1955-10-08 — Page 5

IN SINGAPORE:

STRIKES AS USUAL

BY

Russell Spurr

Singapore.

TY hotel is strike-bound.

M'The staff have been

out

for

months.

more than two

The few remaining guests fumble over makeshift buffet meals in the waiter- Icas dining room, The highly-paid pianist who once tinkled out the mealtime musie now washes in kitchen. The ballroom chestra has been dismissed.

the

or-

The bar is closed. The paims in the outdoor beer garden are

drooping and neglected.

Up in my Bir-conditioned bedroom I weep the floor unl make my own bed. The cream- and-gilt dressing table ix festooned with my drying

underwear.

Hotel staff still picket The entence. Inspired by 71(K) Communists, they decorate with lurid cartoons of "blood- sucking capitalists" (the im- poverished nanagement) und

patrons of the bosses" (people. like me).

LOST MANHOURS

Indeed,

in Singapore

These

days. "everything strikes but

the matches"

hours

Something like a million man- have been lost through strikes in the past four months. From the Hok Lee In drivers whose strike sel 017 bloody rioting-to the men who

the city streets.

sweep

There is hardly a factory, store, hotel or restaurant that fins not been affected.

in

Some of the strikers' demands have been justified Sweatshop inbour js not unknown Singapore. Some of the demanda have not; it is significant that some of the best-pold and best- run firms have been the worst

hit

Union leaders trated

have concen- up

on whipping more

trouble than negotiating for better conditions. They have often refused to negotiate for

B

FAR PLUNG

FOREIGN OFFICE

SUPERASES.

[IUM BETS.

אור

THE CHINA MAIL, BATURDAY, OCTOBER

TEST

MACICAN

FY-SCARE

FORE

DON'T LOOK NOW, BUT

by GILES

"Look herd, Sanders-are you watching meʼor am I watching you? **

I JOINED THIS NAVY TO SEE THE WORLD

London Express Service

And what do I see?

SEE THE SEA

A

my wages of £20 10s. month, a third of what I was paid for a single photograph by an American magazine.

EFORE we sailed the ship's company was

My hours are 6.30 a.m. to mustered and

10 a.m., 12.30 p.m. to 3 p.m. filed past the cap- tain and the directors of the and 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. An 11-

We

weeks on end-then suddenly Line as our names were tick- hour day, seven days a week.

The hours go surprisingly worn the quickly, for one works tou

accepted terms that could have ed off the list. This is the been arranged page.

without a stop-only time I have

bluc trousers and white jacket, which we had to buy

MARSHALL PLAN

Employers meantime have maffered crippling. losses.

who have

hard for time to think.

from the ship's stores. Since No more apples

then I have just worn blue jeans and T-shirt.

corridors

I have always relished and afternoon. keep one morning after my first spell of fruit, but now I can hardly going. There is a deceitful work.

I've been joined in the Fruit Locker by a stoward who was he asked by an American 17.

ked Américar Unwisely tie said | "No." Whereupon the American promptly reported him to the captain for being un-American and the sloward must now be kept out of contact with all passengers.

Except for the brief hours on deck there is little feeling of being on board ship. It's more like a vast hotel. There is not much roll, but I dread the tiny there is for I have to throw all the refuse and empty crates out of en enormibus open door The from very slippery tiles. slightest heave'and I'd go over- board and be sucked, so I'm As for lood, the crew mess is told, straight into ive as good and plentiful could expect, Working in the pellers. galley, though, one doesn't have

"After the muster und an look an apple in the face. The breeze, but it's very hot. The It's getting hotter all the time The extremists are known to the police. So are the thugs

endless boat drill I was or amount of fruit that the sea is bluer than I have ever and we take salt tablets. These repeatedly

sernù beaten dered to

passengers. particularly the seen it before and it is won- seem to make a difference. again, and when this WUS Americans, consume is derful to look over the sido some of the finished I was allocated my staggering.

at the flying fish that jump job for the tripin the 1 carry

of the spray.

and intimidated non-strikers.

1

I have seen

dossiers. They make frightening reading.

ment's consent. ernment does not know

crates up

is

But action cannot be taken plate-house. Being in the

In the evenings there without the Singapore Gover-Gang" (U for Utilities oranges, pears, grapefruit

And the

quite Stewards) this was what I each day from the storeroom,

alice hundreds of melons, the Rec Room, with an old hud feared.

pour gallons of fruit-juices, plano and and Van Gogh and # restaurant, and, worst of all, prepare Renoir prints looking ill-at- when the swing doors open pineapples which 00%0

קטן

how to act.

David Marshall, the "bush-

has shirt" Premier,

hia own Marshall plan. He wants to set "Bank of Malaya" to make Singapore the financial clearing house of South-East Asia.

He wants to visit Indin, Pakistan, Burma and Ceylon to win his Government Asian re- cognition.

He wants to woo the nurly Singapore Chinese from #up- porting their Communist motherland.

