by Harper, Tim
The squatters began to fight back: farmers evaded officials, changed their names and hid their crops under debris. They drew up petitions to point out that the Japanese and British governments had actively encouraged them to open up land for food. But they also invoked a larger principle. In the Malay States, it was a local tradition, enshrined in colonial practice, that the man who brought jungle into cultivation and maintained it had a proprietorial right to it. Peasants now asked: ‘Why do the Chinese have no freedom of cultivation yet the Malays enjoy these privileges?’41 The British saw the red ink of communist propaganda in these demands. Yet it was clear that the squatters were now firmly rooted in a complex rural economy. They exploited the forest; they took rubber on a self-tap, self-sell basis. A typical family of five worked on an average three acres of land, and supported ten other families in the towns. According to one estimate, 95 per cent of Malaya’s population was dependent on squatter production in one way or another. In Perak they not only supplied rice and vegetables but 5,000 pigs a month, 12,688 fowl and 200,000 duck and hen’s eggs. Yet the squatters themselves were poor: their average family income was only $150 a month.42 Above all, they demanded to stay in areas where their families had put down roots, and where they had been living as more or less self-governing communities. ‘We find it very difficult to redistribute the land again’, they explained, ‘for the farmers want to preserve their former allotments and disputes and fights will start [trouble] if a redistribution is forced upon them.’43 At a mass meeting in Sungei Siput, farmers emphasized their suffering during the Japanese occupation. It was an area of counter-insurgency operations against the communists and they had been caught in the middle of it.44 But what stiffened the government’s resolve to move against the squatters was its belief that it was losing political control of these areas. Both British and Chinese employers sensed an opportunity to tame their industrial labour.
When forest officers began to tear up crops, the protests turned violent. One official, D. Speldewinde, described an incident when he entered a squatter area in Changkat Jong with some Malay assistants to pull up some illegal tapioca plants:
The young man made a speech and ended in Malay, saying, ‘We were not afraid of the Japs and we are not afraid of the British. Don’t you think you can do these things to Chinese and get away with it… All of a sudden this young Chinese shouted, ‘pak ung mor’ [Beat up the ‘red hair’] and about thirty of them dived in surrounding tapioca bushes and each seized a spear and came towards us on the run. Two of the forest workers ran away and then we were surrounded. All I could do was to take a parang and prepare to defend myself.
Some older men intervened and saved Speldewinde and his men. The young firebrand was later arrested. It turned out he was president of the local peasants’ union.45 The membership of Chinese rubber-workers’ unions and peasants’ unions overlapped. They shared the same offices and framed their demands in similar terms. When evictions of squatters occurred at the same time as dismissals and evictions from rubber estates, the situation for the rural Chinese became desperate and the mood explosive. The situation in Perak came to a head with a new wave of strike action, led by the MCP Indian labour organizer R. G. Balan. He toured estates raising the tempo of protest: European managers, he said, would be nothing but coolies in their own country, but in Malaya they lived in luxury and obtained beautiful cars by exploiting the workers. Once again, estate managers sent their wives and families to the towns for safety.46 By May there were calls for resistance to the police. Workers were told to grow food and maintain strikes as long as possible. They were told not to fear arrest; this would add pressure to the government, who would have to build jails to house them and buy food to feed them. The disputes moved to the larger estates, where living conditions were better, and their political motives were clear. At the Lima Blas and Kelapa Bali estates in Slim river strikes escalated when a manager refused to employ some fifty-four Indian and twenty-four Chinese labourers. Police and soldiers were moved in to support the evictions. The trouble spread across the Sungei Siput area. In Johore there were attacks on labour bosses with revolvers and knives. The manager of the Chan Kang Swee estate was forced to flee. His labourers began to tap and sell rubber for themselves and blocked entry and exit to the estate. When the police arrived they initially had to withdraw. When they returned with a magistrate they faced a large hostile crowd armed with spears, parangs and changkols. Eight labourers were killed and thirty more arrested. In a dispute on Sagil estate in Johore, the manager was knocked unconscious and was about to be decapitated when the police arrived.47
