Sirmooree Summer 2015

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By the time we had redeployed most of the rioting had subsided. The
Battalion was mostly deployed on controlling the key junctions in
Singapore.
Our Tactical Headquarters was set up in the Police Station opposite Raffles
Hotel.
Things quietened down and three or four of us were sitting round in the
Police Station discussing the riots and what had caused them. We were
pretty ignorant of the political issues underlying them. Our job was to
restore order.
Most of the information we had came from articles in The Straits Times.
They made much of one of the key players who was called Lee Kwan Yew.
We had not heard of him, but we learnt that his parents ran a shop in
Singapore, and that he had won a scholarship to Cambridge where he had
obtained a distinguished degree at Fitzwilliam College. In our discussion
we had commented rather unfavourably about someone who had such
advantages; some of which had been due to the educational arrangements
supported by the Colonial administration. We wondered why he was now
causing such trouble.
After a while the Police Sergeant who was on duty behind the duty desk,
interjected to say “He is my younger brother”. This stopped us in our
tracks and we apologized for whatever we had said, even though we
couldn’t precisely remember quite what we had said.
The Police Sergeant then said that we need not apologize because it was all
true. His parents had worked hard to help their talented son and had high
hopes that he would return to the family business on his return from UK;
but instead he had chosen to become a fire-brand anti-colonial leader –
and so on.
JLC
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