Yes, David Marshall has his pian Perhaps he is the only good God-fearing, Common-

But

Often in

by DANIEL FARSON

• Photographer, writer, 28 years old, he tired of the big city, considered the moment had come for decision and change. So, as he told two weeks ago, ho joined the Merchant Navy... Here is his report an life below decks as a liner crosses the Atlantic into the heat of the West Indies.

case in such surroundings.

And there is the bar where one lines up for very weak beer,

There is

much music

and

singing and one night I caves- dropped on a jazz-session in one

1

G$ one

pro-

time to sit down for a meal. The great disappointment 00 The stewarda snatch pleces of far is that tomorrow we anchor outside Port of the food as they rush by inby the three miles saloon, or we make dashes out Spain, in Trinidad, but of our own lockers for a bit of crew will not be allowed ashore. "If We a fine day, we can see meat or vegetable.

the coast."

Melon, melon

All this is forbidden, but like many unsatisfactory systems it seems the best.

restaurant.

in a London

The passengers arc mere "orders,' So far I've not peen one. There is a woman who eats

dry-ginger with every meal, an Australian who "cite lice a horse" as an exasperated walier told me.

them "He starts with melon, omelette, then melon again, and grapefruit."

It means, of course, that we of the cabins, with the best eat first-rate food, for the first- buss I've ever heard made out class passengers eat meals which of a bow-and-arrow and tea would certainly cost them more chest, necompanied by guitars, than two pounds

and a banjo, Castanets,

two spoons. wealth - supporting Singapore for a moment, one hears the pernicious, acid juice that But I'm too tired to stay up politician who can carry it out.

I sleep within the fanatical ne noise of the kitchen, a burns in the cuts of my really late. Communist opposition, led by hysterious world of shouts hands-and these are rapid. moment of touching the pillow. Cambridge-educated lawyer Lee and crashes. I was now on ly becoming raw!

I have no regrets about join Kuan Yew, is out to win power.

ing the Merchant Navy. It's an At any price.

the other side of the swing doors.

The first dinner was an extraordinary existence. For one

the thing, He is a complete, ordeal. Suddenly there was a

loveller. There are no age dis- There are several jobs in line of frantic stewards tinctions, the ball-boys of 10 the plate-house, washing, clamouring for melon and and the old salts are equals ex- I pineapple which weren't cept in pay. Although the boys Comrale Lee's rabble-rousing stacking, drying, and

ony make £11 a month,

It speeches have already created carried the silver when. It ready. But I managed some strikes me as an exceptionally Buch bitterness against the was cleaned to, the various how.

good life for them. There'er in

that free-and-casy atmosphere white

man that "expatriate" parts of the galley where it

cannot help but do them good. Mony Britons who have was needed.

A Shower

GETTING OUT

has become a filthy word.

Epont their yes serving

the

The demand for fruit la even greater now that we're

colony are seeking other jobs. The job appalled me, not in the really hot weather,

Go are the younger business

men.

They say: "We are getting out while the going's good."

The Opposition's

because it was hard-it was and I'm thinking of spread-

run emetently on a convoyoring a rumour among the

i am surprised by our con-

belt system--but because of passengers that some of the diflons. The hot iron jungle that

chief wen- the monotony,

pon is the trade unions. More indirectly, the strikers, the do- monstrators, The

fruit is discnsed.

I'm unensy over reports of

unruly moin The first day. my predecessor, a mysteri

that seem to spring, from

is our home was a maze at first and it took me an endless tirao to find my cabin-now it scents to have shrunk.

The Roc Room, which look~/

nowhere to spreati demago and if I was bored on the first is figure, who couldn't bod airless and dirty, now recule

Injury

...” Now Comrade Lee is calling day, what would I feel like induced to take such a bad tuxurious. out Singapore's bigfoot bus in four months' time? At case of scabs from pine-

in acest montha,

The cabin is fine, except that

tito

company. The second to strike the end of the meal our apples on the last cruise, the air in the morning heav

Bards of demonialvatore Are hands hind ghrivelled from that his face had to be and stale. And one charsetar being recruited among the un- the hot water, like the skin covered with blue ointment, insists on turning of an

employed. The four crowds are of an embryo in a bottle.

I examino myself anxious to prevent him from catching a

verklotors list. thing at night

chill.

So the shock squnds of

and ludotria are being But I was lucky, I was ly each morning, but so far We are all delighted that bre secretly briefed.

Police riot squiada are donning chosen to all a vacancy in the only charge: is, the red has gone kick gth,

enough, the chill' ho, was tr their glowed helmets and the Fruit Locker and I have nices from the sun."

to prevent y thele aleel; | been doing that ever since,

by for

It's supposed to These couple of hours to prov

be a sun-bathing"bronzine" as "We went ell dey, and

means a lot to be able to fin cushy, Job, but I fall Learn it's called in the morning, we willen

perarmoured Vid Pillanationé

I am now looking forward to going whore in Pinama, but I have an uneasy fealing, that t really the joy of travelling never to arrive, then this is tho ship to be on."

...

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Pag

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