Lee was born into a wealthy Chinese family that had been established in Singapore since the 19th century. His first language was English; only upon entering politics did he acquire a command of Chinese as well as Malay and Tamil. After attending school in Singapore, Lee entered the University of Cambridge, England. There he headed the honours list; he also became a socialist. In 1950 he was admitted to the English bar. Instead of practicing as a barrister, however, Lee returned to Singapore. Appointed legal adviser to the Postal Union, he participated in negotiations to obtain higher wages for postal workers and subsequently did similar work for other trade unions.
A British crown colony and the site of Britain's principal naval base in the Far East, Singapore was ruled by a governor assisted by a legislative council. The council's members consisted primarily of wealthy Chinese businessmen, most of whom were appointed rather than elected. When, in the early 1950s, constitutional reform was in the air in Singapore, Lee formed an alliance with two other political newcomers—David Saul Marshall, a lawyer, and Lim Yew Hock, a trade unionist—to challenge the hold of the businessmen on the council. Lee, however, soon broke with his two colleagues to take a more radical stand, becoming secretary-general of his own party, the People's Action Party (PAP), which included some communists, Lee having accepted communist support for some years.
In 1955 a new constitution was introduced increasing the number of elected seats on the council to 25 out of a total of 32. In the elections, the Labour Front, founded by Lee's former colleagues, won 13 seats, while the PAP won 3—one of which, for a district inhabited by many of the poorest Chinese in Singapore, was won by Lee.
The following year Lee returned to London as a member of a Singaporean delegation that unsuccessfully sought self-rule for the colony. Unrest in Singapore followed, during which a number of PAP leaders were imprisoned. In 1957 the London negotiations were resumed, again with Lee on the delegation. After agreement was reached on a measure of self-government, Lee won a by-election in Singapore by an overwhelming majority. A brief power struggle within the PAP then ensued: in August Lee was ousted from the secretary-generalship by the party's left wing, but he regained his post in October.
The next year (1958) in London, Lee helped negotiate the status of a self-governing state within the Commonwealth for Singapore. Elections were held under Singapore's new constitution in May 1959, and Lee campaigned on an anticolonialist, anticommunist platform calling for social reforms and eventual union with Malaya. Lee's party won a decisive victory, gaining 43 of the 51 seats, but Lee refused to form a government until the British freed the left-wing members of his party who had been imprisoned in 1956. After their release, Lee was sworn in as prime minister on June 5, 1959, and he formed a cabinet. He introduced a five-year plan calling for slum clearance and the building of new public housing, the emancipation of women, the expansion of educational services, and industrialization. In 1961 the PAP's left-wing members broke away from the party to form the Barisan Sosialis (“Socialist Front”), and Lee subsequently broke his remaining ties with the communists. Henceforth Lee and his fellow moderates within the PAP would dominate Singaporean politics.
In 1963 Lee took Singapore into the newly created Federation of Malaysia. In elections held soon afterward, the PAP retained its control of Singapore's Parliament, and Lee thus continued as prime minister. In 1964, however, he made the mistake of entering his party, 75 percent of whose members were Chinese, in the Malaysian national elections. The growing tension between Chinese and Malays resulted in communal rioting in Singapore itself. In August 1965 Lee was told by his Malaysian colleagues in the federal government that Singapore must leave the federation. Although Lee passionately believed in the multiracialism that the federation represented, Singapore had to secede. It then became a sovereign state with Lee as its first prime minister.
Lee's principal aims were to ensure the physical survival of the new state and to retain Singapore's national identity. Surrounded by more powerful neighbours (including China and Indonesia), Lee did not press for the immediate withdrawal of Commonwealth forces from Singapore. Instead, he sought to phase them out slowly and to replace them with a Singaporean force locally trained and patterned on the Israeli model.
More importantly, Lee recognized that Singapore needed a strong economy in order to survive as an independent country, and he launched a program to industrialize Singapore and transform it into a major exporter of finished goods. He encouraged foreign investment and secured agreements between labour unions and business management that ensured both labour peace and a rising standard of living for workers. While improving health and social-welfare services, Lee continually emphasized the necessity of cooperation, discipline, and austerity on the part of the average Singaporean.
Lee's dominance of the nation's political life was made easier when the main opposition party, the Barisan Sosialis, decided to boycott Parliament from 1966. As a result, the PAP won every seat in Parliament in the elections of 1968, 1972, 1976, and 1980, after which opposition parties managed to claim one or two seats. Lee sometimes resorted to press censorship to stifle left-wing dissent over his government's fundamental policies.
Lee brought his country an efficient administration and spectacular prosperity at the cost of a mildly authoritarian style of government that sometimes infringed on civil liberties. By the 1980s Singapore under Lee's guidance had a per capita income second in East Asia only to Japan's, and the country had become a chief financial centre of Southeast Asia.
The PAP won the general elections of 1984 and 1988, and Lee continued as prime minister, though the question of the succession of leadership became an issue during that decade. After satisfactorily arranging the succession, Lee resigned the office of prime minister in November 1990, though he remained the leader of the PAP until 1992.
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