My gum-making brother-in-law, Yong Nyuk Lin, now minister for education, did us proud: In 12 months, he doubled the intake of students, converting each school into two by splitting it to provide a morning and an afternoon session.

He ran a crash programme to train the teachers needed, and promoted many of the seniors to be principals, headmasters and headmistresses.

He also started adult education classes to teach Malay, now the national language, and launched a Chinese literacy drive, using Mandarin as the common language of all Chinese dialect groups.

People wanted to feel they were improving themselves and their prospects, and we gave them the means. We adopted the proven methods of our communist adversaries. As with the mass campaigns, we saw no reason why we should give the MCP a monopoly of such techniques.