The Workers' Party (WP) is a major social democratic political party in Singapore and one of the two contemporary political parties represented in Parliament, alongside the governing People's Action Party (PAP). The WP sits on the centre-left of the political spectrum and is currently the largest and oldest opposition party in Parliament, having contested every parliamentary election since 1959 against the dominant PAP. Since the 2011 general election, the WP has been the only political party, other than the PAP, with elected Members of Parliament (MPs).
The Workers' Party was founded in 1957 by David Marshall, having previously led the more left-wing Labour Front (LF) to victory in 1955, forming a minority government and becoming the first Chief Minister of Singapore. After the British initially rejected his proposal for home rule, he resigned as leader of the LF and from his seat in 1957. After creating the WP, Marshall returned as its first representative in the Legislative Assembly as a Member for Anson in 1961, before resigning in 1963 after disagreements with some members of the party. The party would thereafter decline in prominence during the 1960s and 1970s before its re-emergence in 1981, when party leader Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam became the first opposition MP to be elected since Singapore's independence, having defeated the PAP's candidate at a by-election in Anson. Jeyaretnam was re-elected in 1984 with increased votes but subsequently lost his seat in 1986 following a conviction, which he claimed was politically motivated, for falsely accounting the party's funds. Other former members of the WP include former Law Society President Francis Seow and socialist activist Lee Siew Choh.
Since 1991, the party's safe seat and stronghold has been Hougang Single Member Constituency (SMC), which was represented by Low Thia Khiang for two decades. The popularity of the party in Hougang has been attributed to the area's Teochew heritage and Low's personal affability. Low moved to Aljunied Group Representation Constituency (GRC) in 2011, where he led the first team from an opposition party to win a GRC. In 2020, the WP became the first opposition party to win multiple GRCs in a single general election after defeating the PAP in the newly created Sengkang GRC while retaining Aljunied GRC and Hougang SMC. Positioning itself as a "check-and-balance" in Parliament, it supports a progressive approach to civic nationalism, reducing the voting age from 21 to 18, establishing a universal minimum wage, and providing more flexibility in regard to the Central Provident Fund. In recent years, members of the WP have worn light blue uniforms during political campaigns to represent the party's support for blue-collar workers.
History 1956–1965: Pre-independence and beginnings
In 1956, Singapore's first Chief Minister, David Saul Marshall, resigned from the leadership of the Labour Front (the largest party in the assembly at the time) following the failure of the Merdeka Talks that had sought self-governance for Singapore. He remained as the party's backbencher in the Legislative Assembly until his resignation in 1957. On 3 November that year, Marshall went on to found the Workers' Party.
1965–1986: Post-independence, debut of J. B. Jeyaretnam
On 9 August 1965, Singapore was declared independent, and the Legislative Assembly was reformed as the Parliament of Singapore. 1968 was the first post-independence election, which saw PAP winning every one of 58 contested seats (51 by a walkover, and the other seven on polling day), due to the election boycotting of the main opposition party at the time, the Barisan Sosialis, leading to the mass arrests of most of its leadership since 1963.
Having become a small and fairly insignificant party by the late-1960s, the party saw a rejuvenation upon the recruitment of a group of lawyers, including J. B. Jeyaretnam, who became the party's Secretary-General. Despite fielding a large slate of candidates in succeeding elections, the ruling PAP still managed to retain its monopoly by winning every contested seat for the next three general elections (including by-elections).
On 13 October 1981, Devan Nair vacated his Anson seat to assume his role as the nation's third President, precipitating the by-election; on 31 October, the party's candidate Jeyaretnam secured a historic victory as he became the first opposition MP-elect to be elected in Parliament with 51.9% (7,012) of the valid votes cast, beating PAP's Pang Kim Hin's 47.1% (6,359) and UPF's Harbans Singh's 1.0% (131). This also marked the first time since 1961 that the Anson electorate voted the WP into the assembly. Jeyaretnam then went on to hold the constituency in the 1984 elections with an increased margin of 56.8%.
However, two months later, Jeyaretnam was charged with falsely accounting the party's funds. In October 1986, Senior District Judge Michael Khoo found Jeyaretnam innocent of all charges but one. The prosecution later appealed for a retrial to be held in a different district court; Jeyaretnam was found guilty for all the charges, which resulted in him losing his seat and was issued a five-year election ban, though he subsequently remained as the party's Secretary-General.
1987–1997: Barisan Sosialis merger, debut of Low Thia Khiang
In 1987, some Workers' Party members were among a group of 22 people arrested by Singapore's Internal Security Department as part of Operation Spectrum, accused of being Marxists. They were released on condition that they kept out of politics.
