Lim Chin
Siong vs Lee Kuan Yew: The true and shocking history
Part I: Our man
08 Jul 07
"The men who led Singapore to self-government and
independence were swift to produce an authorized version of their
struggle…,” historian T N Harper observes, "it began with Lee Kuan
Yew's dramatic broadcasts as Prime Minister on Radio Malaya in
1961. The plot and the moral of this story are clear: by the
political resolve and tactical acumen of its leaders, the fragile
city-state weathers the perils of a volatile age and emerges into
an era of stability and prosperity."
However, much to the discomfort of the Minister Mentor who hitherto
has had a relatively free reign in portraying "the period as one in
which Lim Chin Siong and the left were outmanoeuvred by the
tactically more astute Lee Kuan Yew," Harper cautions that
"authoritative new archival research sheds new light on the high
politics of the period."
In other words, Lee's bravado with which he presently speaks covers
up much that took place during those years.
In truth, Lim Chin Siong's fate was sealed right from the very
beginning by the power of the British colonialists – and not Lee
Kuan's political prowess.
At that time British authorities were already devising ways on how
to stop Lim's ascent in Singapore's politics. Southeast Asia
historian, Greg Poulgrain, writes that "In the Public Record Office
in London are some of the observations and stratagems pursued by
both the Colonial and Foreign Office – revealed now more than
thirty years after the events – on how to deal with this rising
star, Lim Siong Chin."
With Singaporeans becoming more educated and the advent of the
Internet, events surrounding the heroics of Lee and his PAP during
the period of independence and merger with Malaya "no longer looks
so unilinear and uncontested."
The emergence of Lim Chin Siong
Harper recounts the "meteoric" rise of Lim Chin Siong as a student
and trade union leader in the early 1950s who was at the heart of
the anti-colonial politics that had erupted all over Asia following
World War II.
By unifying the labour movement and galvanizing the overwhelmingly
Chinese-speaking electorate through his formidable oratorical
skills (he once told his massive audience: "Saya masuk
first gear, lu jangan gostan!" – "When I go into the first
gear, don't you go into reverse!"), Lim captured the attention of
the masses.
And Lee Kuan Yew's too. This led to an association between the two
men and the subsequent formation of the PAP. The anglophile Lee
(Harry, as he once wanted to be called) saw the power of his
younger Chinese-educated comrade.
Even within the PAP, "Lim eclipsed Lee Kuan Yew and other leaders
in the popular following he commanded..."
But in his memoirs, The Singapore Story, published in 1998
Lee Kuan Yew condescendingly described Lim as "modest, humble and
well-behaved, with a dedication to his cause that won my reluctant
admiration and respect."
The truth is that Lee didn't have much of a choice. Lim Chin Siong
was at the front, back and center of a political movement that
commanded national attention. From all accounts, Lee would have
been marginalized if his parasitic instincts had not been so
acute.
Popular as he was locally, Lim Chin Siong did not confine his
politics to within Singapore. Despite British efforts to isolate
the island from anti-imperial movements that engulfed much of
Empire, Lim would draw inspiration from liberation movements
elsewhere in Africa and Asia.
His speeches in the early 1960s repeatedly made reference to events
in the colonial world as well as to South Africa, Korea, and
Turkey. This sense of internationalism had a "deep resonance" in
Singapore.
The colonial government countered by censoring imported reading
material. "This," writes Harper, "would continue, even intensify,
after self-government as the PAP government increasingly saw itself
as pitted against what Lee Kuan Yew was to term the
‘anti-colonialism' of global liberation movements."
In other words, Lee was not the hero who led the fight for
Singapore's freedom. This might come as a shock to some but as
declassified documents reveal, it was Lim Chin Siong who insisted
that Singaporeans' freedom and independence were not for
compromise.
It was also "what really caused the British authorities to consider
[Lim] such a threat."
The talks collapse…
When David Marshall became the chief minister after his Labour
Front won the elections in 1955, he organised a delegation to
London the following year to negotiate independence from the
British. Marshall included both Lim Chin Siong and Lee Kuan Yew in
his team.
The chief minister fought hard, some say too hard, to wrest power
from the British in the internal affairs of Singapore. He opposed
Britain's power to appoint the police chief who in turn had power
over the Special Branch, as it was then known. It was the Special
Branch that gave the authorities the power of detention without
trial.
