and the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) had entered its eleventh year. Subversion was defined as ‘any political activity designed to further the aims and interests not of one’s own people but of foreign powers. The government would fight and counter subversion from both right and left’.⁶ The concern with ‘subversion’ was to override all the declarations of revolution and a new dawn, most swiftly in the field of labour.

Curbing Lim Chin Siong and the Left-wing Unions

Labour reforms were initially at the top of the PAP agenda. The source of the PAP’s 1959 electoral success was clear. As the British noted, of the 43 PAP seats out of a total of 51, 23 of them or 54 per cent were held by active trade unionists.⁷ Lee Kuan Yew was confident that he could take control of the trade unions away from Lim Chin Siong, released after two and a half years of detention. The Trade Unions (Amendment) Bill provided for one general union representing each of the 19 categories of work defined for this purpose. The unions had to have a minimum of 250 members and be registered and affiliated with the Trade Union Congress (TUC). There were more than 200 unions in existence at the time, a number of which were ‘yellow unions’ controlled by employers, and splinter or small breakaway unions that weakened the bargaining position of workers. This new structure would bring them all together and provide for a strong trade union movement. More importantly, it was designed to prevent the ‘communists’ from starting unions or taking over existing ones.⁸ Specifically, it would cut down Lim’s influence as his Singapore General Employees’ Union (SGEU) would have to disband. Lee believed that of the ex-detainees only Lim was against the PAP.⁹ He expected to control the TUC via its general secretary G. Kandasamy.

At the first ISC meeting Lee gave ‘a full exposition’ of his attitude towards Lim and his activities. His government had to be careful not to appear to the workers as enemies of the union leaders, who were working for the rights and benefits of ‘the unsophisticated mass of the people’, as Lee called them. It needed to ‘maintain the security position (and economic) position’ while gaining the confidence of the ‘uncommitted majority’ as their true champions.¹⁰ Thus, on the surface, Kandasamy and his colleagues cooperated with Lim Chin Siong and his colleagues. Like the government, these trade unionists were afraid of alienating the masses if they appeared too moderate and not ‘left’ enough. In their reports, the British labelled them as ‘right wing’.¹¹ At the same time, British reports written just two months before the PAP split and the dissolution of the TUC noted the success of the large number of unions grouped under Lim’s leadership. They had ‘strengthened their position for further action’ and had reduced the number of strikes, having found it more profitable to negotiate concessions from wealthier firms.¹² This observation held even after the dissolution of the TUC, at the request ‘of right wing General Secretary Kandasamy’. The left-wing trade union leaders were careful not to stir up industrial trouble. The British noted that their unions proceeded steadily to negotiate fresh contracts for improved wages and conditions. Most of the agreements entered into were for a period of two years and would be up for revision in 1963 when the constitutional talks were due.¹³

Lee’s presentation at the first ISC meeting would have been to explain why it was necessary for him to release Lim and the others before taking office, and to appoint the leading detainees as political secretaries. All three members of the ISC were in agreement that Lim should be seen as a communist and never be allowed to attain political supremacy in Singapore. A British officer who imbibed this view apparently had visions of Lim as a rabid revolutionary. E.M. West, perhaps among the least astute of the United Kingdom Commission staff, reported to London that Sandrasegeram (Sandra) Woodhull, political and information secretary of the TUC, had approached him for the names and addresses of national trade union organisations and other material concerning trade unions in Britain. West was quick to add that he suspected that Woodhull would be making similar requests from countries ‘on the other side of the curtain’. West was similarly surprised that Lim Chin Siong, who was then political secretary to the minister of finance, attended a cocktail party hosted by Lord Selkirk, the commissioner-general for Southeast Asia. Lim had asked him for materials on the education of trade unionists in Britain and Commonwealth countries to help him in his capacity as secretary for education in the TUC. West subsequently visited Lim at his government office to ‘try and probe into much more political matters’. However, he found that Lim avoided committing himself when replying to his ‘frank questions’, apart from saying that the TUC might not approve of everything that the government would do, and that satisfying the workers while trying to maintain industrial peace and promote development was a very difficult problem. West confessed that he would find it disappointing if Lim continued to speak as if he were of the same mind as those on the extreme right, not left, of the British Labour Party.¹⁴ It was evidently disconcerting when Lim did not fit the stereotype that West had expected from what he learned of him through the intelligence reports.

