Singapore, 27 July 1964
514. Secret Priority
I had lengthy interviews separately with Goh J. Keng Swee and Lee Kuan Yew this morning. Lee was poised and fluent, but anxious primarily to make his case. Goh was more balanced and interested to explore issues.
2. Both believed that the riots have been part of an U.M.N.O. campaign to weaken the P.A.P. in Singapore and to discredit it in Malaysia as a non-communal party.1 They believe that the Tunku and Razak know and approve of the campaign, even if they have not been associated with it. (Goh thinks that Razak, typically, did not foresee the riots.) They believe that U.M.N.O.’s attitude springs from anxiety to preserve the Malays’ dominance and bottle up the P.A.P. in Singapore; that the Malays calculate that if they can hold the Malay vote solid and seal it off from the P.A.P. and other parties, then they ensure a majority over other communities whose vote has been split by the arrangement of the constituencies.
3. Goh said that Lee initially believed that U.M.N.O.’s intention was to let the situation in Singapore get to a point where the central Government could declare martial law and take over; but Goh dissuaded him from this. Right up till about Saturday Lee had wanted to come out against U.M.N.O. and this was still the dominant feeling in the P.A.P. Lee is outraged that Razak insisted, he says, that he form a goodwill liaison committee with members of the Malay extremists’ ‘Action Committee’.2
4. Both declared that the riots had fundamentally changed the situation in Malaysia (‘a new era’) and drastically reduced the time available to consolidate it. The Chinese community was gravely disquieted. Malay sincerity was much in doubt and there was concern about personal security. (Goh spoke of the brutality of the Malay soldiers and the popular resentment against them.) If these feelings intensified, as was certain while Malay extremism continued unchecked, communalism would harden. The Chinese would seek protection and the situation would escalate, which would be the end of Malaysia. Goh emphasised that the P.A.P. would now have difficulty with extremists and this would limit its ability to be forebearing with the central Government.
5. Lee argues that the Malays cannot win in their attempt at domination. The Chinese, Indians and other communities will not tolerate it, but are too numerous to be expelled and can only be held down with British or Indonesian help. The communists and Indonesians are ready to exploit the situation and arm extremists from both sides; 1948 again, but very much worse.3 The ultimate threat would be the Chinese running for help to Peking.
6. Goh believes that the danger point of communal tension is not so close as Lee, who now gives Malaysia only six months.
7. Both look to the British and to us and the New Zealanders to explain to the U.M.N.O. leadership the dangers of the course it is now taking and the political and military impossibility of final victory. They want us to urge a cooperative Malaysian policy on Kuala Lumpur, in which the Chinese and other communities will be given ‘room and an honourable place’. Goh spoke specifically in terms of a coalition government (Toh and Rajaratnam:4 he has left to stay in Singapore to keep Lee in balance) and twice urged that Critchley be recalled to press this on the Malayans as the next two weeks would be critical in determining the Malay attitude.5 He said Lee’s position was not [a] problem: Lee did not seek federal office, not for some time anyway.
8. I taxed both with Lee’s lack of rapport with the Federal Government and spoke of the dangers of this. Access was necessary to influence. Both acknowledged this. Lee said that every time he tried to discuss the situation with Razak, Razak had just closed his mind. He saw no way of getting through to him. It was up to us to do this. I urged strenuous efforts to make and develop contact, but Lee had firmly in mind that Malays must be pressed into cooperation—by the British and us. Goh was much more sensitive to the argument that this hardly offers a stable basis for cooperation.
9. I asked Goh about the Government’s record with the Singapore Malays. He declared that they had made major efforts to improve the position. A fundamental difficulty was the Malays’ traditional indifference to education and training, which would take long to break down. There were ample openings for trained Malays, but they seemed to prefer employment in the work brigades, which the Chinese labourer now spurned. He was receptive to the suggestion that more tact might be desirable.
10. I criticised Lee to Goh for his failure to cope with the Malays and conducting his politics as though he was still dealing with the Chinese Communists: the Malays and the tempo were different. I said I had been reminded in recent days of other rational people like Natsir, Rum and Sjafruddin of Indonesia.6 Where were they now? Goh agreed with this and added that Lee was a very impatient and suspicious man, who saw a conspiracy under every bush. He was very difficult in Cabinet. I put some of this to Lee too, but after a pause he merely raised his hands and went on about the ‘cold brutal logic of the situation’.
11. Lee and Goh were firm about an inquiry into the riots. There is considerable pressure in the party to attack U.M.N.O.’s communalist behaviour.
12. Seen from Singapore, Lee and Goh are correct in their assessment. Even granted faults in the handling of the Malays here and difficulties for the Federal Government in trusting and dealing with Lee Kuan Yew, there can be no doubt that the responsibility for the riots rests squarely with U.M.N.O. whose members ran the communalist campaign or condoned it. If U.M.N.O. does not now turn against communalism it is difficult to foresee how developments such as Singapore Ministers forecast can be avoided. This has always been the threat in the Malaysian situation. We and the British might perhaps be able to secure some modification in the Malay attitude but stability must rest fundamentally on cooperation between the communities and states. A National Government seems essential for this.
[NAA: A1838, 3107/40/104 part 1]
1 The political heat engendered by the PAP’s participation in the Malaysian general elections of April had seen a rise in communal tensions, particularly in Singapore. On 21 July, Malay-Chinese riots had broken out during the annual procession at Geylang Serai to mark Mohammed’s birthday. The trouble spread rapidly into the city and other areas of Singapore. Despite the imposition of curfews, violence continued over the next ten days. When the curfews were ended on 2 August, the casualties were 23 dead and around 460 injured.
2 The violence of the first two days, in which 8 were killed and 341 injured, raised fears that communal tensions might lead to outbreaks of violence in other Malaysian states and all state governments were instructed to form goodwill committees among community leaders. For Singapore, Razak had nominated the 23-man ‘People’s Action Committee’ formed at a UMNO-sponsored convention in Singapore, held on 12 July, and at which Ja’afar Albar, UMNO Secretary-General had been a principal speaker. The object of the convention had been for Malays to express dissatisfaction with their position in Singapore since federation, and an outcome had been a resolution calling on the government to deal only with their ‘action committee’ on issues affecting Malays. This condition was unacceptable to Lee, who argued the government’s right and duty to solve the problems of all Singaporeans, and who had already organised ‘friendly and frank discussions’ on the Malay problems with Malay welfare, sports, social, cultural and other organisations for 19 July. On 17 July, however, Lee did agree to meet the ‘action committee’ at a separate forum on the day of the proposed meeting with the Malay organisations.
3 A reference to the armed communist insurgency in Malaya that in 1948 resulted in the Malayan Emergency. See footnote 13, Document 136.
4 Sinnathamby Rajaratnam, Singapore’s Minister for Culture.
5 Critchley had been in Canberra for consultations in early June and then proceeded on leave.
6 Mohammed Natsir, Dr Rum (Roem) and Prawiranegara Sjafruddin, leaders of Indonesia’s Masjumi party that opposed Sukarno on many issues, including the return to the 1945 Constitution in the implementation of Sukarno’s Guided Democracy in 1959 (see footnote 2, Document 25). Masjumi was banned by Sukarno in I960.