Comet in Our Sky: Lim Chin Siong in History

By Poh Soo Kai

Singapore's political firmament is crowded with stars who could have lit up to the island state's history, but were snuffed out by detention and harassment before they could do so. One of the brightest was probably Lim Chin Siong, who with Lee Kuan Yew, was one of the founders of the People's Action Party, but he spent more time in detention than representing his constituents. Lim Chin Siong was the most prominent left-wing leader in Singapore for a decade until he was eliminated from the political scene by the infamous Operation Coldstore on February 2, 1963.

This book is an account of Lim's significance in Singapore's political developments in the decade preceding. It also contains tributes by his friends and colleagues in Singapore and Malaysia, an assessment of his life by many who were inspired by him. This new edition features an essay by Dr Poh Soo Kai and an extract from Lim's posthumous manuscripts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Function 8
• Release date: Dec 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9789811891014

Book preview

Comet in Our Sky

Comet in Our Sky

Pusat Sejarah Rakyat (People’s History Centre) is an independent, professional non-profit organisation that aims to promote the collective and popular memory of the peoples’ struggles for democracy and justice. Its focus is on the collation, classification and preservation of material – written, oral and visual – on personalities, groups and communities, events and struggles, particularly those which have not been recorded or which warrant reinterpretation. The project involves the cooperation of social activists, academics, scholars and researchers from both Malaysia and Singapore.

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Comet in Our Sky

Editorial Copyright © 2015 Jomo K.S., Tan Jing Quee and Poh Soo Kai

Individual chapters copyright © 2015 Individual authors

First published in 2001 by INSAN

2015 edition is published by:

Strategic Information and Research Development Centre

No. 2, Jalan Bukit 11/2

46200 Petaling Jaya

Selangor, Malaysia

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Website: www.gerakbudaya.com

Pusat Sejarah Rakyat

11, Jalan Pendita

Taman Connaught, Cheras

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Malaysia

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First impression: September 2015

ISBN: 978-967-0630-81-6 (pbk.)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.

Perpustakaan Negara Malaysia

Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Comet in Our Sky: Lim Chin Siong in History / Edited by Tan Jing Quee and Jomo K.S.; New Edition edited by Poh Soo Kai

ISBN 978-967-0630-81-6

eISBN 978-967-0960-34-0

1. Lim, Chin Siong, 1933-1996. 2. Politicians--Singapore.

3. Singapore--Politics and government. Tan, Jing Quee.

Jomo K.S. (Jomo Kwame Sundaram).

II. Series.

320.95957

Cover design by Andy Koh/Epigram

Printed by:

Vinlin Press Sdn Bhd

2, Jalan Meranti Permai 1

Meranti Permai Industrial Park

Batu 15, Jalan Puchong

47100 Puchong, Selangor, Malaysia

Contents

List of Abbreviations

Contributors

Preface Lim Chin Siong – The Man and His Moment

Foreword

Exploring History through Comics: The Art of Sonny Liew

Acknowledgements

Biographical Background

PART 1

Lim Chin Siong and the ‘Singapore Story’

T.N. Harper

Lim Chin Siong – A Political Life1

Tan Jing Quee

Lim Chin Siong’s Place in Singapore History

M.K. Rajakumar

Lim Chin Siong in Britain’s Southeast Asian Decolonisation

Greg Poulgrain

PART 2

Tribute to Lim Chin Siong

Lim Hock Siew

Speech Delivered at the Launch of Comet in Our Sky

Lim Hock Siew

Sebutir Bintang di Langit Sejarah

Usman Awang

Lim Chin Siong – My Unforgettable Comrade

Said Zahari

Lim, As I Knew Him

S. Husin Ali

Remembering Lim Chin Siong

A. Mahadeva

The Man that History Forgot

Eddin Khoo

Lim Chin Siong: Some Memories

A. Samad Ismail

LCS: In Memoriam

Tan Jing Quee

PART 3

I am Not a Communist

Lim Chin Siong

An Extract from Lim Chin Siong’s Posthumous Manuscripts

Lim Chin Joo

Comet in Our Sky Today: Embracing Our Anti-colonial History

Poh Soo Kai

Abbreviations

Contributors

Entries from the 2001 Edition

T.N. Harper is a Fellow of Magdalene College and lecturer in the Faculty of History, University of Cambridge. His principal interests are in Southeast Asian history and the history of the British Empire. His major book publication is The End of Empire and the Making of Malaya (Cambridge University Press, 1999).

