From World City to the World in One City: Liverpool through Malay Lives
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The Resources of Poverty: Women and Survival in a Mexican City*
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Free Markets and Food Riots
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Paradoxes of Segregation: Urban Migration in Europe
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*Out of print
This edition first published 2016
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bunnell, Tim, author.
Title: From world city to the world in one city : Liverpool through Malay lives / Tim Bunnell.
Description: Chichester, UK; Malden, MA : John Wiley & Sons, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015035652 (print) | LCCN 2015044489 (ebook) | ISBN 9781118827741 (cloth) | ISBN 9781118827734 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781118827710 (ePub) | ISBN 9781118827727 (Adobe PDF)
Subjects: LCSH: Malay Club (Liverpool)–History. | Merchant mariners–Malaysia. | Malays (Asian people)–England–Liverpool. | Liverpool (England)–History–20th century.
Classification: LCC HD8039.S42 M438 2016 (print) | LCC HD8039.S42 (ebook) | DDC 305.899/28042753–dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015035652
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover image: ‘Red Ensign on Mersey Ferry, 2007’ © Colin McPherson.
The Wiley Blackwell Studies in Urban and Social Change series is published in association with the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. It aims to advance theoretical debates and empirical analyses stimulated by changes in the fortunes of cities and regions across the world. Among topics taken up in past volumes and welcomed for future submissions are:
The series is explicitly interdisciplinary; the editors judge books by their contribution to intellectual solutions rather than according to disciplinary origin. Proposals may be submitted to members of the series Editorial Committee, and further information about the series can be found at www.suscbookseries.com.
| 0.1 | Malay deck crew of the MV Charon, circa 1947 |
| 1.1 | Liverpool and the two sites of the city’s Malay Club |
| 1.2 | The section of Jermyn Street that includes the Malay Club (at number 7), December 2003 |
| 2.1 | The Malay peninsula and the wider Malay world region (alam Melayu) |
| 2.2 | The Ocean Building, Singapore, in 1947 |
| 2.3 | Crew of the MV Charon in Singapore, circa 1947 |
| 2.4 | Blue Funnel Line advertisement, circa 1960 |
| 2.5 | A Malay seaman and other lascars |
| 3.1 | Malay Liverpool, circa 1960 |
| 3.2 | Mohamed Nor Hamid on board the MV Cingalese Prince |
| 4.1 | Hari Raya party at 7 Jermyn Street, circa 1970 |
| 5.1 | Postcard sent by Carrim Haji Quigus Rahim, 1989 |
| 5.2 | The grave of Osman bin Haji Alias, Anfield cemetery, 2003 |
| 5.3 | Ex-seamen at the Malay Club in 1989 |
| 6.1 | Fadzil Mohamed on the beach at Tanjung Keling in February 2008 |
| 6.2 | Fadzil Mohamed’s visit to Singapore in 1973 |
| 8.1 | Independence day at Pier Head |
| 8.2 | Street party on Jermyn Street |
Non-English terms are Malay except where noted as Arabic (Ar), Chinese (Ch), Hokkien (Hk), Persian (Per), Portuguese (Port) or Urdu (Urd)
It has taken me much longer than expected to complete this book, but that is certainly not because of any lack of assistance along the way. In part, it may be precisely because so many people have helped me – with often irresistible suggestions of additional sources and alternative possible directions – that research and writing have been such prolonged processes. This does not mean that I am blaming anyone (or everyone) else for my meanderings, and I alone, of course, am responsible for any shortcomings in the end product. But it does mean that I have many people in many places to thank – not only with regard to material that constitutes the book but also for positioning me in much wider worlds of knowledge and experience, only a small subset of which is captured in the chapters that follow.
