Quest to Transform Southeast Asia } 217
what had happened in China would also come to pass in Malaya, that
communism was the wave of the future and those who opposed them
would be buried by history. They had then a hardcore following of some
20 to 30 percent of the electorate that we could not win over for many
years, despite the economic benefits we brought them over the next
decade.^53
Singapore’s communists formed the left wing of the PAP during the
struggles against British authority from 1954 to 1959. The PAP was, in ef-
fect, an anti-British united front. Conflict within the PAP intensified once
Singapore gained complete internal autonomy in mid-1959. In 1959–1960, as
British counterinsurgency operations ground down CPM forces in Malaya,
that party, as noted earlier, shifted its resources to Singapore.^54 Singapore
offered an attractive field of battle, according to CPM Secretary General Chin
Peng, because “The island had never become a fully fledged Emergency bat-
tlefield.”^55 A group of about thirty guerrilla fighters were disguised as students
and infiltrated into Singapore in cooperation with Singaporean communists.
Regarding the strength of CPM assets in Singapore circa 1959, Chin Peng dis-
claims exact knowledge, but says “I can certainly say that most of the island’s
workers sympathized with the left-wing trade unions and members of the
unions well appreciated [that] they [the unions] were under the control of the
CPM.”^56
In mid-1961, Singaporean Communist Party leader Eu Chooi Yip, whose
superior was in fact the CPM’s Chin Peng, traveled to Beijing for talks with
CPM leaders over the increasingly anticommunist orientation of Lee Kwan
Yew and the question of Singapore’s merger with the new state of Malaysia
(an event that occurred in September 1963). Eu Chooi Yip and Chin Peng
concluded that Lee’s attempt to take Singapore into Malaysia was an attempt
to draw on stronger anticommunist forces in Malaya to repress the commu-
nist forces in Singapore. Chin Peng and Eu decided to counter Lee’s attempt
to link up with Malaysia’s anticommunist forces by stressing the anti-Chi-
nese policies of the Malaya government—a tack that would appeal to ethnic
Chinese sentiments.^57 Mounting tension within the PAP culminated in open
rupture when the procommunist wing of that organization withdrew and
formed a new organization, Barisan Sosialis. Lee Kuan Yew recounts:
The skillful and tough methods of the unyielding communists ... were
unforgettable lessons in political infighting. Street fighting with them
was like unarmed combat with no holds barred in a contest where
winner took all. We learned not to give hostages to our adversaries or
they would have destroyed us. Even after we had reduced the commu-
nist strength in the united-front organizations, their lurking presence
in the underground had to be taken into our political calculations.
At any time they could resort to violence or choose to rebuild their