Eddin Khoo is a freelance writer, formerly a journalist with a Malaysian daily newspaper. In the past decade, he has been involved in artistic and cultural issues, particularly the traditional theatre of Kelantan.

Lim Hock Siew is a medical doctor in Singapore. He was a prominent leader of the left from his student days at the University of Malaya, and was later a central executive committee member of the Barisan Sosialis, and editor of the English version of the party organ, The Plebeian. He was detained without trial during Operation Coldstore from February 1963. He was released in 1979 to island exile on Pulau Tekong before being allowed back to Singapore island in 1980.

A. Mahadeva was a journalist with the Singapore Standard and the Straits Times during the 1950s and 1960s. He was the first secretary-general of the Singapore National Union of Journalists (SNUJ) and the editor of its organ, Wartawan, until it was banned following Operation Coldstore in February 1963, when he was detained. After his release he worked as a research officer in a leading architecture firm, as a property manager in a property development company, and a divisional manager in a local finance company.

Greg Poulgrain is lecturer in History at Griffiths University in Brisbane, Queensland. He has been working on Southeast Asian history for over two decades. A second edition of his book Konfrontasi: The Genesis of Confrontation, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei (1997) will soon be published.

M.K. Rajakumar is a medical doctor practicing in Kuala Lumpur. He was the last Acting Chairman of the Labour Party of Malaya (LPM), President of the Malaysian Scientific Association, President of WONCA (the World Organisation of Family Doctors), and first Vice-President of the Academy of Sciences of Malaysia.

Said Zahari is a retired journalist. He was the editor of the Utusan Melayu after Malaya gained independence in 1957 and led the three month-long Utusan workers’ strike against takeover by UMNO in mid-1961. He was detained without trial during Operation Coldstore on 2 February 1963, just hours after being elected to lead Partai Rakyat Singapura. He was released in 1979 from Changi prison, and was then kept on Pulau Ubin before being allowed to return to Singapore island in 1980. His memoirs have recently been published in Malay, English (Dark Clouds At Dawn) and Chinese.

A. Samad Ismail has had a distinguished career spanning journalism, politics and creative writing. He was detained without trial thrice – in 1946, 1951 and 1976. He was closely associated with Utusan Melayu, before moving over to the Straits Times group, and is now an Editorial Consultant of The New Straits Times. He has received numerous Malaysian state honours and awards. In 1988, he was awarded the Honorary Doctor of Letters from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. He has also received the ASEAN Award for Communications (1990) and the Ramon Magsasay Award (1994).

Syed Husin Ali has been President of the Parti Rakyat Malaysia since 1990. He was professor of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Malaya before that as well as elected President of the Malaysian Social Science Association. He has been author and editor of numerous publications and was a pioneering nationalist leader from his student days at the University of Malaya, then in Singapore. He was detained without trial under the Internal Security Act from December 1974 until 1980.

Tan Jing Quee was a lawyer with a strong interest in the post-war political history of Singapore and Malaysia. He was detained in October 1963 after Operation Coldstore and the PAP’s electoral victory. After his release, he went to study law in London where he spent considerable time with Lim Chin Siong after the latter’s release. He was detained again in 1977 for a shorter period.

Usman Awang is the Malaysian people’s poet laureate. He was a journalist with Utusan Melayu during the 1950s when he began his literary career. He was a leading figure in ASAS 50 and PENA (National Writers Association), the leading progressive Malay literary and cultural movements of the 1950s in Singapore and the 1960s in Malaysia. He has also been prominent in opposing imperialism, Western military aggression and racism. He has been awarded an honorary doctorate as well as numerous literary and state honours.

2015 New Edition

Hong Lysa is a former member of the History Department, National University of Singapore. She is co-author of The Scripting of a National History: Singapore and its Pasts (2008). She is a founding member of the e-journal s/pores: new directions in Singapore studies (www.s-pores.com), and blogs at minimyna.wordpress.com which comments on matters relating to Singapore history raised in the local press and media. She coedited The May 13 Generation: The Chinese Middle Schools Student Movement and Singapore Politics in the 1950s (2011) and is a member of the team that translated He Jin’s novel Ju Lang into English as the Mighty Wave (2011). In 2013 she coedited The 1963 Operation Coldstore in Singapore: Commemorating 50 Years.

