Forgotten Wars

by Harper, Tim

  46. Quoted in Nicholas J. White, Business, government and the end of empire: Malaya, 1945–1957 (Kuala Lumpur, 1996), p. 82.

  47. Ibid., p. 103; Norman Cleaveland, Bang! Bang! in Ampang (San Pedro, CA, 1973), p. 54.

  48. Gimson to Creech Jones, 2 March 1947 and 20 March 1947, CO537/2171, TNA.

  49. Gent to J. J. Paskin, 20 September 1946; Paskin to Gent, 4 October 1946, CO537/1522, TNA.

  50. ‘Report on the Special Conference on the threat of Communism in Malaya and Singapore, 1947’, 26 June 1947, Dalley Papers, RHO.

  51. Michael Stenson, Repression and revolt: the origins of the 1948 communist insurrection in Malaya and Singapore (Athens, OH, 1969).

  52. C. W. Lyle, ‘Selangor Protest Committee’, 16 July 1947, LAB/158/47, ANM.

  53. Returns on LAB/562/47, ANM. See also Leong, Labour and trade unionism in Malaya pp. 168–73.

  54. Laurence K. L. Siaw, Chinese society in rural Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur, 1983), p. 86.

  55. MSS/PIJ, 15 October 1947.

  56. They were also written with access to British documents and ‘as told’ to a retired Daily Telegraph journalist, Ian Ward, and his wife and collaborator Norma Miraflor. Chin Peng discusses the relationship briefly in his preface to My side of history, pp. 4–5.

  57. Ibid., pp. 167–74.

  58. MSS/PIJ, 31 March 1947.

  59. There is a discrepancy here over the dates. Chin Peng, in his memoirs, gives the date as late January, and the subsequent meeting at which the dossier of evidence was presented as 6 March. However, this must be an error. Most other sources give the date of Lai Teck’s disappearance as 6 March and of the meeting to expel Lai Teck as May, and we have followed them. The March date was also given by Chin Peng when questioned directly in an earlier interview: Chin Peng, My side of history, pp. 171–9; C. C. Chin and Karl Hack (eds.), Dialogues with Chin Peng: new light on the Malayan Communist Party (Singapore, 2004), pp. 124–6. See also Anthony Short, In pursuit of mountain rats: the communist insurrection in Malaya (Singapore, 2000 [1975]), pp. 40–41. We are grateful to C. C. Chin for clarification of this point.

  60. Chin Peng, My side of history, pp. 178–9.

  61. ‘The Wright (@ Lye Teck) Document: “A written statement on Lye Teck’s case issued on 28 May 1948 by the MCP Central Committee”’, supplement to MSS/PIJ, 31 July, 1948.

  62. Chin Peng, My side of history, pp. 179–84.

  63. Christopher E. Goscha, Thailand and the Southeast Asian networks of the Vietnamese revolution, 1885–1954 (London, 1999), ch. 5.

  64. Ibid., pp. 187–8.

  65. Chin and Hack, Dialogues with Chin Peng, p. 130.

  66. Chin Peng, My side of history, pp. 188–9.

  67. Ibid., pp. 187–91; Chin and Hack, Dialogues with Chin Peng, pp. 106–10.

  68. ‘The Wright (@ Lye Teck) Document’; MSS/PIJ, 31 July 1948.

  69. Ibid.

  70. ‘Interrogation of a Perak prisoner, MCP area representative, political’, Supplement No. 7 to MSS/PIJ, 15 July 1948.

  71. Short, In pursuit of mountain rats, p. 44; C. C. Chin, ‘In search of the revolution: a brief biography of Chin Peng’, in Chin and Hack, Dialogues with Chin Peng, pp. 355–8.

  72. Yoji Akashi, ‘Lai Teck, Secretary General of the Malayan Communist Party, 1939–1947’, Journal of the South Seas Society, 49 (1994), pp. 57–103; Chin Peng, My side of history, p. 159; Lim Cheng Leng, The story of a psy-warrior: Tan Sri Dr C. C. Too (Batu Caves, 2000), pp. 113–25.

  73. ‘Malayan Communist Party policy’, supplement no. 9 to MSS/PIJ, 31 July 1948.

  74. Michael Stenson, The 1948 Communist revolt in Malaya: a note on historical sources and interpretation with a Reply by Gerald de Cruz (Singapore, 1971), p. 29–30.

