Thanks to Operation Snip Snip, Singapore Dodged the ‘Social Pollution’ of the Hippie Movement

Dec 25, 2024

Singapore government directive to schools governing hair length for male students, issued November 1971

This week I’m in Bangkok, “celebrating” Christmas as I celebrate most non-secular holidays: by doing the same things I do most other days of the year. Since I arrived on Monday, that has meant eating as many Thai meals as possible, and doing a bit of running.

Yesterday I went out to explore one of the world’s best new urban features, Benjakitti Park, a 102-acre oasis incorporating a lake, wetlands, and over 8,000 trees. The park blew me away, and there’s plenty there for non-runners.

After exploring, I headed out one of the north gates to run back to my apartment, and I ran into a fit-looking man who was running in the same direction. We exchanged hellos, and after I asked him a question about the park, we fell into deeper conversation.

It turned out that Devy – originally from Peru – founded the Inca Trail Marathon, retired a couple of years ago, and although he lives in California, has been using a rented apartment in Bangkok as a base for exploring the world.

When I mentioned that I had just flown in from Singapore, he said, “Oh, wow. I haven’t been to Singapore since … 1973.”

I said, “It’s only a few hours away, and a ticket is only a couple hundred bucks.”

“I’m going to go home and book a ticket,” he said. “I’ll go next week before I head back to California.”

I gave him some advice about dates and hotels, and he said, “I have a funny story about the last time I visited Singapore.”

“I was traveling to Australia, with my mother, and we thought we would stop for a few days in Singapore. Back then, I was 19, and my hair was down to here [he placed his hand at mid-biceps].”

“When we got to the immigration desk, the officer told me I couldn’t enter the country.”

“I told my mother to go ahead, and they took me into ‘the little room’.”

“In there, they repeated that they would not give me permission to enter with long hair. I said I would tie it up, but that wasn’t good enough for them.”

“I had two choices, they said. One, stay in the airport and get on a plane to Australia, or two, let them cut my hair to an ‘appropriate’ length.”

“My mom had already passed through immigration, and we had made a plan to stay in Singapore for a few days, so I agreed to have my hair cut.”

In 1970, several years before Devy landed at Changi Airport, Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew warned of “being exposed to deleterious influences, particularly from the ‘hippie’ culture which is spreading across the jet routes. We are a very exposed society, having both an important air and sea junction, and the insidious penetration of songs, TV, skits, films, magazines all tending towards escapism and the taking of drugs, is a very dangerous threat to our young. We will have to be not only very firm in damping or wiping out such limitation, but also to try and inoculate our young people against such tendencies. It is a malady which has afflicted several of the big capitals in the West and would destroy us if it got a grip on Singapore.”

That year, Singapore banned foreigners who resembled hippies from entering Singapore. “Anybody who looks [like] a hippie has got to satisfy the immigration officers that he in fact is not, and that his stay in Singapore will not increase the ‘pollution’ to the social environment,” read the short statement from the Immigration Department. Official guidance from the Ministry of Home Affairs interpreted “long hair” as “hair covering the ears”, “hair reaching below an ordinary shirt collar”, and/or “hair falling across the forehead and touching the eyebrows”.

Musicians including The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Bee Gees, Cliff Richard, Cat Stevens, Tom Jones and Kitarō canceled gigs in Singapore due to the ban on long hair, labeled Operation Snip Snip, and the government went through pop songs line by line in search of corrupting influences.

By April 1971, the government had banned “deleterious influences” including The Beatles’ “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, as well as the soundtrack to the Broadway rock musical Hair, copies of which had to be surrendered to the government or be destroyed.

The long hair ban continued into the 1990s, but not everyone was unhappy. In January 1972, The Straits Times interviewed a barber, M. Kandasamy, whose shop was very near the border checkpoint with Malaysia. “In my 20 years as a barber, I have never had such business,” he said. “I closed shop at 10.30 pm yesterday instead of 8 pm as usual. Usually my charge is $1.20 for a crop. Now it is $1.50.”

“And I never will go to Singapore/The people there will cut your hair/In Singapore”

– “Down On The Border”, Little River Band, 1982