Lion Among Leaders

There are few men in history like Lee Kuan Yew and, three years after his death, Katrina Yu remembers the politician who shaped Singapore.

- Katrina Yu

A visionary statesman with a mind for business and a heart for his people, Lee Kuan Yew transformed Singapore from a Third World trading port into one of the globe’s wealthiest nations. Spanning half a century, his political career was characterised by steely resolve and an unwavering vision. This same refusal to veer off course won him his fair share of critics, yet three years after his death Lee’s legacy continues to reverberate well beyond the tiny island nation.

Lee’s childhood hinted little at his future as a firebrand politician. Born in 1923 to a wealthy Chinese family, Lee was christened ‘Harry’ and raised among the privileged classes of colonial Singapore. He was an 18-year-old student when World War II hit and upended his world. The surrender of the British and a brutal three-year Japanese invasion would be what he would later refer to as the biggest political education of his life.

“I saw the meaning of power and how power and politics and government went together,” Lee was quoted saying in his biography Lee Kuan Yew: The man and his ideas. “I also understood how people trapped in a power situation responded because they had to live. One day the British were there, immovable, complete masters; next day, the Japanese.”

After the war ended, Lee travelled to the UK to study law at the University of Cambridge. He returned home in 1950 with a resolve to put an end to British rule in Singapore.

“I saw no reason why they should be governing me; they’re not superior,” he said of his time as a student in the UK. It was then that he started going by his Chinese name ‘Kuan Yew’. 

POLITICAL BEGINNINGS