Singapore was also again hit by strikes. As in the previous year, the centre of the conflict was the Singapore Harbour Board. But the struggle was becoming more violent. The previous year communist-backed unions had managed to take over the system of labour contracting. In early 1948 the management decided to deal directly with labourers and a strike broke out. At one point the chairman of the board was approached by a Chinese businessman and asked if he wanted the help of secret-society men to fight the strikers. He refused the offer, but soon afterwards had to leave Singapore under the shadow of a death sentence from the MCP. Hand grenades were thrown at working stevedores. The strikes divided workers; the Kuomintang backed rival associations and the communist trade unions acted as if they were fighting for survival.48 In the midst of this, the government banned the annual May Day parade, and the annual conference of the Federations of Trade Unions voiced a militant defiance. On 15 May the MCP Central Committee convened for a final time. Practical preparations for insurrection were set in motion: guerrilla bands were to be established on a state-by-state basis, a nucleus that could be expanded later. Party workers in the towns were told to avoid arrest, to withdraw to the countryside and lose themselves in the squatter settlements. The new directives were couched in defensive terms. They did not lay plans for a coup d’état. Instead, the MCP was waiting for the repression that would provide it with the legitimacy and the popular support that would carry it forward into revolution. The coming crackdown on organized labour would give it an opportunity to demonstrate leadership. The biggest obstacle to the Party’s control over the labourers were the kong chak, ‘labour thieves’, or contractors, and the ‘running dogs’ who supplied information to the police. They were now to be eliminated. At this point there was no general order to kill Europeans. However, the broad terms of the directives gave discretion to local cadres.49
Between 17 May and 7 June twelve managers and one foreman were murdered; all were Asian except one European mining superintendent who, during a robbery, proved to be too slow in opening a safe where wages were kept. On 12 June in central Johore, three Kuomintang leaders were shot dead in their homes. Gent was under siege from delegations of planters: they were at a loss to understand why he did not act more decisively to protect them. In a speech to the Legislative Council on 31 May the chief spokesman for expatriate business, Aubrey Wallich, blamed the communists for the violence. Gent now telegraphed London to warn of ‘the imminence of [an] organized campaign of murder by Communist agitators’. On 31 May the new trade union legislation finally came into operation, and the Federations of Trade Unions were outlawed on 13 June. But officials remained bitterly divided over the necessity for more extreme measures. Some years later, John Dalley, the head of the Malayan Security Service, revealed that as early as September 1947 he had recommended operations against ‘uniformed armed Communists training and encamped in the jungle’ in Johore. He gave a figure of potential men-and women-in-arms of 5,000; it was, he said, ‘given to me by the Secretary General of the Communist Party!’ The police denied that the problem existed, and Gent had backed them. By December, Dalley was ‘desperate’. He wrote a memorandum listing ‘Gent’s omissions and commissions’ and sent it to MacDonald and to Gent himself. Gent never mentioned it to Dalley. In April and May he again flatly refused to countenance repressive measures.50
Malcolm MacDonald now concluded that Gent’s useful time
was at an end. The governor’s future had been in doubt since the beginning of the year. On a visit to London in May, MacDonald pressed for his recall, and Attlee was informed of it. Ironically, MacDonald’s main argument related not to the issue of communism but to the fact that Dato Onn and other Malay leaders ‘dislike him and distrust immensely’. The overriding reason for the seeming inertia in dealing with the strikes and violence was the fact that MacDonald’s own argument of the previous June still held: the Labour government would not permit the banning of the MCP unless there was conclusive evidence for its conspiracy to overthrow the local government. The Malayan Security Service had issued dire prognostications about the MCP – and equally about the Kuomintang and ‘Indonesian’ influences – but it had given little in the way of a hard assessment of communist intentions.51 As one watcher of the skies in Whitehall, J. B. Williams, commented on 28 May after reading intelligence reports, the effect was ‘almost of melodrama. It conjures up pictures of hordes of people burrowing mole-like in the interstices of Malayan society or scurrying hither and thither on their mischievous errands, so that one may almost wonder whether that society is not about to rock to its fall’. But, Williams concluded, nothing ‘would lead us to suppose that any serious trouble is brewing in Malaya. The threat, such as it was, came from ‘mere bandits’ rather than the communists whose ‘immediate threat is but slight’.52 Two weeks later, on 14 June, the British government received Dalley’s own assessment: ‘There is no immediate threat to internal security in Malaya, although the position is constantly changing and is potentially dangerous.’53 This gave no firm indication that the MCP had ordered an armed revolt. But no such command had, in fact, been issued: it was contingent on the actions of the British themselves.