  75. Short, In pursuit of mountain rats, p. 41; ‘Malayan Communist Party Affairs 25 April 1984 to 26 June 1948’, Appendix A to MSS/PIJ, 30 June 1948.

  76. Short, In pursuit of mountain rats, p. 40.

  77. Malayan Security Service, ‘Report on BMA Period’, 3 April 1946, SNA; Leon Comber, ‘The Malayan Security Service (1945–1948)’;Intelligence and National Security, 18, 3 (2003), pp. 128–53.

  78. Robert Cribb, ‘Opium and the Indonesian revolution’, Modern Asian Studies, 22, 4 (1988), pp. 710–22; Young Mun Cheong, The Indonesian revolution and the Singapore connection, 1945–1949 (Singapore, 2003), pp. 101–37.

  79. Onn to Gent, 17 February 1947, in Stockwell, British documents: Malaya, part I, p. 294.

  80. Majlis, 2 April 1946.

  81. ‘Report on UMNO General Assembly, 10–12 January 1947’, in Gent to Creech Jones 27 January 1947, Stockwell, British documents: Malaya, part I, pp. 292–3.

  82. Ahmad Boestamam (trans. William R. Roff), Carving the path to the summit (Athens, OH, 1979), pp. 82–5. Mustapha Hussain, Malay nationalism before Umno: the memoirs of Mustapha Hussain, translated by Insun Mustapha and edited by Jomo K. S. (Kuala Lumpur, 2005), pp. 330–31.

  83. Quoted in Farish A Noor, Islam embedded: the historical development of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party PAS (1951–2003), vol. I (Kuala Lumpur, 2004), pp. 113–16.

  84. Hussain, Malay nationalism before Umno, pp. 334–9.

  85. Shamsiah Fakeh, Memoir Shamsiah Fakeh: dari AWAS ke Rejimen Ke-10 (Bangi, 2004), pp. 40–45.

  86. Khatijah Sidek, Memoirs of Khatijah Sidek: Puteri Kesateria Bangsa (Kuala Lumpur, 2001 [1960]), p. 160.

  87. Malaya Tribune, 17 March 1947; Wazir Jahan Karim, Women and culture: between Malay adat and Islam (Boulder, 1992), pp. 96–100.

  88. Boestamam, Carving the path to the summit, pp. 61–2; MSS/PIJ, 30 April 1947.

  89. MSS/PIJ, 31 March 1947; Gent to Creech Jones, 24 February 1947, CO537/2151 TNA.

  90. Utusan Melayu, 14 August 1947.

  91. This pamphlet has recently been republished, in facsimile form, in Ahmad Boestamam, Memoir Ahmad Boestamam: merdeka dengan darah dalam api (Bangi, 2004).

  92. Malaya Tribune, 20 March and 21 March 1947; Firdaus Haji Abdullah, Radical Malay politics: its origins and early development (Petaling Jaya, 1985), pp. 98–101.

  93. Boestamam, Carving the path to the summit, p. 90–91.

  94. A. J. Stockwell, British policy and Malay politics during the Malayan Union experiment, 1945–1948 (Kuala Lumpur, 1979), pp. 149–50.

  95. ‘Sabilu’llah and invulnerability’, supplement to MSS/PIJ, 15 June 1947.

  96. ‘Activities of the organisation known as API for the information of the Secretary of State’, enclosure to Gent to Creech Jones, 1 July 1947, CO537/2151, TNA.

  97. Boestamam, Carving the path to the summit, p. 126.

  98. ‘Annual Medical Report, 1949’, SUK Tr/118/50.

  99. ‘Infant mortality rates per 1000 births’, 7 May 1949, FS/13157/47, ANM.

  100. ‘Annual Report on the social and economic progress of the people of Kelantan for the year 1947’, FS/9358/48, ANM.

  101. Ahmed Tajuddin, ‘Economic survey of the padi planters in Krian South’, 22 November 1946, Coop/1045/46, ANM.

  102. Mahathir bin Mohamad, The early years, 1947–1972 (Kuala Lumpur, 1995), p. 59.

  103. For example, Utusan Malaya, 24 November 1947.

  104. See enclosures in FS/2255/48, ANM.

  105. Hussain, Malay nationalism before Umno, pp. 335–6.

  106. Pelita Malaya, 6 April 1946.

  107. Firdaus, Radical Malay politics, pp. 30–44.

  108. Malaya Tribune, 2 June 1947.

  109. ‘Malayan Communist Party Policy’, supplement no. 9 to MSS/PIJ, 31 July 1948.

