COMMONWEALTH PARLIAMENTARY DELEGATIONS (Forthcoming Visits)

Mr Lee Kuan Yew: Mr Speaker, Sir, the subject I wish to raise on the adjournment is the forthcoming visit of Commonwealth Parliamentary delegations at the invitation of the Hon. the Chief Minister.

We all know that an all-Party delegation is coming shortly from the United Kingdom and that one of the objectives of this delegation is, in the words of our Chief Minister:

"They would meet all sections of the people, political Parties, unions and representatives of all communities to assess the people's desire for independence."

Mr Speaker, Sir, the British Government spends a great deal of money on intelligence sources like Phoenix Park and such agencies. I am certain that the Rt. Hon. Mr Alan Lennox-Boyd is not altogether ignorant of the powerful, if sometimes inarticulate, desire of the people to be rid of colonial domination. However, a delegation is shortly to arrive in Singapore and I hope that we shall all take advantage of the opportunity to bring home to the six Members of Parliament the urgency of the problem in Singapore. It may be true that both the Labour Party leader of the delegation and the Conservative Party leader of the delegation - the Rt. Hon. Mr Herbert Morrison, P.C., M.P., and the Rt. Hon. Mr Geoffrey Lloyd, P.C., M.P. - are persons who have perhaps known better political times in their careers, but I am sure they are not altogether without influence in their Parties and we may be able, through them, to influence the policy of their Parties towards Singapore and the Federation of Malaya.

But what indeed alarmed me was a news report in the Straits Times of the 28th of February. On the front page of that newspaper it says:

"AUSSIES TO ASSESS MERDEKA PLAN

Australia and New Zealand are expected to join in the test to find out if Singapore is ready for Merdeka.

Like Britain, these countries are planning to send all-Party parliamentary delegations to the Colony to assess Singapore's fitness for independence.

But it is unlikely that their delegations will arrive here before the Colony's April self-government talks take place in London.

This is because of the short notice given to the governments of the two countries.

The likely acceptance of Australia and New Zealand to participate in the Merdeka test was announced in Singapore last night by their External Affairs Ministers.

Mr R. G. Casey (Australia) and Mr T. L. MacDonald (New Zealand) are on their way to attend the SEATO conference at Karachi."

Sir, there has been no denial of this report from the Office of the Commissioner for Australia or New Zealand, and I have to take it that the newspaper has accurately reported the External Affairs Ministers of the two territories. I can only say, Sir, that there is no better way than this for the Australians and the New Zealanders not to make friends and influence people in South-East Asia. I do not understand how a small nation of ten million people in an enormous continent can have the impertinence and the impudence to come along in an all-Party delegation for a few weeks to assess and to examine my fitness to be my own master in my own home. We all understand that the Australians are anxious about the position in Malaya, because they are anxious about their own defence position in the Pacific. They have joined in a military alliance called the South-East Asia Treaty Organisation in which they have persuaded certain Asian countries to join them. We also know that they are extremely anxious to get Malaya and Singapore to join in this South-East Asia Treaty Organisation. In fact, they wanted to send troops to the Colony of Singapore, until the Hon. the Chief Minister indicated that it would not be wise. But, however imperative their own need for a defence outpost several thousand miles away from their own homeland, it is unforgivable arrogance on their part, when they are not even the colonial power in Malaya, to say that they are coming, like the British, to assess Singapore's fitness for independence -

Mr Speaker: Order, order. Moment of interruption. The motion for the adjournment has lapsed. I need another motion for the adjournment, please.

The Chief Minister: Mr Speaker, Sir, one of the most mischievous speeches ever -

Mr Speaker: Can I have a motion for the adjournment first, please?

The Chief Minister: Would you permit, Sir?

Mr Speaker: You will have the opportunity.

The Chief Minister: If it please you, Sir, I move,

That the Assembly do now adjourn.

Mr Chew Swee Kee: I second it.

Mr Speaker: The Question is, "That the Assembly do now adjourn." The Member for Tanjong Pagar has the Floor.

Mr Lee Kuan Yew: Mr Speaker, Sir, I am afraid that the Hon. the Chief Minister was somewhat confused as to the likely developments of this debate. I am sure that he will agree with me that if some outsider - and an Australian is an outsider in the Malayan context - comes along and says, "I am going to see whether you are fit to govern yourselves independently of Britain", all that I can say to that Australian is, "Hands off Asia! If you do not want to antagonise six million Asians in Malaya, better Press relations and better and more sincere professions of friendship and co-operation should be made manifest."

