Singapore, 12 June 1965
Secret
I spoke with Lee Kuan Yew yesterday. He was relaxed and balanced. The following are the main points.
2. I queried Lee closely about his political motivation over the last six weeks or so; in particular to what extent he was trying to stimulate a situation in which the Alliance would seek disengagement. (He had told me in April this was one of the courses he was pursuing, but that was before his talk with Mr. Bottomley.)1 Lee said, and repeated twice during our talk, that constitutional disengagement was now out. There were two reasons. First, the Tunku had been pressured out of it by his Commonwealth allies. I objected in respect of Australia, and said that in any case our understanding was that the Alliance considered it could handle its relations with the PAP and had no thought of disengagement. Lee doubted that the Alliance was in fact up to this and indicated forebodings about likely recourse to extremist political action and force. Secondly, Lee said that with the convention of opposition parties last Sunday, he had become engaged in pan-Malaysian politics and could no longer withdraw. He was now committed to Ong Kee Hui2 and other leaders in the convention.
3. Lee said most of his PAP colleagues were as happy as larks about the new situation. They had always been anxious to join the political battle on a pan-Malaysian front. (They have certainly spoken to me in this sense over the last sixteen months.) But he was under no illusions about the risks of the present course. He greatly regretted that constitutional disengagement had not been possible. Of course, it had its own risks, but it offered a far better prospect of stable development than the present political conflict.
4. Lee said he still hoped some temporary truce could be arranged to moderate the conflict and permit progress with the Common Market. This was urgent. He also wanted minimal security powers to enable him to crack down on communal disturbance. Lee strongly reacted to my suggestion that the Alliance might use the Common Market as a political weapon and said the Alliance would find Singapore pretty tough if it sought this kind of fight.
5. We discussed the criticism that Lee and the PAP were playing into the hands of the extremists and that by always attacking them he was giving them importance and making the position of the moderates more difficult. Lee said he would much prefer that the moderates dealt with the extremists, but they didn’t and he doubted that they could, though the Tunku believed he had them under control. Basically they didn’t want to control the extremists, who were fighting their battle.
6. Lee said that what he was seeking was public commitment by the Alliance to certain basic principles. Though with grudging reluctance, the Alliance had now, in the recent parliamentary sessions, accepted the objective of a ‘Malaysian Malaysia’, a Malaysia that was his Malaysia too. Lee said that he regarded this, and the Government’s statement in Parliament on constitutional procedures, as very satisfactory gains.3
7. I said to Lee that his statements early in the month questioning the ‘native’ status of the Malays4 and at the end of the month at Delta5 about possible partition (though he did no use this term), seemed to me likely to be widely misinterpreted and to do him much harm. He showed some sensitivity on these points, about which he has been lectured by a number of people, including the British High Commissioner and his Deputy here. (In fact, his Delta remarks have been widely misinterpreted and exaggerated as recommending and even threatening partition, as though Lee was in any position to arrange partition between Malaya on the one hand and Singapore, the Borneo States, Malacca and Penang on the other. Lee was saying that if the Malays didn’t want a ‘Malaysian Malaysia’, better it were said now so that alternative arrangements could be made now, before it was too late. This is not new: for example, he spoke openly of ‘partition’ as one possible consequence of a Malay drive for domination at the Press Club luncheon in Canberra last March.)6
8. I asked Lee how he assessed the risks of communal violence in the face of his campaign. This was under violent attack from Ja’afar Albar and other leading UMN of figures and by the leading Malay journals such as ‘Utusan Melayu’, which he himself said were poisoning the minds of the Malay masses. If they were already in an inflamed condition, wouldn’t the holding of his ‘Malaysian Malaysia’ rallies in Malaya lead to violence? Lee said not in the towns, where the rallies would be held. There would only be violence if the Malay leadership wanted it and organised it. The Malays were not going to come into the towns of their own accord to beat him up. We discussed this for a time and emphasised the need for caution.
