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By Root 4610 0

by a formula in Tan’s words: ‘Only when the Chinese acknowledge the same sovereigns as the Malays do, can they demonstrate their wish to be the equals of the Malays.’145 On the basis of this, the principle of jus soli was conceded by Malay leaders. These resolutions were never enshrined in any binding agreement; they remained a private understanding among the elite. Yet the ‘communal bargain’ that emerged set the terms of political debate for many years to come. It encouraged the British to move forward with a draft development plan: the first of a series of five-year plans. They also set up a rural development agency for the Malays, which Onn would head. It did not eradicate, or even much reduce Malay poverty, but it gave a clear sign to the UMNO leaders of the rewards of patronage that were to be reaped. By the end of the year, the British were laying plans for a system of Asian shadow ministers, or ‘Members’. The lineaments of the post-colonial order were coming into relief.

THE GENERATION OF 1950

This fragile alliance of ethnic interests was not the ‘multiracial’ nationalism that British idealists had wanted to fashion. This now seemed much further away than it had in 1945, and Gurney, for one, was deeply pessimistic that a truly ‘Malayan’ consciousness would ever emerge: its future lay in education and in the young. Not least of the battles of the Emergency was the struggle for the imagination of the new generation; the men and women who were to lead Malaya to independence. But this was also the generation that had been exposed to the full force of Japanese cultural warfare, to the mystique of patriotic resistance and the general assault on the corrupt, colonialist mentalities. The British tended to portray radical nationalists as emotional adolescents and communists as vicious delinquents. They recoiled at the indiscipline and hostility ‘already noticeable in everyday street contact between Europeans and Chinese of the urchin variety or coolies who now often go out of their way to be rude without the least provocation.’146 The schools themselves – the large Chinese high schools of Singapore and Penang in particular – were dominated by over-age students who had missed out on formal education during the war. Their schooling had been on the streets, in petty trade and politics. Most were old beyond their years, and resented that the only path to advancement in a colonial world was the English language. They did not see their future as becoming clerks in British companies. Often with the connivance of teachers, classmates set up study cells and circulated clandestine political writings. They devoured the patriotic literature of the National Salvation movement, but also Russian authors – Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, Gorky – in cheap Chinese translations. It was, as one activist was later to recall, ‘an eclectic mix of romantic, naturalist and realist writers, who wrote of oppression, struggle and freedom. It was a heady literary diet, quite different from the staple fare most English-educated students were exposed or accustomed to.’147 In their spare time students remained part of the labour force, in which they were seen as something of an elite. Student broadsheets and hustings were schools for activism, and their leaders were the natural vanguard of a new wave of radical trade unionism. In 1955, when Singapore island was once again crippled by strikes, the governor struggled to explain to the colonial secretary why the British government was being held hostage by children.148

In no small way, the future of Britain’s interests in the region was staked on the creation of a new elite in its own image: anglophone, Anglophile in outlook and committed to the Commonwealth connection. As a step towards this, on 8 October 1949 the new University of Malaya was opened. It was built as a symbol of ‘national belonging’ and pride. Significantly, Singapore was chosen as its site, rather than the neighbouring Malay capital of Johore Bahru, as was originally suggested. Malcolm MacDonald was its first proud chancellor, and the economic