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Book Review
A new look at history The British manipulators and the "emergency" |
| A close scrutiny COLLIN ABRAHAM'S BOOK is the work of someone looking at the Emergency period, obtaining his facts historically and therefore is subject to close scrutiny as to how widely he has gathered his facts and how wide is his vision of the period. Fortunately he is trying to project a new perspective of an important part of our history, the Baling Talks and therefore the Emergency, in order that we may form a different opinion of the truth and the intentions of the main actors involved. His opinion requires observation from a different paradigm shift that we may have a different perspective in order to see the Emergency and the Baling Talks in a different light and see the many truths not noticed before and so that we may view the facts as they really were and that it was British interests that the British authorities were trying to protect which has prevented presenting the truth and which led to the Emergency. The British, to protect their purpose in Malaya (including Singapore) were to apply their divide and rule policy, dividing the Malays from the Chinese and the other races and then ruling Malaya through a system of state protectorates whereby the country became a system of Sultanates behind which British Advisers ruled the state through the Sultanates and their Malay state civil service which began in the early Thirties. No one wins in a war and when the time came Britain was forced to depend on America and had to repay America for her assistance in the war which made Britain more dependant on Malaya. Malaya had a lot of tin and it was suitable for rubber which were rare commodities made even more important for Britain after the heavy cost of World War Two had compelled her to a lease and lend agreement with America. Britain had to repay America with rubber and tin from Malaya, and was helped by a sudden surge in America's demand for rubber and tin. . For these reasons, Collin Abraham's book is a worthy read. Normal historical analyses are observations by non-participants analysing from known facts, "historical truths" which the author discerns from presented facts. But Collin Abraham's book calls for a paradigm shift in our acceptance of history so that certain facts may be viewed again |
| from another perspective to
discover other conclusions deliberately ignored. Divide and rule Collin Abraham says that this divide and rule policy began in the early years of Chinese immigration after the First World War, especially in the Thirties, when the marginalization of the Chinese was done by refusing their demand for Malayan nationality so that they became outsiders in their request for social equality with the Malays who, as sons of the soil, were entitled to special privileges against any other race except British who could break the Malay ownership of reservation lands by rezoning of those lands; only British estate owners could apply. This system required all applications for rezoning of reserved Malay land for ownership by non-Malays to go first through the Sultans and the Malay state bureacracy behind which, through a system of protected States, there was the British Adviser to the Sultan who gave his advice, maintained by Malay bureaucrats working, ostensibly under the Sultans, but who in fact controlled by him. The Chinese were refused Malayan nationality and were thus marginalized as foreign encroachers to Malay land, to be kept at arm's length and were built up as a major threat to the Malays who had to be protected from them. This Chinese marginalization was further emphasized when Chinese schools and their language were denied recognition and the Chinese could not join the State Civil Service except in the colonies of Singapore, Malacca and Penang. Even then, only those Chinese from English schools in Singapore, Malacca and Penang could be considered.. They were thus forced to employ themselves and to depend on themselves. The colonies did not have tin mines and land for the cultivation of rubber estates and they were scarcely populated so they were allowed to own land in the colonies and this made British objectives less discernible in her objectives. It was a subtle and clever plan and there could be no opposition to it. In 1926, the fear of the Chinese became widespread in Perak and they were vilified in the Malay press. One can assume therefore that Britain had already sown the seeds of splittism in Malaya through Malay Sultans and the Malay bureaucracy which was supposed to represent the state and the people but who were in fact supporting British interests. But, at that time, favouritism was thought of as favours to the Malays in the policy of Malay land reserve agreed to by the Sultans and approved by the Malay State Service (but actually at the instigation of the British Advisers hiding behind the sarongs of the Sultans; but, because of the hugh influx of Chinese immigrants, became a privilege of ownership of land by the Malays (as sons of the soil) but which ripened over the years into a system of discrimination against the Chinese who were kept as foreigners to Malaya when, as sons of the soil, they had become bumiputeras of the land, |