I am grateful, first of all, to Zaharah Othman whose own writing about and concern for Malay ex-seafarers in Britain inspired my research. It was also through Zaharah that I met Sharidah Sharif and her family in Liverpool. Sharidah and Wahab were my main contact points in ‘the field’ between 2004 and 2008, and I thank them for their kindness in feeding me with lots of information and sustenance. (How wonderful that I came to eat petai more often in Liverpool than I do in Southeast Asia!) During field research in 2004 I received institutional support from the Department of Geography at the University of Liverpool – thanks to David Sadler and Dave Featherstone for arranging that. Dave also kindly furnished me with several important archival references from his own historical work on subaltern transnationalisms. My fieldwork from 2004 to 2006 was generously funded by a National University of Singapore (NUS) grant, ‘Malay Routes: Life histories and geographies of Malayness in Liverpool’ (R-109-000-058-112).
NUS has provided a very stable anchorage and supportive home base for my Malay Routes research over more than a decade. I am grateful to the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences for staff research support scheme funds to carry out additional fieldwork in Liverpool in 2009. I held a joint appointment in the Asia Research Institute from that year until 2014, and benefited from opportunities to present my work there, although the Department of Geography has always been my main home. Strands of my Liverpool research have been enriched through discussion in the department’s Social and Cultural Geography research group, as well as by more direct contributions over the years from Elaine Ho, Lisa Law, Anant Maringanti, Chris McMorran, Sarah Moser, Hamzah Muzaini, Ong Chin Ee, Natalie Oswin, Noorashikin Abdul Rahman, Vani S., Pam Shurmer-Smith and James Sidaway. Aspects of my Malay Routes work have been inflicted upon several cohorts of geography honours students, and some of them (Faizal bin Abdul Aziz, Guo Hefang and Lo Dening) kindly carried out research assistance for me. Lee Li Kheng is to thank for the book’s cartographic work. Beyond the Department of Geography, other NUS-ers past and present whom I wish to thank for varied contributions to my research are Daniel Goh, Phil Kelly, Lai Chee Kien, Hussin Mutalib, Alice Nah, Kris Olds, Dahlia Shamduddin and Eric Thompson. My thinking about the Malay world also benefited from comments and suggestions made by scholars and students who attended a seminar I gave in the Malay Studies programme in 2007.
While my home institution remains a great place to do research in human geography and urban studies as well as on the Malay world, I am also grateful for NUS support of sabbatical leave elsewhere. My sabbatical in 2008 started in Malaysia at the Institute of the Malay World and Civilization (ATMA), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Thanks to Jim Collins for supporting my fellowship there and to both Zawawi Ibrahim and Shamsul A.B. for sharing their considerable insights. Other Malaysians and/or Malaysianists who have supported my work during and beyond that sabbatical period include Tan Sri Ismail Hussein, Joel Kahn, Sumit Mandal, Izham Omar, Meghann Ormond and Mansor Puteh. My sabbatical leave ended in Indonesia and there I have to thank Neogroho Andy H. for sharing memories of his late grandfather. For the main component of the sabbatical in the northwest of England, I was based institutionally at the University of Manchester’s School of Environment and Development where the collegiality of Neil Coe and Martin Hess was much appreciated. In Liverpool during that same period I am grateful for help and support from Ronnie and Cathy Bujang, Farida Chapman, Dave Featherstone (again), Paul Fadzil, Erwina A. Ghafar, Teddy Lates, Rosita Mohamed, Wan Mohamed Rosidi Hussein, Sharidah Sharif (again) and Nick White.
Among assistance that I received at various archives and repositories in Malaysia and Singapore as well as in Britain (all of which are listed in the Archival and Documentary Sources section at the back of the book), my particular thanks to helpful folks at the Maritime Archives and Library at Merseyside Maritime Museum and at the Liverpool Record Office. In addition, presentations at the following institutions during my sabbatical year all, in different ways, provided new ideas and suggestions for which I am grateful: the Contemporary Urban Centre in Liverpool, the London Urban Salon, the Seafarers’ International Research Centre at the University of Cardiff, the ‘International Conference on Diasporas’ at Hong Kong University, and seminars in the geography programmes at the University of Plymouth and at Trinity College, Ireland.
Beyond the sabbatical year, my thinking has been shaped by various presenting and writing experiences. Papers that I presented at the conference on ‘Geographies of Transnational Networks’ held at the University of Liverpool in 2005, and at the symposium on ‘Migration and Identities in Asia’ held at Yonsei University in 2009 were revised and published in Global Networks and Pacific Affairs respectively. The only existing publication from my Malay Routes work that includes material in a form that is recognizable in this book (in Chapter 8) is a paper that appeared in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers in 2008 (vol. 33, pp. 251–67), and I am grateful to the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) for permitting this. Thanks to Zane Kripe and Peter Pels for the invitation to present at the ‘Futurities’ conference in Leiden in June 2014 as this helped me to rethink the framing of Chapter 6.
Overall framing of the book was strongly influenced by the (very) challenging comments I received from members of the editorial board of the Wiley Blackwell Studies in Urban and Social Change series. Thanks to Jenny Robinson for agreeing to proceed with the project. The reviews I received from Richard Phillips and Ananya Roy provided excellent, complementary sets of suggestions as to how to improve the manuscript. Jenny provided very clear editorial guidance as well as lots of helpful suggestions from her own careful reading. Two other people have kindly read and helped to nuance the entire text: Michelle Miller and Gareth Richards. An NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences book grant funded excellent editing and formatting services from Impress Creative and Editorial Sdn Bhd. I thank Jacqueline Scott and Allison Kostka at Wiley for their efficiency and patience.
In the context of a process of research and writing which has seen a blurring of boundaries between informants, on the one hand, and friends and family, on the other, I have deliberately left two sets of thanks until last. The first go to the Malay ‘elders’ (the Pak Cik-Pak Cik) across whose lives the urban geographies of this book are mapped. I am privileged and very grateful to have had opportunities to converse with many ex-seafaring men and members of their families. Thanks to Pak Cik Ali, Pak Cik Jaafar and especially to Pak Cik Mat Nor for sharing so much with me. In Pak Cik Mat Nor’s case this extended over multiple interviews and conversations in three different countries. Perhaps the only ex-seaman with whom I conversed more was the late Pak Cik Fadzil who kindly welcomed me to Saturday morning breakfasts with his family.
Special thanks, second, to members of my family, the composition of which has changed significantly over the past decade. Zep, Xavi and Bea have all been born since 2011. While they have not sped up my writing, they are three wonderful excuses for all the delays. I have been ‘finishing’ this book for as long as the kids’ mummy has known me. Michelle: I am so lucky to have a wife who is so encouraging, loving, patient … and a meticulous editor! My parents, Megan and Craig, remain models of what supportive parenting means. Finally, during several stints of fieldwork in Liverpool I stayed with my grandmother, Doreen Owen, enjoying her company, cooking and memories of Liverpool’s dance halls after the Second World War. She died in November 2014, and is now buried next to my granddad at the top of the cemetery in Hawarden, North Wales, from where it is possible to see over to Liverpool on a clear day.
This book is about people who met at Liverpool’s Malay Club over a period of more than half a century. It examines, in particular, the maritime linkages that made possible the formation of the Malay Club and the worlds of connection that the club in turn sustained. Research for the book formally began at the National University of Singapore in 2004, but the genesis of my ‘Malay Routes’ project lay in a couple of seemingly unconnected events over the preceding three years. First, during a research trip to Kuala Lumpur in 2001, I watched a Malay-language film that implanted in my mind the possibility of a long-standing Malay seafaring presence in England. The main characters in Dari Jemapoh ke Manchester (From Jemapoh to Manchester) are two teenage boys, Yadi and Mafiz, who leave behind the sleepy village of Jemapoh in the 1960s in a red Volvo, and head for the great port of Singapore – maritime gateway to lands beyond the Malay world. Yadi dreams of meeting his football idol, George Best, and of watching ‘Manchestee Uni-ted’. Mafiz, by contrast, is no football fan, but is motivated to hit the road and sea lanes by the prospect of tracking down his seafaring father (ayah). Where is Mafiz’s ayah? They are not sure, but the last contact was a postcard, from Liverpool …
The second event, a year after I watched Dari Jemapoh ke Manchester, was the funeral of my maternal grandfather which was held in a part of the northwest of England that borders north Wales. My journey back home from Singapore to Manchester airport was filled with sadness and regret at not having been able to see my grandfather before he died. Conversations that followed the funeral gave rise to further regrets. Especially for Welsh family members whom I had not seen since my early childhood, the fact that I was living and working in Southeast Asia emerged not only as a topic of conversation but also as a connection to my late grandfather’s life. My great-uncle David recalled stories that he had heard from my grandfather about his time in Singapore. Had I not heard those stories before? Certainly I was aware that my grandfather had worked in the merchant navy, shipping out of Liverpool towards the end of the Second World War and into the immediate postwar period. This memory had been sustained by the painting of a Blue Funnel Line ship set against the Liverpool waterfront that was in the room where we always ate during childhood visits to my grandparents’ home. But I had rarely asked my grandfather about the seafaring period of his life, blurring historically as it did into a topic that was off limits – the war. I never got to hear my grandfather’s recollections of Singapore and a host of other places ‘around there’ (as my great-uncle David put it) which were overlapping points in our life geographies, many decades apart.