  110. MSS/PIJ, 30 June 1947.

  111. We have drawn here on A. J. Stockwell, ‘The formation and first years of the United Malays National Organization (U.M.N.O.), 1946–1948’, Modern Asian Studies, 11, 4 (1977), pp. 481–513.

  112. MSS/PIJ, 15 May 1947.

  113. Ariffin Omar, Bangsa Melayu: Malay concepts of democracy and community, 1945–50 (Kuala Lumpur, 1993), pp. 106–10; Tan Liok Eee, ‘The rhetoric of bangsa and minzu: community and nation
in tension, the Malay peninsula, 1900–1955’, Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, Working Paper no. 52, 1988, pp. 18–20.

  114. K. J. Ratnam, Communalism and the political process in Malaya (Kuala Lumpur, 1965), pp. 75–84.

  115. ‘Malayan policy’, Cabinet memorandum, 28 June 1947, in Stockwell, British documents: Malaya, part I, pp. 352–8.

  116. See M. R. Stenson, ‘The Malayan Union and the historians’, Journal of Southeast Asian History, 10, 2 (1969), pp. 344–54, and Wong Lin Ken, ‘The Malayan Union: a historical retrospect’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 13, 1 (1982), 184–91. For a full discussion see Albert Lau, The Malayan Union controversy, 1942–48 (London, 1991).

  117. For the origins of AMCJA, Yeo Kim Wah, ‘The anti-Federation movement in Malaya, 1946–48’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 4, 1 (1973), pp. 31–51.

  118. Malaya Tribune, 21 December 1947. This was the reasoning of Ahmad Boestamam, Carving the path to the summit, pp. 98–9.

  119. Quoted in Sopiee, From Malayan Union to Singapore separation, p. 41; Hussain, Malay nationalism before Umno, p. 365.

  120. Tan Cheng Lock to representative Chinese leaders throughout Malaya, 9 July 1946, SCA/161/46, SNA.

  121. See K. G. Tregonning, ‘Tan Cheng Lock: a Malayan nationalist’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 10, 1 (1979), pp. 25–76; for his thought, we have drawn on his daughter’s memoir: Alice Scott-Ross, Tun Dato Sir Cheng Lock Tan: a personal profile (Singapore, 1990).

  122. ‘Public meeting under the auspices of the Pan-Malayan Council of Joint Action: Speech at Kuala Lumpur on 23 December 1946’, in Tan Cheng Lock, Malayan problems from a Chinese point of view (Singapore, 1947), p. 134.

  123. Hussain, Malay nationalism before Umno, pp. 333–4.

  124. ‘The hartal of 20 October 1947’, supplement to MSS/PIJ, 31 October 1947.

  125. Wu Tian Wang in the MCP Review, of June 1948, quoted in Sopiee, From Malayan Union to Singapore separation, p. 47. Chin Peng in his memoirs suggests that it was ‘not exactly a communist front but… firmly under our influence’, My side of history, p. 199, but on other occasions he has suggested that control was weak; personal communication, June, 1998.

  126. Hussain, Malay nationalism before Umno, pp. 341–7.

  127. Quoted and discussed in Ariffin Omar, Bangsa Melayu, pp. 115–16; Boestamam, Carving the path to the summit, p. 110.

  128. For this, see the seminal essays by Tan Liok Eee, ‘The rhetoric of bangsa and minzi’, and Muhammad Ikmal Said, ‘Ethnic perspectives on the left in Malaysia’, in Joel Kahn and Francis Loh Kok Wah (eds.), Fragmented vision: culture and politics in contemporary Malaysia (Sydney, 1992), pp. 254–81.

  129. Malayan Democratic Union, ‘Memorandum on counter-proposals for future constitution, for consideration of PMCJA’ (signed by John Eber), SP13/A/5, Tan Cheng Lock Papers ANM. The People’s Constitutional Proposals for Malaya 1947 drafted by PUTERA–AMCJA (Pusat Kajian Bahan Serjarah Kontemporari Tempatan, Kajang, 2005), quotes on p. 35 and p. 100.

