ABSTRACT
In the spring of 1959, approaches were made at ministerial level to various British business leaders in Kuala Lumpur for funds to assist the Alliance in the upcoming general elections. It was hoped that M$500,000 (over £58,000) would be raised from European businesses. With the expatriate commercials set to finally lose their seats in the Malayan legislature, Tan Siew Sin, then minister of commerce and industry, explained that British firms ‘would be contributing towards the support of the Government in power and as [they] could not possibly expect better treatment from any other Party than [they] had from the Alliance, surely it was good policy to try and do [their] utmost to ensure that [the Alliance] were returned to power with a good majority’.1 By 1961, the Alliance’s ‘war chest’ was known as the Tunku Abdul Rahman National Fund, and the MCAGB recommended that mercantile, rubber and tin interests double their political contributions to the Alliance for the 1964 elections.2 The sums raised are not known, but the practice of making political contributions to the Alliance was widespread amongst British firms. By June 1959, for example, the HSBC in London had learned that most of the rubber companies would be ‘putting their hands in their pockets’, and the RGA continued to recommend contributing to Alliance funds into the 1970s.3