Lim Chin Joo (born in 1937) is a lawyer in Singapore. He was detained without trial in 1957 and released in 1966. He has since retired from his legal practice. In 2014 he published 我的黑白青春 (My Youth in Black and White) which includes the posthumous unpublished manuscripts of Lim Chin Siong.

Poh Soo Kai was the president of the University Socialist Club in 1954-55 and its secretary-general in 1955–56. He was a member of the eight-person editorial board of Fajar that was charged with sedition. He was the assistant secretary-general of the Barisan Sosialis when it was established in 1961. He suffered two lengthy periods of political imprisonment totaling 18 years. He is coeditor of The Fajar Generation: The University Socialist Club and the Politics of Postwar Malaya and Singapore (2010), and The 1963 Operation Coldstore in Singapore: Commemorating 50 Years (2013).

C.T. Lim writes about comics and history. He is the co-author of The University Socialist Club and the Contest for Malaya: Tangled Strands of Modernity (Amsterdam University Press, 2011; NUS Press, 2012) and the co-editor of Liquid City Vol. 2 (Image Comics, 2010), an anthology of Southeast Asian comics.

Preface

Lim Chin Siong – The Man and His Moment

Jomo K.S.

Not unlike other scholarship, politically sensitive historical research in and about Singapore has been constrained, to put it mildly. Hagiography and apologia are well rewarded, while dissent from official versions often suffers from self- and other censorship as well as peer pressure. Some observers even point to a ‘growing band of scholars who, more for career considerations, rather than political or ideological reasons are being absorbed into active scholarship in line with officially dictated projects’ especially on the recent history of Singapore.

This is not to suggest a happy, monochromatic or homogenous conformity, but the costs of contradiction and contention are generally deemed too high to be worth it for most in this ‘brave new world’. Many even privately suggest that writing about Singapore from abroad is only slightly less hazardous given the regime’s concerns about its external image. While the heavy hand of the state may not yet have a truly global reach, more subtle and, sometimes, not-so-subtle means of ensuring conformity, or at least of discouraging dissent, seem to have proven rather effective.

This volume then is a modest attempt to try to set the record straight on the legacy of a remarkable and charismatic leader who represented the principal alternative in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and would have led Singapore differently, if not for his tragic fate. More precisely, it is a compilation of several efforts to critically understand and appreciate the significant role and legacy of the late Lim Chin Siong. Usman Awang’s powerful image of Lim’s decade-long moment in our historical sky is most appropriate.

Over a decade, from the mid-1950s into the early 1960s, before he was so cruelly extinguished from Singapore’s public life, Lim was undoubtedly the prime mover of the island’s predominantly Chinese working class population. As all accounts confirm, Lim was moved by a noble and sincere, if somewhat innocent vision of a united, democratic and multiethnic Malaya rid of British imperial domination. His popular appeal, youthful charm, honest sincerity and modest demeanour not only endeared him to the masses, but also commanded the respect of his peers and others striving for independence.

This volume contains two types of entries. The first part consists of four longer historical assessments of Lim’s role. The second part contains assessments by many of his contemporaries, including some material originally presented at various memorial meetings held to honour Lim after his passing, in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.

The first four more dispassionate evaluations highlight the significance of the variety within the left as well as the complex relations among the various protagonists of the period, including the British colonial authorities on the one hand and those led by Lee Kuan Yew on the other.

First, Cambridge history don, Dr T.N. Harper emphasises Lim’s political significance by assessing historical options at the twilight of British colonialism for the post-colonial period. His broad, but nuanced canvas reminds us of subtle, but important differences among colonial officials, as well as of shifting positions and considerations in the rapidly changing times that Chin Siong was so central to.

The second chapter by co-editor and fellow former detainee Tan Jing Quee combines biographical notes with personal memories to offer a broader, but yet intimate overview and assessment of Lim’s life and times.

Then, another close personal friend, Dr M.K. Rajakumar critically reflects on the historical moment they were both part of, and some larger implications of the lasting legacy of their defeat. His chapter offers a dispassionate assessment focusing on episodes and missed opportunities which could well have profoundly altered the course of Singapore’s and the region’s history.