  130. O. H. Morris, minute, 13 November 1947, reprinted in The People’s Constitutional Proposals for Malaya 1947, pp. i–ii.

  131. Hoalim, The Malayan Democratic Union, pp. 18–20.

  132. Yeo, ‘The anti-Federation movement’, pp. 43–5.

  133. Tregonning, ‘Tan Cheng Lock’, pp. 54–5.

  134. Boestamam, Carving the path to the summit, p. 110.

  135. ‘Minutes of the Third Delegates Conference of the PUTERA and AMCJA held at Kuala Lumpur at the premises of the New Democratic Youth League, Selangor Branch, at 7 Foch Avenue (3rd Floor) at 11 am on Monday November 3rd 1947’, Tan Cheng Lock Papers, SP13/A/7, ANM.

  136. ‘The hartal of 20 October 1947’, supplement to MSS/PIJ, 31 October 1947.

  137. Tregonning, ‘Tan Cheng Lock’, pp. 53–5.

  138. ‘Report on the Special Conference on the threat of Communism in Malaya and Singapore, 1947’, 26 June 1947, Dalley Papers, RHO.

  139. Malaya Tribune, 6 October 1947.

  140. Sopiee, From Malayan Union to Singapore separation, pp. 41, 48–9.

  141. For this see The People’s Constitutional Proposals for Malaya 1947 drafted by PUTERA–AMCJA.

  CHAPTER 9 1948: A BLOODY DAWN

  1. Cited in Frank N. Trager, Burma: from kingdom to republic (London, 1966), p. 108.

  2. Burma’s Independence Celebrations (Copygraph London Ltd, 1948), p. 15.

  3. Roy Bucher to Miss Elizabeth Bucher, 5 January 1948, Bucher Papers, 7901/87–5, National Army Museum.

  4. Balwant Singh, Independence and democracy in Burma (Ann Arbor, 1993) pp. 67–8.

  5. Ibid., pp. 74–5.

  6. Notably, J. S. Furnivall, Netherlands India: a study of a plural economy (London, 1939), which compared British administration in Burma and Malaya unfavourably with Dutch Indonesia; see also Julie Pham, ‘Furnivall and Fabianism: reinterpreting the plural society in colonial Burma’, Modern Asian Studies, 39, 2 (2005), pp. 321–48.

  7. J. S. Furnivall to C. W. Dunn, 9 April 1948, Furnivall Papers, PP/MS 23, vol. I, SOAS.

  8. Furnivall to Dunn, 11 January 1948, ibid.

  9. Furnivall to Dunn, 28 March 1948, ibid.

  10. Furnivall in New Times of Burma, 10 April 1949.

  11. Furnivall to Dunn, 11 January 1948, Furnivall Papers, PP/MS 23, vol. I, SOAS.

  12. Marginal notes in FO371/61595, TNA.

  13. P. J. Murray, note 20 August 1948, FO371/69518, TNA.

  14. Edgar Snow in Saturday Evening Post, 29 May 1948, FO371/69515, TNA.

  15. Ibid.

  16. Furnivall to Dunn, 11 January 1948, Furnivall Papers, PP/MS 23, vol. I, SOAS.

  17. Richard Butwell, U Nu of Burma (Standford, 1963), pp. 73–84.

  18. Furnivall to Dunn, 4 July 1947, Furnivall Papers, PP/MS 23, vol. I, SOAS.

  19. The estimate is in Mary Callahan, Making enemies: war and state building in Burma (Ithaca, 2004), p. 121.

  20. ‘Nationalisation of British assets in Burma’, FO371/69491, TNA.

  21. Security service report on communism in Burma, March 1948, FO371/69515, TNA.

  22. Trager, Burma, pp. 97–8.

  23. Thein Pe Myint, ‘Critique of the communist movement in Burma’, 1973, Mss Eur C498, OIOC.

  24. Dossier on Thein Pe including his manifesto of 19 March, enclosed in Bowker to Foreign Office, FO371/69517, TNA.

  25. Ghosal was a student labour activist at Rangoon University in 1940–1. He had been evacuated to India during the war and worked as a war correspondent for People’s War, the Indian Communist Party journal, and was a close aide of P. C. Joshi, the party’s Secretary General. He returned to Burma in 1945 and later went underground. Intelligence report, received 13 May 1948, FO371/69515, TNA.

