Lim Chin Siong
Lim Chin Siong was a leftwing politician and trade union leader in Singapore in the 1950s and 1960s. He co-founded the People's Action Party in 1954, and galvanised many trade unions in support of the party with his popularity. He remains the youngest parliamentarian of Singapore to be elected. However, Lim's political career was cut short by two detentions without trial after being labelled a Communist: first, in 1956 to 1959, when under Lim Yew Hock he was arrested; and second, from 1963 to 1969, under Operation Coldstore. He was released in 1969 after he attempted suicide in prison, on the condition that he renounce politics for good.
Early life
Lim was born in 1933 to Lim Teng Geok and Ang Kee Neo in Singapore, along Telok Ayer Street, and was the second child in a family that would eventually have 13 children, although one child did not survive during the Japanese occupation. The Great Depression had a profound impact on the global economy, even in Singapore. The Lims were forced to move to peninsular Malaya from Singapore in search of a better life when Chin Siong was 3 years old. Lim and his family eventually settled in Pontian Kechil, in Johor, where Chin Siong would spend his childhood.Lim enrolled in Pei Chun Primary School in Pontian Pei Chun |SJK in 1939. It was a time when numerous events leading up to World War II were happening both at home and globally. The Marco Polo Bridge incident had only happened two years ago in 1937, while Lim also recalled in a manuscript that was published posthumously that his father's only brother, heeding the philanthropist Tan Kah Kee's call to arms, had volunteered to fight against the Japanese in China:
I was only 5 or 6 years old then, my uncle always held me and sang anti-Japanese and patriotic songs, like "China will not perish".
In 1942, when Lim was just nine years old and in Standard III, schools were forced to close because of the Japanese invasion of Malaya. His family, which used to run a provision shop, were forced to flee to the jungle with their town folks. His family, however, was resourceful. They cleared a piece of land to plant rice and build a wooden pondok, and also raised pigs and chickens.
Post-war years
After the war in 1945, Lim and his family returned to their house only to realise that it had been razed to the ground. Lim's father leased a new plot of land in Kampong Rambah, where he built a new house and restarted his provision shop business. Lim then returned to Pei Chun to complete his primary school education. As with most of his cohort who had to stop school because of the war, he graduated only at the age of 15. As there were no secondary schools in Pontian at the time, Lim's parents had to first get Lim to work temporarily as a shop assistant, and also to get Lim's brother, Chin Kiat, to stop his schooling. He was then able to afford to continue his studies in Singapore, at Catholic High School, in 1949.Chinese High School and expulsion
Lim did well enough in his first semester at Catholic High that, together with an appeal from his father, he was able in 1950 to transfer to Chinese High School, then the premier Chinese medium school in Singapore. Lim was by then 17 years old, and distracted in his studies by numerous events: the victory of the Communists and the proclamation of the People's Republic; the African anti-colonial movement; and the ill treatment of students, particularly of Chinese descent, in Singapore. These were factors which influenced Lim to join the Anti-British League, an anticolonial organisation that received instructions from the Malayan Communist Party.With the support of the ABL, and with his classmate and later political partner, Fong Swee Suan, Lim organised a successful boycott of the Chinese junior middle school examinations in 1951. The examinations were deemed pointless as it was primarily meant for students who wanted to further their studies in China, even though all universities were closed to Malayans since the PRC was established. This attracted the attention of the Special Branch, who held him in custody for a week. When he was released, he was expelled by the school.
Involvement with trade unions
The Special Branch would keep Lim under close watch even after his release and expulsion from school. He tried to learn some English at the Eastaff English School, and then worked as a part-time teacher, but under the name of "Mr Yu". Between 1953 and 1954, Lim then became more involved in the unions: he worked as a paid secretary for the Changi branch of the Singapore Bus Workers' Union, then its Paya Lebar branch, and also became secretary in the Malaya Spinning Workers' Union. In 1954, leaders of the newly formed union, the Singapore Factory and Shop Workers' Union, were impressed by his abilities and invited him to the post of Secretary-General. Within a year, the membership of the SFSWU grew from a few thousand to about 30,000 members.People's Action Party (1954–1961)
Founding of the PAP and 1955 elections
Lim's work in the unions caught the eye of Lee Kuan Yew, who had returned to Singapore from England and organised regular secret meetings in the basement of his Oxley Road house, in which Toh Chin Chye, S. Rajaratnam, and Devan Nair, among others, attended. During those meetings the plan to set up the People's Action Party was drawn up. Even though Lim was a co-founder of the party, he declined to be onstage during the inauguration of the PAP in November 1954, as he felt his previous police record might be exploited by their rivals and jeopardise the party.The historic Rendel Constitution by the British was launched in 1954, and allowed up to 25 members to be elected to the Legislative Assembly. Lim was one of four PAP candidates selected to contest the 1955 election. James Puthucheary, in charge of the publicity for the PAP during the elections, remarked that Lim "was brilliant, and the crowd was spellbound". An attendee at one of the rallies recounted:
There were 40,000 people, each mesmerised by Lim Chin Siong's oratory. 'The British say you cannot stand on your own two feet,' he jeered. 'Show them how you can stand!' And 40,000 people leapt up - shining with sweat, fists in the air - shouting, Merdeka.
