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Tan Cheng Lock: A Malayan Nationalist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

K. G. Tregonning
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Extract

Tan Cheng Lock was born in Malacca in 1883. His father Tan Keong Ann, his illustrious grandfather Tan Choon Bock, and his great grandfather were also born there, while his great great grandfather Tan Hay Kwan, who had migrated from Fukien as a youth to Malacca in the latter part of the eighteenth century (circa 1765), had died there in 1801. The Tans by now have been part of Malacca for over two hundred years.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , March 1979 , pp. 25 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1979

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References

1 A prisoner in Pudu Prison, Kuala Lumpur, writing for help on 14 Jan. 1955, said, “I can still vividly remember seeing you for the first time, a tall young man in white cottons, with your queue (pigtail), kindly directing me to the examination hall in Raffles Institution in 1907 where as a Malacca student I presented myself for the Cambridge.”

2 Interestingly enough, it was Tan Cheng Lock who seconded the motion put forward at the S.S. Leg. Co. meeting of Oct. 1932 by Mr. Wee Swee Teow which incorporated this Kongsi and gave it legal status, by Ordinance No. 5 of 1933. (A kongsi is a group of Chinese, who come together for business or other purposes.)

3 Malaya Tribune, 2 Mar. 1920.

4 Proceedings, Straits Settlement Legislative Council (hereafter PSSLC) 29 Oct. 1923.

5 PSSLC, 14 Apr. 1924.

6 Sir G. Maxwell to Tan Cheng Lock, 11 June 1952.

7 PSSLC, 14 Apr, 1924.

8 PSSLC, 3 Nov. 1924.

9 PSSLC, 1 Nov. 1926.

10 PSSLC, 13 Oct. 1930.

11 Sir Richard Winstedt to the author, 2 Jan. 1963.

12 PSSLC, 31 July 1933.

13 PSSLC, 12 Oct. 1931.

14 Lock, Tan Cheng, Malayan Problems (Singapore, 1947), p. 80.Google Scholar

15 Visit to Malaya, 1932 – A Report of Sir Samuel Wilson (London, 1933), Cmd. 4276 p 12

16 PSSLC 28 Oct. 1929.

17 PSSLC, 12 July 1926.

18 PSSLC, 28 Oct. 1929.

19 PSSLC, 29 Oct. 1923.

20 PSSLC. 29 Oct. 1923.

21 PSSLC, 14 Oct. 1918.

22 Straits Chinese Magazine, 1, no. 1 (1897): 27.

23 PSSLC, 29 Oct. 1923.

24 Straits Times, 9 June 1923. Much of this same colonial atmosphere was in evidence when I joined the new University of Malaya in 1953. Some of its senior staff were pre-war veterans of Raffles College, and they found an emerging nation an impossible idea.

25 PSSLC, 3 Nov. 1920.

26 PSSLC, 12 Feb. 1934.

27 Colonial Office to Governor, S.S. 25 Apr. 1907.

28 PSSLC, 29 Oct. 1923.

29 PSSLC, 3 Nov. 1924.

30 PSSLC, 4 May 1925. Sold for Silver by Janet Lim (London, 1959) is the autobiography of one such girl. Sne became matron of St. Andrew's Hospital in Singapore in 1954.

31 PSSLC, 4 Apr. 1932.

32 PSSLC, 28 May 1934.

33 PSSLC, 3 Nov. 1924.

34 PSSLC, 25 Aug. 1930.

35 PSSLC, 25 Aug. 1930.

36 “Memorandum to Sir Samuel Wilson, December 1932”, in Tan Cheng Lock, Malayan Problems, pp. 74–75.

37 In February 1940 he was appointed Trustee of the Tan Choon Bock Estate. His grandfather owned very considerable landed property in Singapore, including long stretches of Beach Road. Garden Street, Rochore Road, and Raffles Place, as well as rubber estates in Malacca and elsewhere. In 1945 it was valued at $1 million.

38 Tan Cheng Lock to Mrs. B.H. Oon, 22 Oct. 1948, and to Wu Lien Teh, 7 Oct. 1948.

39 Tan Cheng Lock to Sultan of Johore, 11 Mar. 1950.

40 Yong Shook Lin to Tan Cheng Lock, 13 Aug. 1946. “The subject of the formation of a Malayan Chinese Association was uppermost in our minds in 1941, but unfortunately could not be carried through.”

