In 1947, R.G Balan, along with Rashid Maidin and Wu Tien Wang, attended the Communist Parties Conference of Commonwealth Nations in London, as representatives of the Communist Party in Malaya. After his return, he organised the Perak Rubber Labourers Union. R.G. Balan remained as a labour organiser until he was detained without trial by the colonial authority on 30 May 1948 and not released until 1961.[5]
In 1955, while he was under detention, R.G. Balan was appointed a vice chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Malaya. They first met R.G. Balan in Ipoh immediately after the war had ended, when most of the underground party members emerged as victors of the Pacific War in Malaya.