Embedded Files
Lim Chin Siong is a very controversial figure in Singapore history. A Chinese-speaking political
firebrand, he shot into the limelight in the mid-1950s as a charismatic and articulate young politician within the ranks of the anti-colonial Peoples' Action Party. Mr Lee Kuan Yew famously introduced him to the then Chief Minister David Marshall as the future Prime Minister of Singapore! However, after Singapore was granted self-government by the British authorities in 1959, Lim quickly fell out of favour. The ruling PAP viewed him as a communist and had him detained for several years. Lim, for his part, long maintained that he was not a communist.
For those of you who love the challenge of our Source Based Questions, Lim's story makes an excellent subject for exploration. Central to the significance of his life was the controversy over his being a communist.
The book contains the letter which Lim wrote to the Straits Times on 31 July 1961, at the height of the political crisis:
"Your editorial comments and news reports in the last week have focused attack on me. By repeating the fiction that I am a communist front-man I suppose my political antagonists hope that it would stick in the minds of some.... Let me make it clear once and for all that I am not a Communist or a communist front-man or, for that matter, anybody's front-man."
The Battle for Merger book
However.... it had long been the accusation of the ruling Peoples' Action Party that Lim Chin Siong was indeed a communist. Consequently, Lim and other left-leaning politicians were detained for several years, their activities deemed a threat to the important Merger of Singapore with Malaysia in 1963. In a recently re-issued collection of Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew's speeches advocating Merger, it has been reiterated that Lim Chin Siong was a communist. In addition to the transcripts of Mr Lee's twelve radio talks, the book also includes documents attributed to Lim Chin Siong.
"The three documents in Lim Chin Siong's handwriting dispel any pretence that he is other than what he always has been, a Communist open-front leader." (p1)
The role of Lim Chin Siong in the fiery politics of Singapore in the early 1960s, and his eventual arrest and detention under Operation Coldstore, is described very briefly here in a Discovery Channel documentary on the history of Singapore.
The charges of leftist-leanings against politicians in pre-independence Singapore was set against the tumultuous background of intense agitation by students in the Chinese middle-schools, who had become highly politicised and influenced by events in Maoist China. Watch the following excellent clip below entitled Diary of a Nation: 27 November 1961 Chinese School Students Examination Boycott.
THE RE-EMERGENCE OF THE OPERATION COLDSTORE DEBATE
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