41 Tan Cheng Lock, Malayan Problems, p. 46.

42 Among his files was preserved a voluminous collection of Indian newspapers of the 1943–45 period. The speeches of Nehru, Jinnah, Gandhi, etc., were underlined in red pencil.

43 Overseas Chinese Association (Bangalore, 1944). Circular dated 20 July 1944 by Tan Siew Sin.

44 In the 46-page booklet, Overseas Chinese Associations, India (Bangalore, 1944).

45 First published in 1937 by Macmillan; reissued in 1964 by the University of Malaya Press.

46 Tan Cheng Lock to Rupert Emerson, 8 Aug. and 9 Oct. 1945.

47 Roff, W.R., The Origins of Malay Nationalism (Kuala Lumpur, 1967)Google Scholar describes the pre-war Malay political stirring in detail.

48 Lee Kong Chian to Tan Cheng Lock, 9 May 1947. (Dato Lee later became Chancellor of the University of Singapore, and I deem it one of the great privileges of my life to have received the friendship of this most unassuming man.)

49 Wu Lien Teh to Tan, 5 Dec. 1946.

50 It changed its name from P.M. (Pan-Malayan) to A.M. (All-Malaya.)

51 G. de Cruz to Tan, 20 Dec. 1947.

52 Straits Times, 23 Sept. 1947.

53 Minutes, 3rd Delegates Conference of PUTERA - A.C.M.J.A., 3 Nov. 1947, p. 3.

54 Straits Times, 28 Oct. 1947.

55 Straits Times, 21 Nov. 1947.

56 The People's Constitution For Malaya. Drafted by Pusat Tenaga Ra'ayat and All-Malaya Council of Joint Action (Kuala Lumpur, 1947). This 57-page booklet contains an interesting historical section. For comments on this, and on the M.D.U., see Cruz's, Gerald de letter in Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 1, no. 1 (1970): 123–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the detailed Industrial Conflict in Malaya: Prelude to the Communist Revolt of 1948 by Stenson, M.R. (London: Oxford University Press, 1970)Google Scholar.

57 Tan Cheng Lock to G. de Cruz, 7 Oct. 1947.

58 Minutes, Annual Conference, PUTERA – A.M.C.J.A., 24–25 April 1948. For a detailed study of this period see Wah, Yeo Kim, “A Study of Three Early Political Parties in Singapore, 1945–1955”, Journal of Southeast Asian History 10, no. 1 (1969): 115–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The M.D.U. account is particularly revealing.

59 Gerald de Cruz wrote later that year from overseas: “At present I am working as an insurance agent in the Sun Life Assurance Co. I have been offered a job as the editor of an English-language weekly in Karachi. It is a long time since we have seen each other.” (28 Sept. 1948). He worked for many years in England, for some of it in a Home for Mentally Retarded Children. He broke completely with the Communist Party and turned from its ideology. During the later years I was in Singapore, he was working at the Singapore Government's Political Study Centre teaching the Civil Service how to guard against Communist techniques of infiltration.

60 Notes of Discussions of the Communities Liaison Committee, held at Council Chamber Committee Room, Kuala Lumpur, 18 and 19 Feb. 1949.

61 Tan to Lee Kong Chian, 10 May 1947.

62 T.W. Ong from Singapore to Tan Cheng Lock, 18 Nov. 1948, informing him that at the forth-coming S.C.B.A. Meeting, he would move that the Straits Settlements be restored. He hoped that Tan would support it. This move was publicly opposed by Tan Cheng Lock. See Straits Times, 6 Dec. 1948.

63 Gunn Lay Teik to Tan, 16 Nov. 1948.

64 Tan to Mrs. B.H. Oon, 22 Oct. 1948.

65 Tan to Wu Lien Teh, 3 Dec. 1948.

66 Speech delivered by Col. H.S. Lee on 21 June 1954 (Mimeographed), pp. 1–2.

67 John Eber to Tan Cheng Lock, 31 Dec. 1946.

68 T.Y. Ma to Tan Cheng Lock, 15 Feb. 1949.

69 Leong Yew Koh to Federal Government (copy to Tan), 15 Nov. 1950. “10,000 Chinese troops from the Nationalist 26 Army now interned in Annam are offered to help fight the M.C.P. I know the 26 Army well. It was formed by expanding the 93 Division which was fighting on the Siamese border during the early part of the Burma Campaign. I was then serving as a Liaison Officer between General Hutton, British C.I.C. and 93 Division. The commander, General Pang Tso Hsi, sent word to me that they had volunteered for Korea.”

