Lest We Forget - Rubber And Tin Built The Nation

 World Labour Day passed us by again on May 1st. 

A reader (thank  you) sent me the following poem in memory of the millions of people who laboured in the rubber industry in British Malaya and post-independent Malaysia. Particularly the Indian women (and men) who were the backbone of the rubber industry. 

First here is the poem:

Remembering:  'The Milk Of Malaya'

Thousands of ladies rose before the crack of dawn of the Malayan sun to prepare a simple meal for their family, 

Before walking to the muster ground for the roll call 

Before being transported to their assigned areas

Before they put the knife to the bark

Before moving from tree to tree

While

The rest of the world slumbered.

With tapping knives in hand

They made the cut

Their bosses could never muster nor master

Guided by the light affixed to their foreheads

Driven by the need to move their children towards a better life

They tapped and they tapped and they tapped.

We called the flow latex

They called it 'milk'.

It was that 'Milk of Malaya' which nourished the slumbering country to rise to its knees

And cup by cup the coffers were filled

On the check-roll list they were a part of numbers and statistics that the internal auditors would check for possible fraud.

In the hearts of their children

They were mothers

Who could barely read or write

Who only had vague distant memories of a motherland

Created from stories the elderly recounted with a sense of resigned hope of ever seeing a distant homeland.

With some God-given-determination, teachers set out to teach their children to read and write in their mother tongue

Lest they forget

Life went on with regular monotony

With the sun that rose and set

To give them the light

Which the struggling generators so frugally dished out for a few measly hours

Labour Day 

Came and went

Their memories stay

For many a moment

As children remember

A tough determined mother

Who rose with the sun

When life was not fun

And retired with every dusk

Like some unwanted coconut husk

Estates were sold

Cities and an airport replaced the rubber trees

Tappers were scattered

Their talents that once helped build a nation, 

Not needed anymore

They the tappers,

Were thrown out into oblivion

Like the proverbial baby with the bath.

Labour Day

Salutes the labour

That built a nation

Be it from a rubber estate

Or from the tin mines

Or hand-cutting new roads with pick-axes

Or carrying bricks on their heads

To build up shophouses and towns

So

Far away from a fading homeland.

Some hearts will forget

Some hearts will forever remember...

 

My comments :

Until the early 1950s British  Malaya was among the most profitable enterprises in the British colonial project.  In the early 20th century and until after World War 2 the revenue from British Malaya exceeded the Crown's revenue from India the supposedly Jewel in the British Crown. 

British Malaya even paid for a few battleships in the Royal Navy including the famous HMS Malaya, a 640 feet long, 33,000 tonbattleship armed with 15 inch naval guns.

Of course all this excess revenue was contributed to a very large extent from the rubber and tin mining industries which were flourishing in Malaya.

Here is some data about the amount of cash paid out as dividends by British public listed companies (on the London Stock Exchange) which had mining operations and rubber plantations in Malaya:

 

 

Indeed the tin mining and rubber industry gave a kick start to the growth of the Malayan economy.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.