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By Root 4543 0

the plantocracy and conservative officials who were unreconciled to unions in principle, and flabbergasted that an imperial functionary should be actively encouraging their formation. Brazier, it seems, was acutely sensitive about the paternalism implicit in this role; in enforcing the distinction between ‘political’ and ‘economic’ trade unionism, he was not unmindful of the history of struggle of the British labour movement, in which politics had needed at times to come to the fore in the interests of labour. He seems to have been aware that his encouragement of the moderates did not always strengthen the movement, or promote the best men. The MCP argued that establishing unions on a British model in a Malayan context often meant establishing them on communal lines. Brazier was determined to help local people ‘avoid the suffering and restrictions and the bloody battles that trade unionism had had to face in other countries’. But ultimately his presence in Malaya could also legitimate repression. His deputy in Singapore, S. P. Garrett, openly chafed at the constraints of his position, and was more outspoken in his attacks on employers and closer to the General Labour Unions. And although Brazier had some notable success with moderate unions, it was the General Labour Unions that continued to win their battles in 1946 .113

The January general strike had brought home to both the government and the Malayan Communist Party the power of organized labour. In the later part of 1946, the Party continued to move away from its semi-open structure, and its cadres were ordered to embed themselves in the workforce. Only main party offices in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore now remained, and the ‘Singapore Town Committee’ became a somewhat nebulous organization.114 The Party’s leading public spokesman on the peninsula was now the editor of the Min Sheng Pau, Liew Yit Fan. The mood was less openly confrontational; for the Party it was a time of consolidation. But the strike weapon, as the Singapore General Labour Union argued when reviewing the events of the BMA period, was the most effective way of extending its organization. But in the wake of the ‘February 15th incident’ in 1946 when the British intervened to prevent marches commemorating the fall of Singapore, it resolved that it should act more cautiously and systematically: ‘Only the most pressing demands of the movement should be raised, without making a comprehensive claim, in order to concentrate on one’s target, secure the sympathy of the public, and make victory easy to attain.’115 In the year after April 1946, 713,000 man days were lost through industrial action in Malaya and 1,173,000 in Singapore, where imperial strategic assets such as the Harbour Board and the Naval Base experienced prolonged strikes. Across the peninsula, in rubber and other industries, unions began to band together. Tremendous pressure was placed on the workers who stayed outside them: they complained of packing of meetings, of accusations of malpractice aimed at them, of intimidation and worse. Yet, at the same time, in a climate in which the conditions were dire and employers weak, the big unions won major successes: disputes, whatever the range of demands that they voiced, remained ‘rice strikes’. The dilemma for the government, as it reintroduced registration of labour unions in July 1946, was how long it would allow these unions to continue to operate legally. To anticipate this, the General Labour Unions organized themselves into federations which had a stronger trade basis. But the government in Malaya was gaining ground: the ‘laws of 1941’ which the left so derided, were being reintroduced. On the industry frontier, the state was being rebuilt; land and forest offices were reopening and employers were impatient to re-establish their authority.

Meanwhile there was a constant round of rallies and parades: for the first time in early March, International Women’s Day was celebrated in Singapore and Penang, followed in quick succession by the anniversary of the 1919 peace conference, the birthday of Karl