Before the war, Lee had considered himself apolitical. But the war – and the Japanese occupation – destroyed the myth that the British were a superior and invincible people with an inherent right to rule Asians: ‘In 70 days of surprises, upsets and stupidities, British colonial society was shattered, and with it all the assumptions of the Englishman’s superiority.’ In his memoirs, Lee described being slapped and forced to kneel for failing to bow to a Japanese soldier. Lee’s experience of British failures destroyed his reverence for them; his experience of Japanese brutality led him to abhor them. As he later wrote, he emerged from the war ‘determined that no one – neither the Japanese nor the British – had the right to push and kick us around’.
After the war, Lee left Singapore for England to read law at the London School of Economics. Disliking London, he moved to Cambridge University. By the time he graduated in 1949 with a double first with starred distinction, he was a changed man. While his stellar achievements at Cambridge gave him confidence in subsequent dealings with British officials, his experiences in England also forged a deeply anti-colonial sentiment. He never forgot Britain’s blunders during Singapore’s fall, nor the class and colour prejudices he encountered in Britain. Inspired by socialist ideals, he befriended political leaders in the British Labour Party and even campaigned on behalf of one of his Cambridge friends, David Widdicombe, a Labour candidate. His growing political involvement in England caught the eye of Singapore’s Special Branch, which added Lee to its watch list.
In 1950, Lee delivered a parting speech to the Malayan Forum, a London-based discussion club founded to deliberate the future of Malaya. Lee spoke of how returning Malayan students, schooled in British institutions, could lead the fight for independence and oversee a smooth transfer of power. Upon returning home to begin his legal practice, the 27-year-old law graduate found a city still reeling from the aftermath of war, battling a rising communist insurgency, and shuffling uneasily toward an uncertain post-colonial future.