[1] This partial liberalisation was impeded as the British saw their strategic interests in Southeast Asia being challenged by peasant uprisings especially in Malaya.
[3] A turning point came as the Rendel Constitution was accepted by the British government and resulted in elections that brought David Marshall and the Labour Front party into power.
This new constitution led to the provisional easing of restrictions under Emergency regulations, which in its turn sparked off much interest in politics among the people living in Singapore.
[8] The seeds of a communist discourse was being sown by American diplomats, pressuring the British government to take subversive actions against student and labour movements in post 1954 Singapore.
The emerging work on the Hock Lee incident have foregrounded the experiences of the people through the provision of accounts that focus on the social and economic anxieties that were felt by both the students and the workers due to life in colonial society.
[14] His analysis agrees with the colonial perspective and concludes that the students' involvement in the Hock Lee incident was part of a larger plan of communist subversion.
[16] He attributes the cause of the unrest to union leader, Fong Swee Suan and takes on a perspective which favours the actions of the bus company.
[19] A ten-year education plan unveiled by the colonial administration in 1949 sought to significantly decrease student enrolment in Chinese vernacular schools.
[21] The National Service Ordinance act also disrupted the education of Chinese students as the colonial government was unwilling to allow them to defer if they had to sit for examinations.
[28] C. M. Turnbull saw the cause of the riots to be a battle between moderate and left-wing politics within the People's Action Party (PAP) and attributed the workers' involvement to be one of "joint direct militant campaign of obstruction and violence.
"[18] The book Men in White also frames the Hock Lee event as a "demonstration of the ruthlessness of the communists and their capacity to unleash violence in Singapore.
[34] Therefore, the Hock Lee Bus Incident was not a moment of spontaneous communist action but was the effect of the intersections between opposing workers' and employers' sentiments towards the progressive establishment of trade unions which was one of the positive aspects of the Rendel Constitution.
[36] Workers like Lee Tee Tong, who were subject to poor working conditions and the harsh realities of the colonial political economy led them to be increasingly unhappy with the government.
[47] Four people died as a result, including Andrew Teo, a Constable with the Volunteer Special Constabulary, who was severely beaten by a mob, Yuen Yau Phang, another Chinese police officer who was allegedly burned to death in his car, Gene D. Symonds, an American press correspondent also beaten by the mob and Chong Lon Chong, a sixteen-year-old student of Chin Kang School whose death caught the most attention.
Part of Singapore's modernisation project was to expand its tourism sector and an efficient transportation system was important for this growth.
The Singapore Broadcasting Corporation's television series Diary of A Nation, produced in 1988, covers the Hock Lee event in episode ten.
[57] The Hock Lee incident was also depicted in Channel News Asia's documentary feature on violence and communism in Singapore in the 1950s, Days of Rage.
[58] A reaction to the film was published in the form of a three-part critique named, "Hock Lee bus riots – fact or fiction by CNA?"