Shortly after midnight on December 8, 1941, Japanese soldiers landed in northeast Malaya. During the subsequent fifty-four-day campaign, a combination of Japanese skill, air superiority, and British ineptitude caused the worst loss in the history of the British Empire. When Singapore surrendered, the British had lost over 138,000 men, most of them prisoners, while inflicting fewer than 10,000 casualties on the Japanese. Before the fall of Singapore, British officers managed to organize a small band of some 200 Chinese guerrillas led by the secretary general of the MCP. The guerrillas grandiloquently named their armed wing the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army. The British intended the guerrillas to fight against the Japanese occupation. Instead, guerrilla leaders mostly ignored the Japanese and concentrated on preparing for a postwar battle against the British. Toward this goal, they cultivated relationships with a class of poor, marginalized Chinese who lived along the fringes of the Malaya jungle.
Before the Japanese invasion, Malaya’s rural population was almost entirely Malay. Rural Malays lived in villages where they cultivated rice, fruit crops, and small rubber plantations. The Chinese lived in towns or worked in the mines and rubber plantations. During the war years, urban unemployment, the closure of many mines and plantations, and Japanese brutality forced thousands of Chinese to move to undeveloped land along the jungle edge. Because they subsisted on land owned by Malay sultans, they were called squatters. However, they were not squatters in the Western sense in that they were not migrants. Rather the Chinese remained on the land for years, with individual families erecting simple bamboo and palm leaf shelters, clearing small plots of land, and eking out an existence by growing vegetables. They did not form hamlets or villages; rather their homes were scattered along the jungle fringe. About a half million Chinese, 10 percent of the country’s population, lived in this way and they became the principal pillar supporting the anti-British insurgency.
During the war years, while the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army opposed Japanese occupation, most Malays cooperated with the Japanese. While their level of collaboration annoyed the British, it was in fact little different from Malay conduct toward the British before the war. In 1945 the British returned to Malaya and found themselves much diminished in the eyes of the inhabitants. Having been badly trounced by one Asian people at the start of the war, the British no longer had an aura of invincibility. Still, the reopening of the mines and plantations brought some return to normality. However, although many Chinese men resumed their work in the mines and on the plantations, their families remained on their jungle clearings. Meanwhile, the Chinese-controlled Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army established the Old Comrades Association, which ostensibly provided welfare for war veterans. In fact, it was a front organization whose real goal was to preserve a military framework so the guerrillas could be rapidly mobilized when the leaders called them to fight.
WORLD WAR II almost brought Great Britain to her knees. Postwar British politicians understood their nation’s weakness and resolved to cede selected colonial possessions back to the native people. In Malay this initially took the form of the Malayan Union. Nearly the entire Malay population disagreed with the British decision to create the Malayan Union. The Malay majority opposed granting the Chinese and Indian minorities equal rights, particularly equal voting opportunities. Consequently, when the British celebrated the inauguration of a new Malay constitution in April 1946, no Malay political leaders or government officials attended. In response to Malay protests, the British wisely abandoned the constitution.
The year 1948 witnessed the signing of the Federation of Malaya Agreement. Its terms provided for a strong central government headed by a British high commissioner. He, in turn, appointed executive and legislative councils. Each of the federation’s nine states retained its sovereignty, with each Malay sultan, or state ruler, accepting a British protectorate. This agreement was an acceptable arrangement for the Malay majority since it provided for considerable power at the state level and effectively disenfranchised the Chinese minority.
Consequently, the Chinese community in Malaya had little reason to support the Malay-dominated government. They held a contemptuous attitude toward all things Malayan and squirmed under the humiliating knowledge that these Malays and their British masters treated them as second-class citizens. Indeed, the government denied the Chinese full citizenship rights, Malays received preferential treatment in selection for government posts, and the Chinese rural squatters did not own the land they lived on even though no one before them had done anything to make their small plots productive. At the same time, an active minority of the Chinese living in Malaya considered Communism a political system devised by Chinese people working for the betterment of the Chinese. These ethnic and political tensions provided fertile soil for the Chinese-run Malayan Communist Party to plant the seeds of insurrection.
