interview he gave before he died: "To brand someone as communist at that stage was the best and most convenient way to put him in jail... Of course, my brief period of association with the Anti-British League had become a "useful pretext" to brand me as a communist. But was it my mistake or the mistake of history that I had become a member of the ABL at that time?" Debate over subversive activities The official narrative suggested that Lim was behind numerous labour disputes that eventually descended into rioting, such as the Hock Lee bus riots and the Chinese middle school riots. After the war, the British became more paternalistic towards labour issues, resisting collective bargaining and seeking to depoliticise the labour movement. Without an avenue to seek redress, workers, who were often exploited and underpaid, had little choice but to fight back through more extreme methods. Lim was arrested and detained on the charge that he masterminded the riots, although the speech he made might not even have been inflammatory. In one of his last interviews, Lim also said that between 1961 and 1963, he was responsible for "restraining the situation" to ensure that there was no violence following the referendum on merger. It was also noted in the minutes of a Barisan Sosialis meeting on 30 September 1962 that even having been defeated by the PAP in the referendum that they agreed to keep using "peaceful constitutional processes" to win elections. His arrest in February 1963, if legitimate, contradicts his personal accounts and the archived records of the British. Cultural depictions In 2010, Meira Chand's historical novel A Different Sky published by Harvill Secker featured Lim getting elected, along with fellow People's Action Party candidate, Lee Kuan Yew, to the Legislative Assembly at the climax. In May 2015, comics artist Sonny Liew released the graphic novel The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, featuring Lim, his life story and his political rival Lee Kuan Yew. Upon its release, the National Arts Council withdrew a S$8,000 publishing grant as it found that "the retelling of Singapore's history in the graphic novel potentially undermines the authority of legitimacy of the Government and its public institutions". In July 2015, actor Benjamin Chow played Lim in The LKY Musical opposite Adrian Pang's Lee Kuan Yew, directed by Steven Dexter. The Straits Times''' critic Corrie Tan noted that "the musical's designated anti-hero,