May 13 generation shares its stories
By Leong Weng Kam, Senior Writer, Straits Times, 19 June
2011
Former Singapore political detainee Tan Jing Quee, who was battling
cancer, was promoting his latest book up to the last days of his
life.
He had been across the Causeway last month, in Kuala Lumpur and
Penang, to launch The May 13 Generation, an essay collection on the
Chinese middle school student movement in Singapore in the 1950s,
which he co-edited.
Mr Tan, 72, returned home ill on May 25, and was admitted to
Singapore General Hospital a week later. He died just five days
ago.
The retired lawyer and former Barisan Sosialis politician, detained
under the Internal Security Act for alleged pro-communist
activities soon after his failed bid at the 1963 General Election,
was cremated at Mandai Crematorium yesterday.
Released in 1966, he went to London to study law and returned in
1970 to practise till he retired about 10 years ago.
His two co-editors – Professor Emeritus Tan Kok Chiang, 74, a
former Chinese middle school student leader; and Dr Hong Lysa, 58,
a historian – were also at the book launches in Malaysia.
Recalling their trip, Prof Tan who now lives in Ontario, Canada,
said: ‘I could see Jing Quee feeling the pressure of long distance
travel. But his spirits were very high, meeting friends and
comrades whom he had not seen for a while.’
Mr Tan’s wife, Rosemary, 65, said her husband of 40 years had
wanted to go on the journey very much, to meet his many old friends
in Malaysia, including former politician Lim Kean Chye, as well as
to launch the book which took him two years to do.
In an interview he gave to The Straits Times and Lianhe Zaobao
following the book’s earlier launch in Singapore, also last month,
he said the idea for the collection came when he was translating
the Chinese novel Ju Lang (Mighty Wave), by leftist writer Lim Kim
Chuan, into English two years ago.
Helping him with the translation was Dr Hong and another former
political detainee and Barisan MP, Madam Loh Miao Gong, 76, who was
arrested after the 1963 polls for alleged pro-communist
activities.
Ju Lang, set in Singapore in the 1950s, was first published in
Chinese in 2004 to mark the 50th anniversary of the mass
anti-colonial movement started after Chinese middle school students
had clashed with riot policemen.
On May 13, 1954, students clashed with riot policemen
while on their way to hand a petition for exemption from
conscription to the Governor. -- ST FILE PHOTOS
The students were on their way to hand their petition for exemption
from conscription to the then Singapore Governor at the former
Government House, now the Istana, on May 13, 1954.
The novel’s English translation was launched as a companion volume
to The May 13 Generation, which also has a Chinese edition.
‘Halfway through our translation, we felt a novel may not appeal to
younger readers and it may not be able to highlight the
significance of the historical event. So we started to invite
scholars and those involved in the May 13 incident to write essays
and their recollections,’ Mr Tan recalled during the interview last
month before his death.
He had been actively researching, writing and
editing books on Singapore’s leftist history for the past 10
years.
His last effort was The May 13 Generation, comprising 15 essays
which include those on the arts in the 1950s. The preface,
introduction and first four chapters were written by Mr Tan, Dr
Hong and researcher Khe Su Lin.
In their essays, they gave the social and political background,
examined the historical framework and explained the context of the
period in which the Chinese middle school student movement was
inspired and later grew.
The students formed a united, open and legal movement, the
Singapore Chinese Middle School Students’ Union (SCMSSU), a year
after the May 13 incident but it was banned barely a year later by
the colonial government for engaging in pro-communist
activities.
Former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, a young Cambridge-trained
lawyer then, was SCMSSU’s legal counsel.
It was through the students that Mr Lee got to know young
Chinese-educated leftist trade unionists like Fong Swee Suan and
rural dwellers’ association leaders such as Chan Chiaw Thor.
Together with other like-minded people, including several of Mr
Lee’s English-educated friends, they secured a mass base for a
political party and formed the People’s Action Party (PAP) in
November 1954.
It was student support that helped the PAP win
the municipal and legislative elections in the
1950s, leading
to its landslide election victory in 1959 when it became the ruling
party.
Many scholars have said that PAP and the
Singapore story would have turned out quite differently if not for
the May 13 incident.
Former leftists and alternative history writers
often said the role and significance of the student movement were
insufficiently told in the dominant, official
narrative.
‘This volume, The May 13 Generation, marks the
breaking of that silence,’ said Prof Tan, who was SCMSSU’s English
secretary when he was a Chung Cheng High student in the
1950s.
Prof Tan, a graduate of the former Nanyang
University in 1960 who later left for his postgraduate studies
overseas, is among those who have broken their silence. He wrote
about his involvement in the student movement for the first time
after nearly 60 years in the chapter, My Story, in the
book.
Also sharing her story for the first time is Madam Loh, who was
among the arrested students when the colonial government cracked
down on them on Oct 10, 1956. Her chapter is entitled The Two Faces
Of Men In White.
Other contributors include retired lawyer Lim Chin Joo and former
Barisan MP Lim Huan Boon.
‘The telling of the story of the Chinese middle
school students of the 1950s now begins,’ said Prof
Tan.
The May 13 Generation and the English translation of Mighty Wave
are available at Select Books for $34.25 and $28.46 each
respectively. – ST
The May 13 Generation: The Chinese Middle Schools
Movement and Singapore Politics in the 1950s
Tan Jing Quee, Tan Kok Chiang, and Hong Lysa (eds.)
Petaling Jaya, Malaysia: Strategic Information and Research
Development Centre, 2011
ISBN: 9789675832161
The May 13 generation was the first belonging to the
immigrant communities from China to grapple with the issues of
being Malayan/Singaporean, breaking irrevocably with the received
wisdoms of their elders, and in a political climate where their
explorations were deemed to be subversive.
This book
comprises the recollections penned by the participants of the era
of the 1950s, where their generation was in the forefront of the
anti-colonial movement, and the work of academic researchers who
have examined the historical framework and context of the period,
as well as how it has been made to fit into the country's
mainstream history.
The researchers have also examined the students' cultural
expressions, whether it is in art, drama, dance or literature and
found them to be socially engaged, and grappling with the question
of who they were as a people. The cultural explorations of that
period have been forgotten or repudiated. It is revealing
just how this amnesia and silence has become so set.
It is also impossible to imagine the demands that the age had put
on this generation of youths.
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