I first visited Singapore in April 1955, on my way by ship from England to take up a job at Sydney University. It was a welcome break in a four and a half week journey spent mainly gazing at an unbroken horizon. The Singapore of those days was exotic, dirty and provincial. It was a city of pungent smells, street hawkers and life-threatening (i.e., deep, unguarded and very polluted) monsoon drains. The architecture was a mixture of late-Victorian imperial and run-down Chinese shophouses-no skyscrapers, nothing much over about six stories. For the passing visitor, shopping meant either a couple of staid department stores catering to the needs of colonial ladies, or the raucous bargaining free-for-all of Change Alley, where one could buy the transistor radios and ingenious mechanical toys produced in the modest early days of the Japanese "miracle."
To the untutored eye, which mine certainly was, Singapore still seemed firmly under British control. There was a British governor, with all the trappings that involved, and the streets were full of British servicemen. In a park in downtown Singapore, a serious game of cricket was in progress, with white-clad (and white-skinned) players standing out sharply against the well manicured green.
What I didn't know at the time, and what I have only just found out, was that my visit coincided exactly with a vital turning point in the history of Singapore. For on April 2, 1955, the first real popular election in the colony's history took place, one that produced the first elected Singaporean majority in the Legislative Council and the first appointment of a Singaporean chief minister. For a few years longer, ultimate power-over law and order, defense, foreign policy-would remain in British hands, but with the election an irreversible train had been set in motion.
