Lim Kean Siew (June 5, 1922 - September 30, 2007) was a former politician and lawyer who served as secretary–general and the chairman of the Labour Party of Malaya and a leader of the Malaysian opposition Socialist Front coalition in the 1960s.
His brother was constitutional expert Lim Kean Chye[2] who founded the Malayan Democratic Union, while his sister Datuk P.G.
[3] His grandfather Phuah Hin Leong, who also used the family name Lim was a migrant from China who came to Penang and became a highly successful rice miller and landowner.
Kean Siew's father Lim Cheng Ean studied law in Cambridge where he met and married a Chinese lady from British Guiana named Rosaline Hoalim.
[5] Lim Cheng Ean was known for walking out of the Legislative Council in protest of the British colonial government's refusal to fund Chinese and Tamil vernacular education.
[7] In the first elections after independence, he contested Dato' Keramat and won by a convincing 5,426 margin defeating Lee Thean Chew of the Alliance.
[8] In 1965, he also won the Ayer Itam Penang state by-election called after the death of the Alliance incumbent Chor Sin Kheng.