Singapore in Global History Edited by Derek Heng and Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljunied P u b l i c at i o n s S e r i e s Edited Volumes 14 Cover design: JB&A raster grafisch ontwerp, Westland Layout: The DocWorkers, Almere ISBN e-ISBN NUR 978 90 8964 324 7 978 90 4851 437 3 692 © ICAS / Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2011 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owners and the authors of the book. 10 The British Military Withdrawal from Singapore and the Anatomy of a Catalyst Loh Kah Seng “It was not even a sell-out: it was a handout, with virtually nothing demanded or even bargained for in return”, an angry Arthur de la Mare, the former British High Commissioner in Singapore, wrote to the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs in November 1971. De la Mare was reflecting on the handover of the British military bases to the Singapore’s People’s Action Party (PAP) government between 1968 and the end of December, when the remaining British forces would depart from Britain’s chief base in Southeast Asia.1 De la Mare castigated his colleagues for conceding the bases to Singapore without retaining a say in their deployment for economic purposes. With more than a tinge of regret, he lamented, “Had we so wished we had the opportunity not only to retain all that we needed but also to transform Singapore from a doubtful military bastion (it was never a very good one) into the forward base of British business and commerce in East Asia”.2 It was a scathing comment on the end of Singapore’s role in the British Empire. Between crisis and catalyst Yet, De la Mare’s remarks also reveal much about Singapore’s emerging new place in world history as a development-driven, industrial state at the end of the 1960s. They lend support to a new approach that extends beyond the imperial and national history frameworks within which narratives of the British withdrawal have usually been located. Imperial historians such as John Darwin, looking through a Britain lens, typically focus on its struggles to maintain a world presence in the 1960s and the convoluted process by which this ‘East of Suez’ policy was finally abandoned (Darwin 1988, 1991). When the call to pull out was finally made in January 1968, some historians have attributed it to the force of economics, particularly the sterling crises of 1966-67 and the devaluation of the pound in November 1967 (Darby 1973; Butler 2002; Hyam 2006). Other historians have pointed rather to the political actors: specifically, the cabinet reshuffle that undermined the old guard which had supported the ‘East of Suez’ policy (Darwin 1988; Pickering 1998). 196 loh kah seng In this literature, Singapore appears, if at all, as a passive, hapless appendage. By contrast, nationalist historians take a Singapore vantagepoint and view the run-down as one of a number of key events which enabled the making of a ‘nation’. Like their imperial counterparts, they also frame the withdrawal as a crisis, but as Singapore’s crisis; this is encapsulated in the numerical terms in which the pull-out is usually framed: the economic importance of the bases, the number of workers affected and the blow to gross domestic product. C.M. Turnbull’s standard history text adopts the view that the pull-out momentarily ‘clouded’ the nation’s prospects for survival and turned out to be a blessing in disguise (Turnbull 1989, 293-4). A more recent book maintains that the run-down “galvanised the fighting spirit of Singapore leaders, who went on to rally their people all the more” (Lee 2008, 265). Given the purported severity of the withdrawal in nationalist history, its actual impact on Singapore was so strikingly minimal that it ran the risk of becoming a non-event. The withdrawal, which involved much British and Singapore negotiation and collaboration, sits clearly at the nexus between the imperial and national histories. De la Mare’s complaint provides a glimpse into how freshly sovereign Singapore not only survived the crisis, but transformed it into a platform for a massive industrialisation programme based on foreign capital investment. The pull-out is an excellent case study on the linkages between imperial, national and local histories. Some scholars have located Britain’s decision to withdraw at the intersection between metropolitan politics and geopolitical developments in Southeast Asia (Hack 2001a; Hyam 2006). This paper follows a similar approach by examining the dynamics of Anglo-Singaporean collaboration for the mechanics of the pull-out, and adds a new one: social history. By using both official records and oral history interviews, this paper examines how a transnational event started by Britain’s power-brokers became a path-breaking catalyst for development thousands of kilometres away in a micro-state, with significant consequences for the life and work of its people. The key to Singapore’s active connection to the imperial history of the British withdrawal lies less in political than in social and development history. The late colonial regime of post-war Singapore had launched a long process of transforming the island into what James Scott terms a “high modernist” state, geared towards development and governed rationally on scientific principles (Scott 1998). By the time the accelerated timetable for the pull-out was announced, Singapore was well on its way to becoming such a society; in housing in particular, the relocation of semi-autonomous informal dwellers to public housing was already effectively integrating them into the formal structures of the state (Loh 2009a, 2009b). The British run-down facilitated this long-term process in several ways: in the handover and economic conversion of the bases, the british military withdrawal from singapore and anatomy of a catalyst 197 growth of the industrial economy, retraining of redundant base workers, a massive expansion of technical and vocational education, and instilling social discipline in labour. While the official terms describing the event, namely, ‘withdrawal’, ‘pull-out’ and ‘run-down’, implied a contraction, it really prompted the opposite: development, conversion and mobilisation. In this crucial sense, the British withdrawal was less a crisis – for either Britain or Singapore – than a catalyst, and it underscores the theme of change and transformation so central to the making of modern Singapore. The frame of crisis entails that, once it is resolved, history comes logically to an ‘end’, and this under-emphasises the terms of historical inquiry. The frame of catalyst, however, reveals not only the mechanics of crisis resolution, but also extends the enquiry forward in time. Although most of the concerns about the pull-out did not materialise, the withdrawal was nevertheless certainly not a non-event in history; rather it provided the impetus for magnifying and accelerating policies of change that had been initiated earlier. This approach can also be seen in Khairudin Aljunied’s recent thought-provoking study of the 