interviewing war veterans to create an archival record. Goh was very clear about
the mission of this Oral History Centre:
'The Oral History Department began life in the Ministry of defence in 1979.
Its first task was to collect information on the power struggle waged between
the leaders of the People's Action Party (PAP) and the underground Singapore
City Committee of the Malayan Communist Party. The struggle began inl954
when the PAP was captured by its United Front Open virtually from the day it
was founded and ended in 1963 when the stranglehold was finally broken.
Until 1961 the moves and counter-moves in this long cloak-and-dagger fight
went largely unreported in the media of the day, as neither of the protagonists
found any advantage in publicity.
One result was that Singaporeans knew little about the events which were to
shape their lives. The establishment of the Oral History Department aimed at
recording from participants their accounts of their personal involvement.'34
In undertaking this oral history recording programme, the National Archives
of Singapore was in effect creating an archival record of the circumstances of
Singapore's creation and development. What is the historiographical value and
status of these oral history interviews as archival documents of our past? The
tacit assumption that the Oral History Centre made of its work is that there
is no category difference in its oral history recording of, for example, what
transpired at a meeting by one of its participants and the formal minutes of that
meeting. Both are ultimately memories of what actually happened and open
to interrogation by others present at the meeting. In the absence of any formal
minutes of a meeting, for example, Lee Kuan Yew's critical meetings with the
Communist Party 'Plen' Fang Chuang Pi on Singapore's merger with Malaya,
then the memories of Lee and Fang (both of whom have published their versions
of the meetings) becomes the only archival record.35
These Oral History Centre recordings have since become a primary
documentation drawn upon by Dennis Bloodworth and John Drysdale for
their accounts of the 'cloak-and-dagger fight' between the PAP and the CPM.36
In undertaking these oral history recordings the National Archives of Singapore
has created a category of archival records that enabled a reconstruction of
Singapore's history. Have the Colonial records which are now opened, verified
this reconstruction of Singapore's journey to nationhood?
The 'Archival turn'
The mission of the archivist is the physical conservation of the folios of paper
entrusted to him, their optimal storage and how best to describe their contents
and arrangements for the benefit of users of these files. This Jenkinsonian
KWA CHONG GUAN AND HO CHI TIM ARCHIVES IN THE MAKING OF POST-COLONIAL SINGAPORE
33 Rajaratnam, 'Birth of a Nation', 260.
34 Goh Keng Swee is quoted from Kwa Chong Guan, 'Desultory reflections', 6-7.
35 See: Lee Kuan Yew, The Singapore story, and Lee Kuan Yew, From Third World to First
36 Drysdale, Singapore, Struggle for Success and Bloodworth, The Tiger and the Trojan Flhorse.
133