From Third World to First The Singapore Story pdfdrive com

22. Inside the Commonwealth Club
When we became independent I assumed that Singapore would be a member of
the Commonwealth. The British government was supportive, and the Tunku was
keen to sponsor us. I did not know that Pakistan had initially opposed our
admission; it had considered Malaysia too pro-India in the India-Pakistan
conflict over Kashmir. Arnold Smith, the secretary-general of the
Commonwealth, in his memoirs wrote that Pakistan’s antagonism against
Malaysia was carried over to the Singapore government which had shown
sympathy for India. But Smith persuaded Pakistan to abstain and not object to
Singapore’s admission. In October 1965 Singapore was admitted as the 22nd
member of the Commonwealth. This membership was valuable. For a newly
independent country, it provided links to a network of governments whose
institutions were similar and whose leaders and officials shared a common
background. They were all English-speaking governments, with British civil
administration practices and legal, judicial and educational systems.
Soon after we joined, the prime minister of Nigeria, Sir Abubakar Tafawa
Balewa, called a conference of Commonwealth prime ministers for 11 January
1966 in Lagos, to discuss Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence.
Rhodesia was then a self-governing colony with a white minority of 225,000 in
control of 4 million black Africans. I decided to go.
On the BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation) plane making the
seven-hour flight from London to Lagos were several other prime ministers and
presidents of the smaller Commonwealth countries. We made conversation. A
memorable fellow passenger was Archbishop Makarios, president of Cyprus. He
wore silken black robes with a tall black hat as archbishop of the Greek
Orthodox Church. Once on board, he removed his robes and hat and looked a
totally different person, a smallish bald man with a moustache and a mass of a
beard. He sat across the aisle from me, so I had a good view of him. I watched,
fascinated, as he dressed and tidied up when the plane taxied to the terminal. He
diligently and carefully combed his moustache and beard. He stood up to put on

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his black robes over his white clothes, then his gold chain with a big medallion,
and then carefully placed his hat on his head. An aide brushed him down to
remove any white flecks from his flowing black robes, and handed him his
archbishop’s staff; only then was His Beatitude Archbishop Makarios finally
ready to descend the steps in proper style for the waiting cameras. No politician
could have been more PR-conscious. The other prime ministers held back and
allowed him to take precedence – he was not only president, he was also
archbishop.
We were greeted, inspected a guard of honour in turn and then whisked into
Lagos. It looked like a city under siege. Police and soldiers lined the route to the
Federal Palace Hotel. Barbed wire and troops surrounded it. No leader left the
hotel throughout the two-day conference.
The night before the meeting, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, whom I had
visited two years ago, gave us a banquet in the hotel. Raja and I were seated
opposite a hefty Nigerian, Chief Festus, their finance minister. The conversation
is still fresh in my mind. He was going to retire soon, he said. He had done
enough for his country and now had to look after his business, a shoe factory. As
finance minister, he had imposed a tax on imported shoes so that Nigeria could
make shoes. Raja and I were incredulous. Chief Festus had a good appetite that
showed in his rotund figure, elegantly camouflaged in colourful Nigerian robes
with gold ornamentation and a splendid cap. I went to bed that night convinced
that they were a different people playing to a different set of rules.
When the meeting opened on 11 January, Prime Minister Abubakar spoke.
He was a tall, lean and dignified figure with a slow, measured delivery. He
looked every inch a chief, a figure of quiet authority, in the flowing robes of the
Hausas from northern Nigeria. He had summoned this conference urgently to
discuss the unlawful declaration of independence by Rhodesia, which called for
action from the British. The vice-president of Zambia, Reuben Kamanga, spoke
next, and then Harold Wilson. It was clear Wilson was not able and not going to
use force against Ian Smith’s illegal independent regime. It would be politically
costly in British popular support, and would also cause economic damage to
Rhodesia and the surrounding African countries.
On the second day I spoke. I had no prepared script, just a few headings and
jottings I had noted down as Prime Minister Abubakar and the others spoke. I
took a broad philosophical approach. Three hundred years ago, the British set
out to occupy North America, Australia and New Zealand and to colonise much
of Asia and Africa. They settled in the more desirable regions of Asia and Africa

