Another Misleading Account by Thum Ping Tjin

After being thoroughly exposed for his one-sided and erroneous account of Operation Coldstore (1963), Thum and his close supporter Loh - others seem to have withdrawn support after realizing the lack of academic rigour in Thum's works - have now moved into the 1950s to look for safer areas to push their revisionist line.  In their latest article, Thum and Loh again take the position that there was no communist threat, no communist subversion and no communist united front.  In other words, the British, Labour Front Chief Ministers David Marshall and Lim Yew Hock (1955-1959), Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, Cabinet ministers, hundreds of government officials and diplomats and the many local and foreign scholars who have written extensively on the communist threat since the 1950s have all got it wrong? There was no communist threat? 

Unfortunately for Thum and Loh, the CPM leaders themselves have let the cat out of the bag.  CPM Secretary General Chin Peng himself had stated in his memoirs (2003) that the CPM controlled the left-wing trade union movement in the 1950s.  Fong Chong Pik aka the Plen, who was in charge of CPM operations in Singapore, had revealed in his memoirs (2008) about the conspiracies hatched by the CPM secret working committee in Jakarta, and his dealings with top trade union and political leaders and activists in Singapore in the 1950s and 1960s.  CPM members in Hong Kong and China have revealed in their 2013 book that they were behind the unrest in the 1950s, including the Hock Lee Bus riots.  No wonder Thum and Loh ignore these more recent works in their article as they completely demolish their claims that there was no communist threat or conspiracies in Singapore. 

Both writers blame the management and the police for the Hock Lee Bus riots that broke out in 1955 and exonerated the communists and their open front leader Lim Chin Siong and his close confidante Fong Swee Suan.  As in Thum's flawed account of Operation Coldstore, this version of the Hock Lee Bus riots is equally defective, with significant omissions and simplistic one-sided narrative.  

They conveniently fail to mention that Chief Minister David Marshall had denounced the strikers and rioters in his radio broadcast on the day of the riots (12 May 1955), saying that the pattern of developments today closely conforms to the Communist technique in seeking to foment industrial unrest on any excuse and to obstruct peaceful solutions - a strong indictment of the communists and their united front leaders by Marshall which was published in The Straits Times the next day and which Thum and Loh conveniently ignore.

In the Legislative Assembly debate that ensued, Marshall demanded that Lim Chin Siong declare publicly whether he spoke in the Chamber as a "communist and a fellow sympathiser of the Communists". Chief Secretary William Goode also accused both Lim Chin Siong and Fong Swee Suan of instigating the use of violence. The CPM itself, through its propaganda organ, Freedom News, celebrated the victorious ending of the Hock Lee incident and declared that "[an] economic struggle has been precipitated into becoming a political struggle".

It did not fail to draw a link between the "expansion of the workers" movement and the expansion of the national liberation war? it was waging.  There are many other quotes that can be cited to thoroughly demolish the claims in their joint article.  There is no question about the communist threat or communist involvement in the strike and riots that followed.

The only reason Thum and Loh persist in their misrepresentation of historical facts is probably because this approach fits well with their political agenda to undermine public confidence and trust in the present Government which had continued the anti-communist policy of the Labour Front Government (1955-1959) after it took over power in 1959.

If history is to move us forward, it has to be depoliticised from the meandering antics of revisionist historians, such as Thum and Loh, who seek to weave their current political aspirations into their historical analysis. Similarly, pro-establishment historians have to resist against pressure that call for no change, for the study of Singapore's history to remain at status quo. There hasn't been enough in-depth study of Singapore's history from 1950s to 1970s and what I see currently isn't doing us any good.  

PJ Thum repeats old claims as historical truth remains elusive

Thum Pingtjin responded to Burhan Gafoor's letter with a FB posting that he is “happy that the government is engaging with my work”; he claims that his article on Coldstore “which was peer-reviewed and has extensive citations, does address the issues and evidence that Burhan raises”.

Thum's article does nothing of the sort. It fails to include several important revelations by Chin Peng, Fong Chong Pik aka The Plan, Eu Chooi Yip and other CPM/ABL leaders and activists that demolishes his arguments. Eu's revelations that the Barisan was formed on the instruction of The Plen completely undermines his whole thesis that the Barisan was just an ordinary left-wing political party instead of being the principal communist united front organisation (CUF) in Singapore that it was. His allegation that the CUF was an “invention” by the authorities has now been proven to be false.

Click here to read earlier article on what Chin Peng and The Plen say in their own memoirs. 

In another article which also touched on Coldstore and merger, Thum declares that his work quoted extensively the Chinese press – did he know that The Plen has written in his book that many of the articles in the Chinese press originated from him?