1950 Maria Hertogh riots. By bypassing the usual subject of the causes of the riots and exploring instead their ‘aftermath’, the historian can link up the imperial, regional, national, and local levels of history, thus providing greater insight into an event (Aljunied 2009b, 130). Decolonisation and development: the bribe and the sweetener When British Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced the accelerated timetable for Britain’s pull-out from east of Suez in January 1968, it meant that British forces would vacate the island completely by March 1971. This was a considerably shorter schedule compared to that of the 1967 British Defence White Paper, where half the forces in Southeast Asia would pull out by 1970/71 and the remainder in the mid-1970s. In Singapore, the 56 British military sites occupied a tenth of the total land area and contributed a fifth of gross domestic product. One-sixth of the island’s labour force depended on the bases for work, either directly for the 4,450 enlisted and 23,000 civilian Singaporeans, or indirectly, including numerous service workers such as barbers, bus and taxi drivers, shopkeepers, and some 8,000 female domestic workers (or amahs) (Singapore Parliamentary Debates, henceforth SPD, 7 September 1967, 173-4). The run-down would also place a heavy economic burden on Singapore, which would need to build up its own defence and compensate for the loss of local spending by the British services. Singapore also faced a larger perennial challenge since the end of World War Two to industrialise and provide work for the growing numbers of young job-seekers and the unemployed (Ministry of Labour 1977a). Speaking to Parliament when the accelerated withdrawal timeline 198 loh kah seng was publicised, Minister for Finance Goh Keng Swee warned that about half of the labour force employed at the bases would be retrenched between 1967 and the actual run-down in December 1971 (SPD, 3 December 1968, 38, 59). These were the ‘facts’ of a national crisis that never came to pass. The question of defence was resolved through the creation of a citizen army and Singapore’s participation in the Five Power Defence Arrangement, which was signed in 1971 (Chin 1983). The economic impact was on the whole offset by the government’s counter-recessionary development plans, which facilitated the expansion of manufacturing, trade, transport, banking and finance, and tourism (Yeo 1970; Hon 1973). The departing British themselves contributed significantly to this growth by handing over the military bases to Singapore for defence and development, towards which they also provided a sum of £ 50 million as Special Aid over five years to help the island manage the crisis. Singapore’s unemployment rate tumbled from 8.1% in 1967 to 4.5% in 1973, while the economy experienced robust double-digit growth rates in this period. Central to Singapore’s ability not only to avoid the predicted calamity but also to transform itself into a model of growth was the close collaboration between the British and PAP governments. While part of this relationship had always been visible in formal politics and diplomacy, much of it was less immediately obvious, but nonetheless just as crucial (in the form of development projects). Since the end of war, these had been integral to British decolonisation in Singapore and were indeed so in wider imperial practice; from the mid-1950s onwards, an important mission of the British Colonial Office was to ensure the orderly process of decolonisation by providing economic aid to the colonies through the Commonwealth (Boyce 1999, 179-83). This “renewed sense of imperial purpose” led Britain to spend £ 344 million between 1946-70 in an attempt to establish a “partnership” with its colonies throughout the world (Stockwell 2008, 274). In post-war Singapore and Malaya, the British sought to safeguard their economic and strategic interests in the region by restructuring local societies and economies in their own image (Tarling 1993). Decolonisation, then, did not simply mean grooming local politicians who appreciated British interests or suppressing ‘communists’, but also engineering a viable economy and a citizenry instilled with the requisite social discipline. This collaborative relationship became clear when the PAP came to power in 1959 and Singapore became a self-governing state. Despite some initial anti-colonial gestures, the new government quickly put into practice level-headed programmes of development, integration and mobilisation. The continued presence of the British military bases was accepted, even welcomed. At Singapore’s independence in 1965, the british military withdrawal from singapore and anatomy of a catalyst 199 left-wing Barisan Sosialis, the main opposition party, demanded the immediate removal of the bases, arguing that they not only encroached on Singapore’s sovereignty but were launching pads for Anglo-American aggression in the region (Plebeian Express 29 September 1965, 2). The government pointed to the bases’ contribution to the city-state’s defence and economy. In December, the Minister of State for Defence Wee Toon Boon referred to the continued presence of the British naval base at Trincomalee in Ceylon for nine more years after the island was granted independence in 1948 (SPD 17 December 1965, 309). The key local players in this Anglo-Singaporean collaboration were Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, his deputy Goh Keng Swee and a supporting cast of senior civil servants. Much has been written, including by Lee himself, about his rush to London following the announcement of the accelerated withdrawal and his success in obtaining an extension of the final run-down from March to December 1971 (Lee 2000). But the roles played by the Singapore leaders went deeper. From the start, Lee and Goh had different responses to the accelerated pull-out. On reading an advance text of the withdrawal schedule in January 1968, “Mr Lee appeared stunned and took some time to adjust himself”, while “Dr Goh Keng Swee read the letter without any emotion and did not seem surprised by it”.3 A later British document exaggerated the reactions of Lee and Goh as, respectively: “If you have to go, at least do not scuttle off and thereby rock the boat” and “If you have to go, go quickly because we want the real estate”.4 Despite these initial reactions and some disagreements over the details of the development plans, Lee and Goh both agreed on the significance of the pull-out and the substance of Singapore’s response. Lee was less worried about the actual economic effects than the psychological impact: the “crisis of confidence… with repercussions on investment and the expansion of jobs”.5 “This was something which we saw as a contingency which must occur”, Lee said in an interview in January 1968, “[I]t’s a question of timing”.6 The accelerated run-down would, in his view, deprive Singapore of the requisite ‘breathing space’ needed to build up its defence and industry.7 Goh shared Lee’s concern about