ABSTRACT
Arrests, raids and curfews were three tactics which the British employed from the worst days of the riots. The aim was to instil fear into the hearts and minds of the enemies of the colonial state in order to prevent further violence. ‘Fear’, as Corey Robin brilliantly puts it, ‘ensures that those with power maintain it, and prevents those without power from doing much, if anything, to get it’.1 Fear was thus a political tool used by the colonial state to diminish all forms of violent opposition and to regain agency in the aftermath of the riots. But such tactics were not without contradictions and negative consequences. Hospital staff, for example, had to work for over 16 hours each day because doctors and nurses on the night shift were unable to report for duty. Among the ordinary citizens of Singapore, curfews were generally perceived as relics of the Japanese Occupation. A majority of the populace were thus averse to having to stay indoors, as this had a great impact upon their livelihood. The British government had, on many occasions, avoided the enforcement of curfews because they regarded it detrimental to the economy and the daily lives of the people. The Maria Hertogh riots were a watershed in that they compelled the British government to impose the first among a series of dusk-to-dawn curfews in post-war Singapore.2