Back in 1946 and 1947, Malayan Communists had tried to implement the classic Russian pattern of revolution by seeding popular discontent through propaganda and economic disruption. The Communists exploited popular grievances by openly and legally spreading their message in schools, clubs, and youth groups. They had a particularly strong presence in the country’s labor unions, so they tried to cause civil strife with strikes and similar nonviolent actions. Only a minority of union workers ever wholeheartedly supported these efforts. Indeed, when the British responded with restrictive labor laws that thwarted these efforts, most people approved. They were tired of conflict and disruption. All they wanted was a return to normality. By 1948 it was clear to the Communist leaders that the Russian revolutionary model was not working, so they converted to Mao’s model. In June 1948 the new secretary general of the Malayan Communist Party, Chin Peng, mobilized the former anti-Japanese guerrilla army and committed it to a Maoist-inspired guerrilla war.
Terror Comes to Malaya
Born of immigrant parents in Malaya in 1924, Chin Peng had risen to prominence during World War II when he joined other Chinese Malayans who took to the jungle to fight the Japanese. His particular duty was as liaison officer to British commandos who arrived by submarine and parachute during the Japanese occupation. Although Chin Peng saw limited combat service, he displayed enough energy and drive to receive two British campaign medals as well as the prestigious Order of the British Empire, an award an embarrassed British government later withdrew. Chin Peng’s particular skills lay in the art of political infighting. For military decisions, he relied on the much more competent former chairman of the party’s Central Military Committee, Lau Yew.
Like Chin Peng, Lau Yew had at one time been viewed favorably by the British. He had led the Malayan contingent in the grand Victory Parade in London just after the war. Then and thereafter, Lau Yew closely studied Mao Tsetung’s dictates. The party’s decision to wage a guerrilla war against the British meant that it was his responsibility to devise a victory plan. Lau Yew’s plan followed the four-phase formula for revolutionary warfare. During phase one guerrillas would attack isolated, British-managed rubber plantations and tin mines as well as rural police and government officials in order to gain control of the rural population and to undermine the governments’ prestige and authority. Undoubtedly the British and their “running dogs,” the Malay officials and police, would flee for the safety of larger cities, leaving behind a void. Phase two called for filling this void, the so-called Liberated Areas, with a Communist presence. Here the guerrillas would gather and train recruits and prepare for phase three. In phase three, the strengthened guerrillas would fan out from the Liberated Areas to attack towns and villages and sever lines of communication. Then the guerrillas would form into regular units and enter phase four, a climactic conventional struggle leading to ultimate victory.
Party leaders circulated among the 7,000 retired members of the old wartime Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army—soon to be renamed the Malayan Races Liberation Army although in fact some 90 percent were ethnic Chinese—and summoned them to battle. Many of these
former guerrillas were now middle aged, enjoying a life of modest prosperity where at least they had a roof over their heads and ate regular meals. They had had their fill of living on the run in the jungle and were most reluctant recruits. Reluctant or not, some 3,000 heeded the call to mobilize, retrieved hidden weapons—many of them supplied by the British during the war—and traveled to their assigned jungle camps.
Supporting the combat elements was the Min Yuen, or “Masses Movement.” They were indistinguishable from the majority of the Chinese population. They wore no uniforms and looked and acted no different from innocent farmers and rubber tappers. In rural areas the Min Yuen organized clandestine cells within the squatter villages. These cells formed the crucial link between the people and the guerrillas. Motivated by a combination of extortion, coercion, and genuine support for Communist goals, the rural Min Yuen provided the guerrillas with food, intelligence, money, and recruits. To gain urban support, the Min Yuen behaved ostensibly as normal civilians going about their daily business as waiters in British clubs, clerks in the government, and teachers in the schools. In fact, while buried in the fabric of normal society these urban Communist sympathizers spread propaganda, provided intelligence, collected taxes, and informed on those who collaborated with the government.