confidence, while his real worry, like Lee’s, was about security. Pondering the possibility of the run-down in early 1966, he even wondered if “the resulting slump might be no sad thing if it would bring down costs in Singapore”.8 What the PAP leadership did in response to the accelerated timeline was not simply to address the economic effects, but to maintain investor confidence in Singapore. Britain, the perpetuator of the ‘crisis’, was willing to help Singapore do this. In appraising the purpose of the Special Aid later, British High Commissioner de la Mare bluntly stated in January 1970 that “the £ 50 million 200 loh kah seng was a bribe to keep the Singaporeans sweet” and achieve the three main aims of the British pull-out: a to ensure the orderly withdrawal of British forces in accordance with our plans b in the interests of political stability in the area to ensure the prospect of a viable economy in Singapore and to avoid endangering the economy of Malaysia, and c to safeguard our own trading and investment interests.9 The British accordingly took a “general and flexible approach” to the transfer of the bases.10 As early as November 1967, the British Ministry of Defence had accepted that “if it [the transfer of British lands] should come to a local argument, we have virtually no bargaining position at all”.11 Half a year later, when a Singapore delegation visited London to negotiate the terms of the Special Aid, the discussion focused on using the aid for development in the public and private sectors (particularly manufacturing and tourism), and ensuring that the approval of projects, disbursement of funds and repayment of loans would be simplified.12 There were no serious disagreements over policy. As J.Y.M. Pillay, Permanent-Secretary at the Ministry of Finance, who took part in the aid talks, stated in December 1967, Singapore had to “take organisational measures to put this aid to effective use”.13 He felt that the amount of aid was “not ungenerous”.14 Another example of Anglo-Singaporean collaboration can be seen in the ‘Malta precedent’, which highlights Singapore’s location in a wider Commonwealth history in the late 1960s. After visiting Malta in 1967, which had experienced a similar run-down, Lee Kuan Yew was extremely critical of its alleged “aid dependency” mentality, particularly of Maltese dock workers playing water polo in the naval dockyard (Lee 2000, 70-1). Like Singapore, Malta obtained its independence from Britain in 1964, but allowed the British to retain their military facilities on the island until 1979. Malta was also economically dependent on the British, with 13% of its gainfully employed population working in the bases (Craig 1991). In fact, the Singapore government learned positive lessons from the Malta experience. In their exploratory negotiations with the British on the terms of the Special Aid in October 1967, the Singapore side repeatedly referred to the Malta precedents, e.g. transferring all British assets to the Singapore government without charge.15 The provision of a three-month long retraining programme for retrenched base workers, discussed below, was also a Malta precedent.16 So little of this has been acknowledged in public history, because Lee had not desired the Special Aid programme to be given undue coverage in Singapore, for fear that the people would “get into a Malta frame of mind”.17 The way the ‘Malta precedent’ has been discursively rendered in Singapore history is testament to the british military withdrawal from singapore and anatomy of a catalyst 201 high modernist social engineering which occurred during and after the British withdrawal, as determined by the PAP government and particularly by Lee himself. ‘No haphazard takeover’: conversion, redundancy and retraining One strand of the accelerated withdrawal from Singapore led to another. The pursuit of economic development was to some extent mandated by the anticipated effects of the British withdrawal. In 1968, the PAP government quickly committed $ 150 million to a counter-recessionary plan and, over the period of the pull-out, a total of over $ 1 billion. Public works and construction were key planks in this programme, to which an additional $ 400 million was allocated to the 1968 budget to offset the deflationary effects of the run-down. The authorities also relaxed plot ratios in the Central Area and provided financial incentives, such as reduced property taxes, for private developers to increase the speed of construction of commercial buildings, offices and hotels, and other urban renewal projects (Singapore 1975). Not all the development efforts were, however, reactive: major construction projects originally planned for the late 1970s, such as road, drainage and sewerage development, land reclamation, public housing, and urban renewal, were also brought forward to absorb redundant labour (Tan 1972). De la Mare found Singapore’s initial anxieties over the pull-out to be remarkably ‘short-lived’, quickly replaced by an acute economic sense.18 Other British officials concurred in 1970 that “[a]lthough our declared aim was to mitigate the economic consequences of our withdrawal, in the event Singapore has adjusted to this more rapidly than we anticipated”.19 The Singapore government also established the Bases Economic Conversion Department (BECD). Under the direct purview of the prime minister, the department attempted to rigorously deal with the multi-faceted legal, economic and technical issues related to the withdrawal through a single public body. Its leadership, which was inter-ministerial, comprised Hon Sui Sen, the Department’s Commissioner and Chairman of the Economic Development Board (EDB). Hon’s deputies were K.R. Chandra, the Permanent Secretary of Law, in charge of issues of transfer, conversion and land use, and J.Y.M. Pillay, his counterpart from the Ministry of Finance, who dealt with issues such as Special Aid and finance. The BECD’s work involved managing the handover of the British military lands and assets; administering, developing, converting, and disposing of the lands and assets to civilian use; conducting negotiations over the delivery of British aid to help tide Singapore over the effects of the run-down; and using part of the aid for the retraining of redundant base workers.20 202 loh kah seng The conversion of the bases was a success and in both real and symbolic terms a major boost to Singapore’s development. As early as October 1967, when the British Director of Lands and Claims in the Far East Command asked the Chief Surveyor of the EDB, “[W] hat Singapore was going to do with so much land – about 22 square miles”, the latter confidently referred to a map of the island and “named a planned use for practically all establishments and installations”. “This implies no haphazard takeover”, the Director concluded, “they know where they are going!”21 The converted bases aided the creation or expansion of several major industries in the early 1970s: the conversion of the naval dockyard at Sembawang into a