In 1969, the time was approaching when we would have to say goodbye to our home in the Labuk. Until then, Unilever had maintained two separate plantation companies in Malaysia – Pamol Kluang in Johore and Pamol Sabah in Borneo. As the head of the company in Borneo, I had reported direct to London right from the outset.
However, Pamol Kluang, since its purchase in 1948, had used the services of a Managing Agent. The Kluang estate manager reported to Guthries in Kuala Lumpur. They in turn were responsible to Unilever Plantations International (UPI) in London for the overall management of the plantation.
Unilever had never been comfortable with this arrangement. All their plantation companies in other parts of the world came directly under UPI. In 1969, they decided to cancel the agency contract with Guthries and to amalgamate the two Malaysian companies into one business. I was asked to take over as Chairman of the new Group.
Pamol Kluang had, in recent years, gained a reputation of being a hot-bed of industrial unrest. Only two years before it had established the unenviable record of suffering the longest strike in the history of the plantation industry in Malaysia, when a bitter disagreement with the National Union of Plantation Workers (NUPW) had blown up into a national dispute and the workers had been on strike for six months.
Plantations Group believed that part of the problem was that Guthries’ personnel department in KL was too remote from the workers at the coal-face. They decided that my new headquarters should be sited on Pamol Kluang. My first priority as Chairman of the Malaysian group was, Colin Black told me, to get the relations with the labour force on Pamol Kluang onto a better footing.
This was to prove to be a very simple task. Six months prior to setting up my HQ, I paid a preliminary visit to Pamol Kluang, the estate on which I had spent the first seven years of my plantations career. I found that the chairman of the estate branch of the NUPW – who had been portrayed to me by Guthries in Kuala Lumpur as an unprincipled, self-seeking agitator – was no other than my old friend Robert Gomez, our roller driver.
Robert had been the outside-left when Bob Dawson, Stan Rowland and I had played for the estate football team in the early 50s, and I well remembered attending his wedding. He might have had problems at times with the offside trap on the football field, but he certainly was not ‘a self-seeking agitator’.
The mill was identified by Guthries as the focal point for many of the disputes. I swiftly discovered that the main cause of the problems was the attitude of the engineer. He told me he hated the place. He could not walk through the factory, he said, without the NUPW calling a strike. The workers, he said, were “a bunch of bolshies”, and he did not have a good word to say about any of them.
The instigator of most of the disputes, he told me, was the shop-steward – Atan, the steriliser operator. I was astonished to find that this was no other than the Atan who had been my partner when we won the badminton doubles in 1954. Technically, the mill engineer was a well-qualified man, and a competent engineer. I suggested to him that he might be happier if he found work on some other Guthries estate. He swiftly left us for pastures new.
Most of the disputes which had led to the strikes seemed to have been blown up from trivial issues which could have been dealt with in a few minutes, with goodwill and trust on both sides. It was clear that one root cause was that the expatriate managers, although they were good agriculturalists and experienced planters, had become completely alienated from the workers.
They were not to be seen in the estate coffee-shop or playing sports with the estate teams after working hours. Their social life seemed to centre around tennis parties, dances and other functions at the Kluang Club, which was largely supported by the officers and their ladies from the large British military garrison.
There was another club in the town which I was told, was used exclusively by the “Asian Community”. I wondered if somehow I had got caught in a time-warp and had been transported back to the 1920s. It was like the Last Days of The Raj. One expatriate from a nearby estate, whom I had known in the 50s, was obviously deputised to ‘have a word with me’.
“We expats are getting thin on the ground, Old Boy. We must stick together. Most of the Asians actually prefer to have their own club, you know. They would just be uncomfortable in an expatriate club,” he said.
This was all a complete contrast to the situation in Sabah and, indeed, to most other parts of Malaysia. David Marsh the assistant from Tungud was transferred to Pamol Kluang. When it was found that he was an ex-public schoolboy educated at Harrow, it was expected that he would be a bulwark of the Kluang Club. Instead, appalled at what he found there, he shocked the expatriate community by joining the Asian Club instead.
Improved relationships
I did not think we would be able to change the entrenched lifestyles of the Pamol managers who had been conditioned perhaps by having had to sit through the six-month strike. They were in due course transferred to plantations in Africa, and replaced by the Malaysian Cadets who had been under training.