Because of feelings of racial solidarity, many Chinese sympathized with the goals of the Malayan Communist Party. Many more were nervous fence-sitters, uncertain who was eventually going to win and therefore unwilling to support either side except under compulsion. They recalled the startling British collapse in 1942. They saw an ascendant Communist force spreading across their ancestral homeland in China and pondered the possibility that Mao’s victorious legions might flow south into Malaya. Given such musings—and the knowledge that they and their families would be defenseless against Communist reprisal in the event the British abandoned Malaya—there was little reason to support the government until that government clearly proved that it was going to win.
Although Lau Yew planned to follow the four stages of revolutionary warfare, he did not give the Min Yuen much time to promote revolutionary spirit. He expected his forces to pass rapidly through the four stages of revolution. Based on what he had seen at the start of World War II, Lau Yew expected the British who managed mines and rubber plantations to flee as soon as phase one operations began. He and his fellow leaders reasoned that in the absence of income from these holdings, the British would have no reason to remain in Malaya. In the absence of the British, it would be simplicity itself to take over the country from the “running dogs.” The Communists’ military tactic of choice was terror.
ARTHUR WALKER MANAGED an isolated rubber plantation in the state of Perak. His small office lay at the end of one of Malaya’s loneliest roads but this did not alarm Walker. He had spent twenty of his fifty years in Malaya and was comfortable with the country’s daily rhythms. He had just returned from his morning inspection of the estate when three young Chinese rode up to his office on bicycles. They entered Walker’s office. His dog started barking and Walker tried to quiet him. The young men greeted Walker in Malay: “Salutations, sir!” The affable Walker cheerfully returned their greetings. Two shots rang out and Walker fell dead.
Thirty minutes later, ten miles away, twelve armed Chinese surrounded the office of the Sungei Siput estate. Inside, manager John Allison and his twenty-one-year-old assistant, Ian Christian, were discussing business with their Chinese clerks. Revolver-wielding Chinese entered the office and compelled the white men to march to a nearby bungalow. They wanted Allison’s gun. Having secured the manager’s revolver, they marched their victims back to the office. A gunman reassured a frightened Malay clerk, “Don’t be afraid. We’re only out for Europeans and the running dogs”2 They bound Allison and Christian to chairs and executed them.
Eighteen miles away, a phone rang in the upper floor of a two-story building. The building housed the headquarters of the Perak State Police. On the ground floor, thirty-two-year-old Robert Thompson worked as a Chinese-affairs officer. Fluent in Cantonese, he was listening to an elderly Chinese woman detail her grievance when a police officer descended the stairs and came running toward Thompson’s desk. For Thompson, the moment forever remained indelibly imprinted in his brain: the slowly rotating blades of the ceiling fans barely stirring the ovenlike air; native clerks dressed in white duck suits diligently laboring at their desks; the alternating bands of light and dark on the wood floor caused by sunlight filtering through the rattan curtains; a white man running when no one ever ran in Malaya’s enervating climate. Flushed with excitement and exertion, the officer stopped at Thompson’s desk: “Bob—it’s started!”3
Indeed, the murder of three Europe an planters on June 16, 1948, marked the beginning of war in Malaya.
FOR THE FIRST six months of the insurgency, the Communists registered an average of more than two hundred incidents per month. Special assassination teams composed of professional revolutionaries targeted government officials in order to disrupt government operation. Their ability to strike throughout the country surprised and shocked both the Europeans living in Malaya and British authorities. However, like many strategic plans, the Communist strategy to liberate Malaya collapsed when their enemies refused to follow the Communist script. Instead, the government appealed to the targets of terror, its officials and the European elite, to remain steadfast in the face of danger.
In turn, planters and mine managers armed themselves, fortified their bungalows, and carried on with business. Peter Lucy and his wife, Tommy, lived on a rubber plantation eight miles from Kuala Lumpur. In spite of its proximity to a major city, the plantation was the target of frequent attacks. The couple built a sandbagged stronghold (and later put sandbag walls around the nursery where Tommy delivered twin infants), ordered the construction of watchtowers and laying of barbed wire to protect the workers, installed armor plating on their Ford truck, and resolved to carry on. Tommy wrote, “We have to make up our minds that guns, ammunition, and guards are the order of the day.” She put her words into practice by manning a light machine gun whenever the Communists attacked. Many British expats agreed with Tommy when she asserted, “Our biggest value is from the point of view of morale. I’m quite sure it makes a great difference to the labourers and the other people in the district so see that we’re carrying on normal lives.”4
The government helped the rural plantation and mine managers by quickly creating a force of Special Constables, nearly all of whom were Malays. At first they were woefully armed and indifferently trained. But even so, they helped provide a modicum of protection both for government officials who continued to work in rural areas and for the rural Europe an population. Because of the government’s initial responses and the resolve of the expat community, and contrary to Communist expectations, there was no mass, panic-stricken flight out of the remote interior.
