Cleanliness — Gross National Distress

Cleanliness

Cleanliness is also a strategy that has been one of Singapore’s tools for removing obstructions to productivity. In May 1967, Lee Kuan Yew addressed a team known as the Cleansing Staff who were supposedly part of the Cleansing Department and standard of cleansing maintenance. The word “cleansing” is used instead of “cleaning” which seems to also indicate a thorough revamp of the state that would reach beyond the physical and into the minds of Singaporeans. His speech titled, The Future of Singapore Depends Heavily Upon Its Cleanliness emphasized how dire the task of cleaning was. He began by speaking about how the practices of trade unions were an obstruction to the cleansing aspirations of the state which also seems to point fingers at “militant unionism” that was mentioned earlier.

“The history of the trade union movement here is, in large part, the history of our political struggle. You were afraid of the white boss who kept you down, so we organised them to fight this. But, in the process, it became distorted, and trade unionism, instead of just giving self-respect and self-discipline, became a cover for rackets, indiscipline and inefficiency.”¹

The decision to mention the “cleansing” of unions also indicates the significance of labour relations in achieving a “clean Singapore”. Disciplining the trade unions can be seen as a reflection of a wider strategy to “tidy up” systems of governance.

“And the trade unionists of the supervisees' came to feel that, as fellow trade unionists, they had to protect themselves, protect one another. Here again, I think trade unionism has become perverted partly also because it was allowed in the old days - and this is one of the things I have to live with, because I fought for these things though for different reasons, mind you - it was allowed for the supervisor and the supervisee to join the same union. It then became inevitable that the supervision would feel a kind of fellow trade union feeling and say, ‘Well let's go slow on him. After all, we all belong to the same union. The employer pays. Why worry?’ The employer pays but, in the end, it is the country which pays because productivity goes down.”²

With the new disciplining of trade unions and labour in tact, the cleansing machine face its biggest problem - the public.

“The first half is that the cleansing machine must be efficient. The workers on the ground, the supervisors, the equipment they are given, the overall planning, the system of clearance - all that must be efficient. But the other half is the man who creates rubbish - the public. And this is a point, which I think will play a very important part in your work over the next phase of this campaign to make this really one of the cleanest cities in Asia.”³

This issue then corrected through punishment which might be understood as a form of social conditioning.

“So we put the machine to work first. Clean up! Double, treble the cleaning capacity! And we punish the chap who persistently refuses to conform.”⁴

Lee Kuan Yew states the uplifting of morale as his reason for cleansing the state. Positive morale of a population must be engineered through the cultivation of a social habit according to Lee Kuan Yew who does not see it as an issue of class. Here he also demonstrates the tightness of control that the state will exercise over citizens to achieve the goal of cleansing.

“We will develop this very tightly organised, highly disciplined society, educate our young and maintain standards, imbue them with a series of social responsibility and group discipline. Every house, every factory that is built, every machinery that is sunk in the ground may not be yours in the individual sense, but it is ours, you know, collectively.”⁵

The “Keep Singapore Clean” campaign was also launched in the following year, 1968, along with the industrial relations (amendment) act and the employment act. The tidying up of physical space in Singapore is also accompanied with the tidying up of labour policy.

In his collection of essays titled Air-conditioned Nation, Cherian George compares the government of Singapore to the semiconductor industry. The ruling party(The People’s Action Party) values efficiency and does its best to remove any pollutants that they view as a hindrance to their goals. Similar to the semiconductor industry where in the clean potential pollutants are removed to guarantee that the chips are built to the highest quality.

“The People’s Action Party’s (PAP) vision for politics is reminiscent of the semiconductor plants that add prodigiously to Singapore’s balance of trade. Some of the most important work there takes place in dust free environments where miniaturised electronic circuits are etched onto silicon wafers. The technicians are covered head-to-toe in white smocks, which they slip into just before entering the air conditioned rooms, to ensure that they do not introduce foreign particles that would ruin the manufacturing process. These clean room bunny-suited workers have become one of the icons of Singapore’s high technology economy.”⁶

Productivity as imagined by the ruling party cannot exist without the state’s control. To the state, tighter control will lead to higher productivity.

“Sometimes, it is as if the PAP wished politics were more like this: conducted in an antiseptic environment, geared to high valued-added productivity, and with all participants agreeing to keep it clean-or stay out.”⁷

This ironically leads to the state not clearly stating guidelines for how individuals can manoeuvre the political out-of-bound markers. The original intention to cleanse systems of control seems to have halted in the realm of politics. Clarity that was afforded to other initiatives did not apply to the government. Similar to a clean room, “clean” only refers to “particle free” and this only benefits the product being manufactured. The operator is still at risk of being exposed to toxic substances during the manufacturing process.

“Since politics-unlike a factory’s clean room-has no visible walls to tell you whether you are within or without, the government took it upon itself to determine where you stood, and treated you accordingly.”⁸

_{1-5. Address during a Meeting with the Cleansing Staff (Monthly Rated) at the Singapore Conference Hall and Trade Union House, 1967.

6-9. George, Cherian. Air-Conditioned Nation Revisited. Ethos Books, 2020.}