Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Map of Malaya (1952–54)
- Map of Malaya (1956): Locations of Communist Terrorists by State
- Prologue
- 1 The Background: The Appointment of General Sir Gerald Templer as High Commissioner and Director of Operations, Malaya (1952–54)
- 2 The Early Days: General Templer in Kuala Lumpur – Political Background
- 3 The Templer Plan: The Implementation of General Templer's Political Directive
- 4 Victor Purcell and Francis Carnell, Honorary MCA Political Advisers, August–September 1952
- 5 General Sir Gerald Templer, the MCA, and the Kinta Valley Home Guard (1952–54)
- 6 The Case of Lee Meng – A Cause Célèbre: The System of Justice in Malaya (1952)
- 7 The Road to Self-Government: ‘The Pistols Are Out’
- 8 Conclusion: General Templer's Departure
- Appendix A Directive to General Sir Gerald Templer by the British Government
- Appendix B General Sir Gerald Templer: A Short Bibliographical Note
- Bibliography
- Index
- About the Author
- Plate Section
3 - The Templer Plan: The Implementation of General Templer's Political Directive
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 May 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Map of Malaya (1952–54)
- Map of Malaya (1956): Locations of Communist Terrorists by State
- Prologue
- 1 The Background: The Appointment of General Sir Gerald Templer as High Commissioner and Director of Operations, Malaya (1952–54)
- 2 The Early Days: General Templer in Kuala Lumpur – Political Background
- 3 The Templer Plan: The Implementation of General Templer's Political Directive
- 4 Victor Purcell and Francis Carnell, Honorary MCA Political Advisers, August–September 1952
- 5 General Sir Gerald Templer, the MCA, and the Kinta Valley Home Guard (1952–54)
- 6 The Case of Lee Meng – A Cause Célèbre: The System of Justice in Malaya (1952)
- 7 The Road to Self-Government: ‘The Pistols Are Out’
- 8 Conclusion: General Templer's Departure
- Appendix A Directive to General Sir Gerald Templer by the British Government
- Appendix B General Sir Gerald Templer: A Short Bibliographical Note
- Bibliography
- Index
- About the Author
- Plate Section
Summary
On 19 March 1952, some six weeks after his arrival in Malaya, General Templer, as President of the Federal Legislative Council, addressed the opening session of the Council to outline the manner in which he intended to implement the political Directive he had been given by the British Government. It dealt with an impressively wide range of social, economic, and political matters which brought out clearly his views on the immense number of complex problems with which he had to grapple.
Templer sent a draft of his speech to Lyttelton in London, which he said was “entirely in accord with Her Majesty's Government's policy”, and in his telegram of 12 March to Lyttelton, which he copied to Malcolm MacDonald, British Commissioner General for South East Asia in Singapore, he said that it had been “gone through yesterday by the Executive Council”.
In his telegram to Lyttelton, Templer said that during the past few weeks he had held a number of discussions with Dato' Onn, Dato E.E.C. Thuraisingham, a Ceylonese Tamil, who was the Member for Education, and other local politicians about responsible local government at grass roots level, which Templer referred to as the “parish pump level”. On 7 March, the Singapore Standard in a critical article written by S. Rajaratnam [then a newspaper journalist who later joined the People's Action Party (PAP) and became Singapore's first Minister for Culture and subsequently Singapore's longest serving Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister], said it was Templer's intention to limit Malaya's advance to self-government, to use Templer's own phrase, to “parish pump” level. This mention of the term “parish pump” which was to incur Templer's wrath, attracted a lot of attention, and Templer informed Lyttelton that he intended to issue a statement about it in his forthcoming address to be delivered on 19 March to the Legislative Council along the following lines:
I now turn to the question of political progress. Ten days or so I was criticised in a newspaper for saying that I would confine political progress to the Parish pump level. Who gave that information to the newspaper in question, I have no idea, since I have been careful not to make any statement whatsoever on this subject until I could make a considered one at the opening of this new session of the Federal Legislative Council.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Templer and the Road to Malayan IndependenceThe Man and His Time, pp. 47 - 92Publisher: ISEAS–Yusof Ishak InstitutePrint publication year: 2014