 Prominent members of the community including Song Ong-Siang, Mohd.Ismail Sahib, Tan Kheam Hock, E. Tessensohn, M. S. Anguilla, Heerji P. Kaka, Tan Soo Jin, Yeow Ngan Pan, P. A. Beins, Tan Tat Yan, S. A. R. Alsagoff, S. C. Yin, and F. W. Goonentilleke met to discuss the questions raised in Parliament by MacCallum Scott which revealed a regulation that existed and been operation for seven years, that excluded non-European races from the Straits Settlements Civil Service.A public meeting of British subjects of all races resident in Singapore was held at the Victoria Memorial Hall at 5 p.m. on 22 January 1912, to protest "the exclusion of non-Europeans from the Straits Settlements Civil Service on the alleged grounds that the native races, particularly Chinese and Malays, do not pay adequate respect to and do not like half-castes and the existence of peculiar racial conditions among them which has to be taken into account in closing the door for the Civil Service to all other races of the British Subjects who are not of Pure European Descent on both sides."