by Prof Datuk Khoo Kay Kim and Ranjit Singh Malhl
K. Baradan’s article on The men who gave all for justice in The Star (National Day Supplement) of August 31, 1993, is extremely interesting.
It is the first time that the public has been informed of the role the British administration played in the shaping of the trade union movement in Malaya. The man directly responsible for grooming trade unionists and founding trade unions was John Brazier. Baradan pointed out that as early as 1949, Sir Henry Gurney (the High Commissioner assassinated near Fraser’s Hill in 1951), wanted the trade union movement to be controlled by Indians. This partly answers a question which has long been posed in this country, namely “Why is it that the Indians appear to dominate the trade unions ?”
The answer usually given was that the Indians, being more talkative, took more easily to trade unionism. This is almost similar to Harry Miller’s answer to the question : “Why was the communist movement in this country dominated initially by the Hainanese ? “ Miller’s answer was that they had an inferiority complex. This is no more that coffee shop talk.
The Indians were not the pioneers of the trade union movement in this country. The Chinese were. Trade union activities began, clandestinely, after World War I.