70 Speech by Tan Cheng Lock on 27 Feb. 1949 at the Inaugural Meeting of the Proposed Malayan Chinese Association at Kuala Lumpur, pp. 2–3.

71 Singapore Standard. 19 Jan. 1951.

72 Federal Secretary to Tan Cheng Lock, 22 Jan. 1951.

73 Minutes, M.C.A. Working Committee, 16 Sept. 1951, which noted an acceptance of USIS aid, and formed a committee headed by Tan Siew Sin to distribute it.

74 Pahang Speech by Tan Cheng Lock, Sept. 1951.

75 Minutes, 2nd Meeting, Emergency Chinese Advisory Committee, 11 June 1949.

76 A Note in the handwriting of the late Sir Henry Gurney.

77 Loke Wan Tho to Tan, 1 June 1949.

78 Tan to Loke, 6 June 1949.

79 Singapore Standard, 17 Oct. 1950.

80 Tan Siew Sin to M.C.A., Kuala Lumpur, 9 Feb. 1952.

81 Tan to Leong Yew Koh, 24 June 1950.

82 M.C.A. Annual General Meeting, Oct. 1951.

83 Memorandum by Tan Cheng Lock to all M.C.A. Branches, 28 Oct. 1951.

84 Memorandum submitted to The Rt. Hon. Oliver Lyttelton by a Malayan Chinese Association Delegation headed by Dato Tan Cheng Lock, D.P.M.J., C.B.E., J.P., at Kings House, Kuala Lumpur, on 2 Dec. 1951 (Mimeographed), p. 6.

85 Mohammed Sopiee to Tan, 26 Dec. 1951.

86 Tan Cheng Lock memorandum to M.C.A., 9 Apr. 1951.

87 Memorandum for T.C.L. on discussions with Onn 28 June 1951.

88 Speech at formation of I.M.P., 16 Sept. 1951.

89 Tan to Sir George Maxwell, 10 Oct. 1951.

90 H.S. Lee to Tan Cheng Lock, 18 Feb. 1952.

91 High Commissioner to Sir Cheng Lock Tan, 25 Feb. 1952.

92 “In future”, he wrote from Malacca to the Secretary at the M.C.A. Head Office in Kuala Lumpur, “please open all letters addressed to the President and attend to them, informing me of whatever action you take.” 28 Apr. 1953.

93 Dr. Victor Purcell and Francis Carnell (who at that time was my research supervisor at Oxford) had been brought out by Tan to advise the M.C.A. They succeeded in antagonizing UMNO, Sir Gerald Templer, and the M.C.A., a substantial achievement. Their Report To The M.C.A. (20 Sept. 1952) however has much good advice, authentic even today, on matters of education and involvement in public affairs.

94 For some comment on this, see Ratnam, K.J., Communalism and the Political Process in Malaya (Kuala Lumpur, 1965), p. 161.Google Scholar

95 Tan Cheng Lock, Speech at 2nd Meeting National Convention, 11 Oct. 1953.

96 Straits Times, 28 Dec. 1953.

97 Singapore Standard, 24 Aug. 1953.

98 Tan to Emily Hahn, 8 May 1954.

99 Tengku to Tan, 20 May 1954.

100 Tengku to Ismail, 5 May 1954.

101 M.C.A. Submission to the Singapore Constitutional Commission, 13 June 1954.

102 Mohammed Sopiee to Tan Cheng Lock, 30 July 1954.

103 T. H. Tan to Tan Cheng Lock, Aug. 1954.

104 Tengku to M.C.A., 13 June 1954. In a letter to his old friend Wu Lien Teh of 10 Nov. 1954, Tan Cheng Lock wrote: “I was so disappointed that men like Lim Boon Keng and Sir Ong Siang Song did not take politics seriously. In the last resort everything depends upon politics and whatever men do no nation will ever be anything but what the nature of its Government makes it.”

Nearly all of his countrymen however turned away from the truth. Lee Kong Chian, Singapore's multi-millionaire, told me repeatedly that he felt no Chinese should participate in politics; he should vote but no Chinese should be a candidate. Many accepted this unique view of self-abstention.

105 Minutes, 1st Meeting Alliance Council, 10 Apr. 1955.