| Restless Perak Now, not only were the Chinese and the other races marginalized but the Malays had become a privileged ethnic group in the Thirties. Lawlessness in China and the relative peace the British had brought to Malaya saw an influx of Chinese immigrants in large enough quantities as to have their own society within the marginalised Chinese groups and it brought about a different social reality to the country where the immigrant societycould earn in commerce and trade outside of the government. New Indian labourers were also imported to help develop the rubber estates as they fled the Indian unrest and rubber became more important to Britain. But they were Indians with experience in India and independence and were vulnerable to bullying and other weaknesses because they were penniless. They added to the non-national marginalised group and, less skilled in bargaining , had to depend on the Chinese against bullying unionists to help them. The world was also in a turmoil. In the Middle East. Ben Gurion was fighting he British for an independent Israel. The Soviet Union was consolidating behind an iron curtain she was accused of setting up right across Europe behind which she was plotting a take-over of Europe. In China , Mao was establishing a Communist state in China. In India Gandhi was fighting for Indian independence. In Indonesia, Soekarno was fighting the Dutch and the Indonesian sultans and trying to establish a Socialist Republic of Indonesia. In Malaya, the British had returned and were busy trying to re-establish themselves against the Communists whom they suspected was trying to take over the country when in fact they were already in the clear majority and should be given more rights. British Palestine armed policemen were retreating from Israel and looking for jobs. Perak was a state restless with an underpaid labour force in the rubber estates and they had to be dealt with. The Palestine police seemed a godsend to confront the Indians with. Collin Abraham begins his history of post war Malaya with three reports of disturbances in Kedah that had compelled the British Administration to react. All these incidents had involved the Indian labourers. Whether the British were encouraged by the availability of the Palestine police officers to confront them we do not know. . |
| The Kedah incidents The first incident took place in a small township, Bedong, a few miles from Sungei Patani. It involved only unarmed Indian labourers and their families in Kedah trying to make their grievances heard. They had only picketed a toddy shop to protest against the sale of the toddy to the Indian labourers who wasted their low wages to get drunk. Whenthe British turned up, the demonstration was peaceful and nothing more than for a social demand. But the English officer in charge of the police force, deliberately went into the toddy shop for a glass of toddy, a cheap alcoholic drink never drunk by the English officers and began sipping it in front of the Indian protesters. To make matters more insulting, he continued drinking even as the instructions were given to the police to charge and dispersed the crowd. It was clearly a confrontational and insulting behaviour calculated to anger a crowd of restless Indians and their friends protesting on a social habit. At this time, they were not even assisted by the Chinese unionists with their skill and experience. The three major forces in Malaya - the English forces, the Chinese unionists and the Indian workers - were not in confrontation. The British, right from the beginning had decided on their confrontation policy. There was no reason for confrontation where appeasement was an alternative especially as those incidents were minor and social. Can we blame the failure of British colonial policy in Malaya on the other races? The police now had been beefed up with armed police sergeants from Palestine who could have encouraged confrontation under the mistaken view that the Asians could be cowed even if they had failed to cow the Jews in the Middle East. But the situation had changed drastically in Malaya in the meantime. The Chinese had become tougher; they had fought the Japanese and were not so afraid of arms. They and the Indians, who had begun fighting the British in India for their independence, could not be so easily cowed as the British thought they could be. The incident did not stop there but lorries were used to round up Indians and some other persons around the area on suspicion of picketing though they might have been passers by. On the 2nd of March twelve people were brought up for a trial which was completed in one day the all the accused were found guilty and sentenced to three months rigorous imprisonment |
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One Swaminatha Samy was sent to Penang Hospital where he had died
without meeting his family and permission for his family to see
him in hospital was denied. No proper autopsy or a coroner's inquiry
was held. No mention
of who he was and how and where he had met with his injuries has ever