CALLS TO ARMS
Two days later, on the morning of 16 June, at 8.30 a.m., three young Chinese appeared on bicycles at the office of 50-year-old Arthur ‘Wally’ Walker, manager of Elphil estate in Sungei Siput. One came to the door and greeted him respectfully, ‘Tabek, Tuan’, ‘Greetings, sir’; the two others went round the side and fired two shots into the back of his head, killing him instantly. A terrified Indian estate clerk witnessed the affair. Around half an hour later, on Phin Soon estate, the two planters there, 55-year-old John Allison and his 21-year-old assistant, Ian Christian, were surrounded by a dozen Chinese, taken onto their veranda and made to sit on chairs. Both men were then executed. The Chinese shouted to the watching labourers in Malay: ‘We are out only for the Europeans. These men will surely die today. We will shoot all Europeans.’ Walker and Allison had been prisoners of the Japanese. Christian, a former Gurkha officer, had been in the country for only a few weeks. A few days earlier he had approached his old comrades in the Gurkhas stationed nearby and borrowed an old Luger. The Gurhkas had promised to go pig shooting on the estate the next weekend as a deterrent to trouble.54 Years later Chin Peng reflected on the killings: ‘From the revolutionary’s point of view at the time, I saw no validity in the killing of Christian. The deaths of the other two were acceptable.’55 They had been implicated in the bitter disputes in Sungei Siput over evictions from estates and forest reserves. Now labourers took their revenge. The murders were a consequence of the orders that had been issued in May, and perhaps could have occurred in any number of places, but they were unplanned by Party leaders. The spark that lit the Malayan revolution came from below, and caught both the British and the communists unawares and unprepared.
Gent responded by declaring a state of Emergency in Perak and parts of Johore, and it was extended to the entire peninsula two days later. It was seen as a temporary measure, but it would last for twelve years. It did little to stem the tide of criticism. On 17 June the Straits Times ran a headline: ‘Govern or get out’. Gent was very near breaking point.56 He clashed with MacDonald at a conference at Kuala Lumpur on 22 June, over whether troops should be committed for static guard duty on mines and estates – as favoured by MacDonald – or in going after the main ‘troublemakers’ – as advocated by Gent. He was now accused of indecision and blamed for earlier lapses. The local military commanders reported that all soldiers had lost faith in him and MacDonald demanded his immediate recall. On 26 June Creech Jones telegraphed Gent to tell him to come home at the earliest opportunity. He was offered the face-saving formula to return on ‘health grounds’, but he declined to take it.57 At a final meeting at Bukit Serene, MacDonald’s residence in Johore Bahru, Gent requested the use of MacDonald’s private office. He asked Dalley to follow him: ‘There he produced from an attaché case the memorandum I had written on his omissions and commissions and went through it paragraph by paragraph, admitted it all and asked me if we could continue to be friends. As we shook hands on it, I felt quite emotional but my main feeling was one of relief, feeling that when he reached London he would give full support to all-out action.’58
Gent left Singapore on the night of 28 June. Old Malayan hands gloated. John Falconer, the British resident commissioner in Malacca, wrote to his wife on 2 July: ‘It appears certain now that Gent will not be coming back, I feel rather sorry for Lady Gent who is left behind to clear up and say goodbyes. No doubt she regards her husband as a wonderful fellow and I’m sure he’s always been a clever little boy. He has not done this country any good – on the contrary, much harm – though doubtless with good intentions.’59 But Gent never had the opportunity to defend his actions. As his York freighter plane approached London on 4 July it collided with another aircraft. All that survived was Gent’s silver cigarette case. He was mourned by many leaders of the Asian community, who recognized his liberal intentions and were dismayed by what looked like a triumph for British businessmen. To Tan Cheng Lock, it smacked of conspiracy. He protested at Gent’s recall immediately to the Colonial Office, and, after his death, his son, Tan Siew Sin, told the Federal Legislative Council that Gent was disliked because, ‘in the eyes of his countrymen, he committed the unpardonable sin of treating Asians as if they were human beings…’60 Gent saw it as his duty as proconsul to uphold the higher principles of Labour’s imperial policy. He was reluctant to concede that this policy had failed by capitulating to special interests and governing through repressive powers. In his quiet way, Gent embodied the contradictory life and strange death of liberal imperialism in Malaya.
