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Page 11  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Labour And Trade Unionism in Colonial Malaya 
   A Study of the Socio-Economic and Political Bases
   of the Malayan Labour movement, 1930 - 1957
by Dr. Leong Yee Fong 
   Penerbit Universiti Sains Pulau Pinang 1999
 

IN THE PREFACE, the author begins by saying that the primary objective of his book was to analyse the socio-economic and political determinants that shaded the labour movement in Peninsular Malaya during the colonial period. This would mean the period up to 1957,  presumably including the period of the Emergency (from 1948 ). It was a tall order.

But he did it very well. For the history of Labour was the history of politics at a time when a country was moving towards independence and one could not divorce one from the other, especially as about was one of the important targets sort by political parties, especially left wing parties,  for support.. As a matter of fact he referred to this in Chapter 7, The Emergency and the Trade Union Movement. Here, we learn that "in June 1948 the PMFTU and its subsidiaries had been declared unlawful organisations, the trade union movement was placed "in a period of trial and tribulation" and the "labour movement was reduced to ashes" and until 1949 there were virtually no signs of reactivation".

And it is here that we ae shown the work of Brazier, formerly the trade union organiser of the United Kingdom National Union of Railwaymen and who was appointed as the Industrial Relations Adviser to the BMA when the Malayan Union was first inaugurated and who had assumed the post of TUA (Trade Union Adviser) "with the specific task of building up an independent trade union movement free from communist influence and control" (note 182,  p143). Why is this important? Because he was selected by the colonial government to "advise" the trade unions and obviously on them and one judges the objectives and intentions of the person by what he attains as his objective.

"The MTUC " was in no way a trade union federation with all the executive and administrative authority to intervene on behalf of trade unions in labour disputes. It did not even have the status of trade unions as it was registered as a society in September 1951 under the Societies Ordinance of 1946.

The author goes on to say immediately afterwards in the beginning of the next chapter that "the period following the establishment of the MTUC saw the revival of trade unionism under colonial tutelage". Need we go on further to show the purpose and the intentions and the objective of the TUA whose job surely is to stand on the side of the workers without fear or favour? And can we accept it if he said those who were against him were communists? And what credibility does that give to the trade unionists like P. P, Narayanan and others who were leaders at that time?

Let us see how justified we are in this assessment. Well, when the British came to the country to accelerate economic development in the 1800s, the Chinese were already here to supply capital, entrepreneurship and labour in mining sugar and trade. But, at the turn of the century, when the demand for tin and rubber accelerated through the greater financial resources, technical skills and managerial experience, the demand for Chinese and Indian workers grew and overtook the Malay population by 1911, with the Chinese filling jobs of  labour in the mines and factories but also in engineering works, sawmills, oil mills, rubber milling, brickworks, tobacco and tanneries, carpenters and shoemakers, becoming skilled artisans and engineers as well.

With their productivity, there was also the fact that they were clannish and divided by dialects, their curse at the time when unity was required in the struggle for independence. In fact, they also evoked fear and resentment from the Malay who were manly on padi growing and fishing and small estates in those times, to the point that in the 20's came the first organised expression by the Malays of the need to curtail their encroachment into the hinterland.

But the growth Chinese immigrant labour was also the reflection of the growth of the economy in the Twenties and the Thirties and the British allowed immigration directly in relation to the demand of the growth of the economy.  So far, so good. But with the growing numbers of labourers came the growth of problems, labour as well as political.

Since the book is on trade unionism and labour, the emphasis is on labour and its unrest. We know that in spite of protests by the Malays in the twenties and the new immigration laws in the 30's immigration still continued. This was because of the need for more labour as our agricultural and tin industries grew and the Malays remained in their own kampong economy. But revolutionary unrest and political consciousness in China was growing after the overthrow of the Manchu Empire in China in 1911, a natural phenomenon. This and the great depression affected Malaya and its Chinese working class in the early Thirties. 

