Malaya circa 1948

Extract from "No Surrender"

The Malaya of 1948, which was about to be plunged into a bloody war, was a peninsula slightly smaller in area than England and Wales. It had a population of nearly 6 million of whom about 3 million were Malays, overwhelmingly traditional and monarchists who respected their rulers, the Sultans. They were also devout Muslims. The Chinese community of about 2.25 million were mostly recent immigrants and, for the most part, atheists: apolitical and conscious perhaps of their good fortune in having settled in Malaya and left their tormented motherland behind. If they were in some respects second-class citizens, this had certainly not prevented their prospering in their new home. The Indians, a much smaller minority, were also for the most part contented with their lot, which was certainly better for most of them than it was for the relatives and friends they had left behind in India. Some, however, had been infected with anti-British sentiments during the Japanese occupation.

Malaya was a plural, not an integrated, society. No one pretended that all the races were the same, but the bangsa, for the most part, tolerated each other's different cultures and beliefs. Inevitably there was some resentment at the growing economic power of the immigrants, who now represented half the population, but tolerance, not pogrom, was the norm in Malayan society.

The Malay Peninsula stretches for about 550 miles: from Thailand in the north to Singapore in the south. It is lapped on the east by the South China Sea and on the west by the 'Straits of Malacca. Mountains running down the centre divide the east with its stretches of golden beaches and agricultural and fishing economy from the west with its tin mines and plantations. In 1948 there were main roads running from north to south on both sides of the peninsula, the main railway line ran from Thailand to Singapore, through KL, the Federal capital.

A Department of Information leaflet of the time described The backbone of mountains, the highest over 7000 ft, is covered in primary and secondary evergreen jungle. One-fifth of the country consists of rubber estates, tin mines, rice fields, towns and villages: four-fifths is trackless forest and undergrowth so dense that a man is invisible at twenty-five yards. The average noon temperature is 90° and there is torrential rain almost every day.

The primary jungle can be spectacularly beautiful with tree trunks hundreds of feet high, standing like the pillars of some great cathedral, its roof a green canopy of leaves and ferns. The secondary jungle however is quite another matter. Scrubby belukar, a tangle of bushes, saplings, thorny plants, tough creepers and sturdy bamboo, combine to create a nearly impenetrable barrier requiring heavy work with a parang (short bladed sword) to force a path. Torrential rains and the accompanying humidity rot equipment and uniform, which then rubs the skin off in the tenderest parts of the body. Leeches search assiduously for an opening in boots or clothes that allow them to get at the victim's blood, while mosquitoes, ants and midges seek his flesh. It was this trackless forest that made up eighty per cent of the country and was the scene of most operations.

Constitutionally Malaya had, since the 19th Century, been a loose association of Malay States, ruled by Malay monarchs but accepting protection and advice from Britain, linked through the British connection to the three Straits Settlements: Malacca, Penang and Singapore.

The normal tranquillity of the political scene had been disturbed after the war by a misguided Colonial Office attempt to replace. the loose pre-war association of Federated and Unfederated States with a centralised system under a new constitution, The Malayan Union (MU) was designed not only to centralise and tidy up but also to improve the constitutional position of the immigrants. Although the Rulers reluctantly agreed to accept the new constitution, it was not long before the Malays began to protest publicly. London retreated and by early 1948 a new Federal constitution, which took fuller account of Malay sensitivities, had been agreed. Perhaps someone had taken heed of the Malay proverb, Sisat di ujong jalan, balek ka pangkal jalan: 'If you lose your way, go back to the beginning of the road'. Malaya reverted to its normal decorous mode in which political discussion tended not to take place in riotous assembly. The immigrant interest in legal rights was much weaker at grass roots level than Britain's metropolitan reformers had imagined. This was hardly surprising since they had emigrated to Malaya for economic, not for political, reasons.

Communist ideas had been circulating in Malaya since the 1920s. In 1939, adopting the Moscow line, the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) had opposed the war against Germany and fomented strikes to damage the war effort. The Party line was, of course, changed when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union and the Malayan Communists joined the British in a temporary alliance against the Japanese invaders.

After the Japanese surrender, the MCP claimed that it had been responsible for the defeat of the Japanese, a claim that many believed. The MCP then returned to its subversive ways, flexing its muscles through domination of organisations such as the Trade Unions, the China Democratic Youth League, Chinese schools and the Chinese press, all of which formed part of what they called a United Front. But their subversive activities were not limited to propaganda and industrial action: their henchmen were using torture and murder.

