“You Have Picked a Wrong Candidate”: Latent Fragments and Reasonable Narratives of the British Military Withdrawal from Singapore

Abstract

“I really believe you have picked a wrong candidate to relate to you of my father’s retrenchment story, simply because our situation was very different from others’” was Lim’s response to my inquiry about the effects of the British military withdrawal from Singapore in the late 1960s. His father, a senior clerk at the Singapore Naval Base, was retrenched like thousands of other base workers. But this, he emphasized, turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as his father received a “golden handshake” in the form of a five-figure retrenchment benefit, found new work in private firms, and retired comfortably several years later. Unlike the preceding decade where the family struggled financially, the British pullout was an ironic turning point for the family of seven in the 1970s. “Hence,” Lim concluded, “I would not be able to provide you the relevant or required information for your project.”1