Lim was elected into the legislative assembly as a member for Bukit Timah in 1955. Lim still holds the record for the youngest ever parliamentarian in Singapore history: he was just 22 when he took office. Lim seemed to be an extremely promising politician, even in the eyes of Lee Kuan Yew. David Marshall, then the Chief Minister, recalled that Lee had introduced Lim to him, and said that Lim would be the "future Prime Minister of Singapore".
Hock Lee Bus riots
The first of many controversies in which Lim was implicated was the Hock Lee Bus Company riots, which started in April 1955 and ended on 12 May 1955 with four dead, including a 16-year-old student who was paraded by the rioters for three hours on a stretcher after getting shot.Hock Lee workers were on strike on 27 April 1955 when the police used force on them, injuring 15 people. In response, Fong Swee Suan, Lim's former classmate at Chinese High, and now the leader of the Bus Workers' Union and a PAP member, was quoted in the Chinese newspapers that "there was bound to be bloodshed in a revolution". Students from the Chinese-medium schools also joined the strikes in droves to provide moral support.
Sir William Goode, the Chief Secretary, had suggested that the demand for bloodshed by the PAP was the cause of the violence. The Chief Minister, David Marshall, demanded in the Legislative Assembly that the PAP "purge themselves of the Communists" who he placed at fault for the riots. Lim refrained from commenting at length during the debate, except to state that he would not support the view that was put forth by the British. Lee Kuan Yew also did not state outright that Lim was not culpable, and in a long speech during the debate said that the riots could only have been incited because of the way the workers were treated, and that it was not possible to fight both the colonial masters and Communists at the same time. Ultimately, the Assembly voted overwhelmingly for the temporary closure of two Chinese-medium schools, Chinese High and Chung Cheng High, in the aftermath of the riots.
To safeguard the PAP's reputation, Lee Kuan Yew requested that all members of the PAP central executive committee who were branded "militant and pro-communist" not to contest the next committee election. Lim, Fong, Devan Nair, and Chan Chiaw Thor were hence forced to step down.
1956 constitutional talks in London
Although Lim was forced to step down from the PAP CEC, he was still part of the PAP delegation in the all-party constitutional conference in London in April 1956. In his manuscripts that were published only posthumously, Lim remembered that the all-party delegation was not aligned in its objective to seek full self-government, and that it was "like a circus". Knowing that Marshall had made an enormous gamble by placing his job on the line in the case the talks failed, his political rivals - particularly from the PAP and the Labour Party - seemed to have given up on helping Marshall achieve his objective.Marshall's key desire was for the British to hand over the control of internal security to the Singapore government. Lim supported this proposal and made his stand clear during the talks, but the British were concerned that Marshall was too soft and emotional to control the "Communist" influence as could be seen from the riots of the last year, and rejected it. Also, knowing Marshall's gambit, the British had already begun to look to other leaders in the delegation, particularly Lim Yew Hock and Lee Kuan Yew, whom they thought they could work with better. After three weeks, the talks failed and Marshall resigned, handing over the office of Chief Minister to Lim Yew Hock.
1956 Chinese middle school riots
Unlike Marshall, who was very reluctant with the use of force, Lim Yew Hock was ruthless and was keen to show the British that he could control any disruptive influences in Singapore. On 18 September 1956, Yew Hock used the Preservation of Public Security Ordinance, which allowed him extraordinary police powers, to dissolve seven organisations and detain seven people, mainly from Chinese middle schools. As public anger became so strong over the arrests, Chin Siong and others launched a Civil Rights Convention, which was Singapore's first civil rights movement. This alarmed the British and Yew Hock, as the Convention was supported by locals of all backgrounds and ideologies at the time and was on the verge of becoming a real force.On 25 October 1956, Chin Siong gave a speech at Beauty World in Hokkien to an angry audience, urging them to calm down and that their enemy was not the police, but Yew Hock and the colonial masters. Among those who attended the rally were Lee Kuan Yew, Toh Chin Chye and Devan Nair.
