Letters to the Editor
Living Among Asians George Edinger
A New Westminster? 'Wesitnonasteriensis'
So You Want To Be An Audience Rennitt Gardiner The Church of England and Divorce
Rev. W. 1. S. Weir
'Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat'
Dr. I. McD. G. Stewart
Mental Health 1. Housden The Great Divide in the Schools W. J. Sparrow York Minster John C. Voysey Nylons George Clarke John Gordon Graham Greene LIVING AMONG ASIANS SIR,—May I say something in extenuation of the charge that Mr. David Morris makes against me when he ponders whether my plea for assimilation of European and Asian in Malaya, made two years ago in the Spectator, may not have come fifty years too late?
This may be true. But possibly the plea I made in 1957 has become too late in 1959 because it went unheeded, and by no means unrefuted, when I put it forward and when there might well have been time for reconciliation and co-partnership in Common- wealth. It is true that my tour was then completed but it was not the Asians' fault or mine that it was not renewed.
In 1956 when I left Malaya the voice of those who feel as we do was silenced by the expatriate Establish- ment, not only in the Labour movement but in public life as well. Had those who felt as we feel, and there were many, not been subject to every form of social and financial pressure, not from Asians, our school of thought might well have carried weight in the political life of Malaya and Singapore and there would then have been a place for men like Mr. David Morris.
Besides, when I decided, perhaps presumptuously at Kuala Trengannu in summer, 1956, that I might be more effectual by putting forth our view in London than in taking either of two posts offered to me by Asians. the Hong Kong massacre of October 10 in that year, the Suez catastrophe, and the happenings in Iraq which have made things so much harder, were inconceivable to me, much as I had suffered from that European ostentation and inflexibility that Mr. Morris writes of. Of course those British Mr. Morris speaks of should be encouraged to settle in Malaya and foster goodwill between East and West. But Brjtish policy along with a crude local nationa- lism that it engenders and encourages are both allied against us. So far as I know, no effort was made by our Colonial, Foreign or Commonwealth Offices to safeguard the future of the European eager to make a home in South-East Asia, and any effort that he may have made to make himself acceptable was Pounced upon both by the British Government and commerce on the spot.
With the Conservative hierarchy snorting at the loss of vanished privilege, the Labour Party squealing for an outright abdication, and the Liberals shadowy and indeterminate, far-sighted British in the East were just abandoned, like those British families is
Egypt exposed by the senseless bombing of Suez to the natural indignation of the local populace.
If the complacent official pomposities who waddled around Kuala Lumpur when Merdeka came or the commercial ones who sat around the Tanglin club in , Singapore fuming at David Marshall's moderate government had given some thought to the future, my writings would not now seem fifty years belated. Knowing them as I did I might have foreseen the tragic outcome. I plead to estimating both their foresight and -their moral courage much too highly.
The only consolation I can offer Mr. Morris is that he will not be the only victim of that gang and that the ostentatious stuffiness of senior expatriates will bring its nemesis, and soon not only on the Island of Singapore but also in Whitehall and Mincing Lane.— Yours faithfully,
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