commercial shipyard; of Changi airbase into a recreational resort and later an international airport; of part of the military facility at Seletar airbase into Singapore Electronic and Engineering Limited for repairing and overhauling electrical and electronic equipment; and of Blakang Mati into a tourist resort, renamed Sentosa. The BECD also planned the establishment of an offshore oil-drilling site off Sembawang, support operations at Loyang and industrial estates at Ayer Rajah and Telok Blangah; and the relocation of the University of Singapore from Bukit Timah to Kent Ridge. In the largest of the conversion projects at the naval dockyard, the British shipbuilding firm Swan Hunter provided vital technical and managerial expertise, as the Singapore officials “did not seem to have much grasp of the complexities of the commercialisation project”.22 This is not to say there were no minor political or administrative hurdles in the process but, by and large, the transfer and conversion took place smoothly within the framework of Anglo-Singaporean collaboration. Both the British and PAP governments generally agreed on the terms of the transfer of the bases. In the same year that the withdrawal was announced, Britain proposed, and Singapore accepted, the working premise to transfer without charge to Singapore military facilities required for the republic’s economy or defence, together with surplus items of non-operational moveable equipment.23 With up to a tenth of Singapore’s land area becoming available for economic use, the British pull-out was a major catalyst for development in a land-hungry and rapidly developing state. The government’s aim was not simply to prevent or absorb unemployment but to pursue a “positive, job-creation” strategy, based on state-driven industrialisation, so that “conversion planning can foster, and be integrated with, wider economic changes both nationally and globally” (Southwood 1991, 195, 200). At the same time, the conversion enhanced Singapore’s industrialisation programme, because it coincided with the flow of international, particularly American, capital in the late 1960s to countries with cheap factory sites and low labour costs (Rodan 1989). british military withdrawal from singapore and anatomy of a catalyst 203 Less successful were the BECD’s retraining programmes to help redundant base workers find new employment in industrial vocations, although retraining might have played a symbolic role in demonstrating Singapore’s will and ability to industrialise and maintaining investor confidence. In a speech in 1968, Lee Kuan Yew explained why the redundant base worker had to be retrained: It’s no use giving the man ive weeks’ pay or one month’s pay for every year of service – he will spend that and having nothing, he will be on my dole. What I want is to keep up the man’s morale and self-respect.24 Here again, as in his stress on investor confidence, Lee emphasised the psychological; morale, he believed, was “three-quarters of the essence of the solution to the problems consequent on the reduction of the bases”.25 This belief that the way to revitalise redundant workers was to provide them new skills rather than financial relief, was deeply rationalist. The three-month long retraining programmes, modelled on those in Malta, were planned by the Organising Committee for the Training and Retraining of Redundant Base Personnel, established in April 1968 under Ernest Wong, Director of Training in the BECD. The committee, like the BECD itself, was cross-ministerial in its work, coordinating the efforts of the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC), individual trade unions, EDB, and the ministries of education and labour. Discounting workers who were skilled or close to retirement, and those who could be re-employed from the naval dockyard to Sembawang Shipyard, the final figure of retrainees was 9-10,000, most of whom were white-collar administrative workers or unskilled labourers.26 Some 3,309 out of the 10,000 retrenched workers at the Naval Base were re-employed by Sembawang Shipyard in 1968 (SPD 3 December 1968, 38). Economist Lee Soo Ann viewed the retraining as “an exercise in sheer hope which might very well end in frustration” (Lee 1971, 61). Here, the high modernist developmental project could not overcome individual resistance. The retraining was clearly inadequate in many cases for converting a white-collar worker into a skilled tradesman, as was highlighted by the government’s plea for employers not to discriminate against retrained workers. Lee Kuan Yew stated in his memoirs that the retrenched were readily absorbed into factory work provided by the emerging industries in Singapore (Lee 2000, 73). But if this was true in a general sense, there were nonetheless very divergent experiences. Hwang Peng Yuan, the Head of Promotion in the EDB, reflected later that when “you get a 40-year-old shopkeeper who was already earning $ 1,500”, “[i]t doesn’t make sense for him to train as a machinist and start at $ 500”.27 In 1971, Hon Sui Sen admitted in Parliament that the redeployment of some retrenched 204 loh kah seng base workers was difficult, while many older workers had not responded favourably to retraining, prompting the government to terminate the programme (SPD 17 March 1971, 759). There are no statistics on retraining, but a telling case was that of Lim Meng Jock, who joined the Naval Base as an accounts clerk in 1964, was retrenched in December 1968, and then completed two technical drawing courses. However, Lim did not become a tracer, but joined Sembawang Shipyard as a billing technician, another administrative position, before leaving to set up a catering business a few years later. The British withdrawal, he said, had “not much of an impact”.28 The emphasis on technical and vocational education also shaped the nature of work for generations of young Singaporeans in the 1970s and beyond. Following the announcement of the British pull-out, a new Technical Education Department was formed in the Ministry of Education (Singapore 1973). When Minister for Labour S. Rajaratnam spoke to the first graduating batch of 427 retrained base workers in July 1968, he made no distinction between the retraining of redundant base workers and the new policy of promoting technical and vocational education due to the changing technological basis of the global economy, which was making white-collar and unskilled workers increasingly redundant. He spoke of the base workers as the “earliest victims” of this worldwide shift in the demand for labour, but noted their “good fortune” in receiving special assistance from the government to find alternative work. He warned white-collar workers that one day soon they might be replaced by machines and computers.29 Because it clearly aided Singapore’s development, the British keenly endorsed the use of the Special Aid to finance and supply British expertise for the expansion of technical and vocational education. The former British army depot at Telok Blangah was converted into