I suggested that the hesitation was related to their concern about the possibility of suggestions being made that the Chief Minister was taking action [against the subversives] in order to help Lee Kuan Yew pull his chestnuts out of the fire, that is, to eliminate some of the opposition within the PAP. The Chief Minister said that Lee Kuan Yew had not specifically asked him for help of this kind, but, from their conversations, he knew that Lee Kuan Yew would like him to do this.
Sir William Goode, British Governor of Singapore writing about his conversation with Lim Yew Hock
A week later on the 15 August 1957, the Governor wrote that: “While discussing the PAP with the Chief Minister this morning, he said that Lee Kuan Yew was determined to go forward with the policy of attacking the subversives with the PAP, while Lim Yew Hock attacked them from without.”
Clearly despite Lee Kuan Yew’s claims to the contrary, he was conspiring with Lim Yew Hock with the full knowledge of the British Governor, Sir William Goode, to arrest and detain those within the PAP who opposed him.
It is perhaps because of these Machiavellian arrangements that Lee Kuan Yew was influenced against releasing the detainees who opposed him when the PAP came to power in 1959. Furthermore he visited these detainees at St Johns Island to keep up the appearance that it was the British and not he that kept them in detention.