Forgotten Wars_ Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia - Christopher Bayly [156]
but he took to the recently repatriated U Saw, as so many British did. ‘I was impressed by his virility and oratory’, he wrote, describing him later as ‘probably the most forceful character in Burma today’.45 In the course of conversation with Saw, Rance remarked that he was also quite impressed with Aung San, especially since he had just managed to give a speech lasting for five and a half hours. But ‘U Saw was not impressed, as his record is twelve hours’. Saw held out some bait to the governor. He tried to diminish Aung San, saying that he was sincere ‘but not a strong character’, controlled first by the communist Than Tun, and later by other major figures in the AFPFL. Even more to Rance’s taste, Saw positioned a future independent Burma – under his rule – within the British Commonwealth. He readily accepted that free Burma would need British help. The United Nations was ineffective, he said, while Russia was ideologically purblind and the USwas distant. Without British support the Burmese might wake up to find the Chinese in Mandalay one day, in Sagaing the next and Rangoon the day after: ‘A hundred million Chinese in Yunnan could not be ignored.’46 Saw tried to persuade Rance that the British overestimated the AFPFL. He said that they were powerful in Rangoon and parts of the delta but elsewhere people were thoroughly sick of them. Later, writing a memorandum for Rance, Saw took the gloves off and railed against Aung San. He had been tutored by the Japanese and hated democracy. Throughout Burma it was the ‘brute force and terrorism’ of the AFPFL which prevailed. Most of its members were unemployed. Hence they resorted to extorting goods and money from people by using Aung San’s alternative title Bogyoke, ‘a title which inspired the awe and abject submission of a great bulk of the unthinking masses’.47 The British, he concluded, had failed in their responsibilities since their return. They should have relied on the old ministers such as Saw himself. Instead, the ‘Burmese felt that the British Government have wittingly or unwittingly handed over the administration of the country to a band of traitorous fascists whose avowed policy is to gain power and ascendancy at all costs’.48
Though he sympathized with the spirit of such ranting, Rance was shrewd enough to see through U Saw. The AFPFL organization was much stronger than Saw’s and Saw was unlikely to be able to exploit any splits within it. Saw’s party, which was associated with pre-war sleaze, would certainly do poorly in an election. Rance quickly decided to back Aung San, recommend concessions to London and try to get the AFPFL to enter the Burmese cabinet. The alternative was a popular revolt, further damage to an already shattered economy and possibly even mass starvation.49 In the meantime, one event pregnant with the future took place. Returning from a visit to his party’s newspaper office, Saw was ambushed by gunmen dressed as AFPFL volunteers about half a mile from Government House on Prome Road. He narrowly escaped assassination and was badly cut around the eyes with broken glass. Next day in the bazaar, most fingers pointed to members of Aung San’s party who must have known about Saw’s parleys with the governor. But this was a gangsterish and prurient sort of Burma. Another strand of gossip indicted U Saw’s Burmese wife, ‘who was anxious to get rid of him on account of his so-called German wife from Uganda’.50 Saw kept his counsel, bided his time and began to stockpile weapons. The consequences for Burma’s future were to be no less critical than the telegrams flying between Rance and Attlee’s government.
Rance’s decision to work with Aung San to counter the gathering social crisis was easier said than done. The young nationalist leader had been languishing ill in bed for some time while the general strike gathered pace: ‘Here I am helpless in bed, and I must remain quiet, God alone knows how long.’51 The bruiser U Saw took this as weakness, but it seems as likely that Aung San was ‘doing a Gandhi’, using his apparent weakness to set the agenda. At any