the fourth vocational institute in Singapore, which was capable of retraining 2,000 workers a year initially, but eventually doubled that number (Ministry of Education 1969). The PAP government, with British assistance, was steadily transforming the economic, employment and social structures in Singapore. In 1972, commenting on the development of technical and vocational education, the new British High Commissioner S. Falle surmised that “a major cause of the new release of disciplined energy which has produced this success was probably the galvanising effect on the Singapore government and people of the announcement of the withdrawal of British ‘aid’ in the form of the spending power of our armed services”.30 With the reforms, the experiences and outcomes of work for young school-leavers with different skill-sets were to vary widely (Salaff 1988). From the 1970s, secondary, polytechnic and tertiary students with technical or vocational education were finding more highly paid jobs and more quickly than those trained more generally in the Arts. Males and English-educated University of Singapore students also did significantly british military withdrawal from singapore and anatomy of a catalyst 205 better than their female and Chinese-stream Nanyang University and Ngee Ann Technical College counterparts (University of Singapore 1976, 1980; Pang 1972, 1973, 1974; Eng 1974). The labour laws and ‘new release of disciplined energy’ The PAP government’s ability to push through far-reaching social and economic policies came from the mandate it received in the 1968 general elections. Following the announcement of Britain’s run-down, the leadership decided to hold early elections some seven months in advance for a strong mandate from the citizenry at this difficult juncture. The party won all the seats in Parliament and polled 86.7% of the vote, although this was helped by the decision of the opposition parties (except the Workers’ Party) to boycott the polls. Foreign observers saw the early elections as an attempt by the PAP to obtain a popular mandate and push through a comprehensive economic package without having to spend time debating or consulting the people (Far Eastern Economic Review, henceforth FEER, 59 (9), 29 February 1968, 360). The companion policy to the educational reforms involved remoulding the character of labour, arguably the most comprehensive of the PAP’s policies designed to maintain investor confidence. With complete control of Parliament, the PAP swiftly passed the Employment Act and an amendment to the Industrial Relations Act. Together with the Trade Unions (Amendment) Act, passed in 1966, this trio of labour laws redefined the relationship between labour, employers and the state in post-pull-out Singapore. By making it mandatory for unions to hold a secret ballot before a strike decision could be taken, the Trade Union (Amendment) Act greatly undermined labour militancy, while a further amendment outlawed strikes in the essential services and sympathy strikes. The anticipated effects of the British withdrawal reinforced the government’s rationale for passing the Employment Act. In July 1968, when S. Rajaratnam explained the legislation as designed to help facilitate Singapore’s future development, he framed the pioneer batch of retrained base workers as the vanguard of an adaptable national workforce spearheading the island’s venture into manufacturing in the 1970s.31 The Act aimed to maximise the productivity of labour by increasing the number of working hours and cutting down on fringe benefits. Employees may not work overtime for more than 48 hours each month; may only obtain a maximum of one month’s bonus per annum; may not obtain retrenchment or retirement benefits if they had not continuously served an employer for three or five years, respectively; and may only be paid double time, not triple time as previously, for work on a public holiday. The government also referred to the British withdrawal 206 loh kah seng in justifying the need for the Industrial Relations (Amendment) Act. This legislation transferred significant powers to management, including the right to hire and fire, while trade unions were also prohibited from obtaining terms superior to those stipulated in the Employment Act in the “pioneer industries”, to which the government was seeking to attract foreign investment. The act of passing these pro-capital laws signified the progressive intentions of Singapore to international investors. They were intended to enhance Singapore’s appeal as a site for foreign industrialists by shifting the basic labour framework from employee protection to employer protection (Tan 1970, 25). Many workers and even labour leaders and PAP MPs were critical of certain provisions in the laws, although, significantly, they accepted them as necessary for the industrialisation programme.32 The overwhelming electoral mandate won by the government was expedient, because it meant that labour MPs and activists could not simply reject the laws out of hand (FEER 61 (30), 25 July 1968, 186). In Lee Kuan Yew’s view, it was the acute sense of anxiety over “an economic collapse” arising from the news of the British withdrawal which led the workers of Singapore to accept the tough labour laws (Lee 2000, 108-9). Peter Vincent, President of NTUC, the dominant umbrella of unions in Singapore, warned retrained base workers in 1968 that “the world does not owe us a living”. He urged them to support the new labour laws and “contribute to the further development of Singapore” through manufacturing and tourism.33 An NTUC seminar in 1969 formalised this change of the trade union movement’s role from being an independent player involved in “collective bargaining and traditional militancy” to playing an integrated ‘symbiotic’ role between government, management and labour in Singapore (Ministry of Labour 1977b, 2). The PAP government’s belief in utilising the labour laws and retraining schemes, not only to equip workers with new skills but to create a new type of worker with a disciplined work ethic, was rationalist and quintessentially high modernist. The labour laws were not merely proscriptive but developmental in intent. The Employment Act aimed to “tighten labour discipline by providing against malingering and restrictive practices” (Ministry of Labour 1977a, 2). The conversion of the naval dockyard into Sembawang Shipyard encapsulated this social engineering. Ship repair work in a commercial dockyard, unlike in a naval facility, now became a seven-day-a-week preoccupation, including overtime.34 When the 3,309-strong civilian workforce of the naval dockyard was hired en masse by the shipyard, the management cracked down strongly on work absenteeism, frequent sick leave and social gambling at the dockyard, as mandated in the Employment Act (Chew 1998). As a former BECD official reflected on the discursive language of the new industrial economy, base workers “could no longer adopt a carefree or british military withdrawal from singapore and anatomy of a