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as conquerors and masters. But in 1966 a British prime minister was talking on
equal terms with heads of government of former colonial territories. It was a
continually evolving relationship. Sir Albert Margai, prime minister of Sierra
Leone, had said that only an African could feel passionately and be concerned
about Rhodesia. I could not agree with him that only Africans should be
concerned with this problem. We were all interested parties and concerned.
Singapore was closely associated with Britain in defence. If Britain were to be
branded as a supporter of Ian Smith’s illegal seizure of power, my position
would become difficult.
I disagreed with Dr Milton Obote, prime minister of Uganda, that Britain had
been reluctant to bring the Europeans in Rhodesia to heel or to have the UN
impose sanctions because of a diabolical British plot to give Ian Smith time to
consolidate his regime. It was unhelpful to talk in terms of racist divisions
between white settlers and immigrants. Like the peoples in Canada, Australia
and New Zealand, I was a settler. If all immigrants were racists, then the world
was in for a difficult time. We had two alternative solutions to problems created
by migrations that had taken place all around the world: either to accept that all
men had equal rights, or to return to the rule of the strong over the weak. For
coloured peoples of the world to demand retribution for past wrongs was not the
answer to man’s survival. In Africa, the nub of the problem was not Rhodesia
but race relations in South Africa.
I did not believe that Britain was reluctant to end the Smith regime because
its survival would threaten the standing of the West with all non-European
peoples. Wilson was faced with the problem of going against domestic opinion if
he used force to crush a puny minority. I believed the British government was in
earnest and its reluctance to bring the issue to the United Nations was because it
did not want 130 members of the UN to decide what happened in Rhodesia after
Mr Smith had been brought down. Britain had to buy time for its economic
interests in South Africa and Rhodesia, and there was the need to preserve the
Rhodesian economy in the interests of Africans as well as Europeans. When the
problems of South Africa were resolved, the wider problem remained of how
different races could learn to live together in a world shrunk by technological
changes.
I sympathised with the Africans, but I also saw the difficulties a British
prime minister faced if he had to send British troops to quell a rebellion of
British settlers who had been fully self-governing for decades since 1923. The
question now was to make progress on the method and the time for achieving

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majority rule for Rhodesia.
One advantage of these Commonwealth leaders’ meetings was that however
big or small your country, when you did intervene, you were judged on your
merits. Many read prepared speeches. I responded to what had just been said,
and from notes. I spoke sincerely and expressed my thoughts without the
euphemisms of a prepared text. This was my maiden speech at a Commonwealth
prime ministers’ conference and I could sense that my colleagues around the
table responded favourably.
Wilson later wrote in his memoirs that “It was hard-hitting, though
somewhat repetitive, as one African leader after another sought to prove how
much more African he was than his neighbour. From Asia, Cyprus, the
Caribbean, the message of condemnation was the same. Then Lee Kuan Yew of
Singapore spoke – an off-the-cuff unprepared speech of some forty minutes at a
level of sophistication rarely achieved in any of the Commonwealth conferences
which I attended.”
My attendance at Lagos consolidated my friendship with Harold Wilson. I
had been helpful to the Africans and not unhelpful to the British. Wilson
congratulated me outside the conference room and said he hoped I would attend
other Commonwealth conferences. He needed a foil for difficult leaders who
made long and biting speeches. The conference ended two days later after
appointing two committees to review the effect of sanctions and the special
needs of Zambia that required Commonwealth support.
When we left for our next stop, Accra, the capital of Ghana, there was more
security along the route to the airport as tension had increased in Lagos in the
four days since we arrived.
Three days after we arrived in Accra, we were told by our hosts that there
had been a bloody coup in Lagos. Prime Minister Abubakar had been
assassinated and so had Chief Festus. An Ibo army major from eastern Nigeria,
where oil was being discovered, led the coup which killed many Hausa Muslims
from northern Nigeria. The major said “he wanted to get rid of rotten and corrupt
ministers and political parties”. This coup put Major-General J.T.U. Aguiyi-
Irons into power, but it was to be followed by many other coups.
Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s president, did not rejoice at the news. He himself
had had a narrow escape about two years ago, just before I visited him in
January 1964. By 1966 “Osagyefo” (Redeemer), as Nkrumah was called, had
recovered enough of his bounce to give me dinner with some of his senior
ministers and a bright young vice-chancellor of his university. This man,