I understand, Mr Speaker, Sir, that the Hon. the Chief Minister invited certain other Commonwealth countries, notably India, Pakistan and Ceylon. I have not heard the replies from either the External Affairs Ministers of these territories or the Commissioners that these Commonwealth countries have in Malaya. It would appear that they have no intention of coming to assess our fitness for independence. They, being Asians, would know the feeling, the temper and the attitude of a subject people. On behalf of the Asians in Singapore, I tell the Australians and the New Zealanders that if they think they are coming here to share in the colonial tutelage of this country, then they are making one of their greatest political blunders in the history of the Pacific. We all know that the British want gently to ease themselves out. Australian troops have appeared. The last time they appeared here, they left in a great hurry, including their Major-General.

Hon. Members: Shame!

Mr Lee Kuan Yew: Yes, indeed. But let me tell them this, that if they want to make friends - and we want to make friends with everybody - then the way to do it is not to come and assess our fitness for independence. "Come, visit us, be our friends, send us reconstituted milk plants if you will. Send us the free powdered milk to work the reconstituted milk plants if you like." But if they come to test the fitness of our people for independence, they will not find the friendly response which as good neighbours they would wish.

Mr Speaker, Sir, according to this report, they are not likely to come before April because of the short notice given to them. I do not know what useful purpose would be served if they came after April to judge our fitness for independence. By then, certain matters would have been settled between the all-Party delegation from Singapore and the British Government in the Colonial Office in London. If they must send a delegation, let it be a delegation to foster trade between Australia and Malaya, to foster more friendliness and more contacts between Australians and Malayans, but let it have nothing to do with our fight for independence, because they are not our masters and we will have none of them.

The Chief Minister: Sir, in our struggle to achieve freedom from colonialism and to attain independence, we now and then get sharply pulled up with a shock by conduct which, to us, seems incompatible with basic human decency. I know that the people of Singapore are a peaceable and a decent people. I often wonder why some of their representatives are what they are. I know that the Member for Tanjong Pagar is one of the ablest debaters, with a tremendous appreciation of his own oratory; and I would willingly move that for 29 days out of 30 in every month he should have the whole of this hall to himself, to speak to his own delectation, if we could have avoided this most unfortunate, most untimely, most improper and most unfair attack on neighbours who are seeking genuinely to be nothing more than our friends and our supporters. At a time when we in Singapore need every one who is a friend to stand by us, that we should in this fashion slap them in the face because of a report which does not even report in the first person, is, Sir, a gratuitous insult. Sir, there might even have been an excuse for this extraordinary tirade, but I said to this Assembly this morning, in the clearest possible words, that the only term of the invitation to these Commonwealth countries with whom we aspire to be in partnership was, as Singapore is seeking the status of an independent member of the British Commonwealth, that the Government considered it appropriate to invite all Dominion governments to send parliamentary delegations so that they may have the opportunity to acquaint themselves fully of issues which may affect them arising out of our desire for independence within the Commonwealth.

Sir, the invitation went from this Government, and it is because we seek to be their equal and it is because, in seeking to be their equal, if we should attain that status, it would affect each and every Commonwealth member, that we thought it only proper to give them the opportunity, should they so desire, to come here and judge of the issues which may affect their own status in accepting an additional independent member of the Commonwealth. No statement that I know of has ever been made by Mr Casey or by Mr MacDonald, but the Straits Times has reported that they are here. The Straits Times itself has misunderstood. The purpose of this visit, as I say, might have been the occasion for a question, but after it had been made clear to this House that the purpose was no more than that these Dominions should have their rightful opportunity to judge of the issues which might affect them in taking in an independent member into the Commonwealth, such an attack, Sir, is utterly unreasonable and one that is most unfortunate in its timing when we need our friends; most unfortunate in indicating that there is in this territory a group whose anti-white hate goes beyond the bounds of logic and may spill into completely unreasonable conduct, an example of which this Assembly has seen here this afternoon. That such an unnecessary, such a gratuitous insult and attack should have been made by the leader of an allegedly responsible Party that pretends and hopes one day to rule Singapore, that terms of such violence should have been used, because a newspaper has seen fit to speak of their coming here, in this fashion is most improper, Sir, and it is regrettable. And I would like to say, Sir, as a representative of a section of the people of this country, that I find in the highest degree repulsive the action, the motives and the language which have prompted the Member for Tanjong Pagar.

Question, "That the Assembly do now adjourn," put, and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this Assembly do now adjourn.

Adjourned accordingly at eleven minutes past Four o'clock p.m.