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By Root 4604 0

was ‘strictly negative’ against the colonial constitution, and which did not support the nationality proposals of the people’s alternative. The combined leadership never met; it merely declared protests on the same day. But the participation of Chinese business made the hartal a monumental and well-financed undertaking: 400,000 copies of the manifesto and 300,000 posters were distributed, and 300 propaganda groups toured the country to prepare the ground.132 In the words of one local writer: ‘In coffee shop and government office, in rubber estate lines and bus depots, by Governors over the radio and by leader writers in the press, people talked of local issues such as self-government, citizenship and communalism in a manner that made the six-year gap between 1941 and 1947 seem sixty. People talked of Malaya as home. It bewildered many.’133

By all accounts, Singapore and Malaya came to a complete standstill on 20 October. ‘Kuala Lumpur that day’, Ahmad Boestamam wrote, ‘was deserted, like a land defeated by the invincible garuda [the eagle of apocalyptic legend]. Only PUTERA–AMCJA were to be seen going round the town to verify that the hartal was really a complete success.’134 The scene was repeated throughout the country: the port of Singapore was throttled, and only the remoter villages and estates were less affected, although Malay support was strong in the fishing kampongs of the east coast. The organizers declared the hartal to be 90 per cent effective: ‘It was the first political strike in Malaya to be observed by all sections of the people.’135 The British refused to acknowledge the extent of the opposition it demonstrated. The Malayan Security Service reduced participation to statistics: 5 per cent joined for ‘political motives’; 30 per cent through ‘Chinese defensive nationalism’; 50 per cent were ‘sheep’, following in fear or ignorance; 5 per cent ‘disgruntled’ and a further 10 per cent ‘incidentals’. Yet it struggled to find evidence of intimidation anywhere.136

But then came the backlash. Tan Cheng Lock was now under direct attack from the British and from his own community. Many Chinese blamed him for conceding Malay majority rule in the People’s Constitution, and baulked at the implications of the Melayu nationality. The Straits Times whipped up the communist bogey. From this point, Tan Cheng Lock absented himself from most PUTERA–AMCJA meetings. It was said that the outbreak of labour trouble on his own rubber estates contributed to this.137 The alliance with Chinese Chambers of Commerce was not to be repeated. By the end of 1947 the fastest growing political party in Malaya was the party of business, the Kuomintang. In the first days of peace it had lain low, but now it was looking to assert its position. When MacDonald convened his summit meeting on the MCP in June, those present acknowledged that, along with UMNO on the peninsula, the Kuomintang was the only effective counter-balance to the MCP. Only the Kuomintang’s own reputation for violence stood in the way of open co-operation with it. MacDonald still cherished hopes that ‘a centre or Centre-Left party’ might emerge with which the British could treat.138 ‘Our ultimate and supreme aim’, he announced in a broadcast on the eve of the hartal, ‘is a government of the peoples of Malaya, for the peoples of Malaya and by the peoples of Malaya’.139 But the British had now reconciled themselves to alliance with ethnic-based parties in order to hold on to their diminished Asian empire.

The British repudiated the movement that most closely resembled the multiracial ‘Malayan’ nationalism they had originally sought to create. But the exuberant populism of the left was anathema to them. They could not see beyond the participation of the Malayan Communist Party and its proxies in PUTERA–AMCJA, and with this the People’s Constitution would be for ever tainted. It was also to be dismissed as a superficial, paper alliance.140 But this is not how it was seen by those involved at the time. It was seen as a great experiment, of learning by doing, in which the leaders