Lee’s motive is clearly that proposition he put to me on the detainees was designed first to allay suspicions in the party that he had not in fact been pressing for the release of the detainees and secondly to produce a public clash with the British which would present him in an anti-Colonial light.
Lord Selkirk 21 July 1961
Clearly Lee Kuan Yew was aware that “he may be forced to resign” and his political maneuverings were designed to “throw a a smoke screen over the grave dissensions within the party.”