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nationality and citizenship – between indigenous and non-indigenous – that lay at the heart of British proposals. The people’s alternative enshrined jus soli, and offered citizenship to all those who had lived in Malaya for eight of the preceding ten years. In effect, this made the common experience of the Japanese occupation the defining transition. The final test of loyalty was ‘the country in which a man would prefer to lay his bones, and for which he is prepared to die to defend, is his home’. The People’s Constitution united Malaya and Singapore in a federation where the rulers were sovereign but constitutional monarchs governed by a legislature elected through universal suffrage and, in a further concession to the Malays, for the first nine years 55 per cent of the representatives were to be of Malay descent. The Malay language would be the national language, although other tongues might be used in the new national assembly. Malay religion and custom would remain in the hands of the Malays, and a Council of Races would monitor legislation for discrimination. But these provisions failed to impress the defenders of Malay primacy within the British administration. One observed that it left the Malays like ‘the unfortunate king, so well known in their history, whose “bottom was being stuck with thorns at the same time that his mouth was being fed with bananas”’.129

The People’s Constitution received only passing attention from the British. Gent told the Colonial Office that the AMCJA commanded no support and should be ignored. ‘An academic exercise’, was the conclusion in London; ‘a typical production of people unaccustomed to political power and responsibility, and either unaware of, or unwilling to face, the real difficulties of personal and racial animosities, and of economic rivalries, which make Malayan politics so confused and the problem of settling a stable constitution so intractable’.130 This was an astonishing statement. To its creators, the constitution came directly out of the experience of managing difference. ‘It was quite clear from the outset’, Philip Hoalim argued later, ‘that our partners accepted the leadership of the Malayan Democratic Union. We, for our part, put unity first on our list of priorities and fashioned a constitution which would embody this unity in practice.’131 But the British were not interested in alternatives. After the volte-face on the Malayan Union the previous year, they could not back down a second time, Gent least of all. MacDonald was less convinced, but the mounting confrontation with the unions in the course of 1947 and the vital need for Malay backing settled the matter. The final version of the federal constitution that was published in July was barely amended by the consultations. Faced with the intractable opposition of the British and UMNO, the united front leaders decided to take direct action.

PUTERA–AMCJA announced a hartal, or stoppage, for 20 October 1947, the date of the opening of the session of the British Parliament at which the future of Malaya would be discussed. The hartal was a new concept in Malaya, a staple of the civil disobedience of the Indian National Congress, which Tan Cheng Lock had admired during his sojourn there. It was unprecedented too in that, through Tan Cheng Lock’s mediation, the Chinese towkays joined the demonstrations, led by the Associated Chinese Chambers of Commerce and the clan associations. They resented chiefly the watered-down citizenship provisions of the British proposals and the exclusion of Singapore. They had lobbied London and the consultative committee to no effect. The Chinese leaders who had sat on it, H. S. Lee and Leong Yew Koh, helped broker an understanding with the PUTERA–AMCJA. The main support came from Singapore, from Lee Kong Chian, the son-in-law of the overseas Chinese leader Tan Kah Kee, who commanded the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce. It was an unnatural alliance. Many businessmen refused to co-operate with communists. The Malayan Democratic Union was reluctant to work with bodies whose protest