James quarrelled with Lim Chin Siong soon after he came to the detention camp. The row was over the revolution in Iraq. They heard over the radio that Nuri Pasha al-Said had been hanged from a lamp post. He was the Prime Minister and Head of Special Branch. James said, “I hope this will establish a democracy.” Chin Siong replied, ” What democracy? What are we objecting to being kept in prison? If you think that any system has the right to put others in jail for political reasons, then you are put in jail by your opponents for political reasons. If you said people for political reasons should not be in jail, that’s a different thing. That is the basis of democracy.”
“The argument went on and then we agreed to disagree. But Chin Siong showed his displeasure with my political views so I refused to talk to him. He was living in my room so I chose to sleep during the day and he slept during the night.”
The differences in thinking between James and the other detainees is distilled into his paper sent to Wang Gung Wu, “On the Future Of Socialism In Malaya” sent from the Changi Detention Camp in 1958.
“Soon, the rest of them slowly began to boycott me and I stopped talking to the rest of them.”