Lim Chin Siong

Lim Chin Siong (; 28 February 1933 – 5 February 1996) was a Singaporean politician and union leader active in Singapore in the 1950s and 1960s. He was one of the founders of the governing People's Action Party (PAP), which has governed the country continuously since independence. Lim also used his popularity to galvanise many trade unions in support of the PAP.

Lim was the youngest Assemblyman in Singapore to be elected. However, Lim's political career was cut short by two detentions without trial after being labelled a communist. The first time was between 1956 and 1959 when he was arrested and detained by the Labour Front government. The second time was between 1963 and 1969 when he was arrested during Operation Coldstore and detained by the PAP government. After attempting suicide in prison, he was released in 1969 on the condition that he forever renounced politics.

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 the Japanese occupation of Singapore. The Great Depression had a profound impact on the global economy, even in Singapore. The Lims were forced to move to peninsular Malaya in search of a better life when Lim was three years old. Lim and his family eventually settled in Pontian Kechil, Johor, where Lim would spend his childhood.

Lim enrolled in Pei Chun Primary School in Pontian 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:

) and "Oh, the beautiful Chinese nation" ( zh, c=美哉，美哉中华民族, labels=no)."

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'' (hut), 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, Lim 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 School that, together with an appeal from his father, he was able in 1950 to transfer to The 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 of China; 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 (ABL), an anti-colonial 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 (1931–2017; zh, c=方水双, p=Fāng Shuǐshuāng, labels=no), 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 People's Republic of China 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 Chinese High 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 (SFSWU), 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 Britain and organised regular secret meetings in the basement of his Oxley Road house which were attended by Toh Chin Chye, S. Rajaratnam and Devan Nair, among others. During those meetings, they drew up a plan to set up the People's Action Party (PAP). Even though Lim was a co-founder of the party, he declined to be on stage 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 in 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:

Lim was elected into the Legislative Assembly as the Assembly Member for Bukit Timah in 1955. Lim was the youngest Assemblyman ever to be elected in Singapore's history, at the age of 22. Lim seemed to be an extremely promising politician, even in the eyes of Lee Kuan Yew. Chief Minister David Marshall 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 Chong Lon Chong, 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 The Chinese High School, 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.

Chief Secretary William Goode had suggested that the demand for bloodshed by the PAP was the cause of the violence. Chief Minister David Marshall demanded in the Legislative Assembly that the PAP "purge themselves of the communists", whom 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 Legislative Assembly voted overwhelmingly for the temporary closure of two Chinese-medium schools, The Chinese High School and Chung Cheng High School, 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 (those who had the closest links to trade unions) were hence forced to step down.

1956 constitutional talks in London

Although Lim was forced to step down from the PAP central executive committee, 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. Knowing Marshall's gambit, the British had already begun to look to other leaders in the delegation, particularly Lim Yew Hock

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