been found. To the marginalized Chinese had come the Indian working class. This was the beginning of British confrontation. The following two incidents made the incidents three in number and in all of them, confrontation seemed to have been the overall policy even against unprovoked incidents in the peaceful, rural Kedah of 1947. The second incident The second incident happened on the 3rd of March in the same year which even was more sadistic. It appeared that on the morning of the 23rd March, one Armanthayee had complained to the estate manager that she had lost two bullocks. The manager was the superior power in the estate which was out of bounds to everyone not working in the estate. He was the only person to whom she could lodge her complaint to as he was the only authority in the estate. Without his permission no one could enter the estate or remain there without his permission. It was his castle. Apparently he lost his temper and shortly afterwards assaulted her and ordered one Balaya, a factory hand, to load Ananthayee and all her belongings on to a lorry and see that she left the estate. Balaya thought the idea illogical and refused. A strike commenced. A few days later, Balaya left the estate to see some friends in Penang and, in his absence, a strong force of police turned up at the coolie lines of the estate and cordoned the entire coolie lines which formed the entire residential area of the labourers, turning everyone out of their residences and held them as the police searched every room fruitlessly as Balaya was not at home as the police had been informed. . The police then told the crowd that they had an arrest warrant for one Balaya and that they had come to apprehend him and asked that he be produced. The labourers repeated that since he was not in the estate, it could not be done. The police did not believe them and conducted another fruitless search of the entire tenement area. When that proved negative, the police were instructed to disperse the cordoned crowd, charging the assembly. without giving them a chance to disperse. |
| Property
was destroyed during the search, twenty five women were injured
and sixty six men and their families were arrested for rioting and
tried in the criminal court. Their defence was that they were at
home and the police had raided the place, how could they be guilty of
rioting when they had been held against their will - and all because
the police had wanted to arrest one man. At the inquiry held later the Police Commissioner said that he had come to Kedah to see the situation for himself. He considered that the disturbances in Kedah was not over wages but political agitation by illegal elements which had to be broken up and action would be taken by the Government to stop this illegal agitation. Asked if the police would help the labourers by asking the rubber industry to adopt a policy of conciliation he told the inquiry that the police would not suggest that the rubber industry do anything that was detrimental to the industry. The third incident The third incident was an escalation and it took place at Dublin estate on the 28th of April when the labourers were discussing the details of the Labour Day 1947 to be held at Kulim by some unionists. The labourers had written a letter to the management of the estate inviting him to a meeting in the Home Division of the estate on the 28th of April 1947. In itself, it was a harmless meeting to prepare for the details of the Labour Day meeting and arrangement of transport to be provided to and from the meeting at the usual transport cost. The letter ended up with a request for the presence of police as it would have a good effect on the meeting. In the meanwhile the estate manager, on receipt of this invitation, had contacted the police with the view that surveillance on the meeting should be kept. The police showed up with a baton squad in the forefront. They were seen at 6 pm just outside the hall where the meeting took place. When they were seen they declared they had come to arrest outsiders and identified Ah Soo, a trade unionist who had come as a unionist to advise the meeting, who was immediately arrested. He struggled to free himself and all hell broke loose because the unionists lost control of the situation. They were at that time sitting but all began to rise to their feet and fled in all directions. The police officer then began to open fire haphazardly into the crowd, hitting one Low Teik, killing him. Later it transpired that the estate manager had no objection to the meeting at all and a person had been killed and many others imprisoned because his letter to the police had been misread. The policemen was trigger happy and had gone to the scene armed to the teeth and these arms had been abused, though Collin Abraham does not say it that way. Evidence was produced which showed that the English officer may not have been as the deceased could have been killed by some other policeman who fired the fatal shot. Most important was that these three incidents took place from February to April in 1947 and they were over trivial personal matters seemingly involving simple personal grievances over which the unions were not involved, until the last incident where |
| evidence
was adduced that involved union advisers from outside the estate
for a forthcoming legitimate annual trade union meeting. At
that time because the British were encouraging unions which were not
outlawed and which the estate manager admitted that he had no
