Police raided the SFSWU HQ at Middle Road and arrested the leaders under the Preservation of Public security Ordinance.
On 8th November 1956, a detention order was issued by the Council of Ministers on the recommendation of Special Branch for 5 of the union leaders. Lim Chin Siong was kept in solitary confinement away from the others.
Recent reserach by Greg Poulgrain has shown that the 1956 riots were instigated by Lim Yew Hock, who told Alan Lennox-Boyd, the Secreatry of Sate for the Colonies, in London that he had provoked the violence so as to detain Lim Chin Siong and bar him from the 1957 constitutional talks1.
1 Poulgrain, Greg “Lim Chin Siong in Britain’s Southeast Asian Decolonisation”.