We had one very competent assistant on Pamol Kluang, Siva Sankar. He told me that he had been warned: ‘Don’t get too close to the workers. They’ll just take advantage!’. I suggested that he should be promoted to be in charge of the whole estate. He became the most senior Asian estate manager in the district. My old boss John Galpine became the Plantations Director for the two plantations for the few months before his retirement.
Shortly after I arrived and moved into the new HQ, our visiting medical officer gave a welcome-back lunch-party for me. On arrival at his house I noticed that he had invited our expatriate assistants but not their estate manager, Siva Sankar.
Since this was a semi-official function I asked about this. He told me with some pride that he had never entertained an Asian socially in his house and never would. I did not bother to stay for the meal and I took steps to replace him as our visiting doctor the next day.
The close links between the workers and the managers were soon re-established. Relations with the estate branch of the NUPW steadily improved. Problems still occurred from time to time of course, but they were mostly settled promptly at the Divisional level. Pamol Kluang never had another local strike in the next 20 years.
As regards my replacement in Sabah, it was vital that the new general manager should be someone who would maintain the excellent relations which existed with the whole Labuk community.
Our young Malaysian managers, although they were showing great promise, did not as yet have the experience to take over the top job in Sabah. I was delighted and immensely relieved therefore when Plantations Group announced that the person they were sending to take over was Garven Thorniley, who was currently in Cameroons.
I had known Garven and his wife Mary when we were on Pamol Kluang, in the 1950s. Mary was a trained nurse and had done a lot of voluntary work in the Kluang community. Garven, although hailing from Cornwall, had a degree in agriculture from Aberdeen University; his first job with UPI had been with the Oil Palm Research Department in Nigeria.
More importantly, he was a warm character with a great sense of humour – a natural leader who got on well with his staff and workers. Garven and Mary had both visited Tungud in its early days when we were still living in the attap house. They were good friends of ours. I knew the Sabah business would be in good hands.
In my new job as Chairman, Sabah would continue to be my biggest responsibility. Colin Black was very insistent that, since Garven had no recent experience with Sabah conditions, I should continue to keep in close touch and visit the plantation at least once a month.
Meaningful contribution
In the nine years since that day in October 1960, when Kong Miew and I had sailed up the Labuk River to move into our attap house, the Labuk had been transformed – from what Sir William Goode had described as a depressed, poverty-stricken backwater, into a bustling, thriving region.
Sabah had become the second home for myself and the family, and our number had increased by one little Sabahan, namely Mary Anne, who was born in Sandakan Hospital. Labuk residents like Ibrahim, Tasman, Tumpeh, Titi and Rangga had become our lifelong friends, as had many of our managers, staff and workers.
In the 60s, Southeast Asia had gone through a period of intense turmoil. To the north of us, in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, a terrible, bloody war had been fought. Next door, in the Philippines, the war which had been simmering between the Christians in the north and the Muslims in the south for the last hundred years, had continued unabated. There had been bloody insurrections in Celebes and Timor.
Colonialism had disappeared from the region. Sabah had become a state of independent Malaysia. Soekarno, in response to this, had declared war on Malaysia, and we had gone through the years of Konfrontasi.
Politically, it had been a chaotic period. However, throughout the turmoil and the strife, I think it would not be unfair to claim that Tungud Estate and the other pioneering plantations in Sabah had provided a peaceful haven.
Many thousands of refugees – fleeing from problems of poverty or from political and religious strife in the surrounding countries – could find employment, earn a decent living, get married, and bring up and educate their children there, free from persecution. I was personally far more proud of the contribution we had made towards this, than of any impact we may have had on the agricultural development of the region.
On Oct 26, 1969, a crowd of over a thousand people, including all our friends and neighbours from the Labuk area, gathered at the estate airstrip to say goodbye. It was a sad occasion. I knew that over the next few years I would be visiting them frequently. Nevertheless it was, for Olive, Catriona, Fiona, Mary Anne and myself an emotional farewell. We were leaving with a wealth of rich memories and richer friendships.
Datuk Leslie Davidson
Author, East of Kinabalu
Former Chairman, Unilever Plantations International
This is the final chapter from the book published in 2007. It can be purchased from the Incorporated Society of Planters; email: isph@tm.net.my