Later that night, a riot began after police and protesters clashed outside Chinese High, and escalated into an islandwide riot, with 13 deaths. After the riots, Chin Siong and close to 300 others were arrested, apparently because Chin Siong had incited the audience in his speech to "pah mata".
At the Legislative Assembly, then-Minister of Education Chew Swee Kee said:
It is significant to note that the Member for Bukit Timah at that meeting said that instead of shouting "Merdeka" the people should now shout, "Pah Mata", which means "Beat the Police". Is there any doubt whatsoever as to who sparked off the riots?
Lee, who was present at Chin Siong's speech, did not refute this.
A transcript of the speech by the Special Branch, recently declassified, revealed that Chin Siong had said:
A lot of people don't want to shout Merdeka! They want to shout "pah mata". This is wrong. We want to ask them to cooperate with us because they are also wage-earners and so that in the time of crisis they will take their guns and run away..
There are contrasting views to what Chin Siong was trying to achieve during that speech. The view was that Chin Siong was a brilliant orator trying to create a "psychological climate" in which the audience would "go out and take action of their own volition". Another perspective was that Chin Siong was framed, and that Yew Hock and the British had found a golden opportunity to arrest him.
First detention (1956–1959)
Chin Siong was placed under solitary confinement for close to a year, away from his other PAP colleagues, as they were placed in the Medium Security Prison instead. The number of PAP members imprisoned rose in August 1957, when PAP members from the trade unions won half the seats in the CEC. The "moderate" CEC members, including Lee Kuan Yew, Toh Chin Chye and others, refused to take their appointments in the CEC. Yew Hock's government again made a sweeping round of arrests, imprisoning all the "communist" members, before the "moderates" re-assumed their office.In early 1958, Chin Siong was transferred to the MSP as well. It was in the MSP where Chin Siong was asked to endorse a document called The Ends and Means of Malayan Socialism, which indicated that the detainees were committed to a "free, democratic, socialist and non-communist Malaya". Reflecting on the document in his manuscript, Chin Siong said that although he agreed with the contents in the statement, he felt he signed the document "under duress", and that it set a precedent whereby all political prisoners had to sign written statements prior to their release.
With most of the PAP members labelled "communist" in prison, the British assessed that the concerns of internal security had been successfully allayed. Furthermore, the subsequent all-party delegations accepted most of the conditions that Marshall had earlier rejected, which had led to the failure of the talks in 1956. A fresh round of elections would be held in May 1959, this time for full internal self-government.
The PAP won convincingly, with 43 out of the 51 seats at the polls. With this victory, Chin Siong and his fellow PAP colleagues who were imprisoned were released on 4 June 1959, just a few days after a hastily held CEC elections.
Internal party strife
After Chin Siong's release, he was appointed the Political Secretary to the Minister for Finance, Goh Keng Swee. The CEC rules had by then been changed such that only "cadre" members appointed by the party executive could participate in CEC elections, ensuring that there would not be a takeover similar to the one in 1957.1961 Hong Lim by-election
Although the "Communist" faction had been frozen out of ever taking over the PAP, other problems had begun to arise internally. Ong Eng Guan, the former Mayor of the City Council, presented a set of "16 Resolutions" to revisit some issues previously explored by Chin Siong's faction of the PAP: abolishing the PPSO, revising the Constitution, and changing the method of selecting cadre members.Although Ong's 16 Resolutions originated from the left-wing faction led by Lim Chin Siong, that faction had only reluctantly asked the PAP leadership to clarify its position on them, as they still thought that the party with Lee Kuan Yew at the helm was a better alternative than Ong. However, Lee took the stance taken by the left-wing PAP members as a lack of confidence in his leadership. This issue caused a rift between the "moderate" PAP members and the "left-wing" faction.
Ong was then expelled, and he resigned his Assembly seat to challenge the government to a by-election in Hong Lim in April 1961, where he won 73.3% of the vote. This was despite the fact that Lee Kuan Yew had made a secret alliance with Fong Chong Pik, the leader of the Communist Party of Malaya, to get the CPM cadres to support the PAP in the by-election.