Finally, Australian historian Dr Greg Poulgrain reminds us of the significance – for Britain’s imperial decolonisation plans – of the elimination of the alternative that Chin Siong led and represented.

The second part of this book opens with Dr Lim Hock Siew, a founder-leader with Lim Chin Siong of the Barisan Sosialis and Singapore political detainee for 17 years, who celebrates Chin Siong’s brave and principled life in a moving speech originally delivered as an eulogy at the latter’s funeral.

Another friend and contemporary, Usman Awang lionises Lim as a bright star in the Malayan sky, who transcended his own ethnic Chinese cultural origins to lead the struggle for a united nation appreciating Malay as the common language of its multicultural population.

In a chapter excerpted from his recent political memoirs, Dark Clouds At Dawn, former Utusan Melayu editor Said Zahari fondly remembers his ‘unforgettable comrade’, both politically as well as personally. Unable to attend Lim’s funeral owing to his own ill-health, Said had become especially close to Lim after his ban from re-entry into Malaya during the historic Utusan strike in mid-1961 as he contemplated political activism in Singapore. Arrested at the same time in early February 1963, Said was the last of that generation of detainees to be released, together with Dr Lim Hock Siew, at the turn of the following decade, almost two decades later.

A leading student activist at the University of Malaya (then in Singapore) from the mid-1950s and political detainee for six years after the 1974 Baling demonstrations, Dr Syed Husin Ali now leads the Parti Rakyat Malaysia, founded in 1955 by Ahmad Boestamam, a political ally of Lim’s. His account also locates Lim in the larger maelstrom of Malayan politics, with some moving personal reminiscences.

Another friend and fellow ex-detainee, former journalist A. Mahadeva also recollects his impressions of Lim Chin Siong, giving us some hints of the man’s almost mythic reputation despite his youthfulness and modesty as well as considerable personal insight into the man of the moment.

The fifth item by Eddin Khoo represents the discoveries of a young journalist trying to find out about a man almost absent from the history books who seemed to have awed his own generation. His perspective contrasts interestingly with those of Chin Siong’s own contemporaries and points to his contemporary relevance as well as that of his generation for younger generations at the beginning of a new century.

The second part and the volume closes with Tan Jing Quee’s farewell poem to his dear friend and leader.

No volume of this type can do justice to a figure such as Lim Chin Siong.¹ Except for the Harper and Poulgrain pieces, it lacks the careful archival research so necessary for an adequate assessment of his legacy seen against the context of his times. But precisely because the prospects for this vacuum being filled in the present circumstances are so remote, we hope that this mixed collection of personal reminiscences, historical assessment and Lim’s own words will honour his rich legacy and inspire others to more thoroughly study and appreciate it.

2001

Note

¹. There is an odd man out in the recent volume, Lee’s Lieutenants, edited by Lam Peng Er and Kevin Y.K. Tan (Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1999). While the other essays in the volume deal variously with those who served Lee Kuan Yew in gaining and maintaining power from the 1950s to the 1980s, the sole exception is Lim Chin Siong. Although younger and lacking Lee’s Cambridge pedigree, Lim was never a lieutenant of Lee’s. For the masses and their peers, Lim was the true leader of the people, the alternative to Lee, and later, his anti-thesis. His unassuming modesty only confirmed his stature in the eyes of his peers and the people.

    Lim Chin Siong also somewhat unexpectedly features in several other recent accounts of Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore. Such acknowledgement of Lim’s roles in the labour and anti-colonial movements in Singapore and Malaya in the 1950s and early 1960s, albeit reluctant, is unavoidable. No historical account of the period would be credible without some mention of Lim’s crucial role and towering leadership. Such efforts to incorporate him into official or mainstream history as a prodigal also serve to legitimise the larger project of gaining legitimacy for such accounts – ‘after all, even Lim Chin Siong is featured’, it can be said. The contrast in personal character between the humble, sometimes innocent Lim and the calculating, almost Machiavellian Lee – and its full political implications – will probably never be fully told, let alone analysed. To hope for a balanced and fair assessment of their actual roles in history may be expecting too much.

Foreword

Hong Lysa

Comet in Our Sky: Lim Chin Siong in History, published in 2001 is a classic.