The terrorists found it easier to kill civilians who were reluctant to provide support for the revolution than to kill government officials or armed and wary planters. In a typical incident, guerrillas appeared one night at the homes of three squatters who had refused to pay their requisitions. The guerillas assembled the three families, selected one child from each, and hacked the children to death before their parents’ eyes. They departed with the warning “Pay or we will kill another of your children.” During the first outbreak of the insurgency, guerrillas killed 223 civilians, only 17 of whom were Europeans; almost all the rest were Chinese.
Terror came easy to the guerrillas. However, Communist leaders quickly realized that when guerrillas sabotaged mine equipment, slashed rubber trees, and murdered the managers who operated the mines and plantations, they destroyed the means of production and thus ruined the ability of Chinese peasants to support themselves. Moreover, their failure to direct their forces to carve out a “liberated zone” that could serve as a base area to nurture the insurgency ultimately proved disastrous. In sum, phase one operations neither produced popular uprisings, fa
tally disrupted the economy, nor built a secure sanctuary. The faltering campaign of sabotage and terrorism persuaded the Communist leadership to follow Mao’s Chinese example and gird for a long guerrilla war designed to break British will.
TWELVE
Personality and Vision
The British Army
ON JUNE 18, 1948, JUST TWO DAYS after the killing began, British authorities made a federationwide declaration of emergency. The first set of emergency regulations gave the police—a force almost exclusively composed of Malays officered by Britons—sweeping extra powers to search, detain, and enforce curfews. On July 23, the government declared the Malayan Communist Party an unlawful society. To impose its will, the government initially had a regular military force of ten understrength infantry battalions (two British, six Gurkha, and two Malay), a 10,000-man Federation Police force (supplemented over the next three months by 24,000 Malay Special Constables), and a Royal Air Force contingent of some 100 planes.1 The squadron of aging but still versatile Spitfires could attack ground targets. The squadron of Sunderland flying boats had no direct value against the guerrillas. It fell to the army to play the leading role in the initial counterinsurgency campaign.
Throughout its history the British army had taken a supporting role behind the Royal Navy as the lead actor in national defense. By the middle of the 1800s about 80 percent of the regular British army was stationed abroad, where it policed imperial territory. The army evolved as a disparate collection of individual battalions accustomed to long service in isolated locations. British leaders used the small decentralized army to achieve limited goals at limited cost. This background shaped the army’s philosophy toward counterinsurgency operations in Malaya. Three principles prevailed: minimum force, civil-military cooperation, and flexible small-unit tactics. In many ways, the British Army was institutionally well-suited to wage an effective counterinsurgency. But the strategic capabilities of the senior leadership also influences outcomes. The commander of British forces in Malaya, Major General Charles Boucher, began his military service in a Gurkha unit and ascended to command of the Tenth Indian Brigade in World War II. Captured by Rommel’s troops in the western desert in June 1942, Boucher was held as a prisoner of war in Italy until 1943, when the armistice with Italy allowed him to escape his Italian guards and make his way to Allied lines in southern Italy. Thereafter, he again led Indian troops in combat, this time in bitter mountain fighting at Cassino and against the Gothic Line. Boucher described his strategy on July 27, 1948: “My object is to break the insurgent concentrations, to bring them to battle . . . to drive them underground or into the jungle, and then to follow them there . . . I intend to keep them constantly moving and deprive them of food and recruits, because if they are constantly moving they cannot terrorize an area properly so that they can get their commodities from it; and then ferret them out of their holes, wherever these holes may be.”2
Jungle of Snakes Page 16