The Right Posing as Left

The Trade Union Ordinance 1960 was duly passed on 13 May 1960, but almost immediately the government decided that it should lapse. The ISC chairman’s caution that it might well be creating a Frankenstein monster was heeded.¹⁵ Three newly-registered federations of trade unions were deregistered ten days later: the Singapore Federation of Land Transport Workers’ Union, the National Federation of Building Construction and Woodworking Workers Union, and the Federation of Factory and Workshop Employees’ Union, as was the Singapore Water Transport Employees’ Union.

TUC statements alleged that the ISC, particularly the Federation representative, was responsible for the deregistration, and attacked such ‘interferences’.¹⁶ Kandasamy, the general secretary, repeated the allegations in Petir, the PAP newsletter.¹⁷ However, news soon ‘spread all over town’ that the ISC had in fact nothing to do with the matter. Lee complained of this to UK High Commission, thinking that it was behind the ‘leak’. It was very damaging to him to be made to appear as more right wing than the ISC itself. The government had also been ‘badly shaken’ when it received ‘strong, expert advice’ that sheltering behind the ISC did the PAP leaders more harm than good in the first place, since they were then represented as stooges of the British.¹⁸

However, far from learning his lesson as the British expected, Lee continued to place the blame on the ISC for the continued detentions of those arrested by the Lim Yew Hock government, defying the popular expectation of the electorate that they would be released. When Ong Eng Guan campaigned in the Hong Lim by-election on the basis of the ‘sixteen resolutions’ that he claimed were abandoned promises from the original PAP platform, Lee used the term ‘left-wing adventurers’ for those who voiced support of the resolutions which accused the PAP of moving to the right.¹⁹ With the expulsion of the party’s left wing following the government’s defeat in the Anson by-election, rhetoric replaced substantive debates in the assembly. Relentless tirades accused the Barisan Sosialis of being pro-communist, a catch-all accusation which was used to invalidate any arguments the Barisan Sosialis had, no matter how legitimate.

The PAP fought the Anson by-election on the question of merger. Tunku Abdul Rahman had mentioned this as a possibility following the Hong Lim by-election, which the Tunku had read as an inexorable leftward drift in Singapore politics. Lim Chin Siong and the unions had refused to give their unqualified support for merger when the newspapers pressed them for a view just a few days later. In reply to PAP chairman Toh Chin Chye’s announcement that the party would seek independence through merger, Lim listed four immediate steps the government should take: release of the political detainees; speedy unification of the trade union movement; right of citizenship and franchise to all those loyal to the anticolonial struggle; and freedom of press, speech, assembly and organisation for the purpose of advancing the anticolonial struggle.²⁰ This was the platform of the left wing where merger was concerned.

The Barisan Sosialis saw merger as a political move – an attempt to bring in the Tunku and the Alliance, which was against socialism outright, as a means to prevent Singapore’s left-wing movement from expanding. The PAP claimed to be a socialist party, in view of the popularity of socialism among the electorate in Singapore, but its credibility was thin with the loss of support of Lim and the trade unions. As the Barisan Sosialis’s Sheng Nam Chin asserted in the legislative assembly, the PAP on the one hand wanted to check the advance of socialism while on the other, it had to pretend to be a socialist party to stay in power, and had to make sure that no other group of legitimate political forces was to be on its left. Thus Lee Kuan Yew sought to delegitimise his former comrades when he proclaimed in his radio talk that they were communist, potentially communist, pro-communist or communist inspired.²¹

Ultimately, the PAP’s gambit of using merger against the Barisan Sosialis was successful, for not only did it divert attention away from the issue of release of the political detainees to citizenship and the economy, but the Federation government demanded the detention of Singapore’s political opposition as a condition of merger. Mindful of how Lim Yew Hock’s use of detention against his political opponents in 1956 had destroyed Lim’s political credibility with the public, Lee had been reluctant to endorse the use of detention against the Barisan Sosialis and other political opponents unless he could escape responsibility. The Federation demands, however, allowed him to dispose of his opponents while publicly highlighting that the right-wing Tunku would never tolerate them in Malaysia.

