History
The VSC was formed in 1946 to augment the slender ranks of the regulars immediately after the war, when manpower was badly needed to restore law and order. About 150 men responded to appeals made in the press and formed the pioneer batch of the VSC. The VSC has since grown and contributed significantly in maintaining law and order in Singapore.
The first test for VSC was during the Maria Hertogh riots in 1950, when VSC Officers performed duties alongside the regular forces in suppressing riots. Other achievements include the arrest of a communist arsonist, the arrest of a terrorist suspected of grenade attacks in Bras Basah Road and the quelling of the Hock Lee bus riots in 1955. One VSC officer, Special Constable Andrew Teo Bock Lan, was fatally injured during the Hock Lee bus riots.
Part-time National Service was introduced in 1967. The total force of the Special Constabulary, including volunteers and national servicemen, was 10,000 by 1977. The National Servicemen were required to serve 12 years on a part-time basis. Up to 70% of them were deployed for patrol duties in the divisional police stations, in the marine police, radio and traffic divisions. A small number was attached to the Reserve Unit to help in anti-rioting and crowd control. The VSC was renamed SC(V) (or Special Constabulary (Volunteer)), and SC(NS) (or Special Constabulary (National Service)) to reflect the two groups of special constables. Part-time Special Constabulary National Service was discontinued in 1981, and the SC(V) reverted to the VSC.
Read more about this topic: Volunteer Special Constabulary
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)
“The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)