Merger issue
The British had earlier tabled a proposition to merge the Malaya, Singapore, and North Borneo territories into a single sovereign country, calling it "the Grand Design". However, Tunku Abdul Rahman, the Malaya premier, had never been very keen on the proposal, as he was concerned that Singapore's majority Chinese population would outnumber the number of Malays and would hence dominate the political scene. Hence, many PAP members and the public were shocked that the Tunku had announced that he was favourable to merger in May 1961, and that Lee and Goh had secretly been in discussions with him since April. The public seemed to view the Tunku's agreement to merger with suspicion: on the surface, it appeared that the circumstances had not changed, yet the Tunku had changed his mind. The Anson by-election became a test of public sentiment towards the PAP - and they failed it, losing the seat to David Marshall in July.Eden Hall Tea Party and vote of no-confidence
Lim was concerned that, despite the tide increasingly swinging towards him in the political battle, the British might not be keen on a "radical" wing of the PAP taking over the government. To settle this issue, Lim and his colleagues met with the British High Commissioner for South East Asia, Lord Selkirk, to understand if the British would continue to work with the government, even if it was not the PAP. The meeting was held at Selkirk's residence, Eden Hall; this became known as the "Eden Hall Tea Party". Selkirk had given a non-committal response that they would abide by the constitution.Lee interpreted the meeting as one between "British lions and Communist bears", and also as an act of party disobedience. He dramatically tabled a motion of confidence in the government. 13 PAP assembly members abstained from the vote, and were expelled. Around two thirds of the party membership - including Chin Siong - left with them.
Barisan Sosialis (1961–1969)
The Battle for Merger
In August 1961, Chin Siong and his fellow PAP members who were expelled formed a new party, called the Barisan Sosialis, with Chin Siong as secretary-general and Lee Siew Choh as chairman. Meanwhile, details on the terms of merger with Malaya had been planned out by the PAP without any other party or public input.Lim and the Barisan were horrified: under the terms, Singapore residents would effectively become second-class citizens in Malaysia. For the price of having autonomy in labour and education matters, Singapore would:
- Be under-represented in the Federal Parliament for its population, with just 25 seats;
- Singapore citizens would not be able to move freely in the other states, unlike other citizens; and
- The federal government would control internal security matters, even though Singapore had given up the rights above.
The Barisan demanded that general elections be held for a clear mandate on merger. Instead of general elections, however, the PAP committed themselves to a national referendum for merger. However, rather than a simple yes-no referendum, the PAP developed a referendum with all three choices agreeing to merger but in different forms.
The PAP endorsed Option A in the referendum, and announced that the Barisan's option was B. However, Option B was deliberately misrepresented: in a radio forum, Goh Keng Swee announced that the Barisan proposal would make "nearly half of the present citizens" lose their voting rights. The PAP also ruled the radio airwaves - Lee Kuan Yew gave 12 talks on radio on "the battle for merger", putting his case across and attacking the Barisan for being "communists". However, when Lim demanded for the Barisan to be given equal airtime, they were denied.
Frustrated at how the Barisan's proposal had been misrepresented, Lim called for his supporters to cast blank or spoilt votes during the referendum. However, the PAP was quick in amending the referendum rules at the last minute: it ensured that blank votes would be treated as 'undecided' and the ultimate decision for where they would count would be made by the Legislative Assembly, which they controlled.
On Referendum Day, 1 September 1962, 71.1% of voters chose Option A, while 25.6% cast blank votes. Lim and the Barisan had lost the battle for merger.
Operation Coldstore and second detention (1963–1969)
For months before the referendum the British, the Tunku, and Lee had sought a justifiable reason to make a mass round of arrests, including Lim and many of his Barisan members and supporters. However, key British figures felt there was none, and believed that the left was behaving constitutionally, and commanded wide popular legitimacy. But the Tunku viewed the Barisan as a communist problem that had to be solved before merger, and Lee was keen on ensuring his political survival through the arrests.Lim's meeting with Azahari on 6 December 1962 would change the British's minds. Azahari was a leading Brunei leftist who would eventually be accused of masterminding a rebellion in Brunei two days later. After that meeting, the British approved the swoop, and within a day the Internal Security Council approved a round of arrests. The operation was given the codename "Coldstore". But the operation was delayed by almost two months as Lee and the Tunku negotiated over the list of people to be arrested. A list of 169 people was eventually finalised, with Lim's name at the top of the list.
In the early hours of 2 February 1963, Operation Coldstore was carried out. In the end, 113 detainees were arrested, with the rest managing to escape. Lee offered Lim permission to leave Singapore if he wanted to, but he chose to stay to face another incarceration without trial.
Lim never personally recounted in detail his detention experience. The detention lasted six years, even longer than his previous term when he was arrested under Lim Yew Hock's government. It was clear, however, that this detention broke him mentally:
You are detained for years, until such a time that you are willing to humiliate your own integrity. Until you are humiliated publicly. So much so, when you come out, you cannot put your head up, you cannot see your friends. Alright, then they may release you. It is a very cruel torture.
