Dec 24, 2009
'Untold story' of struggle
<!-- by line -->By Cai Haoxiang
<!-- end by line -->
<!-- end left side bar --><!-- story content : start -->
A GROUP of researchers have finished the manuscript for a book about the University of Malaya Socialist Club (USC), a political debating society and student activist group in the 1950s and 1960s.
Dr Loh Kah Seng, visiting research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (Iseas) and the lead writer for the Iseas project, said that the group wants to tell the 'untold story' of the socialist club and its role in the struggle for independence from the British.
Particularly, he wanted to highlight the role played by English-educated student activists in the University of Malaya, which later became the University of Singapore and then the National University of Singapore.
Formed in 1953 by mainly students from the medical and arts faculties, the USC was a debating forum for students who were against British colonialism. Eight members of the club who founded the journal, Fajar, were famously acquitted of sedition charges brought against them by the British government in 1954. The lawyer who represented them was Queen's Counsel D N Pritt, who was in turn assisted by Mr Lee Kuan Yew who was then a practising lawyer.
In the 1960s, the club clashed often with the People's Action Party government and was eventually deregistered in 1971.
For their book, Dr Loh and his team relied on face-to-face, email and archival interviews with some 20 former members of the club.
Read the full story in Friday's edition of The Straits Times.
'Untold story' of struggle
<!-- by line -->By Cai Haoxiang
<!-- end by line -->
<!-- end left side bar --><!-- story content : start -->
A GROUP of researchers have finished the manuscript for a book about the University of Malaya Socialist Club (USC), a political debating society and student activist group in the 1950s and 1960s.
Dr Loh Kah Seng, visiting research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (Iseas) and the lead writer for the Iseas project, said that the group wants to tell the 'untold story' of the socialist club and its role in the struggle for independence from the British.
Particularly, he wanted to highlight the role played by English-educated student activists in the University of Malaya, which later became the University of Singapore and then the National University of Singapore.
Formed in 1953 by mainly students from the medical and arts faculties, the USC was a debating forum for students who were against British colonialism. Eight members of the club who founded the journal, Fajar, were famously acquitted of sedition charges brought against them by the British government in 1954. The lawyer who represented them was Queen's Counsel D N Pritt, who was in turn assisted by Mr Lee Kuan Yew who was then a practising lawyer.
In the 1960s, the club clashed often with the People's Action Party government and was eventually deregistered in 1971.
For their book, Dr Loh and his team relied on face-to-face, email and archival interviews with some 20 former members of the club.
Read the full story in Friday's edition of The Straits Times.
