8 - Strike for Power

Summary

The time had come for one of those moments in history when people are thrown together and the course of a nation's destiny is changed forever. The first of these events involved Goh Keng Swee, whom Raja knew from the MDU days. While Goh, small-built and wiry, was happy to slug down mugs of beer with the MDU leaders at the Liberty Cabaret, he was detached from their political ideology. He was cerebral and deliberate in his political calculations.

Like Raja, Goh was disillusioned with the moribund politics at home and resented the humiliation of being under colonial rule. His resentment deepened as other countries — India, Pakistan, Burma, and Ceylon — gained their freedom. Unlike Raja who often lived in the realm of ideas and theories, Goh was a down-to-earth pragmatist who chose his allies and his methods carefully.

Goh found his chance when he was released from the civil service to pursue economics in London. In 1949, while studying at the London School of Economics, Goh and several friends set up the Malayan Forum. The aim of the forum, which Goh headed as its founding chairman, was to rouse political consciousness and press for an independent Malaya that would include Singapore.

From Singapore, Raja gave his active support to this Malayan anti-colonial student movement in London. He had felt keenly the absence of such a national consciousness among Malayan students during his 12 years in London, which was in sharp contrast to the upsurge of nationalistic fervour among the Chinese, Indians, and Africans. To help it along, he passed some of his influential British contacts to Goh to follow up.

The Malayan Forum invited speakers from various organisations, including the Fabian Society. Goh realised how well-regarded Raja was in the intellectual left-wing circles when he found personalities such as Lady Hilda Selwyn-Clarke, a leading figure in the China Campaign committee and the Fabian Colonial Bureau, asking after her friend, Raja. She also asked Goh to pass on her contact number to Raja in Singapore. By widening and deepening their political network in Britain and Singapore, Goh and Raja supported one another in their common cause to shape thinking against colonial rule in Malaya.