Forgotten Wars_ Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia - Christopher Bayly [125]
Soong Kwong, Soong Kwong,
You have taken the wrong path.
Why didn’t you make a fortune out of the Japs,
Instead of taking up anti-Jap activities, in the tropics?
An old saying goes:
The Good and Loyal are always tortured.
The Evil and Bad are praised in temples.
Another old saying runs:
The cunning rabbits are dead,
The excellent fox remains.
You have taken the wrong path.40
Soong Kwong’s trial was riddled with inconsistencies: it was held in a military court under civil law; if military law had been used, Soong Kwong’s defenders argued, there would be no case to answer as their man was a belligerent. There were three separate trials; at the first, the British judge was overruled by the two Asian assessors and ordered a retrial; at the second, when the judge was again overruled, he ordered a third trial. On this occasion the Asian assessors were dispensed with altogether, and replaced by two British military judges, on the grounds that no Asian judge could withstand intimidation. Soong Kwong was found guilty and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. At the final hearing, he threw his slippers at the judge.
The general strike was Malaya’s first and the largest trial of strength yet between the left and the British regime. In the eyes of Philip Hoalim and other Malayan Democratic Union leaders who gave it their support, it was a strike for civil rights. A few days earlier the British had further provoked the Chinese community when British national servicemen wrecked the offices of Chinese associations and tore down pictures of Chiang Kai Shek. Local hawkers protested bitterly at one incident in Senai, Johore: ‘although we are merely hawkers who know nothing, our national flag represents our country. And they insulted our flag in such a manner!’41 The strike threatened to cripple the colonial economy. The first confrontations began on 21 January at the Singapore Harbour Board, where 7,000 stevedores again refused to load shipments of arms bound for Java. On 29 January between 150,000 and 170,000 workers downed tools in Singapore, another 60,000 in Selangor and more in Penang, Perak and elsewhere. In Singapore the markets came to a standstill and the British reported that 3,500 pickets and supporters were out on trishaws and lorries enforcing the stoppage. The Kuomintang and Chinese business leaders claimed that if the British could break the strike, they could get the city back to work within hours, but in the event the strike was abruptly called off at its peak, on the eve of Chinese New Year, just before support threatened to drop away. The General Labour Union claimed a major victory. Soong Kwong was released, his sentence remitted, on 4 February. Mountbatten had wanted to do this before the strike, but had been unwilling to be seen to capitulate to pressure. The effect was the same. In the words of the BMA’s police adviser, René Onraet: ‘never in the History of Singapore have all sections of the diverse Asiatic community been so overawed and subdued’.42 The ‘January 29 Strife’, as it became known in Communist Party annals, was a political strike, and the British justified their punitive reaction to it on these grounds. But in private they acknowledged that they were fighting unrest based on hunger. ‘The administration cannot have a clear conscience in fighting a general strike on such as basis’, warned the chief civil affairs officer in Singapore. ‘The next strike might be effective… If force were to be used, it would be disastrous for here and for the empire as a whole.’43
Despite such warnings, British opinion hardened. Mountbatten observed in his diary that