Many of these revelations have been in the public domain for the last 15 years. His entire unsubstantiated case against the government over Coldstore collapses now that it has been proven that the Barisan was indeed a political front of the CPM and that the communists were actively driving Barisan's disruptive activities and that the communists conspiracy was real and not imagined as alleged. Will Thum now revise his article?

Thum's response to Burhan was a repetition of his old line that his article was “peer reviewed” as though that in itself authenticates his work as a truthful account and addresses all concerns about inaccuracies and misrepresentations. Since he relies heavily on peer reviews, and give the many misleading arguments in his article, readers are entitled to know who are these peers who reviewed his work and how were they chosen? What are their areas of specialisation and research interests? How familiar are they with Communism in Southeast Asia, in particular Malaya and Singapore? How familiar are they with Singapore history? Have they conducted research on Singapore history and politics?

Further, would Thum address all the evidence and arguments highlighted in Burhan's reply in his forthcoming works on Coldstore or is it going to be an expanded version of his flawed articles? In particular, would he include all the revelations by Chin Peng, The Plen, Eu Chooi Yip and former CPM/ABL members that contradict his thesis? Would he also include the revelations and exhaustive research conducted by authors like C C Chin, Cheah Boon Kheng, Lee Ting Hui, Drysdale and Bloodworth and other British colonial records that argue against his own arguments?

Like Thum, I too hope that the state would declassify more documents. But when academics do not use materials that are publicly available and shoddily analyse those that they have access to, then I wonder when that day will come.  

History for history's sake?

Revisionists and their supporters are clearly distressed by the wide publicity on the communist threat in the early 1960s, as a result of the re-launching of the Battle for Merger. They do not seem to want the public to be reminded about the global Cold War or communist subversion in Singapore and insurrections in Southeast Asia.

To counter the publicity and mainstream narrative about the communist threat, Hong Lysa cites the dated work of Tim Harper and echoes the claim that there "is no evidence" of instructions from communist China or the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) to the communists in Singapore. She cites British Deputy Commissioner Philip Moore as saying in a dispatch that "while we accept that Lim Chin Siong is a communist, there is no evidence he is receiving orders from the CPM, Peking or Moscow."

But Moore's claim has been established to be inaccurate. It is roundly contradicted by revelations from the Secretary General of the CPM himself, Chin Peng. In his book published in 2003, Chin Peng revealed that in a meeting in July 1961 in Beijing, Deng Xiao Ping told him that he wanted the CPM to continue its armed struggle; Chin Peng agreed and accepted Deng's offer of financial support. (If anyone is interested, Chin Peng actually made a dangerous overland route from south Thailand to communist-controlled Hanoi, before boarding a plane to Peking.) Further, at the meeting in Beijing in 1961, Chin Peng instructed Eu Chooi Yip, the chief CPM strategist running operations in Singapore from Jakarta, to "sabotage" merger and Malaysia.

Picture from Chin Peng: My side of history

Picture from Chin Peng: My side of history

Fong Chong Pik aka the Plen has confirmed the instruction Chin Peng gave to Eu Chooi Yip. The Plen disclosed in his book published in 2008 and also to historian CC Chin that in a meeting in Beijing in 1957, the CPM had directed Eu to set up a working committee in Jakarta to strengthen and consolidate communist united front activities in Singapore. He was assigned this task, with further instructions to rebuild the united front with the PAP. One of his priorities was to meet Lee Kuan Yew in order to coordinate the policies and activities between PAP and the left-wing movement. On the merger issue, the Plen even revealed that he had used the local Chinese press to disseminate CPM's lines to influence the Chinese-speaking community.

There above should suffice to debunk Hong Lysa's and Moore's claims that there "is no evidence" of instructions from communist China or the CPM in Beijing to the communists in charge of running operations in Singapore. (As for Harper's dated article which Hong Lysa lauded, it was published in 2001 well before Chin Peng's and Fong's memoirs.)

The question arises as to why the revisionists have chosen to ignore the remarkable admissions of the communist leaders. Why do they instead grasp at a dated official document (Moore's) with an assessment that has been proven to be patently wrong at the time it was written? Moore himself later effectively conceded in another dispatch to the Colonial Office dated 7 December 1962 that he was mistaken! He wrote that the "communists (in Barisan Sosialis) seem to be sufficiently entrenched to control policy and action." The revisionists failed to mention this reversal of opinion and re-assessment of the communist threat in Singapore.

The explanation for the revisionists' selective use of documents and sources boils down to the fact that they are less keen in establishing historical truths and more interested in being the vanguard of fashionable counter-theories. Together with like-minded persons, they sought to show that there was no justification for Operation Coldstore, and to use this as a pretext to join the bandwagon of opposition politics. This is not history but politics.