The revolution in China was a nationalist revolution and quickly divided the Chinese into right and left wing elements. Mao turned it into a peasant revolution under the inspiration of Communist ideology against the feudal and corrupt landlordism of China. The situation was different in Malaya . We had been a country of independent sultanates and colonies and labour itself was divided between the indentured Indian labour from India and generally contract coolies from China where there were no labour organisations and labour unrest was against exploitation and conditions which were appalling under as new and primitive Labour Code, 1912 which were subsequently amended, notably in 1922
.
 

In other words, the Protectorate dealt with dissatisfaction from the labourers, not as a labour or political matter but as secret society problems because it was such societies which exploited the situation. Later on, they considered labour unrest as a Communist problem when it was a national matter where the left wing began to take the side of the workers against the right wing guilds and associations.

Labour had to turn to anyone who could and were prepared to help the. Since the right was for the employers they turned to the left and tried to take over the guild, at first quite unsuccessfully. When they discovered the Selangor General Labour Union and its efforts in organising labour organisations and found them to be left wing KMT they began to label them the nucleus of the Communist Party instead of trying to understand them and attend to their grievances. 

In other words, the British to turned these organisations into communist organisations by their own acts instead of rating them as worker leaders and treating them as such to make it unnecessary for them to turn to agitators for help. After all, it was the Labour Government which encouraged helped the trade unions in England who in turn helped the Labour Party. Had they followed the British idea, we might have had a different history. But how could they? They were the colonial government and anyone who agitated labour demands were against them and thus were demands fermented into unrest. 

This affected the Chinese working class in Malaya and, we can see from hindsight, the left were not really communist but it suited everyone to call them communists. This was what the right wing Chinese and the British did. It also suited those of the left who wanted an identity and a cause, as I have said.

We can have no doubt that, in the main, Brazier,  the anti Communist feeling came foremost and it affected his leadership of and advise to our trades union and, since he was colonially appointed, it had tremendous impact and we have to know how much it affected our country.

He was more authoritative and restrictive rather than encouraging and helpful. In 1946 came the administrative and the registration and regulation of the trades unions with admission from Britain that liberal trade union policy for Malaya was unsuitable. One of the rules that Brazier wanted was the exclusion of outside influence and, obviously, advisers and this meant that the only outside adviser to the trade unions was the TUA Brazier who, with the Registrar could weed out "MCP" influence which would include any trade union of having any officer who was not actually engaged in the industry 

And he went further than that. When Britain liberalised the law on unions in 1946, he suggested the temporary retention of restrictive laws here and argued that to allow for freedom of association and picketing and the maintenance of political funds would bring about drastic consequences to our unions and by the "beginning of 1948, it was clear that the role of the MCP. and the PMFTU had been circumscribed and the MCP constitutional struggle an the "United Front" had failed to obtain any political concessions from the government and the MCP had failed in the trade unions".

More than that,  it has made more than one point Brazier was appointed from England to help us have a democratic and a fair and equitable trade union movement. In the first place, he did not act like a democratic trade union man but a colonial government official who ruled with the assistance of a colonial government in support, more than paternalistic with no one to maintain his democratic attitudes and hold him to definitions.

Secondly, were the unions democratically organised reformed and were the communists actually removed and did they lose or were they ever there?
Thirdly, it would seem to raise the question that since the government had won in the union movement on the dawn of the Emergency and since, according to R.R. Raj's book "The War Years and After", the police force had also been brought up to prewar strength in 1948, whether it was the government that had provoked the declaration of the Emergency in order to finish the war against the Left wing threat rather than that the Emergency had been forced upon the government? 

Finally, it has also raised the question what we are supposed learn from the book, purely the history of trade unionism or the broader aspect, the history of our nation where trade unionism play such an important role? And what is that? That the immigrants came at a time when there was a shortage of labour and we are indebted to them and that no real effort was made to restrict them and they had been as assert and that though all the Malays wanted before the war was to prevent them from encroaching too much on their preserves that there should have been such an about face in 1948 as to make them almost permanent immigrants with such unequal rights? 

Or are we to note that there had been an unequal political fight in the union movement where an experienced man had been invited here to twist our arm?

Henry Ford, I think, said history is bunk. Yet, the book tells the truth and from it was can see that much of what he had been told is bunk. He writes well and it is advisable to read his facts. But I think we should be interested in the whys and the wherefores of the facts and this is what makes the book fascinating.