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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2015
PLANNING AND ORGANIZING
David Marshall and his Labour Front government spent most of their time quelling fires and conflicts and being hounded from pillar to post. The slew of explosive issues that confronted them from the moment they took office would have felled many a government, but David was not one to back down in the face of adversity. Despite the many problems he faced, he was determined to put his government on a proper footing to advance its election promises.
One of the first things he tried to do was to get a party organizer to strengthen his party's organization and management. For this, he turned to his old friend, Gerald de Cruz, who was at the time principal of Osborne House, a school for intellectually disabled children in Hastings, England. De Cruz had written David a congratulatory note on his election victory and, two weeks later, received an invitation from David to return to Singapore to work for the Labour Front. David, in typical fashion, had told de Cruz that he was “surrounded by crooks” and needed someone he could trust to help him run the party as organizing secretary. David was even prepared to dip into his pocket to fund de Cruz's appointment. In a letter to de Cruz in June 1955, David wrote:
You can help. You can come out here as organizing secretary of the Labour Front and the TUC [Trades Union Congress]. It may well be that once here your somewhat impatient nature would prefer the PAP. I do not know, but I do think that your place is here to take a hand in guiding the future. I have known you to be corroded with bitterness to the point where you were no longer useful as a human being. The tone of your letter does indicate that your soul is now healed, and that you have attained maturity. If that is true, you can be a very very real help. If you are interested I would indicate that the present Labour Front is an extremely tenuous organization and it has no money in its coffers. I will be personally responsible for such expenses as may be incurred for the first year, including your salary.
De Cruz was keen but anxious about leaving a stable job that he enjoyed.
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