catalyst 207 lackadaisical attitude to their work as they would have to meet completion time of vessels” (Leong unpublished). The Barisan Sosialis alleged that “[o]n the excuse of fighting unemployment consequent on the sham ‘British withdrawal’, workers are heavily oppressed and exploited” (Plebeian 101, 9 January 1971, 2). Many former base employees keenly felt this dramatic shift in the culture of work at Sembawang Shipyard, although few understood the significance of the labour laws at the time. The amount and pace of work changed markedly along with the surge in the volume of ships calling at the shipyard. While working in the naval dockyard, Lim Shee Chee’s father, a fitter, would cycle to work in the morning, spend much of a typically slow day drinking coffee, cycle home for lunch, before returning to his workplace; he would be home by 4.30 pm. “That’s the life of a servant of the British Empire”, Lim remarked.35 John Ng, a policeman at the Naval Base who retained his job at the shipyard when the British left, commented that there was not a single oil spill in the dockyard and workers could “shake a leg” during lull periods.36 But at Sembawang Shipyard, Ho Shee Lim, a tradesman, felt that “every day was a mad rush”, as workers now had more challenging targets to meet.37 Balachandran Nair, a mechanic at the naval dockyard who continued working in Sembawang Shipyard, observed that “work in the shipyard was a tough life”, “miles different” from that in the dockyard. As security guards increasingly cracked down on social gambling during working hours at the shipyard, the corporate focus on profits and individual betterment filtered down to many workers. “You sweated to get [a] bonus in Sembawang Shipyard”, Nair told me, adding, “Only thing good in Sembawang Shipyard is you get promoted if you worked hard”.38 Work in the shipyard also became more stressful because it was much more regulated. Along with the increased volume of work came changes in the supplement of rules for Sembawang Shipyard workers. Getting sick leave now became more difficult, at least in the eyes of the workers. In Nair’s account, the medical centre in the Naval Base was always full on Monday, as the British did not interfere with the workers’ entitlement to 14 days of sick leave per year. “If the British were still here”, Nair concluded, “Singapore would not be what it is today”.39 John Chai, a tradesman for steel fitting in Sembawang Shipyard, stated that as the amount of work increased after the commercialisation of the dockyard, the hazards of working onboard ship were greatly magnified. As one could get seriously hurt by the release of toxic gas, an explosion or fire, objects falling from above, or slipping on a wet surface, he had to be “100% alert” at work. As he felt that the doctors in the shipyard were reluctant to grant medical leave unless one was seriously sick, Chai took care of the minor bruises and cuts he suffered at work by continuing to work and seeing a Chinese physician for treatment, or by self-medicating. Of the injuries, 208 loh kah seng Chai observed, “It’s nothing, [you] just have to take care,” adding, “That’s the way”.40 Chai’s remarks indicate the extent to which former base workers were socialised into the post-pull-out industrial economy of Singapore. In its review of Singapore in 1969, in the middle of the run-down, the British High Commission labelled the year as one of “non-stop action”. This was the “year of the Beaver”, with burgeoning construction work in Singapore – on “hotels, housing, office-blocks, factories, container ports, schools power stations, flyovers, community centres” – making it truly a “workers’ republic”. No small thanks because, the report concluded in self-gratifying fashion, Singapore had responded robustly to the shortened timeline for Britain’s withdrawal from the island. The writer of the report was Arthur de la Mare.41 From ‘Little Britain’ and ‘Kochu Kerala’ to modern Singapore Mass redundancy due to the run-down was a central concern for the Singapore government. In fact, most blue-collar workers of the naval dockyard were absorbed into Sembawang Shipyard, while the experiences of white-collar employees, unskilled workers and service providers varied, depending less on the pull-out per se than on local factors such as one’s age, education, family composition, and social networks. The father of Lam Chun Chew, a senior clerk at the Naval Base, was retrenched, but this was the prelude to a ‘golden handshake’, as he received a five-figure redundancy benefit, found work in private firms and retired comfortably several years later. “I really believe you have picked a wrong candidate to relate to you of my father’s retrenchment story”, Lam told me, “simply because our situation was very different from others”.42 The grandmother of George Annadorai, who worked as an amah for a British family in RAF Seletar, also received a “handsome offering” when they departed. She was elevated from domestic servant to landlady overnight, using the money to build wooden houses in Jalan Kayu village just outside the base, which she rented out to villagers.43 Another amah, Tan Geok Hak, was not so fortunate. Working for the family of a British officer in Holland, the withdrawal cut her source of income without providing for any redundancy benefit. She became a home-based, piece-rated worker in Singapore’s informal economy, sewing clothes and making paper bags for pressure lamps. Many older Chinese amahs, she said, “retired” after the British withdrawal, an outcome which was less a voluntary than an enforced one.44 For Song Koon Poh, the son of a clerk working in the British Ordnance Depot, the run-down was a life-changing personal experience. Following his father’s retrenchment, Song had to forgo his opportunity to pursue his pre-university education and venture into the workplace to support the family, thus british military withdrawal from singapore and anatomy of a catalyst 209 fulfilling the Chinese tradition of family-based self-help. He joined a shipping company as an assistant boarding officer in 1971 at the age of 17, benefiting from the boom in Singapore’s marine industry. His sister, like Tan, also contributed to the household by sewing clothes, for which she was paid by piece. As Song reflected: “We struggled as a family during the years just before the British pulled out and immediately after”.45 Just as crucial as the economic consequences was the social impact of the British run-down. Its role as a catalyst was also to extend the political economy of life in Singapore into spaces previously under British military control. On the one hand, the British bases were ‘Little Britains’ in the cultural and economic senses, self-contained enclaves governed by the British which “stood quite apart from the development going on in other parts of the Island” (Lim 1974, 23, 58). On the other, the military facilities also developed a unique, semi-autonomous ‘base culture’ owing both to the presence of British power and the Asian labour