Consequences

Lee Kuan Yew had pronounced in the legislative assembly debate, where he split with the PAP left, that ‘the battle for men’s minds cannot be won by simple smearing of a man being either anti-communist, reactionary, wavering bourgeoisie, Social Democrat or communist.…the battle for men’s minds cannot be won by simple labelling’.²² Indeed the people of Singapore evidently were not sufficiently convinced by the labelling of the left to the point of abandoning them. Whatever victories the PAP claimed, one of which was the referendum, were the result of bullying and intimidation, and ultimately brute force, as applied in Operation Coldstore. Coldstore also established a model for the use of repression as a tool of governance in Singapore. In 1956 Lee, as leader of the opposition, declared:

Repression … is like making love – it is always easier the second time! The first time there may be pangs of conscience, a sense of guilt. But once embarked on this course, with constant repetition, you get more and more brazen in the attack and in the scope of the attack. First … you attack only those whom your Special Branch can definitely say are Communists. They have no proof except what X told Z who told Alpha who told Beta who told the Special Branch. Then you attack those whom your Special Branch say are actively sympathising with and helping the Communists, although they are not Communists themselves. Then you attack those whom your Special Branch say, although they are not Communists or fellow travellers, yet, by their intransigent opposition to any collaboration with colonialism, they encourage the spirit of revolt and weaken constituted authority and thereby, according to the Special Branch, they are aiding the Communists. Then finally, since you have gone that far, you attack all those who oppose you…. Repression is an easy substitute for hard work and organisation.²³

Lee predicted his own future. After the success of Coldstore, he repeatedly used the Internal Security Act (ISA) against his political adversaries. Two more rounds of arrests were conducted in 1963 and another three in 1964, and at least one or more rounds every year until 1979, with two further rounds in 1987 and 1988.

The consequences for Singapore have been profound. From 1965, when the Barisan Sosialis MPs began resigning in protest, there was no opposition member in the parliament until 1981, when J.B. Jeyaretnam won a by-election in Anson. Since then, until 2011, there have been no more than four elected opposition members in a parliament which has more than 80 seats. Without the discipline of an opposition, authoritarianism and intolerance of dissent became the normal practice of the Singaporean government. Repression indeed became an easy substitute for hard work and organisation.

Postscript: The Right to be Left

The most obvious reading of the PAP fielding two candidates in the 2011 general election who are children of former Barisan Sosialis leaders, apparently with the blessing of their fathers, is that it was a demonstration of the ultimate defeat of the left. But this triumph was covered by a philosophical overtone. George Yeo, reputed to be the liberal and ‘big picture’ person in the PAP, supplied the grand sweep of history to situate the ‘old left second generation’ issue. He was reported in the local Chinese press as saying that as the course of a river diverges at a certain point, and then converges further on into a new mainstream, so too the divergences in a people’s history would eventually converge into a new mainstream. Thus, Yeo concluded, the family background of the candidates need not be a permanent barrier against them joining the mainstream. To him, Singapore’s history from the anticolonial movement to gain independence, the struggle with the left wing, to the conflict between the PAP and Malaysia, was filled with pathos or suffering, in the Greek sense of the term. But it needed to be recognised, in order to enrich the collective memory of the society. However, that history needed time to settle and find its proper place, for the wounds inflicted were still too recent and too raw. Yeo held out solace in the example of men like Zeng Guofan who were condemned in the early days of the People’s Republic of China for suppressing the Taiping Rebellion and prolonging the life of the Qing dynasty. Today Zeng Guofan is regarded in China as a man of ability who contributed to the country. So too, according to Yeo, could historical reassessments like this on the left wing in Singapore take place in the future.²⁴

