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2 The Campus
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MERDEKA AND MUCH MORE 6 6 2 The Campus I n those early years the communist menace that Parkinson had outlined had a prominence, a reality, difficult today to imagine. Sixty years on the brutality of it all, the terrible wrongs and terrors inflicted on innocent individuals by this worldwide revolutionary movement are forgotten or ignored, as they were then by many academics, while the cause itself has vanished almost without trace, even from Russia and China. Yet at the time, as Parkinson said, “we could be the next to go”. I had little fear that this would be, provided that those in Singapore who were opposed to it acted. Yet I could not understand how so many were dedicated believers of this foul cause. Back in Australia, a fairy land of ignorance, I had academic friends — Dorothy Hewett the playwright, the historians Russel Ward and Manning Clark (“the communist Party is the conscience of Australia”, he once said), the author-lawyer Lloyd Davies among them — all committed communists. They, I felt, were part of a lunatic Left, remote from reality. But here, in the frontline as it were, it was even more unbelievable. How could this be, I wondered. So I sought enlightenment from my new campus colleagues, particularly Ungku Abdul Aziz, a Malay aristocrat in the Economics Department, and Wang Gungwu, a fellow historian. Surely no one could possibly envy China or Russia with their communes, collective farms and discredited economic practices? Surely the individualistic Chinese who crowded the roadside Five Foot Ways doing business in the open, each one endeavouring to climb the THE CAMPUS 7 ladder of economic success, could not embrace the totality of state control of all their enterprises? So what’s in it for them — or the Malay peasant working his padi field or tapping his rubber small holding? You have it all wrong I was told, it’s not economics but politics. Lenin and Mao supplied an organisational answer to the problems of political authority of particular relevance to Colonies. Here was a proven formula for social mobilisation as well as a justification for political power, and an effective means for harnessing the resentment against Western dominance. Maoism (and Marxism) must be seen as a political answer, not economic, to explain its acceptance by so many. All this applied more to Singapore and the Chinese in general than to the Malays where, Ungku Abdul Aziz said, their faith and semi-feudal system inhibited them from radicalism of most kinds. Indeed, he said, he saw communalism, that is the ongoing relationship with the Chinese, as far more of a permanent weakness to the peninsula than communism, despite the war being fought there. However, Gungwu added, another factor to explain the strength of the communist movement on the island was the centuries old Chinese tradition, very much alive, of secret society involvement in clandestine revolutionary activity. He spoke with some authority, as his research thesis on Chinese Revolutionaries in Singapore and Penang, 1900–1911, had earned him a First Class Honours degree only a few months earlier. Gungwu was heading for a distinguished academic career of international repute. He was respected even then by his peers and elders for his level headedness and impartial assessment of contemporary affairs, rare for one so young. He accepted the success of the Communists in attacking the widespread grievances of the proletariat, ignored by the colonialists, but he pointed to their failure to commit themselves in any meaningful way to the Malayan nation-building process. “This is their Achilles heel,” he said. “The sooner Malaya is a state the better. Singapore too. Capitalism inside a nation-state will defeat communism any time.” [54.166.200.255] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 07:13 GMT) MERDEKA AND MUCH MORE 8 I retained my doubts. Watching the fire storm in nearby Vietnam, seeing the communist success in Korea and China, anticipating a coup in Indonesia, most of Malaya communist controlled, I could not be that confident that all would be well. Nevertheless when 40 years later, Gungwu, by then an elder statesman among academics , was to say much the same to the MCP leader Chin Peng, what was the latter’s reply? “I agree with you.” Another who was anxious to participate in the nation building process was Lee Kuan Yew, a young Singapore lawyer. He had no time for the Old Hong Kong cliché that justified the perpetuation of Colonial rule — “the Chinese do...