9. I asked Lee at one stage did he realise how dependent he was on Sukarno, in that should confrontation cease he would be much restricted in his pressure for a ‘Malaysian Malaysia’. I said Australians were particularly interested in this because should confrontation end and the Malays decide to seek ties with the Indonesians rather than a new national integration with the Chinese of Malaysia, then the Australian position could be pretty seriously set back. We should not only have failed to win a solution to the problem of the Chinese of Malaysia, and probably lost what standing and influence we might have among them, but we should by our support of ‘Malaysia’ against Indonesia earned Indonesia’s hostility. It was important to us, therefore, that the Malays not get into a position where ties with Indonesia appeared preferable to Malaysia and we hoped he would bear this very much in mind in his campaign for a ‘Malaysian Malaysia’ (on the merits of which I was not offering any firm comment). Lee readily took this point. He indicated that the circumstance of confrontation was one of his important advantages and that it was important to get certain things established while it lasted. In later discussion of the forthcoming ALP visits7 he jokingly said the Australian Government should pay £1,000,000 to the PAP fund for his good work in winning Labor to support Malaysia and covering the Liberal–Country Party flank should the circumstances discussed come about.
10. Lee has come in for much criticism lately and there has been talk in responsible circles of arresting him and getting him out of the country. The British in particular appear to have worked themselves up into a state of much alarm and to have turned against Lee to some extent as provoking political tension to force the Alliance to reach a modus vivendi, recklessly risking a degree of communal tension ruinous of Malaysian stability. I suggest we need to be cautious in accepting this assessment, basically that of Lee’s opponents in the Alliance Government. There is no doubt that Lee has been engaging in some ‘brinkmanship’ in the hope of forcing a modus vivendi, but there is more to this than merely a search for power. Certainly Lee would like to maximise his power and his proposals for constitutional disengagement offered him this. But basically his struggle for power is more than just personal ambition or ambition for his political party, though he has plenty of both. The struggle for power in which Lee is caught up is a struggle between societies and ideologies and conflicting regimes. It is a basic political struggle which is bound to be carried on amid passion and tension. If our interest is basically the survival of a polity favourable to our interests, we are not bound to either side and will have praise and blame for both parties for ‘rocking the boat’—or not.
11. I should like briefly to make a few points supplementary to the foregoing:
(a) Lee is not hitting at a phantom when he attacks ‘Malay Malaysia’, though he exaggerates the importance of some of its manifestations. The Malay-dominated regime in the Federation of Malaya did inherit power from the British throughout Malaysia and not win it. They have kept it.
(b) The Chinese are traditionally second-class citizens in the Malaysian territories except Singapore. Lee voices deep apprehensions among the Chinese about their future when he attacks ‘Malay Malaysia’ and calls for ‘Malaysian Malaysia’.
(c) Lee’s speeches and comments hit headlines. What we see little of is the virulent communalist campaign in the Malay-language press for Malay values and attacking the PAP and Lee in person. This campaign is an UMNO campaign. Lee’s politics are to an important extent a reaction to this campaign and a warning to the Malays that he is not to be browbeaten or forced to drop his demands. The UMNO agitation in Singapore a year ago and the Malay organised riots8 then have left a deep impression on him. I doubt this factor receives sufficient attention. Instead of urging the Tunku not to arrest Lee, Lord Head might have done better to urge control of the Malay communalists centering round the Secretary-General of UMNO, the Tunku’s own party.
[NAA: A1838, 3027/2/1 part 23]
1 See footnote 6, Document 267.
2 A prominent leader of the SUPP and Sarawak MP.
3 See footnote 2, Document 271. Government ministers had also assured the parliament that the government would abide strictly by the constitution and that provided other parties did likewise they need have no cause t of eel concern.
4 Lee had been reported as having said that the Malays were not the indigenous people of Malaysia.
5 South Singapore.
6 See footnote 2, Document 271, and footnote 1, Document 263.
7 A senior-level ALP delegation, headed by the leader of the Opposition, Gough Whitlam, was to visit Singapore 7–27 July, with trips planned to Malaya, Borneo and Thailand 13–21 July. The announced purpose of the visit was to ‘foster closer relations’ between the ALP and PAP, and to gain ‘a more intelligent understanding of the problems of the area’.
8 See Document 193.