objection to. Show of force Things were getting out of hand and by the beginning of 1948, a wave of strikes had taken place and things had began to escalate leading to the introduction of the Emergency to protect British colonial interest. The intention of Collin Abraham is to show that had the police not provoked the situation right from the beginning by confrontation instead of appeasement, the Emergency of 1948 might not have occurred. His view is that in this period, labour unrest became a political issue to the Malayan Communist Party because the people had been insulted enough to call for realisation "of a communism in Malaya" by the removal of British power and its feudalist Malay allies and they established a "Democratic Socialist Republic" front for that purpose. In early 1948, Ganapathy was found possessing a revolver in the estate he was working in in Perak, charged under the Emergency Regulations and found guilty and hanged. No longer was labour unrest a simple innocent matter but it had become a serious political labour unrest. Whether he should have been hanged or not, is not the question but his case became a cause celebre for the Communists for he was hanged under the Emergency regulations. The unions had now a political reason for their strikes and matters had dangerously escalated as the Communists now had a reason for their involvement with the unions. Collin Abraham observes that the MCP now had a relationship with the trade union movement to remove power from the British and from their Malay "feudalist" allies. To realise its objective of a "communism in Malaya", through an anti-colonialist front the "Democratic Socialist Republic of Malaya" was set up and declared to be vanguard of a Malaya of the MCP. |
| The loyal opposition The idea was to amass labour support to disrupt the colonial economy. Essentially, there was little difference between the strategy of the Party and its front organisation to mobilize Malayan labour for political purposes "to get more concessions for the workers." The British, in the meanwhile were equally busy in the opposite direction and the result of their activity was to push the unionists, the Left wing Malayans and the MCP closer together. The way they did it was in this way. The Malay Nationalist Party organized by Dr Burhannudin had joined the UMNO soon after it was formed. But it was not respectful of the feudalist forces in UMNO who were close to the British plan. The Malayan Union Agreement was friendly to the Malays but only to the feudalist forces whereas the MNP thought it was only favouring them against the Malays as a whole. But the MNP was soon to join up with the younger more militant Malays and UMNO was soon forced on the defensive. The idea was therefore to show that the UMNO was more nationalistic and more loyal to the Sultans who now had taken on themselves as those who preserved the Malay nationally. After a struggle, the British, instead of working on the Union, gave it up for the Federation Agreement in early 1948 which ensured the Malay sultanates as maintainers of Malay identity and protected the conservative Malay autocracy. The idea was to give the non-Malays citizenship but not nationalism so they need not take the oath of allegiance to the Sultan and therefore were somehow inferior to Malay nationals. In the meantime, a non-Malay Left had been formed and it entered the fray by joining a new Left wing coalition which was generally supported by the All Malayan Council for Joint Action which effectively became a most dangerous opposition to Britain. A hartal was organised to show its popularity. The British then branded the MNP and the API as communist organisations and the UMNO as loyal opposition. The MNP thus became a marginal organization, the API was demolished. The unity of the Malays was split. Chinese businessmen like Tun Tan Cheng Lock withdrew from the Council of Joint Action which was made redundant. The MDU discontinued its activities and many of its leaders were detained though only one of them claimed that he was a Communist with no loyalty to any Communist Party. Here, the history of this period is murky and the account by Collin Abraham is equally vague. But the general direction, the main markers, the direction and the people involved are equally clear and they cannot be hidden. The Malayan Union Agreement was being sabotaged by the very people who had introduced it. |
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This period also saw the emergence of class consciousness of the
Malay society. As early as 1938, a Kesatuan Malayu Mudah (the KMN
or the Young Malay Union) had been formed which were conscious
of the relationship between the ruling class and the British and
who was hostile to both but who was prevented fro The right wing In 1946 the Malay elitist state associations formed the UMNO under Dato Onn bin Jaffar and it became the Malay representative . Some of its members took part in of the mass meetings organized to oppose the Union as part of the right wing politicians group to boycott the Union proposals. Even as these negotiations took place, the sultans consolidated their power as the constitutional core of the Malay. The Malay Nationalist Party first joined the UMNO and was compelled to take a different stand on nationalism and eventually forced to leave the UMNO to become a marginal Party of the Left opposed to UMNO. In the meantime, the MDU, formed in 1945 was also active. They saw the turmoil a chance to organize the Left against the British. Their most effective act was the unity of the Left against the Federation Agreement. They managed to spearhead a hartal of the Left in which the AMCJA the umbrella of nearly all the opposition parties ranging from the Straits Chinese British Association, the Women's