force residing in them. The Naval Base, for instance, was known to the locals as ‘Kochul Kerala’ or ‘Little Kerala’, after the rich cultural life of the large Malayali population living in the base, expressed in their religious and cultural organisations and activities (Liew 2006). Socially and culturally, for many former base employees and residents, the British pull-out constituted the end of an era. Life in a British base was shaped by the unique combination of Western modernity and vernacular culture. In the locals’ perception, the base represented the best of two different worlds: the kampong with its unauthorised housing, basic amenities but close community bonds, and the Western-style estate with its permanent housing, material comfort and modern amenities. In the Asian quarters in the Naval Base bounded by Kowloon, Delhi and Madras roads, the neighbours knew one another as far as 200 metres away, while adults and children of different ethnic groups intermingled freely. As John Ng, the naval policeman in the base who learnt Tamil from his neighbours and friends in the base, recalled, “You could see an Ah Seng, a Muthusamy and an Ahmad together”.46 For Cramon Chenteley, whose father was a fitter in the Naval Base, the area was not only “a protected place”, fenced up and closely guarded, but also a “kampong-like” environment where school-going children and youths were “free to play”. Yet, he was also happy that he did not have to endure water rationing while living in the base (they had piped water), or use a pail toilet (they had water closets) or an oil lamp (they had electricity).47 When the bases began to be run down, however, the residents began to experience the powerful integrating pull of the high modernist state and economy of Singapore. Here was ‘conversion’ of not only the uses of physical assets but also social and economic roles. Where once the rent in the base had been heavily subsidised and the utilities free, the residents now had to pay for the use of water and electricity. 210 loh kah seng As Vanessa, John Ng’s wife, a Punjabi, remarked, “Nothing is free after the British withdrawal”.48 Balachandran Nair, who moved out of the area when he got married and later moved into a Housing and Development Board (HDB) flat in Ang Mo Kio estate, lamented, “You can’t get that life [in the Naval Base] back”.49 For those still living in the base, as more of their neighbours left, as George Annadorai recalled of RAF Seletar, there was an obvious ‘slow death’ to the social and cultural life of the community.50 The tipping point for many residents was when they moved out of the bases in the early 1970s as the British forces finally left. In the new HDB public housing to which many of them moved into, they encountered the lack of social and community interaction which many other Singaporeans had experienced a decade earlier: locked doors and a life centred around the demands of work, away from one’s residence. Like many former Naval Base residents, John Chai, the tradesman, moved into the Jurong Town Corporation flats built for workers in Sembawang. He hardly knew his neighbours, but eventually understood why: he typically left for work around 5 plus in the morning and returned home only at 10-11 pm after working overtime.51 As full-fledged worker-citizens of the post-pull-out state, the lives of Chai and other former base workers were being drawn into the emerging high modernist structures of Singapore, as the island became increasingly connected to an international web of industrial capital in the 1970s. Conclusion In 1974, Lee Kuan Yew thanked Her Majesty’s Government for the ‘breathing space’ British forces had provided for Singapore’s development.52 He had much to be thankful for: the accelerated British withdrawal was not only the final chapter of decolonisation in Singapore, but also the first step in the independent city-state’s growth. The catalyst, which began as a crisis for both Britain and Singapore, was forged at the intersection of imperial and national policies and enabled by the combined agency of the two parties. The British aim was to achieve successful decolonisation by continuing to encourage Singapore’s development during the withdrawal. This meant providing aid and technical expertise to Singapore and handing over the bases promptly for its defence and developmental uses. British policy coincided with the high modernist projects pursued by the PAP government, a programme that was also based on the post-war colonial blueprint. This programme sought to protect investor confidence in Singapore in both concrete and symbolic ways, as envisaged by Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Keng Swee. Despite de la Mare’s accusation british military withdrawal from singapore and anatomy of a catalyst 211 of a British ‘handout’, he admired the development of Singapore in the late 1960s and recognised the role played by the run-down; if anything, he was overly pessimistic about the role of his British colleagues in negotiating the terms of the handover. In fact, as officials in both countries realised, the economic and strategic interests which Britain wanted to safeguard in a smooth pull-out would at the same time be served by facilitating the expansion of the Singapore economy. De la Mare’s view of the Special Aid as a “bribe” and “sweetener” was not so much wrong as not fully putting in context the close collaboration between Britain and Singapore in dealing with the effects of the run-down. The ‘Malta precedent’, which Singapore drew on for its negotiations with the British and for addressing the effects of the withdrawal, was another slice of the connection between Singapore and another part of the Commonwealth. The programmes of national development and social engineering, enabled by Anglo-Singaporean collaboration during the withdrawal, spurred the transformation of the island state into an international industrial hub in the 1970s and elevated it to a new place in world history. Rationalist projects to commercialise the military facilities, accelerate construction works, expand technical and vocational education, retrain redundant base workers, and forge a disciplined labour force both provided the raw material for Singapore’s growth and mobilised the people into their new role as members of a new ‘workers republic’. These were either ongoing projects now being systematically expanded in the context of a ‘national crisis’ or planned ones which were quickly brought forward. Not all the projects were entirely successful: the retraining was often inadequate and naturally invoked the resistance of middle-aged clerical workers, while the reform of technical and vocational education was to further divide the experiences of workers according to skill as well as language and sex. Fast pace of work, systematic routines and stress now characterised the working lives of many former base employees re-employed in the newly commercialised plants of production. Whatever their effects, the projects collectively defined the