as to who sparked off the riots?" Lee, who was present at Lim Chin Siong's speech, did not refute this. A transcript of the speech by the Special Branch, recently declassified, revealed that Lim Chin Siong had said, "A lot of people don't want to shout "Merdeka"! They want to shout "pah mata". This is wrong. We want to ask them to cooperate with us because they are also wage-earners and so that in the time of crisis they will take their guns and run away." There are contrasting views to what Lim Chin Siong was trying to achieve during that speech. The view was that Lim Chin Siong was a brilliant orator trying to create a "psychological climate" in which the audience would "go out and take action of their own volition". Another perspective was that Lim Chin Siong was framed, and that Lim Yew Hock and the British had found a golden opportunity to arrest him. First detention (1956–1959) Lim Chin Siong was placed under solitary confinement for close to a year, away from his other PAP colleagues, as they were placed in the Medium Security Prison instead. The number of PAP members imprisoned rose in August 1957, when PAP members from the trade unions (viewed as "communist or pro-communist") won half the seats in the PAP's central executive committee (CEC). The "moderate" CEC members, including Lee Kuan Yew, Toh Chin Chye and others, refused to take their appointments in the CEC. Lim Yew Hock's government again made a sweeping round of arrests, imprisoning all the "communist" members, before the "moderates" re-assumed their office. In early 1958, Lim Chin Siong was transferred to the Medium Security Prison as well. It was in the prison where Lim Chin Siong was asked to endorse a document called "The Ends and Means of Malayan Socialism", which indicated that the detainees were committed to a "free, democratic, socialist and non-communist Malaya". Reflecting on the document in his manuscript, Lim Chin Siong said that although he agreed with the contents in the statement, he felt he signed the document "under duress", and that it set a precedent whereby all political prisoners had to sign written statements prior to their release. With most of the PAP members labelled "communist" in prison, the British assessed that the concerns of internal security had been successfully allayed. Furthermore, the subsequent all-party delegations (in 1957 and 1958) accepted