The Coldstore detainees were treated badly. Initially, men were kept in solitary confinement, had no access to the toilet, and were forced to stay in a barren cell except for a small lightbulb on the ceiling and a chamber pot. Detainees were only allowed access to a lawyer more than a month after they were arrested. David Marshall, who conducted an investigation into the conditions of the detention, said that conditions were "radically worse than conditions imposed in the past either by the Imperial Government or by any previous Singapore Government".
Under such conditions, Lim's health deteriorated. He suffered from depression and also high blood pressure. The doctor prescribed medication to keep his blood pressure under control, but it seemed to make him more depressed. Eventually, he had to be moved to Singapore General Hospital, where he attempted suicide.
Eventually, Lim gave up the struggle in prison and requested to be released. On 21 July 1969, Lim wrote two letters: one addressed to Lee Kuan Yew, and one to Lee Siew Choh. In those letters, Lim stated that he had "completely lost confidence in the international communist movement", and that "communism is not as ideal as what we think it is". In the letter, Lim also resigned from the Barisan Sosialis, marking an end to his political career.
Later years
Lim was released along with Wong Chui Wan, his fiancée and a former colleague in the General Employees Union along Middle Road. They married in 1970, and had two sons. In England he worked odd jobs, and also tried to nurse himself back to health. However, his condition remained fragile. In 1980 he suffered a heart attack and underwent a bypass operation in 1982.In 1984, Lim returned to Singapore with his family, and lived in Serangoon Gardens. He died of a heart attack on 5 February 1996.
Legacy
Lim's long list of achievements include co-founding the PAP, galvanising the trade unions against colonialism, and predicting correctly that the marriage of Malaya and Singapore as a single country would be short-lived. Yet these achievements have generally been overshadowed by the allegations that:- He was a communist, and that Singapore could have become communist; and
- He was the mastermind behind numerous subversive activities against the government.
Debate over communist leanings
Apart from the letters he wrote upon his release in 1969, Lim had also denied consistently that he was a Communist. He did so for the last time in 1995, in the final interview he gave before he died:
To brand someone as Communist at that stage was the best and most convenient way to put him in jail... Of course, my brief period of association with the Anti-British League had become a "useful pretext" to brand me as a Communist. But was it my mistake or the mistake of history that I had become a member of the ABL at that time?
Debate over subversive activities
The official narrative suggested that Lim was behind numerous labour disputes that eventually descended into rioting, such as the Hock Lee riots and the Chinese middle school riots. After the war, the British became more paternalistic towards labour issues, resisting collective bargaining and seeking to depoliticise the labour movement. Without an avenue to seek redress, workers, who were often exploited and underpaid, had little choice but to fight back through more extreme methods. Lim was arrested and detained on the charge that he masterminded the riots, although the speech he made might not even have been inflammatory.In one of his last interviews, Lim also said that between 1961 and 1963, he was responsible for "restraining the situation" to ensure that there was no violence following the referendum on merger. It was also noted in the minutes of a Barisan meeting on 30 September 1962 that even having been defeated by the PAP in the referendum that they agreed to keep using "peaceful constitutional processes" to win elections. His arrest in February 1963, if legitimate, contradicts his personal accounts and the archived records of the British.
Cultural depictions
In 2010, author Meira Chand's historical novel A Different Sky featured Lim getting elected, along with fellow People's Action Party candidate, Lee Kuan Yew, to the Legislative Assembly at the climax.In May 2015, comics artist Sonny Liew released the graphic novel The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, featuring Lim, his life story and his political rival Lee. Upon its release, the National Arts Council withdrew a $8,000 publishing grant as it found that "the retelling of Singapore's history in the graphic novel potentially undermines the authority of legitimacy of the Government and its public institutions".
In July 2015, actor Benjamin Chow played Lim in The LKY Musical opposite Adrian Pang's Lee Kuan Yew, directed by Steven Dexter. The Straits Times' critic Corrie Tan noted that "the musical's designated anti-hero, Lim Chin Siong, is thankfully not relegated to the ranks of villainy and one-note declarations... the charismatic left-wing leader, with his compelling oratory and rapport with the common man ". During the musical's run, actor Chow published a blog post, later removed, on how the writers had been "extremely open to input" from the Ministry of Communications and Information.
In September 2015, Jonathan Lim's Chestnuts 50 The UnbelYeevable Jubilee Edition live parody sketch show featured a 'bromance' between Lim and Lee.