John Lee Yong Min (1921 – 8 February 1993), also known as Y. T. Lee, was a Singaporean politician, union leader and businessman who served as the secretary of the Labour Party, as well as the general secretary of the Singapore Cinema and Entertainment Workers' Union and the Department of Civil Aviation Workers' Union.
Having joined the Labour Party at its formation in 1948, Lee became a member of the faction led by P. M. Williams, which increasingly dominated party affairs. He was elected to the party's General Council upon its founding and as the general secretary in 1954, and continued to serve in this post as the party waned and eventually ceased to exist. As a member of the party, he unsuccessfully contested the Municipal Commission election of 1950, the City Council elections of 1951 and 1952 and the 1955 general election. He was the sole Labour Party candidate in the lattermost election and the last to run on the Labour Party ticket overall.
Lee became the secretary of the Department of Civil Aviation Workers' Union on its founding in 1952, threatening to call for a strike on numerous occasions in this capacity. The year after, he also became the secretary to the Singapore Cinema and Entertainment Workers' Union in 1953. He called a strike in the middle of 1955 on two theatres owned by K. M. Oli Mohamed. He was soon arrested on charges of extortion in relation to this, but was eventually acquitted.
Early life and career Lee was born in Singapore in 1921. He received his education at the St. Joseph's Institution, where his teachers included Frank Caulfield James. At the age of 16, he went to work for a typewriter firm. By the early 1950s, he had become the proprietor of the Y. T. Lee Typewriter Service, which operated out of Bras Basah Road. He was also a social worker, serving as the vice-president of the Singapore Workers' Education Association and the treasurer of the Singapore Tenants' Association in that period. He moved into a part of the city which would later come to be within the East Ward and later the Geylang Division in about 1938.
Politics In 1948, Lee joined the Labour Party (SLP), formed in 1948 to advocate for workers' rights by unionists, in particular M. A. Majid, P. M. Williams and M. P. D. Nair. He was a founding member. It was the second political party active in Singapore at the time, after the Progressive Party (PP). The decision to form the party was made at a meeting in September. This was followed by a meeting on 27 November, at which a constitution was adopted by the party and an executice council, which was to lead the party, was elected. Lee was elected to this council on its formation, alongside 13 others, including Nair and Williams.
The party soon became highly factionalised, with major groups including a "left-wing", comprising members such as Williams, V. P. Abdullah, and E. S. Moorthy. Lee found himself aligned with this group. This faction of the party, considered more radical and comprising "white-collar office workers", was spearheaded in particular by P. M. Williams. They stood in opposition to a more moderate faction, the party's "right-wing", comprising mostly Chinese "professionals and businessmen", which came to be led in particular by Francis Thomas, a former chair of the SLP, and Lim Yew Hock.
A third faction, a "lawyer-group" led by Pat Johnson, the first SLP member to be elected to the commission and its leader on that body, and Victor J. Mendis, had led a walkout at the party's annual conference and the ensuing resignation after the group's bid to be elected president and vice-president failed. Lee was re-elected to the executive council, now the executive committee. With Johnson's resignation, this left two SLP members on the SLP council, E. V. Davies and S. M. A. H. Chisty, with the former being appointed Johnson's successor as the SLP head on the commission. In contrast, there were nine PP members on the commission and six independents.
1950 election On 28 August, Williams confirmed that, at the General Council meeting held the day prior, Lee had been nominated the SLP candidate for the East Ward in the upcoming Municipal Commission election. This meant that Lee would be contesting against his former teacher, James, who was with the PP. He was the incumbent, havin been elected on a term expiring in December, and was seeking re-election. The SLP ultimately fielded candidates for all six seats up for grabs in the election, with the PP only fielding four in total. The other SLP candidates were Nair, Majid, V. Rajaratnam, Yap Chin Poh and C. R. Dasaratha Raj in the South, City, North, West and Rochore Wards, respectively. At an election meeting on 22 November, Lee claimed that, while he maintained his "respect and admiration" for James as an individual, voting for the latter would grant the PP a "victory", accusing the PP of "treachery" in their failure to deliver "higher posts for the local born" as they had previously promised. He declared members of the PP to be a "set of reactionaries" who were "desperately attempting to mask their lust for power". A key plank of his platform included clearing the local slums and rehousing their inhabitants.
Lee lost the election, held on 2 December, with just 610 votes. James had received 1,464, thus winning the East Ward seat with a majority of 854. In the election as a whole, the only SLP candidate to win their seat was Nair, who triumphed over the PP's Chan Kum Chee to win a seat formerly held by the PP. Rajaratnam and Yap both lost to PP candidates while Majid lost to an independent.