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Abraham, was only about 30 years old, had taken a First in Classics in Oxford
and was a fellow of All Souls’ College. Nkrumah was very proud of him. I was
impressed, but wondered why a country so dependent on agriculture should have
its brightest and best do Classics – Latin and Greek.
On our arrival at Accra, the person who came up the aircraft to greet me was
Krobo Edusei, the minister for presidential affairs. He had gained notoriety as a
corrupt minister who had bought himself a golden bedstead, a story much
publicised in the world press. Nkrumah defused the scandal by restricting
Krobo’s portfolio to looking after government hospitality. On my second night
in Accra, he took me to a nightclub in Accra. He proudly announced that he was
the owner and that all VIPs would enjoy their evenings there.
We travelled by car to the High Volta dam, some three hours of travel. On
the road to the dam our convoy was led by a car with loudspeakers playing
music with an African beat; the lyrics had the refrain, in English, “work is
beautiful”. Little toddlers would appear from their huts off the road, swaying
naturally to the rhythm as they made their way to the roadside to wave to us. I
was fascinated to see how lithe and double-jointed they were.
I was the second guest to be entertained on a beautiful yacht that had been
imported fully assembled from Miami. They told me it had been transported by
rail and floated on the lake. Accompanying us on board were Krobo Edusei and
Ghana’s minister for foreign affairs, Alex Quaison Sackey, a well educated and
well-spoken man. When we were cruising on the lake, having cocktails and
canapés on deck, Raja asked Krobo who had made his beautiful safari suit.
Krobo replied, “My tailor shop in Kumasi. You must visit it one day and I will
make a suit for you like mine.” He then spoke of his other activities. He used to
be a 30 bob (US$4) a week postal clerk; now he had two sons educated in
Geneva, Switzerland. A man, he said, must have ambition. Quaison Sackey, a
sophisticate who had been president of the UN General Assembly, looked most
unhappy and uncomfortable. He valiantly tried to steer the conversation away
from Krobo, but Krobo was not to be deterred and we were regaled with one
hilarious tale after another. I wondered what would happen to these two
countries. They were then the brightest hopes of Africa, the first two to get their
independence, Ghana in 1957, followed shortly by Nigeria.
One month later, on 24 February, as Nkrumah was being welcomed with a
21-gun salute in Beijing, China, an army coup took place in Accra. People
danced in the streets as the army leaders arrested leading members of Nkrumah’s
government. Alex Quaison Sackey and Krobo Edusei were with Nkrumah in

