October 1914. He part of third generation of overseas Chinese in Singapore, and son of Lim Teck Locke. Lim was the eldest son in his family and has a brother and two sisters. He attended English language schools; the Pearl's Hill School and Outram School from a young age. He obtained excellent results and received a four-year scholarship. He was admitted to the prestigious Raffles Institution and completed his secondary education in 1931. Lim had planned to study law in the United Kingdom upon graduation, and was ready to sit for Cambridge entrance examinations. However, his father's sudden death made it impossible. He was only 37 years old when he died, so the assets he left behind was put under supervision of Lim's uncle, while Lim was being mistreated. As the Great Depression greatly impacted Singapore's economy, he had to earn a living by provision of "private tuition" during his post- secondary education years to support his family, made up of his mother and younger siblings. Soon, he was employed as a junior clerk of the Imperial Chemical Industries in 1934, he transferred to Cold Storage as a junior clerk, which enabled him to earn a stable income. He was promoted as stenographer because of his outstanding performance in shorthand. During World War II, Japan launched the Pacific War in December 1941, leading to the fall of Singapore in February 1942. Lim lived on selling charcoal, until the end of Japanese occupation and Singapore's revert to British rule in 1945, when he returned to Cold Storage as private secretary. Early political career Lim became involved in trade union activities right after the war. He resigned from Cold Storage and worked as full-time Secretary-General of the Singapore Clerical and Administrative Workers' Union (SCAWU). In March 1947, he became the first Singaporean to receive the British Council scholarship, to study local trade unions in Britain. With his trade union background, Lim joined the newly formed Singaporean Progressive Party (PP) led by Tan Chye Cheng to start off his political career. In fact, there was a major change in politics of post-war Singapore. On the one hand, there were increasing calls for independence, and on the other hand, the Straits Settlements was dissolved in 1946 by the British Government, while the Legislative Council of the Straits Settlements was restructured in 1948 as the Legislative Council of Singapore. In March 1948, Singapore held its