Federation, the Pan-Malayan Federation of Trade Unions, the Democratic Youth League, the MCP Front organisations and the MNP, PUTERA under Ishak bin Haji Muhammad and the API under Boestamam. In fact they gained the support of all the important Left wing organizations against the feudalist UMNO. It was almost a clean sweep which the British could not overlook if they wanted the Federation to succeed. Hence the MDU arrests and the detention of Boestamam and Ishak bin Haji Muhammed and the UMNO was left supreme. All the rest is history. The British never gave these opposition organizations a chance to succeed and so concerned with the Malay opposition that she ignored the non-Malay organizations even on the overall socio-political implications of the Agreement on the other societies. They continued to view these positions based upon the view of British authoritarian colonial system based on its exploitative colonial system which she was trying hard to re-establish as soon as possible, believing that the system would still apply. Collin Abraham has gone on to suggest that the Emergency was organized for the advantage of the sultans and their conservative right bureacracy and the Baling Talks failed because the British made it clear the Tengku should not fail in his own interest and Tengku had, according to the British, had shown his obedience. According to the biography of a senior officer in the Singapore Special Branch, C.C. Too had left with him his notes on the Baling Talks where he claimed it was he who |
| told
the Tengku that Chin Peng could not be trusted and should be forced
to surrender completely or not at all. Whatever it was, Tengku was
shown as someone who was obedient to his master and the failure was
proof to the British that Tengku could be trusted. If the Emergency was not warranted, why was it declared but to protect the Federation Agreement against popular condemnation since it was introduced only with the agreements of the Sultans and the bureaucracy. It was to distract the people and thus maintain Britain's hold over Malaya as Singapore with its two and a half million Chinese would show that Malaya had a Chinese majority and they have as much right to be protected. There was no physical or threat of Communism to be protected but unfortunately, the Malays who had been kept as privileged members of our society had decided that this was the time to get rid of the British yoke. So, though I think the British lost, it was not because they wanted it but the Tengku turning the Emergency on them. So, though I do not agree with Collin Abraham it is more a matter of semantics. Collin Abraham was going on assumptions and he has a narrow vision and did not look elsewhere to make his assumptions. In 1948, Communism was winning in China and the British were in dread of the broom of Communism sweeping southwards through to Australia. They already had shown this dread when they disastrously went against Soekarno in Indonesia in 1945. In my view, the British were afraid of mounting criticism against the Federation as they had pushed it through whilst they still had support of the Malay people as represented by the Malay Sultans and their bureaucracy, a myth they had created. Collin Abraham stresses the the Malays wanted protection and they won in the end. This was a lacuna in the book because my suspicion that the British wanted to protect their own interests all the while, using the Sultans as a front but the front failed the British because the pickings were too valuable and they defaulted as all spoilt people generally do. The lacuna may however be a fault of linguistics for which he could be forgiven for the salient points he has brought up. I believe that the Emergency was to protect British and not Malay interests and the British did not entirely trust the Tengku who was to deal with the Baling talks and the Malays turned the tables on the British and took over power completely. In my view, since they were used as a front it did not matter why the Emergency failed and who lost. After all, the British were the manipulators and, in the last analysis, though he claimed it was Malay interest that Britain wanted to protect it did not matter who lost. . Thinking to distract the opposition they had created, they started the Emergency at the same time taking arbitrary action against all effective opposition. |
| But all
in all, because of his call for a new perspective and his work to
emphasize this marginalization through a system of Malay rights over
reservation land, Chinese language, education and schools not recognized
and the Chinese banned from employment in the Malay state civil service
and the British creating the impression that they and the sultans were
the guardians of Malay interests thereby splitting the Malays and
the Chinese through this system of hate and anger, his book
is needed by all who are interested in the truth of our own history.
# Lim Kean Siew Former Secretary-General The Labour Party and The Socialist Front. Review of "Our Finest Hour" by Collin Abrahams, published by SIRD 2006 |
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| _____ INDEX Point to the article
that you want to read, and CLICK Index page Baba jingles Book
review Food guide
Foreign eye The jungle war (9)
Letter from
Pulau Tikus MacMichael's bullying
The Straits Chinese
The wise magistrate |
| _____________________ The Penang File Issue 50 |