Although there was a small Malay element in the MCP, and also a small Indian element, the MCP was in essence a Chinese party drawing the vast majority of its members from Chinese immigrant families of relatively recent arrival, and educated, if at all, in Chinese language schools. Such people had minimal interest in integration into their host society, unlike the long resident Chinese, such as the Straits Chinese, who had learnt Malay and English, and saw themselves as Malayans.

The MCP had been encouraged to revive their wartime dreams of taking over Malaya by the triumph of the Soviet Union in Europe and, even more, by the dramatic victories of Mao Tsetung in China where, despite massive US aid to President Chiang Kai Shek and his party, the Communists were winning.

In early 1948 the Central Committee of the MCP directed that plans should be made to launch a countrywide armed insurrection. At this time, although the country had not fully recovered from the ravages of war, the economy was developing well. There was a strong demand for Malaya's staple exports, rubber and tin, and in Malaya's benign environment even the poorest could find food, clothing and materials to build a simple shelter. There were no starving masses, no armies of hungry, angry, dispossessed peasants, or downtrodden, unemployed proletariat festering in city slums, to exploit. By almost any standard, Malaya was a fortunate country. The people, whatever their race, were for the most part content with their lot and there was little of the political tension, which had characterised the relations between the metropolitan power and the local politicians in India during the last years of the Raj.

The MCP, however, was determined to turn this tolerant and relatively successful society into a People's Republic, persuading the population to cooperate, if necessary by intimidation, torture and murder.

It is difficult to understand why the MCP should have thought that tolerant, prosperous Malaya was ripe for revolution. The situation could hardly have been more different from that in China where decades of civil war, vicious corruption and runaway inflation under the maladministration of the Kuomintang (KMT) had persuaded the vast majority of the Chinese, regardless of their political views, that any other government, whatever its political label, must be an improvement on the KMT. It might have occurred to men less ideologically blinkered than the MCP leadership that the population of a reasonably contented and prosperous country was unlikely to rally enthusiastically to a call to revolution. Even if there were significant numbers of Chinese malcontents or of Chinese who could be brought to heel by intimidation, how could they possibly have arrived at the conclusion that a significant number of Malays would support a movement designed to convert Malaya from its traditional monarchic and Islamic society into a Communist republic dominated by atheist Chinese immigrants?

The MCP's strategic assessments were as bizarre as Stalin's confident assessment in 1941 that Hitler would not attack Russia, and Hitler's equally confident assessment that defeating Russia would be as easy as 'pushing down a rotten door'.

It might, however, be argued that the MCP had some grounds for their assumption that Britain would not have the stomach for a fight. They had, after all, witnessed the Japanese victory in Malaya and noted Britain's departure from India, Burma (Myanmar), and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and the Dutch and French inability to restore their authority in Indonesia and Vietnam.

Former CTs, including Chin Peng, have said that the decision to go to war was forced upon the MCP by the defection of Loi Tak, the previous Secretary-General, and his unmasking as a man who had spied in turn for the French, British and Japanese intelligence services. The morale of the Communists had plummeted and drastic action was required to restore it.

The MCP were, perhaps, also victims of their own propaganda which proclaimed that, whereas a British Army of 100,000 had been totally defeated by a Japanese invasion force of 30,000, the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) only a few thousand strong had remained in action throughout the war, and so one MPAJA soldier was worth ten Japanese (and by extension many more British soldiers).

But, however wrong-headed the MCP may have been in their strategic assessments, they were right in their tactical appreciation that hit and run attacks mounted throughout the Peninsula at a time and place of their own choosing, would be difficult to counter. They fought on the principles laid down by Chairman Mao: never attacking unless they had numerical and tactical advantage, and melting back into the jungle before an effective counter-attack could be mounted.

The jungle presented a difficult environment for military operations. During the Japanese occupation of Malaya, Colonel Tsuji of the Japanese Army recorded his dim view of the jungle: "The men covered in leeches and everywhere venomous snakes ready to strike. During the day an inferno of heat and at night the men were chilled to the bone." The jungle had provided the British Special Forces and their temporary allies, the MPAJA, with an excellent base for guerrilla operations and now, once again, it was providing the Chinese Communists with an excellent guerrilla base.

I have found no description of life in the jungle written by a Communist Terrorist (CT); but Colonel Spencer Chapman (who commanded Force 136 in Malaya during the war) gives a fascinating account of life in a CT jungle camp, which adds a dimension to the descriptions in the following. stories of attacks on CT camps. The drill, leadership and efficiency of the Communists varied tremendously. At the extreme end of the scale were the ruthless and efficient professionals of the 'traitor killing' camps, highly trained and well-armed, and tasked to eliminate anyone who was suspected of supplying intelligence to the enemy.