  26. ‘On the present political situation in Burma’, January 1948, enclosed in Bowker to Foreign Office, 20 July 1948, FO371/69516, TNA.

  27. British Services Mission, preliminary report, 9 February 1948, p. 3, L/WS/1/1705, OIOC.

  28. Note by Peter Murray, ‘Establishment of British Services Mission in Burma’, and report by Major General G. K. Bourne, 9 February 1948, FO371/69481, TNA.

  29. Smith Dun, Memoirs of the four-foot Colonel: General Smith Dun, first commander in chief of independent Burma’s armed forces (Ithaca, 1980), pp. ii–vii.

  30. Notes by R. B. Pearn, 26 November 1948, on minutes by Bowker and Bourne, FO371/69486, TNA.

  31. British Services Mission, preliminary report, 9 February 1948, pp. 4–6, L/WS/1/1705, OIOC.

  32. Rangoon to London, 15 May 1948, minute by Bourne, FO371/69482, TNA.

  33. Ibid.

  34. Rangoon to London, 9 April 1948, FO371/69481, TNA.

  35. Peter Murray, minute, 14 September 1948, FO371/69484, TNA.

  36. Furnivall to Dunn, 29 February 1948, Furnivall Papers, PP/MS 23, vol. I, SOAS.

  37. ‘Effect of Communist Party advance in China on communists in Burma’, Rangoon to FO, 4 December 1948, FO371/69522, TNA.

  38. Be
rtil Lintner, The rise and fall of the Communist Party of Burma (Ithaca, 1990), p. 11.

  39. Thein Pe Myint, ‘Critique of the communist movement in Burma’, 1973, Mss Eur C498, ff. 26, OIOC.

  40. Rangoon to London, 26 May 1948, FO371/69515, TNA.

  41. Bowker to Foreign Office, FO371/69481, TNA.

  42. Furnivall to Dunn, 28 March, 9 April 1948, Furnival Papers, PP/MS 23, vol. I, SOAS.

  43. Bowker to Foreign Office, 12 April 1948, FO371/69515, TNA.

  44. Nu to Cripps, 7 October 1948, Cripps–Nu correspondence, CAB127/151, TNA.

  45. Rangoon to Foreign Office, 3 July 1948, FO371/69483, TNA.

  46. Furnivall to Dunn 12 April 1948, Furnivall Papers, PP/MS 23, vol. I, SOAS.

  47. Maung Maung, A trial in Burma: the assassination of Aung San (The Hague, 1962), p. 68.

  48. Clipping from the Sunday Despatch, 15 February 1948, Laithwaite Papers, Mss Eur F138/74, OIOC.

  49. Furnivall to Dunn, 12 April 1948 with some additions 2 May, Furnivall Papers, PP/MS 23, vol. I, SOAS.

  50. See Bertil Lintner, Burma in revolt: opium and insurgency since 1948 (Boulder, 1994).

  51. Report of British Mission, Rangoon to London, 30 June 1948, FO371/69483, TNA.

  52. Ibid.

  53. Rangoon to London, 14 August 1948, FO371/69484, TNA.

  54. Butwell, U Nu of Burma, p. 62.

  55. News Chronicle, 27 August 1948.

  56. News Chronicle, 23 September 1948.

  57. P. Murray, Foreign Office, to Major A. K. Rugg-Price, FO371/69486, TNA.

  58. For a detailed account of these events and the Karen insurgency see Callahan, Making enemies, pp. 124–42.

  59. Ibid., p. 127.

  60. Bowker to Foreign Office, ‘Karen movement and British complicity’, 12 September 1948, FO371/69509, TNA.

  61. Bowker to Foreign Office, 19 June 1948, ibid.

  62. Bowker to Foreign Office, 28 February 1948, ibid.

  63. Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten armies: Britain’s Asian empire and the war with Japan (London, 2004), p. 336.

  64. Note by P. J. Murray, 16 September 1948, FO371/69509, TNA.

  65. ‘Translation of speech by the Honble Thakin Nu, Prime Minister of Burma, delivered in Parliament on 14 June 1949’, CAB127/151, TNA.