1951 election
Lee was appointed to act as a vice-president of the SLP in 1951. In September, the SLP revealed four of its candidates for the City Council election in December. A. R. Lazarous, N. A. K. Jothi and Williams's brother P. R. Williams were selected for the North, South and Rochore Wards, respectively. Lee was again to run in the East Ward. Lee Choon Eng was later revealed as the candidate for the West Ward, V. K. Nair replaced Jothi as the South Ward candidate and the SLP did not field a candidate in the City Ward. At a meeting of around 50 residents of Katong, Mak Pak Shee, a former SLP member who had contested twice in the East Ward and had broken with the party together with Johnson and Mendis, was nominated to contest the ward once more, as an indepndent. Chan was then named the PP candidate for the ward.
In response to the proclamation of PP commissioner Amy Ede that it was not the commission's responsibility to repair the side roads of Geylang, known as the 'lorongs', Lee stated that the commissioners should order that they be repaired, even if they were on private property. He believed that the commission should either force the owners to repair them or declare them public roads, noting that he lived on such a lorong himself and that his was a "very poor lorong". Lee proclaimed at the first SLP election rally, held in Farrer Park in early November, that only the SLP could "improve the living conditions of the underdogs who are today being exploited by the few privileged people." In his manifesto, released in the middle of the month, Lee claimed that he would push for the improvement of roads in the city, in particular the 'lorongs' of Geylang and Katong, which were then "maintained in a most miserable manner." He also promised to fight for social security. The clearing of slums was again part of his platform.
Lee accused Mak of being a "renegade" who had repeatedly switched his political affiliation and Chan of having a "shameful" record within the PP, to which the latter challenged Lee to "name a public service" that he had done and Chan had not and one that he could do that Chan could not. In response, Lee noted that he had lived in the ward for years and claimed that he "knew the problems confronting the people there." The Straits Times reported that the East Ward was considered to be "strongly pro-Progressive", having already elected two PP candidates to the commission, and that Chan was thus expected to win the seat with a significant majority.
In the election, held on 1 December, Lee came second with 724 votes, just ahead of Mak's 720, though well behind Chan, who won the seat with 1,401 votes, granting him a majority of 677. The SLP otherwise performed well at the 1951 City Council Election, winning three more seats and bringing the total number of SLP members on the council to six. P. R. Williams, Lee Choon Eng and V. K. Nair won in the Rochore, South and West wards, respectively. They each won over a PP candidate. In March 1952, Lee was re-elected to the executive committee, now the General Council. He came sixth with 81 votes, behind P. M. Williams, Thomas, Abdullah, Teng Ling Siang and P. R. Williams.
1952 election By May 1952, The Straits Times reported that Lee was expected to once again contest the East Ward as a member of the SLP in the upcoming City Council election. With M. P. D. Nair's resignation from the SLP earlier in the year, the SLP then had five candidates on the council: Davies, V. K. Nair, Lee Choon Eng, Chisty and P. R. Williams. Of these, Davies and Chisty in the North and Rochore Wards, respectively, had been elected on terms set to expire in December and were looking to run for re-election. It was confirmed in July that Lee had decided to apply to run on the SLP ticket as a candidate in the East Ward, the only member of the SLP to do so.
Nomination dispute It was initially announced that the General Council would finalise the nominations for the election at a meeting on 9 August. However, Lim announced on 27 July that the council had already decided to nominate SLP general secretary D. Stevens over Chisty for the Rochore Ward and Lee in the East Ward, the latter having faced no opposition in his bid. On 9 August, the General Council confirmed Lazarous as the candidate for the North Ward as opposed to Davies and P. M. Williams over popular union leader S. Jaganathan in the South Ward, though it had not yet determined candidates for the City and West Wards. The list of candidates was opposed by a "dissentient" group of the SLP, over 2,000 members strong, who disagreed with the selections of Lazarous, Williams and Stevens. This group felt that the General Council had been "prejudiced" in choosing to field Lazarous, Williams and Stevens and threatened a "mass resignation", calling for an emergency meeting on the matter.
Davies then claimed that the General Council was ruled by a 'clique', Williams's faction, which "lacked the confidence of the electorate". He revealed that the SLP allowed non-British subjects as members, and alleged that the annual conference earlier in the year was a "farce" that had been staged in part through bringing a "few lorry loads" of non-local members to vote for preferred candidates through a "stupid" constitution. He accused this General Council of attempting to control its members on the Legislative and City Councils and of making "fantastic pronouncements" for the SLP as a whole. He claimed to have not been aware of any action taken by the General Council which proved beneficial to the party, and felt that they were simply selecting those within their own faction as candidates.