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Marshall's chief rival is another lawyer, a Chinese. Three generations of Lee Kuan-yew's rich merchant family have been born in Singapore. Like Marshall, Lee, who is 33, studied law at London's Middle Temple. His People's Action Party is far enough to the left to be the chosen instrument of the Communists, and the British cannot quite decide whether he is a prisoner of the Communists or the simple nationalist and follower of Nehru that he professes: to be. In Asian ears his merdeka has a sharper ring.
Arsenic Pudding. Last month in London a delegation of Singaporeans, including both Marshall and Lee, presented British Colonial Secretary Lennox-Boyd (see box) with a demand for full control of Singapore's internal affairs. When the British showed no disposition to turn over Singapore's police to the local government, Marshall slapped down a draft bill for Singapore's full independence, with the last word on internal security resting with the Singaporeans. Said he: "I am resigning immediately unless I get my proposals accepted."
The British attitude is that Singapore's local police forces are inextricably bound up with the island's defense system, and that unless the British have the key job (chairmanship) in Singapore's Security Council, their power to act in a defense emergency would be hopelessly impaired. Lennox-Boyd pledged that Britain would exercise this power only in the gravest national emergency.
Last week, as the talks broke down completely, Marshall declared grimly: "This is a day of mourning for a great opportunity lost: an opportunity to make friends with the people of Asia." The British proposals had been "Christmas pudding with arsenic sauce." At a press conference his eloquence got the better of his sense: "If we have elections on my return, I and my party will boycott them—or we will put up 25 of the most advanced lepers in the island as our candidates. Singapore will have to wait until the fascism of the Colonial Office and the Communism of Peking have expended themselves fighting."
But Marshall's emotional belligerency did not prevent him (after taking the Colonial Secretary and wife to the opera) from making a last-minute suggestion that the decisions of the present Security Council should be cleared through the British Parliament. The suggestion drew a hoot of derision from Lee: "Incredible political ineptitude . . . Never has so much humbug been enacted in so short a time by such a leadership . . ."
The British were inclined to agree about Marshall's talent for humbug and his unreliability as a negotiator, but their distaste for the new Asian demagogy did nothing to speed a solution to the problem of unstable Singapore. Lennox-Boyd was left to utter that inevitable Colonial Secretary's remark: "We, for our part, have done all we can . . ."