CT Units in Malaya

By 1948 the CTs had constructed large, semi-permanent, jungle camps, well-camouflaged, and only approachable along cleverly designed tracks, which were skilfully booby-trapped and guarded by sentries. With six years' experience behind them, many of the CTs were experts in jungle warfare and their jungle craft was often superb.

Colonel Spencer Chapman called his book The Jungle is Neutral, but that neutrality gave advantages to those who understood the jungle and were acclimatised to it. In 1948 the CTs were jungle-trained and acclimatised: the Security Forces (SF) were not.

Most of the CT armoury consisted of weapons and ammunition that had been air-dropped in generous quantities to Force 136 in the last months of the war. The MPAJA had gone through the motions of handing in some weapons while, in fact, caching most of their military stores for future use.

The CTs had absorbed all too well what their British officers had taught them about the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the aborigines in order to have their help for Intelligence and logistic support. The CTs had already set up a group known as ASAL for this purpose: while the SF had to start from scratch to build up their relationship with the Orang Asli (the original people). But probably the CTs greatest advantage over the SF was their freedom to choose target, place and time for their attacks. So in 1948 the CTs had a field day and the SF, particularly the police, suffered heavy casualties.

At the beginning of the Emergency there were several thousand CTs under arms in the jungle. Against this force, many of them with jungle warfare experience, the police had only about 8,000 men, who had not been trained as a paramilitary force. The army mustered many thousands more but they too were not trained for jungle warfare. In these circumstances, it says a lot for the grit and determination of all the youngsters serving in the police and army that they managed to hold the line.

Before the Emergency the senior echelons of government, although frequently meeting to discuss 'the threat', had never clearly identified a threat of imminent armed insurrection. Many commentators have cited 'failure of intelligence' as a prime cause of the government's difficulties. But the documents available suggest that the faults were, by no means, all on the side of the intelligence professionals. The collectors and assessors of intelligence failed to produce a clear picture of the nature of the threat. But their customers the senior officials and military chiefs, contributed to the problem. They grumbled loudly but took no steps to cure the weaknesses of the intelligence machine.

In any case, it is nonsense to charge the intelligence community with failure to uncover the Communist plan for insurrection, since in June 1948 the details of the plan had yet to be agreed by the Central Committee of the MCP. The increasing violence that led the government to declare 'war' was the work of rank and file CTs who had jumped the gun. The following report by a group of former senior MCP cadres, quoted by Dato Seri Yuan, makes this point clear.

The original plan of the Central Committee was to have ample time for its preparations before launching the armed struggle. It was triggered off prematurely by the inflated psychology of increased resistance it had stimulated in the working masses against the authorities as part of these preparations. Above all the accompanying over excessive emotions of anger and violence which had built up in a number of their cadres who had knowledge of an impending armed struggle, rendered them less willing to tolerate suppressive legal measures imposed and disruptive action by the government. Once issued with weapons they ignored Central Committee instructions. Although they did not attack government forces they went for European planters, police agents and running dogs.

The police were at the centre of the war. They had to travel on country roads throughout Malaya in constant danger of ambush and without benefit of armoured vehicles. They and their men suffered heavy casualties as they went about their duties.

In December 1955 Tengku Abdul Rahman, Chief Minister of the newly elected Alliance Government and Head of the United Malay National Organisation (UMNO), accompanied by Sir Tan Chenglock, President of the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA) and David Marshall, Chief Minister of Singapore, went to Baling to meet Chin Peng in the hope of persuading the Communists to give up the armed struggle. But Chin Peng refused the amnesty terms, insisting that the MCP must be allowed to operate as a legal party, and stalked back into the jungle. Although more and more CTs were surrendering and collaborating with the police, the MCP leadership remained obdurate and a year after Merdeka they were still at war, although by now their army had been reduced to less than one thousand, more than half of whom were lurking in Thailand. The Emergency did not end officially until 1960.

The core of this book is the memories of the youngsters of many races, usually plunged in at the deep end with minimal training. It was these Subalterns, Assistant Superintendents of Police, Inspectors, and Police Lieutenants who held the fort in the countryside in the darkest days, and moved rapidly and successfully onto the offensive. The morale of the Subalterns and their men remained high despite the dangers and discomforts of their lives.

No Surrender