From Jail to Jail. Tan Malaka
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And at the time I was in China, shortly before his death, Ch’en Ch’iung-ming, another of his former generals, almost succeeded in arresting Dr. Sun.17 I frequently heard Chinese intellectuals and bourgeoisie refer to Dr. Sun during his lifetime as being indeed a great man, but an idealist. And Dr. Sun himself said that under his government the Cantonese traders ridiculed him as an “empty cannon,” meaning that he had a loud voice with nothing behind it.
In fact it was really only after he died that I saw respect and even praise given to Dr. Sun. Through the vicissitudes of public appreciation some great people are praised, applauded, and worshipped today, but cursed tomorrow. Others, like Dr. Sun, are praised only after their deaths. Dr. Sun would not have been Dr. Sun had he struggled and sacrificed merely for temporary popularity. He was aware that appreciation of his work would rise and fall at different moments, and he devoted all his energy, skill, will, and emotions to the independence and greatness of the nation he loved to the bottom of his heart, the Chinese people. Neither his friends nor his enemies can deny this love of his, nor his honesty and determination.18
One day when I was in the South carrying out my obligations as Comintern representative (a fact that I no longer need to hide since outsiders have long since broadcast it), I received instructions from the center to find delegates from Indonesia to attend the Asian Transport Workers Conference to be held in Canton. The results of this conference have long been public knowledge, and my role in it was well known in the Philippines as a result of my arrest there. By August 1927 Western imperialism was smart, experienced, and wealthy enough to know everything that went on in the organizations of its enemies.
The official view of the Canton Conference, as recorded in the Encyclopaedie (same volume as quoted above), p. 535 is as follows:19
International Communist Trade Union Action
The Fourth Congress of the Comintern, November/December 1922, decided to carry out active propaganda for the national liberation of all the nations of the Pacific.
[111] The Red International of Trade Unions (Profintern) also proposed this in its Second Congress, held simultaneously with the Fourth Congress of the Comintern, and it was decided to call a large conference of delegates of transport workers of all the nations around the Pacific Ocean.
This Pan-Pacific Conference was held in Canton at the end of June 1924. Canton was the only place near the tropics where they could work undisturbed to organise a Red International of sailors and labourers in the principal ports of the Pacific. This International was seen as the link in the chain uniting the revolutionary national liberation movements with the proletarian class struggle in the West. The question of how to implement this link, which had to be accomplished without straying too far from theoretical axioms of the class struggle, had long been under consideration by the E.C.C.I. (Executive Committee of the Communist International). The importance of this first conference of the transport workers can be seen to some degree in the Manifesto addressed to the workers of the East and to the proletariat of Europe and America (published in Internationale Presse Korrespondenz 6 September 1924, No. 36).20 This manifesto pointed out the fact that in Canton, in the revolutionary part of South China, representatives of transport workers from North and South China, from Java (Alimin and Budisutjitro) and from the Philippines had gathered at a conference convened by the Red International of Trade Unions. The aim of establishing an international link was shown, inter alia, by the following call: “We call on all organisations of transport workers in colonial and semi-colonial countries to unite themselves and join the revolutionary transport workers of the world.”
The conference, which lasted for six days, decided to establish in Canton the Bureau of the Red Eastern Labour Union to unite the transport workers of all the Eastern countries, to which would be attached Secretariats for China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan and India.21
And on page 537 of the Encyclopaedie:
[112] At approximately the same time (21 December 1924) the P.K.I. seemed to move towards establishing the Red Labour Union Secretariat for Indonesia in Surabaya. The Central Leadership of the P.K.I. in Jakarta took the initiative and sent draft statutes for this Secretariat to the leadership of the V.S.T.P. (Railway Union), the S.P.P.L. (Seamen’s Union), the S.B.G. (Sugar Workers Union), and the Serikat Pelikan (Oil and Mineworkers Union). These draft statutes stated that the Secretariat would be a branch of the Canton Bureau, and would be a member of the Profintern in Moscow. The P.K.I. leadership stated in so many words that “to achieve a revolutionary class struggle in Indonesia it is necessary to establish unity among the Asian industrial and transport workers’ organisations.”
In the old areas of communist work, particularly Semarang, there was more of a desire to strike. Initially, in P.K.I circles, there was a proposal to stage a strike on 8 May 1925 to commemorate the second anniversary of Semaun’s arrest. Having learned from the 1923 rail strikes, the V.S.T.P. rejected the strike plan.22 The P.K.I. leadership postponed the strike date until the S.P.P.L. (Indonesia) united with the S.P.P.L. (Netherlands).23 But because members were tired of waiting, it was proposed to stage a general protest strike as a demonstration against the (Dutch East Indies) Government’s rejection of Tan Malaka’s request to return to Indonesia from exile (a more detailed explanation will follow—T.M.). However, it seems that people were reluctant to move without real support from the large unions like the V.S.T.P. They were awaiting a suitable strike atmosphere, in which economic motives could be synchronised with and used as camouflage for political ones.
Meanwhile, it appears that in Semarang people became impatient. On 21 July 1925 the long-awaited strike broke out, initially among the printing workers of a Chinese firm that published a Chinese-Indonesian newspaper. The strike was precipitated by the firm’s refusal to meet the demand of the Sarekat Buruh Cetak, the Printing Workers Union, that a dismissed worker be re-hired, which was coupled with other demands relating to general job security. The strike spread to several other printing concerns, and on 1 August a strike broke out at the Centrale Burgerlijke Ziekeninrichting [Central Civil Hospital] in Semarang. At the same time a strike broke out at the Semarangsche Stoomboot en Prauwenveer [Semarang Steam and Ferry Boat Co.]. Within a few days, some one thousand Indonesian captains and sailors stopped work on the urging of the Seamen’s Union (S.P.P.L.), which was advancing demands for improvements in working conditions to the management of the ferry company. The strike gradually diminished from that point and came to an end in mid-September. According to Government Decision No. 2 of 17 December 1925, three strike leaders and propagandists of the P.K.I.—Darsono, Aliarcham and Mardjohan—were interned.24
The main points in the above passages are as follows:
[113] 1. The Canton Bureau, which united all transport workers of Asia and branches of the Profintern, was established in June 1924 at a conference at which Indonesian delegates were present (from the PKI);
2 As a direct result of that conference, in December 1924 a Red Labour Union Secretariat for Indonesia led by the P.K.I. was established in Indonesia;
3 The strikes staged in several industries in mid-1925 were directly under the leadership of the Red Labour Union Secretariat for Indonesia and the PKI;
4 The strike wave was apparently very weak and, apart from spreading a little in Semarang, did not catch on in all of Java, let alone the whole of Indonesia.
It is my opinion that the lack of spirit in the economic actions, which in essence were directed towards a seizure of economic and political rights, resulted from the economic situation at that time. The Economic Curve shows clearly that the lowest point was reached in 1922, and by 1925 the world economy was on the upswing towards the peak of 1927-1928. One cannot deny that our organization had certain weaknesses, ones that we, as a tropical nation, still manifest today. However, the main reason for the downturn in political strikes in mid-1925 was the exhaustion of the revolutionary spirit throughout Indonesia as a result of the improvement in the economic crisis.
So much for the developments in the politico-economic strikes in 1925, which resulted in the exile of several leaders of the PKI who were desperately needed, particularly in the period leading up to the 1926 events. Let us return to the Canton Bureau.
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