Neither side was ready for war. In June 1948 the MCP was at only an early stage of mobilization. It called up ex-MPAJA men and women, many of them well entrenched in civilian life. In Perak, by mid June, only one in five of the old comrades had responded to the call to arms. Some remained in the towns and villages as workers. ‘Others’, admitted a captured Perak leader, ‘have good jobs and do not want to go.’ But over time, new recruits were found, and the new army’s strength would rise to at least 3,000. There were few large units; the strategy was to mix fighters up with villagers. This was to prevent their isolation and increase their opportunities for action. It was also a recognition that, unlike the anti-Japanese war, this would be a protracted struggle and the Party had to remain as close to the people as possible. Privately, Chin Peng thought in terms of ten years. The guerrilla groups began to move to hill hideouts. Many were wartime sites, but those from which British Force 136 officers had been excluded. As well as the mobile standing army there were auxiliaries drawn from the squatters and townsfolk. The main handicap to mobilization was lack of funds. The squatters were poor, and were not always able to feed party workers. A spate of robberies of payrolls in May and June was to make up the deficit.61 As Chin Peng acknowledged, the Party was relying on the period between July and September to complete these tasks, and many of the key tactical decisions were yet to be made. ‘Now in retrospect’, Chin Peng reflected many years later, ‘I think we were very inexperienced. At that time we were very young.’62 This chaotic state of affairs would continue for the rest of the year and into 1949. It was only in December that the Party would issue its declaration of intent: the establishment of a People’s Democratic Republic of Malaya. Even this, Chi
n Peng conceded, was perhaps a mistake: ‘Our battle-cry should have been: Independence for Malaya and all Malayans who want independence.’63
The most compelling evidence for the Party’s lack of readiness was the loss of so many of its senior cadres. Arrests had begun before the Sungei Siput murders. R. G. Balan was picked up on 30 May; on 9 June the editor of the Min Sheng Pau, Liew Yit Fan, was arrested together with many other journalists; so too was the cause célèbre of the February 1946 protests, Soong Kwong. On 20 and 21 June the British launched Operation Frustration, which dragged many more into the net including Rashid Maidin in Perak. Chin Peng’s deputy, Yeung Kuo, had been visiting his wife and newly born daughter in Penang. On hearing the news of the Emergency he left his family home and made his way back to Kuala Lumpur by bus. In the confusion he managed to go underground in the Ampang area, but his wife was arrested and later banished to China. On 16 June Chin Peng was visiting a mine less than forty miles away from Sungei Siput, at Kampar. The Party had made a substantial investment in the business, but the owner was not sharing the profits. ‘After some persuasion’ he agreed to pay out, and Chin Peng had gone to collect the cash. The night after the Sungei Siput killings he narrowly avoided arrest and, together with a female worker from the mine, had to pose as a young married couple in order to navigate the police road blocks back to a safe house in Ipoh, where he was effectively trapped and out of action for some weeks.64