political economy of work in Singapore into the 1970s and beyond. Finally, the effects of a decision made in Britain were deeply felt at the local level, as the lives of base workers and residents were ‘converted’. This encapsulated strikingly James Scott’s point that high modernism sought not only to transform nature but also human nature (Scott 1998). During the PAP era from 1959 onwards, the British ordnance depots were the remaining semi-anachronistic spaces in the city-state which, while in their own ways modern, existed largely outside the well-regulated structures of the newly emerging state that was predominant on the remainder of the island. The base residents, used to the unique blend of the material comfort and vernacular base culture of the ‘Little Britains’ and ‘Kochul Kerala’, found their own identity dramatically redefined by the 212 loh kah seng scope of transformation during the run-down. Formerly ‘servants of the British Empire’, they were now being socialised as worker-citizens of the post-pull-out state. When they moved out of the bases, often to public housing estates close to their workplaces, the sense of community and neighbourhood which had for a decade shielded them from the political economy of industrialisation gave way to a closely integrated relationship with the state and international capital. It was, naturally, the pull-out which enabled the final phase of the modernisation process the British regime had first started a generation earlier at the end of the Pacific war to be completed at the bases themselves. Wan Chan Peew, a clerk working at the Naval Base, was re-employed in the same vocation at Sembawang Shipyard. Recalling the conversion of the bases, the move of many base residents into HDB flats and the increase in his working hours from 36 to 44 per week, he observed, “It was such a buzz – rather than the pull-out!”53 Notes 1 This time-frame refers to the schedule planned in 1968; in fact, smaller British forces remained in Singapore until March 1976. 2 FCO 24/1019 Telegram from Arthur de la Mare to Alec Douglas-Home, 3 November 1971. 3 FCO 24/62, Note of a Conversation at the Commonwealth Secretary’s Luncheon for Mr Lee Kuan Yew on 16 January 1968. 4 FCO 24/1861, Memo on ANZUK Real Estate by P. G. de Courey-Ireland, South West Pacific Department, 10 October 1974. 5 FCO 24/62, Letter from Lee Kuan Yew to Harold Wilson, 18 December 1967. 6 FCO 24/62, Transcript of Interview, ‘Prime Minister Lee Explains his Difficulties’, 15 January 1968. 7 FCO 24/62, Transcript of a Press Conference Given by the Prime Minister Mr Lee Kuan Yew at the City Hall, 9 January 1968. 8 FCO 24/62, Telegram from British High Commission to Commonwealth Office, 5 January 1966. 9 FCO 24/888, Telegram from Arthur de la Mare to Roy Mason, President of the Board of Trade, 29 January 1970. 10 FCO 24/1861, Disposal of Service Assets in Singapore, 29 August 1974. 11 FCO 24/75, Note by the Ministry of Defence on Defence Lands and Fixed Assets in Malaysia and Singapore, 9 November 1967. 12 FCO 24/114, Opening Statement by Mr Hon Sui Sen, Leader of the Singapore Delegation, Annex B, 8 March 1968. 13 Radio Corporation of Singapore, audio recording titled ‘Interview with Manual Pillay, Economic Development Board’, 6 December 1967. 14 Author’s interview with J.Y.M. Pillay, 26 November 2009. 15 FCO 24/75, Extract from Meeting in Singapore, 12 October 1967. 16 Radio Corporation of Singapore, audio recording titled ‘Interview with Manual Pillay, Economic Development Board’, 6 December 1967. 17 FCO 24/327, Telegram from British High Commission to Commonwealth Office, 2 March 1968. british military withdrawal from singapore and anatomy of a catalyst 213 18 FCO 24/888, Telegram from Arthur de la Mare to Roy Mason, President of the Board of Trade, 29 January 1970. 19 FCO 24/888, Letter from Roy Mason, President of the Board of Trade, to Judith Hart, Minister of Overseas Development, 24 February 1970. 20 Ministry of Culture 110/68, Memo from Secretary to the Prime Minister to All Permanent Secretaries and Heads of Departments, 8 February 1968. 21 FCO 24/75, Extract from Presentation by Director of Lands and Claims, Far East Command, 13 October 1967. 22 FCO 24/114, Negotiations on Aid with Malaysia and Singapore, 8 March 1968. 23 FCO 24/114, Note by the British Delegation on the Transfer of Lands and Fixed Assets, Annex C, 8 March 1968; and Note by the British Delegation on the Transfer of Moveable Assets, Annex D, 8 March 1968. 24 FCO 24/62, Transcript of a Press Conference Given by the Prime Minister Mr Lee Kuan Yew at the City Hall, 9 January 1968. 25 OD 39/8, Letter from Lee Kuan Yew to Reginald Prentice, Minister for Overseas Development, 15 December 1967. 26 Radio Corporation of Singapore, audio recording titled ‘S. Rajaratnam at Graduation Ceremony of 1st Group of Trainees for Redundant Base Civilian Workers’, 29 July 1968. 27 Oral History Centre (henceforth OHC), interview with Hwang Peng Yuan, 29 August 2002-4 April 2003. 28 Author’s interview with Lim Meng Jock, 17 November 2009. 29 Radio Corporation of Singapore, audio recording titled ‘S. Rajaratnam at Graduation Ceremony of 1st Group of Trainees for Redundant Base Civilian Workers’, 29 July 1968. 30 FCO 24/158, Telegram from S. Falle to Michael Walker, Overseas Development Administration, 21 February 1972. 31 Radio Corporation of Singapore, audio recording titled ‘S. Rajaratnam at the Graduation Ceremony of 1st Group of Trainees for Redundant Base Civilian Workers’, 29 July 1968. 32 OHC, interview with Seah Mui Kok, 6 July 1988, 17 June 1994. 33 Radio Corporation of Singapore, audio recording entitled ‘S. Rajaratnam at the Graduation Ceremony of 1st Group of Trainees for Redundant Base Civilian Workers’, 29 July 1968. 34 Radio Corporation of Singapore, audio recording titled ‘Conversion of Naval Base – Swan Hunter Group’, 18 June 1968. 35 Author’s interview with Lim Shee Chee, 4 December 2009. 36 Author’s interview with John Ng, 16 December 2009. 37 Author’s interview with Ho Shee Lim, 15 December 2009. 38 Author’s interview with Balachandran Nair, 17 December 2009. 39 Author’s interview with Balachandran Nair, 17 December 2009. 40 Author’s interview with John Chai, 28 December 2009. 41 FCO 24/875, Singapore: Annual Review for 1969, 5 February 1970. 42 Author’s email correspondence with Lam Chun Chew, 13-17 November 2009. 43 Author’s interview with George Annadorai, 10 December 2009. 44 Author’s interview with Tan Geok Hak, 17 December 2009. 45 Author’s email correspondence with Song Koon Poh, 4-6 October 2009. 46 Author’s interview with John Ng, 16 December 2009. 47 Author’s interview with Cramon Chenteley, 10 December 2009. 48 Author’s interview with Vanessa Ng, 16 December 2009. 49 Author’s interview with Balachandran Nair, 17 December 2009. 50 Author’s interview with George Annadorai, 10 December 2009. 51 Author’s interview with John Chai, 28 December 2009. 52 FCO 24/1861, Conversation with Mr Lee Kuan Yew, 29 November 1974. 53 Author’s email correspondence with Wan Chan Peew, 10 January 2010.