From Third World to First The Singapore Story pdfdrive com

Illustrated London News
that
compared it to the retreat of the Roman legions from Britain as the Dark Ages
descended over Europe. But the analogy was false. Modern communications and
transportation have brought more Britons to Singapore than in colonial times.
The British community now is smaller only than the American and Japanese
communities. There are more British schools in Singapore now, to cater for the
children of some 10,000 British families, than when we were their colony.
Hundreds of Britons now come to Singapore on their own to work as engineers,

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architects and technicians – no longer on expatriate terms and living in exclusive
areas, but on local terms and living in the same apartments as Singaporeans.
Singapore salaries have reached the levels of Britain’s. Many British banking
and financial institutions have set up branches in Singapore as it became one of
the major international financial centres. The whole economic and political
landscape has altered beyond recognition.
In 1982 the City of London made me a Freeman of the City of London, an
honour which, as a former British subject, I appreciated. I was impressed to see
how thorough they were about the guest list. They had invited all the British
ministers and governors who had had dealings with me over Singapore. And I
was asked to list the personal friends I wanted to have present. So I had the joy
of having former prime ministers, secretaries of state, commanders-in-chief, the
last governor of Singapore and my many personal British friends, all there in the
Guildhall to share that moment. Among them were Harold Macmillan, Jim
Callaghan, Harold Wilson, Alec Douglas-Home, Alan Lennox-Boyd and
Duncan Sandys. It was an occasion for nostalgia. In responding to the address at
the ceremony, I said,
“When I was a schoolboy 50 years ago in Singapore, my teachers held
this truth to be self-evident, that London was the centre of the world. It
was the centre of high finance and banking, as well as of the arts, the
theatre, the centre of literature, of music, of culture. It was the centre of
gravity of the world, … as indeed it was in September 1939 when a
British government decided to honour an obligation to the Polish nation,
a year after it had glossed over an undertaking to the Czech nation. Thus
was World War II triggered off, and the world irrevocably changed …”