Lim Chin Siong

With the support of the ABL, and with his classmate and later political partner, Fong Swee Suan (1931–2017; ), 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.

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".

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.

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.

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 five or six years old then.

My uncle always held me and sang anti-Japanese and patriotic songs, like "China will not perish" and "Oh, the beautiful Chinese nation" .""

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.