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1947
THE TWISTED HISTORY of Malaya almost invariably portrays Malaya as a country of hostile peoples facing one
another with fear and hatred. Its picture of the post-war period after the
Japanese surrender is of a divided people
governed by a benevolent Britain honestly trying hard to reconcile racial
animosities and to create a viable united nation. But the truth is that
there were in fact two groups - the pro British and the anti British who
wanted freedom, one might conveniently call it left wing v right wing.
The left was inspired by the Indonesian battle against the Dutch for independence and the role of the Soviet Union in defeating fascism and the downfall of
Churchill and the ascendancy of the British Labour Party. They noticed that
even the returning British soldiers were singing Soviet songs.
There was no doubt that the left were in the majority and they were demanding
"merdeka." Among them was the MIC. The right were
the palace pro-British elements led by Dato Onn in Johore and in Perak by the
Dato Panglima Bukit Gantang and clutter of very small clubs
and associations whose timid slogan was "hidup Melayu" that
disdained challenging British rule.
The documentary "Ten Years Before Merdeka"
by Fahmi Reza has pierced the mist of disinformation to reveal from
the National Archives the story of the united front against British colonial
rule ten years before August 31, 1957, especially, of the coalition known as the
PUTERA-AMCJA. That the narrative was done by some actors still
alive to tell the story is a tribute to the grinding work of searching and
researching that he and his team must have done.
The film explains the Peoples Constitutional Proposals of 1947, the
culmination of the resistance to the naked
restoration of the 1940 British colonial rule, and the smashing of the left
by mass arrests, led by the detention of 10,000 Malays. The British feared the Malay nationalists above all else for they knew
that they could only rely on the support of those around the palaces. While
Ho Chi Minh in French Indo-China had maintained his armed forces, the British
agent Lai Te, otherwise Wright, ordered the MPAJA to surrender their arms,
ensuring the supremacy of his returning masters.
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Tan Cheng Lock
The film missed emphasising the immense significance of
Tan Cheng Lock, the chairman of the PUTERA-AMCJA. That is largely my
fault and I make amends here.
Tan Cheng Lock (later Sir Tan Cheng Lock) was British to the bone. A wealthy
man with interests in rubber and banking, he
was a Straits Settlements Legislative Councillor from Malacca, at the same
time as my father who was appointed from Penang. He was a loyal Straits Born British Chinese.
To understand him, we have to look at the loyal Chinese of 1945. They were
shocked by the British running away and leaving them to an uncertain, fearful future under the Japanese; they began to look at
the British with different eyes. Lim Ewe Hock's
"A Straits British Chinese Discovers Himself," published in
March 1946, neatly epitomises their anguished awakening. (See The Penang File - Archives - jul-2004 - page1135). It is
not surprising that when the Malayan Democratic Union was formed at the end
of 1945 it won the immediate support of Raffles College graduates, the
so-called cream of the English educated. Lim Tay Boh, Goh Keng Swee, Yong
Nyuk Lin, Eu Cheow Chye, Seow Cheng Fong were among the majority who
supported us, openly or clandestinely. The minority, who disdained the
"disloyal" anti-colonialists, even voted against the setting up of
a university when the graduates, meeting as the Stamford Club, debated the
Carr-Saunders Commission. That they were only able to muster three
votes against exposed the comedy of their
size.
The older generation, such as C C Tan in Singapore, rallied around John Laycock, the English
solicitor. In Penang, Heah Joo Seang ran to
London to plead desperately for Penang to remain a crown colony.
Cheng Lock came back from India, to which country he had fled when the
Japanese invaded, a rather changed man. He was very
impressed by Nehru and Gandhi and the Indian independence movement. I went to
see him in Malacca and after a few talks formed the definite impression that
he would support us in our work for self-government. He was very interested
in the Malayan Democratic Union which he was convinced was not communist
(being well connected, he had his sources of information) and asked a
few questions to clear up in his mind that we were not puppets of the
communists, the trade unions, and youth and women's movements nor stooges of
the Malay groups. The significance of Cheng Lock agreeing to be
chairman can never be exaggerated. He dissolved the hesitancy among many
border liners and even persuaded the local Chamber of Commerce to come out in
support of the general strike - the hartal, something which we had never
heard of and learnt from Cheng Lock, who urged us to use a weapon he had seen
in action while in India.
Shut down
The film did not lie about the success of the hartal. We effectively shut
down the country for one day. A circular, issued by the chief secretary to
the government, on September 19,1947 is enough to prove this. It read:
"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."
They were not sure even of their civil service.
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