Singapore
The day I feared
it was my last assignment
What trade unions were like in British Singapore in 1846-47. By Sit Yin Fong.
Aug-Sept 1996

I might not be here writing this story if Providence had not thought it was not yet time for me to go on that Last Assignment!

For an Alfred Hitchcock type of suspense thriller I choose the time when I was nearly beaten to pulp by a frenzied mob of Indian wharf labourers.

Those were the disturbing days of 1946 and 1947, when the powerful, militant Left-wing 50,000-strong Singapore Federation of Trade Unions was calling strikes at the rate of one a day, sometimes two and even three. Violence was in the air.

Somehow, an Indian wharf trade unionist was shot dead by a Pathan policeman in a scuffle at one of the gates of the Singapore Harbour Board.

One could almost hear the ominous growl of anger in the Singapore Harbour Board Labour Union, led by a rabble-rousing Indian tough named Veerasanan, who was also the Secretary of the SFTU.

Almost immediately wharf labourers downed tools and flocked in their hundreds to a hasty meeting called by Veerasanan.

On an improvised platform, Veerasanan was inciting the crowd through a loudspeaker and whipping up hatred against the police.

I had been standing on the fringe of the meeting for a little while, when I suddenly sensed that labourers nearest to us were murmuring something, and at the same time turning scowling, menacing faces in our direction.

As the murmurs grew, like soft rumbling thunder, more and more faces turned towards us, until about half of the crowd were looking at us instead of the speaking platform.

I caught the words "detective" and "police". We apparently had been mistaken for plainclothes detectives spying on the meeting. What caused this belief was undoubtedly our outward appearance and our "suspicious" behaviour.

Dressed in white, I stood out amongst a sea of dark faces. We were not taking notes, and the shorthand books in our trouser pockets bulged like revolvers.

If some blighter among the labourers, out of sheer mischief, had only shouted "adi" (beat, in Tamil) there is no doubt we would have been torn limb from limb for we were two obvious targets for whatever vengeance the angry crowd had in mind.

A maddened mob after blood, seldom stops to ponder the rights or wrongs of a lynching. Someone raises his hand to strike, the next fellow follows suit, and the next and the next in blind chain reaction.

I stole a quick glance behind my back, and realised we were trapped men inside a fenced enclosure which was the compound of the S.H.B. Labourers' Quarters in Tanjong Pagar.

I could have sprinted for the gate but even this was barred by labourers as tough-looking as the rest.

Both of us, I recall, realised almost at the same instant, the highly explosive situation we were in.

After a few urgent words between ourselves we took out our note books, intending it be a demonstration to the crowd that we were not policemen but reporters.

Unfortunately I could not speak Tamil to let the meaning sink in and at that moment the crowd was already moving towards us.

I then took the only desperate course left to save our lives. I boldly elbowed our way cutting a swathe right through the throng towards the platform.

Veerasanan knew us and we wanted him to explain through the loud-speaker that we were not detectives - just newsmen going about our legitimate business.

But as I approached within a few feet of the platform, Veerasanan (since killed as a bandit in the Federation) deliberately stepped off the platform, and made for a nearby building used as a union headquarters.

I sprinted after him, and almost bodily shoved him back to the platform. Veerasanan explained to the mob. A thousand faces stared at us once more, but there was no longer murmur in them. Phew! What a narrow shave!

For the record, this same crowd later beat up several innocent people, including a British naval despatch rider, who unwittingly got into the way of the funeral procession of the shot labourer.

Such are the occupational hazards of the newspaper reporter, and when the readers study the next morning's plain, straightforward and sober presentation of the news they little realise the toil that goes into it.

Reporters seldom find themselves in the headlines, except when tragedy overtakes them.

Then, as has happened in many Western countries, it may fall to the lot of a newsman to report the death of a colleague in the line of duty.

How, perhaps, he criss-crossed the path of hoodlums and was bumped off for his trouble or how he never returned from the war he was sent to cover.

In less spectacular Malaya, reporters run into less trouble. The ethics are the same however.

A reporter worth his salt does not think of the dangers. The editor's request to get a "good story" is a sacred order. He must risk everything to get it."

(Extracted from "I stomped the hot-beat" by Sit Yin Fong, a veteran Singapore journalist, now in his 70s. This was reproduced in Scribes: Aug-Sep 96, newsletter of Singapore Press Club)