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Beijing. When they returned to Accra, they were placed under protective
custody. My fears for the people of Ghana were not misplaced. Notwithstanding
their rich cocoa plantations, gold mines and High Volta dam which could
generate enormous amounts of power, Ghana’s economy sank into disrepair and
has not recovered the early promise it held out at independence in 1957.
The news I read saddened me. I never visited Ghana again. Two decades
later, in the 1980s, Quaison Sackey saw me in Singapore. He had been arrested
and released in one of the innumerable coups. He wanted to purchase palm oil
on credit from Singapore, on behalf of the Nigerian government which promised
to pay after they had held their elections. I said that was a private business deal
he had to strike. He picked up a living by using his contacts with African leaders
of neighbouring states. Ghana, he said, was in a mess. I asked after the bright
young vice-chancellor, Abraham. Quaison Sackey reported that he had entered a
monastery in California. I felt sad. If their brightest and best gave up the fight
and sought refuge in a monastery, not in Africa but in California, the road to
recovery would be long and difficult.
I was not optimistic about Africa. In less than 10 years after independence in
1957, Nigeria had had a coup and Ghana a failed coup. I thought their tribal
loyalties were stronger than their sense of common nationhood. This was
especially so in Nigeria, where there was a deep cleavage between the Muslim
Hausa northerners and the Christian and pagan southerners. As in Malaysia, the
British had handed power, especially the army and police, to the Muslims. In
Ghana, without this north-south divide, the problem was less acute, but there
were still clear tribal divisions. Unlike India, Ghana did not have long years of
training and tutelage in the methods and discipline of modern government.
The next conference was in London in September 1966, when I got to know
many prime ministers who had not attended the special conference in Lagos. In
the two weeks there I consolidated Singapore’s position with the British public
and maintained my already good relations with Wilson and his key ministers,
and with Conservative party leaders.
The Rhodesia question again dominated the whole conference (as it did
every conference until its settlement in 1979 at the Lusaka meeting). African
leaders felt strongly for their fellow Africans in Rhodesia. They also wanted to
establish their African credentials with their own people. Moreover, focusing on
the Unilateral Declaration of Independence in Rhodesia took their people’s

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minds off their own urgent economic and social difficulties. Of the white
leaders, Lester Pearson of Canada was by far the most liberal in his instincts and
sympathetic to the cause of the Africans and the underprivileged.
I spoke of the problems in Southeast Asia. I said that Vietnam was a clash of
two rival ideologies, each determined not to give in, knowing that the whole
region would be lost if one side yielded to the other. Harold Holt, the Australian
prime minister, showed discomfort when I said Australian and New Zealand
armies were in South Vietnam not purely to safeguard democracy and
Vietnamese freedom: they were defending their own strategic interests. He
quickly recovered his balance and accepted my point when I added that their
interests included my survival. I took an independent position to establish my
credentials so as not to be seen as a puppet of the British, Australians or New
Zealanders whose troops were defending Singapore. I said frankly that an
American withdrawal would be disastrous for all in the region, including
Singapore. My language made my views acceptable, although the prevailing
sentiments of African leaders were against American intervention. Singapore’s
standing with Africans and Asian leaders also improved.
At the next meeting, in January 1969, also in London, Wilson as chairman
asked me to open the discussion on Commonwealth cooperation. I prefaced my
remarks with a criticism of niggardly Western help for developing countries,
then went on to explain the deeper reasons for their failure. To rally their people
in their quest for freedom, the first-generation anti-colonial nationalist leaders
had held out visions of prosperity which they could not realise. A population
explosion had increased the burden on resources. Inter-ethnic peace, which had
been enforced by the colonial overlord, was difficult to maintain after
independence with power in the hands of an ethnic majority. The elite who had
commanded popular support before independence had to demonstrate their
continuing legitimacy, and in competing against other parties, they had been
unable to resist the temptation of appeals to ethnic, linguistic and religious
loyalties. The countries suffered as their ethnic minorities, mostly Indians in
Africa, were squeezed out by rioting or legislation. Often they were the
shopkeepers who had acted as village bankers, since they knew who was and
who was not credit-worthy. This role of village banker could not be filled by
their own native administrators, the US Peace Corps or British Voluntary
Service officers. The layer of trained men was too thin and new states reverted
back to type as soft societies without the firm hand of an overlord and a strong
framework of administration. Corruption set in and became a way of life.

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Military coups made things worse. But most of all, most governments had
favoured economic planning and controls which stifled free enterprise.
Fortunately, Malaysia and Singapore had not and so continued to make progress.
In his book