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These disputes set the pattern for three years of deepening industrial conflict. With communist support, the General Labour Unions of the pre-war period began to revive. Where before they had been underground movements, they now set up offices in resistance organization buildings. They were not confined to single trades; they amalgamated workers in artisan or service industries who were employed in small, dispersed clusters and who saw the need to form larger combines. The Singapore General Labour Union, inaugurated at the 25 October Happy World rally, claimed a membership of 100,000 workers from over seventy individual bodies, most of whom earned a mere 50¢to $1 a day. The General Labour Unions brought together smaller unions of hawkers and trishaw riders to fight British attempts to clean up the streets, and unions of shop assistants and waiters whose livelihood was threatened by government food control measures. They represented the invisible city and gained support through its defence of the informal economy. As shortages worsened in December, the strikes engulfed hospital attendants, taxi and bus drivers, clerks, mechanics, telephone workers, postmen and government clerks. The unions were formidable combinations of workers, and stoppages in one sector could easily escalate to become general strikes.

The British claimed that the MCP was orchestrating these campaigns by intimidation; certainly few labourers dared oppose them. But much of the labour organization was spontaneous. Subhas Chandra Bose’s great achievement in Malaya was that, in S. K. Chettur’s words, ‘he infused dignity and self-respect’ into Indian labour. His loss had caused widespread demoralization but, by the end of 1945, independent Indian unions were being formed and the Azad Hind movement was reassembling on the rubber estates. Desperate to encourage moderate trade unionism, the Labour government created an entirely novel government position. At the end of December a ‘trade union adviser’ arrived in Singapore. ‘Battling Jack’ Brazier was a cockney railwayman who had driven the Bournemouth Belle. A product of Ruskin College Oxford, he was a passionate socialist and anti-colonialist, but also a committed anti-communist, probably from religious conviction, and he adopted the view that unions should restrict themselves solely to economic matters, and play no political role.91 Purcell demurred. ‘There is’, he wrote, ‘no need to sniff about political agitators to explain a refusal to work when the cost of living at the lowest pre-occupation standards is higher than wages.’

The distinction between rice and freedom was incomprehensible to local unionists. There seemed to be no other forum in which political issues could be debated. At Purcell’s suggestion the MCP was allowed representation on the official Advisory Councils. But if they hoped to use this to make speeches, they were disappointed; the agenda was strictly apolitical and the membership dominated by local worthies. Purcell witnessed the frustration at first hand in Kuala Lumpur. The day before Purcell’s visit, on 12 October 1945, the leader of the People’s Assembly, Soong Kwong, was arrested by RAF police on a charge of extortion. There is little doubt as to Soong Kwong’s guilt. His Chinese victim was a known Japanese informant who was imprisoned in a basement for a week by Soong Kwong and his followers and released only after he agreed to produce a ‘fine’ of $300,000. But there was a large rally of Soong Kwong’s outraged supporters on the Kuala Lumpur Padang on 15 October. The issue at stake was the status of the MPAJA. The extortion had occurred before the surrender when Soong Kwong was a guerrilla leader and a combatant under the command of SEAC. The BMA had earlier decided to overlook the violent episodes of the interregnum, but it seems that the RAF police had acted on their own initiative. On the afternoon of the rally, Soong Kwong was released on bail. He confronted Purcell and other British officers: