Throughout Myanmar’s fight for independence and the post-independence era since 1948, liberalism never managed to gain traction. While the world was polarized between right-wing and left-wing ideologies, Myanmar’s internal sphere witnessed a unique struggle between socialists and communists. As a former colony of British India, Myanmar perceived liberalism as a peripheral of colonialism and imperialism. As a result, the struggle for independence and the establishment of nation-states naturally leaned towards left-wing ideologies, particularly social democracy and bolshevism. Most leaders of the independence movements perceived the subjugation of their countries to colonialism and imperialism due to the weakness of their state. As a result, they adopted the nationalization principles of left-wing ideologies to create a robust and independent state.
Among such leaders, Edward Michael Law-Yone emerged as a unique and distinct intellectual. While he took a hardline stance against colonialism and communism, he uniquely promoted the importance of private institutions, a free press, and constitutional liberalism in nation-building. Edward Michael Law-Yone came from a heritage that represented the mosaic of Myanmar’s diverse ethnic identities. He came from a father of a Chinese immigrant and a mother of Shan descent, who was the niece of the famous anti-British resistance leader, U Po Saw. While he came from a heritage that represented China and the Shan States, he came into the world in Kachin State and had a lifelong affinity for that region. He famously described his heritage in Myanmar culture, stating, “When the Burmese want to be polite, they do not ask where you were born. They enquire, ‘Where is your navel buried?’ Mine is well and truly buried in Kachin soil.”
Despite his deep local roots, Law-Yone’s education at St. Peter’s in Mandalay, an elite English-medium boarding school run by the Christian Brothers introduced him to a more “internationalized” environment. It was there that he first engaged in political activism, becoming the youngest participant in a school-wide strike against the colonial education system and spending four days protesting at Setkya Thiha Pagoda. The episode so alarmed his father that he was subsequently transferred to the school’s European code section.
After his father’s death forced him to abandon law school, Law-Yone joined the colonial Frontier Service as a low-level clerk, performing arduous border duties while teaching himself through diverse classical and legal texts. During this time, witnessing a Burmese official kneel before a British superior sparked an anti-colonial epiphany, fueling a lifelong rejection of “slave mentality” and a rebellious streak that later led him to clash with Europeans while working for the Burma Railways. During WWII, he served as a British Army officer and an OSS intelligence operative, maintaining his defiant independence even under pressure, as shown when he refused to be diverted by American “Flying Tigers” pilots in Rangoon.
As the end of World War II was nearing, Law-Yone’s nationalist ideals came to the fore when he clashed with a high-ranking American lieutenant over the issue of American, British, or Japanese rule over Burma. When the American lieutenant, with the intention of provoking Law-Yone, said that the British would soon resume control of Burma, Law-Yone retorted that this time the British rule would be brief, as the Burmese would take the opportunity of submitting petitions to the government to assassinate the British in the shadows, using the guise of petition submission as a ruse. However, this outburst by Law-Yone was ignored by his commanding officer, who believed that this was due to Law-Yone’s “perverted sense of humour.”
After Myanmar’s independence in 1948, Law-Yone founded and edited “The Nation”, which became famous as the best English-language daily newspaper in the country. It was used as an intellectual forum of great sophistication, offering various viewpoints such as Bertrand Russell’s critiques on the final failure of Communism, Christmas Humphreys’ perspectives on Buddhism, and J.S. Furnivall’s sociological investigations into the essence of Burmese “civilization”. He was famous for using Jefferson’s quote on the masthead of his newspaper, The Nation: “Let me make the newspapers of a country, and I do not care who makes its laws”.
In the early 1950s, Law-Yone was sued for criminal libel by the AFPFL government on charges of impugning U Hla Maung, who was the Secretary of Finance and National Planning, overseeing some twenty-five different government boards and corporations. Law-Yone used the trial to expose gross irregularity in government procurement, like the procurement of unsuitable machinery for cotton spinning mills and refitted junk gunboats sold at the price of new vessels. Law-Yone also derided the government politicians who practiced corruption, calling them gasbags who squandered the nation’s energy on unproductive activities, not doing constructive jobs like cleaning up Rangoon or correcting infant mortality.
Another aspect of Law-Yone was his unwavering opposition to the left wing politics in Burma. He often used his column to highlight what he called their egregious mistakes. His attack on Communism was so well known that it caught the eye of Aung San, father of the nation. Law-Yone was challenged by Aung San over his negative attitude towards Communism: “Why are you always running down Communism? There are many things I find appealing about Communism.” Law-Yone later sent a copy of Das Kapital to Aung Than, which left Aung San who was a co-founder of the Communist Party of Burma in an inexplicable state of annoyance. However, Law-Yone’s association with Aung San’s brother, Aung Than, who was his roommate at that time, complicated things further. Aung Than sought Law-Yone’s advice on whether to ally with communism or socialism and confessed that he had not read the Communist Manifesto. Law-Yone ordered a copy of Communist Manifesto from Calcutta to encourage him to read it. This again sparked off a sharp and irritable remark from Aung San: “Leave him alone. Don’t you go and get mixed up.” It can be interpreted that what truly infuriated Aung San was Law-Yone’s refusal to be swayed; despite having read Das Kapital, Law-Yone maintained his preference for a market economy, making his attempt to ‘tutor’ Aung Than feel like an act of ideological subversion.
In the political scenario of Myanmar after independence, Law-Yone stood in a unique ideological position. His contemporaries were in favour of nationalization, but Law-Yone stood by the market economy with pragmatism. Long before the “Burmese Way to Socialism” destroyed the national economy, Law-Yone had recognized that unfavourable policies towards capitalism would have long-term adverse effects on the economy by famously remarking:
“The government had learned the lesson that while it cost nothing to inveigh against capitalism, doing things to frighten it away could be attended with serious aftereffects.”
Law-Yone was also one of the rare intellectuals to have identified the authoritarian streak in both the socialist and communist movements in Myanmar. He famously criticized the leadership of the AFPFL (Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League) for having a “Messiah complex,” since they often argued that their hold on power was essential for the survival of the country.
He remained of the firm view that power, if left unchecked, would only strive to expand itself. He also warned that the single party rule without proper parliamentary plurality is as dangerous as autocracy.
He referred to the writings of an anarchist thinker Mikhail Bakunin in one of his editorials in 1951, “No dictatorship can have any other aim than the perpetuation of itself”. He went on to add that “any regime, whether Russian or Burman, would inevitably attempt to secure its survival by “killing criticism, if necessary, by killing the critics.”
Law-Yone’s most lasting legacy, perhaps, has been his emphasis on the need for the citizenry to take responsibility. He saw apathy in the citizenry as being complicit in the failure of governance. He famously wrote, “Apathy towards inefficiency is blameworthy. People get the government they deserve.”
Yet, in spite of his scathing commentary on a society that “allows institutions to desert their high principles and to leave the public feeling hard and cynical,” his life’s work with ‘The Nation’ was itself a testament to the power of the free press. This was precisely the reason why he was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay award in 1959, making him a “stanch foe of communism” and a “vigorous defender of civil rights.”
After the coup in 1962, when he demanded an investigation into the military’s use of force against the students, he marked a turning point that he later referred to as the “first nail in The Nation’s coffin.” This act of defiance led to his imprisonment at Insein Prison and the nationalization of his newspaper. In prison, he showed his disdain for the “Burmese Way to Socialism” by buying the socialist manifestos of the ruling party to use as kindling for the illegal barbecues he cooked in prison.
Upon his release and subsequent departure from Myanmar in 1968, he immediately began to organize resistance to overthrow Ne Win. As the Secretary General of the Parliamentary Democracy Party (PDP) and Foreign Minister of a government-in-exile in Thailand, he brokered a historic alliance between Burman rebels and ethnic minorities such as the Karen and Mon to form the National United Liberation Front (NULF). To finance the armed resistance, he travelled the world to raise funds and signed a $2 million deal with a private oil company, Ocean Resources Ltd.
However, he later resigned from the PDP in 1971, believing that the secret peace negotiations between U Nu and Ne Win were a fundamental betrayal of the revolution. In his final years, he searched for a personal peace, not through surrender, but through a clinical analysis of his adversary that came to the conclusion that Ne Win had a “true psychopathic personality” that could not be cured by medicine.
U Law Yone knew that one of the advantages of a nation was not in its consolidation of power but in its leaders’ accountability to its people. The legacy of U Law Yone challenges those in power and those over whom they have power, for he was an advocate of “constitutionalism”, “parliamentary democracy”, “economic freedom”, and “individual responsibility”. This revolutionary in a post-colonial era sought a powerful and independent Myanmar, but not in terms of a powerful military and socialist state, but in terms of a powerful civil society with a free press and market economy. Moreover, he envisioned Burma with federalism where ethnic minorities had a right to self-governance and self-determination, which Myanmar military dictatorships found blasphemous even nowadays.
