Black Areas: Urban Kampongs and Power Relations in Post-war Singapore Historiography‪.‬

"[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]"--popular Chinese saying After the September 1963 elections in Singapore, the victorious People's Action Party (PAP) government carried out a wave of deregistration of leftwing mass organizations and detentions of their leaders for alleged involvement in "communist united front activities" (Straits Times 1 November 1963). These measures effectively shattered the leftwing movement and paved the way for the government's nation-building project. Among the organizations removed were the little-studied Singapore Rural Residents' Association and the Singapore Country People's Association, which were charged with "agitation on behalf of the Communists" and operating "recruiting and training centres for Communist cadres in the rural areas" (Straits Times 4 October 1963). (2) Their dissolution left kampong dwellers increasingly unable to resist their rehousing to public housing by the Housing and Development Board (HDB) (Gamer 1972, pp. 66-82). In November 1956, two precursor associations, the Singapore Wooden House Dwellers' Association and the Singapore Farmers' Association, had been banned in a similar crackdown on the left by the Labour Front government of Chief Minister Lim Yew Hock. Why these associations were able to organize kampong dwellers, and why the state had deemed it politically necessary to proscribe them are questions this paper will address towards revising the framework of analysis for the historiography of Singapore after World War Two.