11 - The Malayan Question

Summary

12 May 1955. Black Thursday. Raja was working late in his Straits Times office, when all hell broke on the streets outside. A mob was parading around a bleeding Chinese student, strapped onto a wooden door.

The boy had been hit by a stray shot fired by a policeman hours ago during a riot which had turned violent. But instead of rushing him to the nearby hospital, the mob carried his body around town, with stops for the press to take photographs as evidence of police brutality. By the time they took the boy to the hospital late at night, he was dead.

Raja related later: “Our reporters told me that they got the impression the mob wanted the boy to die, because they wanted a martyr.” He was shocked at their ruthlessness. He was even more shocked that the street violence arose out of strikes instigated by his fellow PAP founders, Fong Swee Suan and Lim Chin Siong. This was not what the PAP, as he had envisaged it, stood for or wanted to be known for.

While Fong and Chin Siong would later protest that they did not start the riots, that it was the prevailing “social conditions” which led to it, their actions indicated that they were more than ready to use revolutionary methods in their struggle.

Earlier in April, they had instigated strikes of the bus companies, notably the Hock Lee Bus Company. Strikers blocked the entrances to the Hock Lee Depot to stop buses from moving out, bringing the island's transport system to a standstill. The ensuing confrontation in May with the police erupted into a riot with four people killed and 31 injured. In a show of support to their comrades, 20 busloads of Chinese students moved into the area. They overturned vehicles and set them on fire. They clenched their fists and hollered communist slogans. It was amidst such chaos, which continued through the night, that the boy was shot.

Hyped up in a frenzied state, the students and unionists continued to run riot over the ensuing days, sparking off more strikes and sit-ins all over the island. Soon, communist-controlled Chinese cultural organisations also entered the fray. From then on, Singapore was a cauldron of strikes and conflict as the Middle Road group of union leaders incited thousands of workers and students to rage against the government and employers.