Back at work in Singapore, curiosity about the mid-twentieth-century maritime routes that had taken my grandfather from Liverpool to Singapore reminded me of the possibility of seafaring journeys in the opposite direction. To what extent was Mafiz’s father in Dari Jemapoh ke Manchester merely a product of filmmaker Hishamuddin Rais’s creative imagination? And, if Malay sailors really had sent postcards back to villages in Malaysia from ports such as Liverpool in the 1960s, were any of these men still living in England? Although the seemingly most straightforward way to answer the first of these questions was to ask Hishamuddin himself, unfortunately – for him even more than for me – he was in detention in 2002 under Malaysia’s Internal Security Act. By the time that he was released in mid-2003, I had found the answer to the second question: newspaper articles written by the London-based Malaysian journalist Zaharah Othman confirmed that there were indeed Malay ex-seamen living in Liverpool and other former British maritime centres such as Cardiff and London. When I eventually met Hishamuddin in Kuala Lumpur in early 2004, I had already read about some of the ex-sailors whom he had encountered in London in the 1980s – most memorably Man Tokyo, whose knowledge of the Japanese language gained when working in shipyards in Japan during the Second World War had helped him to secure roles in British war films.
Another, more serendipitous, source of information about Malay ex-seamen in the city of Liverpool in particular came through a friend and former colleague at the National University of Singapore. Phil Kelly’s family are from Liverpool and, in email correspondence in the period after my grandfather’s funeral in May 2002, I asked Phil if he was aware of a Malay presence in his home town. He wrote back some weeks later to report that his Aunt Valerie (‘just retired from many years as the telephone operator at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine’) had kindly unearthed several leads for me. These included contact details for Liverpool’s Al-Rahma mosque (a reasonable place to seek Malays who, in Malaysia at least, are constitutionally Muslim); the nursing home where a Mr Hassan (‘an elderly chap with good English and very knowledgeable’) was staying; and a ‘Malaysia/Singapore Association’ (the Malay Club) housed at 7 Jermyn Street. With this information and inspiration gained from reading Zaharah Othman’s newspaper articles – which included mention of meeting Mr Hassan (Arsad Hassan) at 7 Jermyn Street in 1996 – I headed back to the northwest of England, to Liverpool, in December 2003.
During this initial pilot visit to Liverpool, a graduate student from Malaysia introduced me to an ex-seaman known as Dol. Born in Singapore in 1929, Dol had gained seafaring experience working on the MV Charon, a Liverpool-owned Blue Funnel Line ship that had operated between Singapore and Western Australia in the 1940s. Moving on to work on oceangoing ships, he first arrived in Liverpool as a seafarer onboard the MV Gladys Moller on a very cold day in December 1950. At that time, Dol recalled, there were ‘hundreds’ of Malay men like him in Liverpool. By December 2003 only around 20 remained. The lives of these men and other people who met at the Malay Club on Jermyn Street – including descendants of ex-seamen as well as Malaysian student sojourners and their family members – provide a window into Liverpool’s historically shifting urban social geographies.
Figure 0.1 Malay deck crew of the MV Charon, circa 1947.
Photograph courtesy of Fadzil Mohamed.