by Ivan Toh Chun Siong

Singapore’s history, as it is “fashioned by the heroic vision of its founding fathers”, has produced an orthodox doctrine we know as the Singapore Story.[i]However, the Singapore story is problematic; embodying a “complexly nuanced historical…interpretation of the past that (was) manufactured for political reasons…a tactical selection of facts: those that are taken to support the party line highlighted while others are marginalized.”[ii] Thus, an interesting and meaningful way to approach Singapore’s history would be to make a documentary detracting from mainstream history and based on an alternative viewpoint.

The focal point of the film could revisit the life of Barisan Sosialis leader Lim Chin Siong, who currently occupies a “marginal and deeply problematic place” in the Singapore Story.[iii]A re-examination of Lim’s life will provide insight into the forgotten versions of the Singapore Story and in the process, fill in the gaps of a selective national history. This allows for a greater appreciation of our past as well as inculcating a historical consciousness and political awareness that many have bemoaned to be absent in an apathetic Singaporean society.

Just like any historical issue needs to be discussed within context, a documentary on Lim Chin Siong and the Barisan Sosialis needs to be put into an appropriate historical setting. The existing “narrative of the ‘island story’…focuses on free trade and modernity as themes of its history…privileg(ing) sober mercantilism over the pursuit of individual freedom.”[iv]As such, the political activism, the “popular-front politics…(with) Lim Chin Siong…at its heart” would seemingly be unsettling and disruptive in our mainstream history.[v]

However, the documentary could portray early Singapore based on Tim Harper’s reconstruction, whereby “early twentieth century Singapore…was a heart of the intellectual world of Asia…the central locus of overlapping migrant worlds…a public sphere where information and ideas from outside lay in creative tension with an emerging local experience.”[vi] Situating Lim within this rich intellectual environment, even if Lee Kuan Yew’s version of Lim as a communist front man who “fought tenaciously for his beliefs and for his side”[vii]was true, it would be easier to reconcile Lim’s political leanings and activism in the context of a vibrant political milieu.

Thus, while the official version of the Singapore Story tends to leave out the vibrant political climate present in Singapore in its early years, therefore leaving Lim as a distant figure, “in one sense possessing a mythic quality, in another…linger(ing) as an unwelcome ghost”[viii], a documentary which starts off with Harper’s portrayal of early Singapore will not only offer greater insight to the enigma of Lim Chin Siong, but will also provide us with a clearer and broader picture of Singapore’s early history.

The body of the documentary could focus on certain highlights of Lim’s political life. Events like the Hock Lee riots and Operation Coldstore[ix]would make fantastic documentary footage and give flesh to alternative versions of Singapore’s history. The 1955 riots have been described in official histories as due to the “inaptitude of David Marshall’s government” to impose order, culminating in students and workers attacking “police posts, road blocks individual policemen and radio patrol cars.”[x]

However, the riot could also be seen as a reaction by civil society, responding to “the authorities’ punitive act of suspending classes that prompted (students) to respond with combative congregation” rather than an “outburst of mob fury.”[xi]Therefore, in the context of the vibrancy of civil society (embodied by trade union activism) in the 1950s, Lim’s “eminence as a student and trade union activist” would become relevant in a study of our national history today – as part of a larger scheme to understand how 1950s civil society was like.[xii]His role as a prominent leader and mobilizer in Singapore when uncovered in the documentary, would not only show another face of the Singapore story, but perhaps inspire the somewhat phlegmatic civic society of Singapore today.

Another episode in Lim’s life that was not fully understood was his detention during Operation Coldstore. Official versions portrayed the event as necessary to “forestall communist front organizations from…violence…to stop or delay Malaysia.”[xiii] However, in the light of the 1961 defection that created the Barisan Sosialis and left the People’s Action Party (PAP) with a single-seat majority in the Legislative Assembly, Coldstore could be a politically-inspired move to eliminate the opposition that posed a serious threat to the PAP’s political legitimacy. The political climate of “heightened security consciousness”[xiv] brought about by the Brunei Revolt[xv] was described as an opportunity for the PAP to “deal with the communists in the Barisan Sosialis”[xvi] by conveniently eradicating them under the internal security act.

As such, Lim and the Barisan may not be communists per se, but were labeled as such to justify their capture and eliminate the threat to PAP’s legitimacy. Such a claim would be hard to justify as Lee Kuan Yew’s official version was that Lim was “fighting for a communist Singapore, not a democratic one.”[xvii] However, a documentary that delves more into Lim and his adamant claim that “(he was) not a communist or a communist front-man or…anybody’s front-man”[xviii] could provide an alternative view to the official version that “is tinged…arisen from a victor of history’s reflection on a defeated enemy.”[xix]

As such, a documentary about the life of Lim Chin Siong will provide a broader perspective to a one-sided victor’s account of Singapore’s history. “The life and career of Lim Chin Siong reminds us of other pasts, other Singapore stories’ perhaps waiting to be retold, other lives waiting to be discovered.”[xx] A documentary focused on uncovering alternative truths, will undoubtedly be interesting as it offers us a chance to look at the Singapore story from the other side of the coin, and provide a meaningful portrayal of the Singapore Story by recovering pasts that have been forgotten.

The author is a second-year undergraduate majoring in History at the National University of Singapore.
       

[i]T. N. Harper, “Lim Chin Siong and the Singapore Story” in Comet in Our Sky: Lim Chin Siong in History (Kuala Lumpur: Insan, 2001), p. 3

[ii]Crossroads: an interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 12(2), 1998, p. 6.

[iii]Huang Jianli, “Positioning the student political activism of Singapore: articulation, contestation and omission” in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3, 2006, p. 412.

[iv]Harper, p. 8.

[v]Ibid, p. 14.

[vi]Ibid, p. 7.

[vii]Huang, p. 411.

[viii]Harper, p. 3.

[ix]“A police operation designed to shut down the (supposed) communist open front in Singapore” in Sunny Tan Siang Yang, Barisan Sosialis: Years at the Front Line, unpublished academic exercise–Dept. of History, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, National University of Singapore, 1998, p. 25

[x]Huang, p. 415.

[xi]Ibid.

[xii]Harper, p. 16.

[xiii] Yeo Kim Wah and Albert Lau, “From Colonialism to Independence, 1945 – 1965” in Ernest Chew and Edwin Lee (eds.), A History of Singapore (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 143.

[xiv]Tan, p. 23.

[xv] A revolt in Brunei in 8 Dec 1962 led by the socialist Brunei People’s Party(PBR). It was alleged that AM Azahari, the leader of the PBR had contacted Lim Chin Siong and asked him if he wished to start a similar revolt in Singapore simultaneously with the revolt in Brunei.

[xvi] Ibid, p. 23.

[xvii]Loh, p. 11.

[xviii]Harper, p. 20.

[xix]Loh, p. 11.

[xx]Harper, p. 48.

Tags: Lim Chin Siong, singapore history, Singapore Story

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