Yeo saw the children of the old left joining the PAP as a return to the fountainhead. His invitation was for the old left to accept his civil attitude towards them and the prospect that they might find their place in Singapore’s history. However, that would not be in their lifetime. Yeo’s apparent peacemaking needed the acceptance by the former detainees and left-wing members to bury the past. However, Operation Coldstore and the other detentions could not be so easily blotted out. On 19 September 2011 – when the Malaysian government repealed its legislation – 16 former political detainees signed an open letter to the government demanding the abolition of the ISA in Singapore. The Ministry of Home Affairs’ statement in response was one that has been in use for 50 years: the 16 were not detained for their political beliefs – they were actively involved in communist united front activities in support of the CPM, which was committed to the violent overthrow of the constitutionally elected governments in Singapore and Malaysia. The streams remained in their divergent courses.

The apparent gesture of reconciliation by Yeo could only be the mirage that it was as long as it was not paired with the offer of truth and restorative justice. Half a century after Operation Coldstore there are enough former political detainees who are determined to assert their right to be left, and ensure that the government has to account for its actions. If a new historical mainstream does emerge it would be one which the left wing will be an integral part of, and on its own terms.

Bibliography

UNPUBLISHED SOURCES

National Archives, United Kingdom

NEWSPAPERS

Lianhe Zaobao

Straits Times, The

GOVERNMENT PRINTED SOURCES

Singapore Legislative Assembly Debates, various

BOOKS AND ARTICLES

Drysdale, John, Singapore: Struggle for Success, Singapore: Times Publications International, 1984.

Lee Kuan Yew, The Battle for Merger, Singapore: Government Printing Office, 1961.

Lee Kuan Yew, The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore: Singapore Press Holdings, 1998.

Footnotes

¹ Lianhe Zaobao, ‘Ong Ye Kung, old left second generation: My father had set me free’ [in Chinese], 10 April 2011.

² Straits Times, ‘Positive reaction to PAP fielding sons of ex-leftists’, 23 March 2011.

³ Lee Kuan Yew, The Battle for Merger, Singapore: Government Printing Office, 1961, p. 16.

⁴ John Drysdale, Singapore: Struggle for Success, Singapore: Times Publications International, 1984, pp. 142–43.

⁵ Lee Kuan Yew, The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore: Singapore Press Holdings, 1998, p. 238.

⁶ Singapore Legislative Assembly Debates, vol. ¹¹, session ¹, ¹ July ¹⁹⁵⁹, cols. ⁶–¹⁶.

⁷ S.A. Priddle to commissioner-general for Southeast Asia, ‘Labour scene in Singapore by labour adviser’, ²¹ September ¹⁹⁵⁹, CO ¹⁰³⁰/⁷⁶¹, ‘Labour situation in Singapore ¹⁹⁵⁷–⁶⁰’.

⁸ S.A. Priddle, Office of Commissioner-General for UK in South East Asia, Singapore to A.G. Wallis, Ministry of Labour and National Service, London, ¹⁵ June ¹⁹⁵⁹, CO¹⁰³⁰/⁷⁶¹, ‘Labour situation in Singapore ¹⁹⁵⁷–⁶⁰’.

⁹ UK commissioner William Goode to secretary of state for the colonies, ²¹ September ¹⁹⁵⁹, CO ¹⁰³⁰/⁷⁶¹.

¹⁰ Ibid.

¹¹ S.A. Priddle, ‘The labour scene in Singapore’, March ¹⁹⁶⁰, CO ¹⁰³⁰/¹²⁸⁸, ‘Labour situation in Singapore ¹⁹⁶⁰–⁶²’.

¹² Selkirk to secretary of state for the colonies, ‘Singapore: Political Developments’, ¹⁹ May ¹⁹⁶¹, CO ¹¹⁵⁰, ‘Political situation, Singapore, ¹⁹⁶⁰–⁶²’.