The idea of retaining the power of internal security whilst
granting self-government, Marshall accused the British, was like
serving "Christmas pudding and arsenic sauce."
Lim Chin Siong supported the chief minister on this and demanded a
constitution that transferred power to the local government with
only defence and foreign relations left in British hands.
The British refused the demand and the talks collapsed. Marshall
returned to Singapore frustrated and, amidst condemnation by Lee
Kuan Yew, resigned as chief minister.
...Lim Chin Siong is detained…
Lim Yew Hock took over the position and led another visit to London
the following year, which again included Lee Kuan Yew. But this
time, Marshall and Lim Chin Siong were not part of the negotiating
team.
More accurately, Lim Chin Siong could not go because Lim Yew Hock,
as chief minister, had placed him under arrest, ostensibly for
instigating a riot.
The episode began when Chief Minister Lim closed down a Chinese
women's group and a musical association. A week later, he banned
the Chinese Middle School Union which provoked further unhappiness
with the locals.
Undeterred he arrested Chinese student leaders and shut down more
organizations and schools, including the Chinese High School and
the Chung Cheng High School. Given the already tense situation
between the Chinese-speaking people and the colonial authorities,
this was a highly provocative act.
At that time any Singaporean leader worth his salt could not have
sat by idly. And so Lim Chin Siong came to the fore and spoke up
for the students. The late Devan Nair, former Singapore president,
joined in.
A 12-day stay-in was organised at one of the schools and Lim Chin
Siong was scheduled to speak at a nearby park one evening.
It wasn't long before the police appeared and ringed the crowd.
Suddenly a mob started throwing stones at the police who then
charged with batons and tear-gas.
Violence erupted and spread, with police stations being attacked
and cars burned. By the end of the chaos 2,346 people were arrested
and more than a dozen Singaporeans were killed.
The blame was squarely pinned on Lim Chin Siong who was
arrested.
But did Lim Chin Siong really cause the mayhem? Who was the "mob"
that started attacking the police?
At that time, Chief Minister Lim made no bones that the Lim Chin
Siong was the front man for the communists who had started the
violence. Lim was arrested by the Special Branch the following
day.
Lim vehemently denied this accusation and countered that the chief
minister was a colonial stooge. As declassified documents now
reveal, Lim Chin Siong was largely right.
Entitled Extract from a note of a meeting between Secretary of
State and Singapore Chief Minister, 12 December 1956, the
archival note recorded that it was Chief Minister Lim who "had
provoked the riots and this had enabled the detention of Lim Chin
Siong."
Poulgrain even documents that full-scale military assistance was
requested by prior arrangement. Singapore Governor, William Goode,
acknowledged that the colonial government was not beyond employing
the tactic of provoking a riot and then using the outcome to
"achieve a desired political result."
Indeed, Poulgrain noted that "[Public Record Office] documents show
these were the tactics of provocation that were employed in the
1956 riots that led to Lim Chin Siong's arrest."
A few weeks after Lim Chin Siong was behind bars, Lim Yew Hock
visited London in December 1956 and was "warmly congratulated on
the outcome by Alan Lennox-Boyd, Secretary of State for the
Colonies."
And yet, in his memoirs, the Minister Mentor concludes that the
Malayan Communist Party "in charge of Lim Chin Siong" were behind
the whole affair and that Lim Yew Hock had purged Singapore of the
communist ringleaders.
…and the talks are resurrected
And so in the 1957 with Lim Chin Siong under detention, Lim Yew
Hock led the delegation to London. But during the negotiations, it
was Lee who "played a crucial role in sweeping away the earlier
obstacles to agreement on internal security by resurrecting the
proposal for an Internal Security Council (ISC)."
The ISC was structured in a way that Britain and Malaya outweighed
Singapore in the outfit. Why was the PAP supportive of such an
arrangement?
Historian Simon Ball said it best: "Lee wanted an elected
government but not one that could be blamed for suppressing its own
citizens."
Even more damning was an archival "Top Secret" document that
recorded: "Lee was confidentially said that he values the [Internal
Security] Council as a potential ‘scape-goat' for unpopular
measures he will wish to take against subversive activities."