Prior to the 1988 general elections, Barisan Sosialis and the Singapore United Front merged with the party to gather the opposition parties together to challenge the PAP and also the need to form teams of candidates to contest in the new Group Representation Constituency (GRC) system for the upcoming election. WP did not win any constituency but came very close to winning the Eunos GRC, in which the party's team, consisting of Francis Seow (a former head of the Bar Society who had briefly been detained under the Internal Security Act prior to the general election), Lee Siew Choh (a former chairman of the Barisan Sosialis and former PAP Assemblyman from 1959 to 1961) and Mohd Khalit bin Mohd Baboo, scored 49.1%; only one opposition MP was returned to Parliament (Chiam See Tong of the Singapore Democratic Party). However, since the team garnered the highest percentage of the vote secured by losing opposition candidates during the election, the party was eligible to nominate two members of its team to become Non-constituency MPs (NCMPs). The party had refused to nominate NCMPs in the past, but this time they nominated Lee and Seow to do so. While Lee accepted the offer, Seow however declined to do so and instead fled the United States following accusations of espionage. The election also marked the political debut of then-organising secretary Low Thia Khiang, who contested the three-seat Tiong Bahru GRC, and would capture its eventual safe seat of Hougang SMC in the 1991 general election.
Jeyaretnam was sued for slander by then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew for comments he made at an election rally in 1988; Jeyaretnam was ordered to pay Lee damages of S$260,000 including costs following an unsuccessful lawsuit. Jeyaretnam was again sued and paid damages of S$465,000 and S$250,000 in court costs for an article he wrote in an issue of the party's newspaper, The Hammer, where he called Indian PAP leaders stooges.
During the 1991 election campaign, one of the WP's candidates in Eunos GRC, Jufrie Mahmood, came under fire from the PAP and Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong as they accused him of being a Malay chauvinist, a claim which Jufrie strongly denied. As with the 1988 election, the WP lost to the PAP team while polling strongly in the GRC (47.6% to 52.4%). No NCMPs were offered as the opposition (including Low) elected now occupied a combined four seats in parliament. Following the election, Low became the Assistant Secretary-General.
A by-election in 1992 for Marine Parade GRC was expected to mark the return of Jeyaretnam to electoral politics after his Parliamentary ban had expired; however, the team ultimately did not participate due to one of its candidates turning up late on the nomination day. In 1993, Jeyaretnam and another candidate, Tan Soo Phuan (now a member of Democratic Progressive Party), attempted to seek candidacy in the first-ever presidential election; however, both candidates were not granted the Certificate of Eligibility, an item presidential candidates required to complete their nominations. In 1996, Lee Siew Choh resigned from the party, citing differences with Jeyaretnam.
1997–2006: Renewal in the new millennium
In the 1997 elections, Low was re-elected as Hougang MP in the 1997 general election. Besides Low, only one other opposition MP was elected (Chiam See Tong, who left SDP to join the Singapore People's Party); one NCMP was to be nominated from the WP team for Cheng San GRC, as they had polled better than any other losing opposition candidates with 45.2% of the vote share; the party selected secretary-general (and candidate) Jeyaretnam as the NCMP, marking his return to Parliament after 11 years.
During the election campaign, another candidate who was part of the WP's team in Cheng San, lawyer Tang Liang Hong, drew particular attention from the PAP as they accused him of being an anti-Christian and anti-Muslim Chinese chauvinist. Tang, who insisted all he was trying to do was to "better represent the Chinese community and ask questions on their behalf", vigorously denied this charge and accused the PAP of trying to win votes by damaging his reputation and preventing people from voting him. Tang also attacked the PAP with regards to the Hotel Properties Ltd case (which started when the Stock Exchange of Singapore criticised Hotel Properties Ltd for its "tardiness" in disclosing details of sales of its condominium units to directors and their family members).Ven Sreenivasan and Michelle Low, "Analysts support SES censure of HPL", in: Business Times, 24 April 1996, p. 15 Lee, who had purchased one of the units, claimed that Tang was trying to milk this issue for political capital; the PAP sued Tang for defamation and branding the PAP leadership as liars, for a total of S$13.6 million of damages. Tang fled to Australia shortly after the election, and never returned until his death in 2025.
Prior to the 2001 election, Jeyaretnam was discharged from his NCMP seat due to an undischarged bankruptcy (having failed to keep up with payments of S$120,000 worth of damages owed from a libel suit brought by Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong and other PAP leaders following comments he had made at an election rally in 1997, but since fulfilled and discharged from bankruptcy in May 2007); Jeyaretnam then relinquished his Secretary-General post to Low. The party became acrimonious as Jeyaretnam later accused Low of not doing enough to help him pay the damages from the libel suit. In response, Low claimed that he had always looked upon Jeyaretnam as an elder and had done everything possible to help him. Jeyaretnam left WP to form Reform Party in June 2008, before dying of heart failure three months later.