¹³ H.G.L. Poppit, assistant labour adviser, ‘The labour scene in Singapore, August ¹⁹⁶¹’, ¹³ August ¹⁹⁶¹, CO ¹⁰³⁰/¹⁴⁰⁰, ‘Trade Unions, Singapore’.

¹⁴ E.M. West to C.S. Roberts, Colonial Office, ⁹ June ¹⁹⁶⁰, CO ¹⁰³⁰/¹²⁸⁸, ‘Labour situation in Singapore ¹⁹⁶⁰–⁶²’.

¹⁵ Proceedings of the Internal Security Council, ²² September ¹⁹⁶⁰, CO¹⁰³⁰/¹¹⁰².

¹⁶ Ibid.

¹⁷ Ibid.

¹⁸ H.T. Bourdillon to Geofroy Tory, ²⁰ June ¹⁹⁶⁰, CO ¹⁰³⁰/¹²⁸⁸, ‘Labour situation in Singapore ¹⁹⁶⁰–⁶²’.

¹⁹ Singapore Legislative Assembly Debates, ³ August ¹⁹⁶⁰, cols. ⁵⁵–⁵⁸.

²⁰ H.G.L. Poppit, ‘The labour scene in Singapore – ¹³ August ¹⁹⁶¹’, CO ¹⁰³⁰/¹⁴⁰⁰.

²¹ Singapore Legislative Assembly Debates, ²⁴ November ¹⁹⁶¹, cols. ⁶⁹⁷–⁷⁰¹.

²² Singapore Legislative Assembly Debates, ²⁰ July ¹⁹⁶¹, col. ¹⁶⁷⁴.

²³ Singapore Legislative Assembly Debates, ⁴ October ¹⁹⁵⁶, cols. ³²²–²³.

²⁴ Lianhe Zaobao, ‘George Yeo on the left-wing second generation as PAP candidates: Family’s political background need not be permanent barrier’ [in Chinese], 10 April 2011.

PART I

FROM THE RECORDS

Chapter One

Operation Coldstore: A Key Event in the Creation of Modern Singapore

*

Geoff Wade

Introduction

The police operation known as ‘Operation Cold Store’ or ‘Operation Coldstore’ was carried out in Singapore in the early hours of 2 February 1963. Through it and the more than 113 arrests and detentions it entailed, the political left of Singapore was essentially eviscerated. The operation and the events leading up to it remain woefully understudied and underdocumented.¹ This is particularly so given their palpable importance to both the process of the establishment of the Malaysian state and to the creation of virtually every aspect of modern Singapore. The sensitivity of the topic even today is obvious from the scant attention the operation is given in Singapore’s own history writing, both official and otherwise.² This is also reflected in other official accounts of the period.³ The intention here is to provide a documentary history of Operation Coldstore, essentially drawn from the British archival record, to try and illuminate the agendas, the events and the processes of the various players involved.

The Left as a Threat to British Control in Malaya and Singapore

Following the end of the Second World War, with the return of the British to Malaya, the relationship between the British and the left, including the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM), grew increasingly fraught. This was particularly so when Cold War concerns deepened and global rivalries expanded. With the creation on 1 February 1948 of the Federation of Malaya without any reference to the non-Malay peoples of the peninsula – as a Cold War bulwark against a communism that was perceived as quintessentially Chinese – the British had marked out their agenda. Not long after, an armed revolt (or revolution) was launched by the CPM against British rule in the peninsula.⁴ In the subsequent period of armed warfare, often referred to as the Emergency (1948–1960), regulations were introduced which allowed for preventive detention without trial. Operation Coldstore, conducted under the Preservation of Public Security Ordinance, was a product of Britain’s engagement in a global Cold War. This element is central to the evolution of the events which culminated in the removal of one side of politics in Singapore in 1963.

While Singapore was established as a separate British crown colony in 1946, many of