But the PAP continues the charade. Recall what Dr Ow Chin Hock
wrote in his letter in 1996 about the arrest of Lim Chin Siong and
other Barisan leaders: "The [ISC] had a British chairman, two
British members, one Malaysian members and three Singaporean
members. Together these four non-Singaporeans outnumbered the three
Singaporeans on the council."
In any event, unlike the one led by David Marshall, the
negotiations in 1957 had little spine and gave away too much of
Singaporeans' rights. As a result, both sides expeditiously reached
an agreement for self-government, an agreement that Marshall called
"tiga suku busok merdeka" (three-quarters rotten
independence).
But self-government was not the only subject being discussed. On
the side, the British also wanted to introduce a clause that would
bar ex-detainees, or subversives as the authorities called them,
from standing for elections.
Lee supported such a move – one that he would surely have known
would cripple party comrade Lim Chin Siong's political
career.
In his memoirs, however, Lee Kuan Yew wrote: "I objected to [the
introduction of the clause] saying that ‘the condition is
disturbing both because it is a departure from the democratic
practice and because there is no guarantee that the government in
power will not use this procedure to prevent not only the communist
but also democratic opponents of their policy from standing for
elections'."
A declassified British memo contradicts this: "Lee Kuan Yew was
secretly a party with Lim Yew Hock in urging the Colonial Secretary
to impose the ‘subversives ban'."
Perhaps this is not surprising as the British had noted that the
"present leadership of the PAP is obsessed with the need to
persuade the politically unsophisticated masses that the PAP is ‘on
their side' and this involves demonstrating that the PAP is not a
friend of the foreigner…"
And this is perhaps the reason why Lee told Britain's Secretary of
State, Alan Lennox-Boyd: "I will have to denounce [the clause]. You
will have to take responsibility."
London to the rescue…again
A few months after Lee returned from the constitutional talks in
London in March 1957, the PAP conducted elections of its executive
council. Lim Chin Siong was still under detention and could not
challenge Lee for the party's leadership.
Lim's supporters, however, outnumbered Lee's rightwing faction and
were elected to the executive council of the PAP.
The British, through Lim Yew Hock who was by then "viewed as an
altogether more compliant tool of the security apparatus," ordered
the arrest of Lim Chin Siong's supporters, thereby securing Lee
Kuan Yew's continued control of the party.
Harper records, that despite Lee's protests against the crackdown
of his party's leftwing, "not all were convinced of his innocence
in the matter."
In his 1998 memoirs, Lee Kuan Yew describes the fateful detention
of the PAP's leftwing leaders by giving much prominence to Lim Yew
Hock's decision while adroitly playing down the role of the
British.
After the talks in 1957, and given the stubbornness of Marshall and
Lim in the 1956 talks, the British were persuaded that Lee was
their man.
Another set of talks were arranged in May 1958 and thereafter
"there was an unspoken assumption that the PAP would govern after
the 1959 elections."
Writer T J S George repeated this observation that "repeated
[British] intervention to ensure Lee Kuan Yew's political survival
confirmed the feeling that Lee was by now Britain's chosen man for
Singapore."
Poulgrain recounted his own experience with British intelligence
officers who were operating in Singapore in the early 1960s. One
told him about a group of officers who were listening in on Lee
Kuan Yew making a speech, railing against British
imperialism.
"The diatribe," Poulgrain writes, "brought only a jocular response
from this group, one of whom openly commented that Lee was going a
‘bit over the top' considering that he was actually ‘working with
us.'"
The historian states plainly that Lee Kuan Yew personified the
essential long-term interests of the United Kingdom in
Singapore.
Lee himself played up this position when he told the British
government that the PAP was really London's "best ally."
The British agreed. Secret documents now show that London's
assessment was that Lim Chin Siong was increasingly bringing
pressure to bear on Her Majesty's Government and "unless
forestalled by Lee, may well be able to make the pressure
decisive."
Lee was grateful. He indicated that "he and his other reputed
moderates in the PAP regard the continued presence of the British
in Singapore as an assurance for themselves."
From then on, despite the British concerns of Lee's "totalitarian
streak that rides roughshod over all opposition or criticism",
Lee's PAP and London "became locked closer together."
Lee saw the power in
Lim Chin Siong.
The failed 1956
Constitutional talks, Lancaster House, London. From right: David
Marshall, then chief minister (7th), Lee Kuan Yew (2nd) and Lim
Chin Siong (partially hidden).