Until it appeared, there was no systematic account of Singapore’s anti-colonial movement.

There was only the PAP story, presented as an anti-communist crusade.

In this narrative Singapore politics during the 1950s and 60s was black and white, with Lim Chin Siong and the predominantly Chinese-speaking trade unionists and middle-school students portrayed as communist terrorists acting on orders of international communism directed by Mao’s China, and/or the Soviet Union. While a discerning reader would not find this obvious oversimplification satisfactory at all, it was nonetheless difficult to dissect just what that narrative was covering up, given the then prevailing oppressive political climate, and inaccessibility of documentary sources.

Comet lifted the forbidding cover.

Conceived and edited by the late Tan Jing Quee and Jomo K.S., it also set the precedence for collaborative publications by former left-wing political actors, and academics. While Jomo solicited contributions from fellow university-based academics, Tan Jing Quee approached comrades and friends to pen their appreciation of Lim Chin Siong as a person, as well as his role in Singapore’s struggle against the British colonialists for merdeka.

Tan Jing Quee explained that he was motivated to produce Comet when he did on account of Lee’s Lieutenants: Singapore’s Old Guard,¹ the work of a group of academics who aimed to examine the roles of members who formed Lee’s team of Old Guard. At the time of its publication, Lee’s Lieutenants was one of the rare attempts to go beyond the establishment’s plot of history which saturated the field, and assess critically the dynamics between Lee and his lieutenants, including the tensions and differences with him.

However, Tan Jing Quee disagreed profoundly that Lim Chin Siong should be included in the volume as one of Lee’s ‘lieutenants’, though the author of the chapter on Lim did make it clear from the outset that Lim could hardly be described as one. Nevertheless, the limits of deconstructing texts: Lim’s speeches and interviews, pitted against the ‘world view’ of Lee Kuan Yew had obviously been reached.

Instead of condemning the younger Singaporeans concerned, Tan Jing Quee got down to working on Comet, which asserted that Lim Chin Siong was working for the PAP’s founding statement and goals, as opposed to the Lee Kuan Yew line. Breaking the stereotype of Lim Chin Siong as a leader of the Chinese-speaking communist trade unions and students, Lim’s friends who contributed to Comet were English-speaking, and included Malaysian poet Usman Awang, whose short essay is significantly published in Malay.

Almost 15 years since its publication, the stature of Comet in Our Sky has kept growing. It has come to define a genre of historical inquiry into Singapore history, the very first (along with Said Zahari’s autobiography published in the same year) to give voice to the set of historical actors who had stood up to Lee Kuan Yew, and been marginalised. The book is in the libraries of the local universities; it has stimulated students to interrogate the mainstream account. I recall a student in her junior college uniform asking ‘And what about Comet in Our Sky?’ at the 2005 symposium organised by the History Department, National University of Singapore, to coincide with the visit of Mary Turnbull, author of History of Singapore first published in 1977. Turnbull’s book, which was updated in 1989 and 2009, has been the standard textbook, for lack of other academic studies on the subject until the 1990s. Even then, with a couple of exceptions, most of the handful of subsequent products did not differ significantly from her analysis.

Tan Jing Quee and his friends took the risk of restoring Lim Chin Siong’s reputation in a Singapore whose history has been silenced by the dominance of a single-party rule since the country’s first general election in 1959. At the time of its publication, not many Singaporeans would have heard of Dr M.K. Rajakumar, or A. Samad Ismail, who contributed chapters, though some might recognise the names of Said Zahari and Dr Lim Hock Siew, who were imprisoned for close to 20 years. Lim Chin Siong himself was at best an ambivalent figure to those who did not live through the times as adults. It was understandably difficult for them to imagine that there was not at least some basis for the relentless categorical allegations against him made by the government.

Historians T.N. Harper and Greg Poulgrain however have established in Comet in Our Sky that Lim Chin Siong was considered a threat to British interests in Singapore, and that while the colonial office documents reveal that the authorities were unable to come up with evidence that he was a communist, they colluded with Lim Yew Hock, Lee Kuan Yew and Tunku Abdul Rahman to ensure that Lim Chin Siong’s enormous political appeal would not lead to his holding any degree of political power. The only way to ensure this was to resort to