Indonesia policy

The interviewees discuss the attitude of the PvdA towards Indonesia in the years after 1945. Van der Vusse interviewed them for his doctoral thesis on history (UvA).The interviewees discuss the attitude of the PvdA towards Indonesia in the years after 1945. Van der Vusse interviewed them for his doctoral thesis on history (UvA).

• Drees (1886-1988) was Minister of Social Affairs for the Dutch Labour Party in the Schermerhorn and Beel Cabinets. From
  1948, he himself was prime minister for ten years. The PvdA agreed to the police actions in Indonesia in 1947 and ’48, which was not appreciated by everyone.

• Bernard van Tijn (1900-1990) belonged to the left wing of the SDAP and later the PvdA. He went to the Dutch East Indies in 1930. In addition to his
  working as a lawyer at the land council in the small principality of Solo on Java, he was active in the Indian Social Democratic Party (ISDP). He also founded the Dutch East Indies Zionist League. He spent the war in a Japanese camp. Returning to the Netherlands in 1945, he became a member of the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA) and was a member of the Indonesia Committee. He also functioned in the Social-Democratic Centre (SDC), a left-wing opposition group within the party. He was strongly opposed to the police actions and the party’s attitude towards them. From 1948-51 he stayed in Indonesia again. After his final return, he continued to be an opposition member of the party. In 1959 he called it quits. In the mid-sixties he became a municipal councillor for the PSP in Amsterdam.

• The writer Beb Vuyk (1905-1991), partly Indonesian on her father’s side, lived in the Dutch East Indies and Indonesia for a long time. After the transfer of sovereignty in 1949 she also took the Indonesian nationality. In 1958 she returned to the Netherlands, where she wrote several books with Indonesia as background.

Andere Tijden: Drees and Indonesia