Gurney’s death had pinpointed the problem facing every government where the enemy are terrorist guerrillas: how to defend the vulnerable majority against a ruthlessly determined minority. The postwar promise of a stable and successful Malaya was balanced on a knife edge. Some decided to leave the country, feeling that the promise was no more than an illusion. By the end of 1951 the need for strong direction had never been more urgent.
14
The Battle for Hearts and Minds
Three men personified the British presence in Malaya during its final phase: a political impresario, an administrator and a soldier. The first of these, Malcolm MacDonald, served as Governor-General of Malaya and Singapore from 1946 to 1948 and as Commissioner-General for South-East Asia from 1948 to 1955. The son of Britain’s first Labour Prime Minister, he was an unconventional, unstuffy influential politician, though in co-ordinating policy from his Johore residence of Bukit Serene he was sometimes at odds with Colonial Service opinion. ‘He had an exceptional memory,’ a member of the Malayan Civil Service remembered, and was ‘A natty little man who dressed rather loudly’ and sat in his Rolls-Royce ‘like an orchid in one of those cellophane packets’.1 In 1947 MacDonald had identified Communism as ‘Enemy No.1’ in Malaya, and consequently won the respect of the planting community in the early days of the Emergency. ‘The vital part played by the Commissioner-General cannot be over-estimated,’ wrote the Johore planter John Edington. ‘In the interest of the economy, his priority was the protection of the estates and mines with their personnel against banditry’, leading to the introduction of Special Constables.2
The second man was Donald MacGillivray, last of the High Commissioners, an industrious administrator and ‘a gentle approachable personality … who believed that faith and commitment should underlie one’s life’. According to a Malayan colleague, he ‘did not see himself especially talented in spite of a lengthy and very distinguished career in H.M. Colonial Service’, and he never had the easy relationship with the future Malay Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, which the British Colonial Secretary Alan Lennox-Boyd enjoyed. But MacGillivray was to oversee an accelerated timetable to independence, after serving as Deputy High Commissioner in the crucial years from 1952 to 1954, when ‘he was a perfect foil to General Sir Gerald Templer’.3 And so to the third figure: it was without doubt General Templer who countered the Communist insurgency, galvanized British morale, and steadied Malaya’s multiracial community in preparation for a new political future.
Templer arrived in Malaya in February 1952, charged with the joint responsibilities of High Commissioner and Director of Operations, and carrying the hopes of Britain’s newly elected Tory government under Winston Churchill. In Malaya his appointment was greeted with caution – not everyone, including Malcolm MacDonald, rejoiced at the prospect of a soldier heading the civil government – but, as Templer threw himself into his self-appointed task of getting to know the people of Malaya, his stock rose. The upswing in British morale was palpable, said an administrator who transferred to Malaya on the heels of Templer. John Loch, a member of the General’s planning staff, was one of many to be won over by his charismatic leadership. In appearance, he noted, Templer
looked rather like Charles II – if you have seen the effigy of Charles II at Westminster Abbey – fairly short, wiry, and he had a little pencilled moustache … and the moment he talked his eyes lit up … You felt the whole time you were under his gaze … He was one of those leaders who attracted younger army officers who later most of them became generals in turn … You gave him all you could, partly out of loyalty to him. He was a very, very great man … He was legendary.4
This praise was echoed by a young Chinese Affairs officer: ‘Dynamic, enthusiastic, energetic, and for someone in my position a hero, who was always open to ideas from junior officers like myself … Templer was a charismatic leader who helped to break down social barriers between the races in our complicated plural society.’5
Within a short time the commercial world as well as the Civil Service was reassured by Templer’s capacity to make and implement decisions. The planter John Anderson, who arrived in 1951 to work initially on two estates outside the capital, Kuala Lumpur, remembered him with enthusiasm. ‘He was a breath of fresh air to the planting community and a much-needed boost to morale at a difficult time. I thought he did a great job.’6 This view was also shared by J. S. Potter, Chairman of his District Planters Association in Negri Sembilan:
I remember being present and hearing General Templer speak when he addressed Planting Representatives for the first time in Kuala Lumpur. I was at once impressed. Here was a man at least who knew what he wanted to do and how to do it. Later I formed one of the first Estate Home Guards for him … encouraging … the common people to take some active part in the war against the C.T.s instead of being passive lookers on … General Templer … paid us a visit one evening with Gen. Sir Hugh Stockwell (G.O.C. Malaya Command) and others … [His] visit was greatly appreciated and everyone on the estate had an opportunity of airing his views, asking questions and meeting him face to face. No previous High Commissioner had taken the trouble to do this before …
Here was a man ‘who got off his office chair’, ended Potter approvingly.7
Templer was also given to straight-talking and strong language, devoid of rhetoric. His admirers considered him to be enormously likeable, but Loch conceded that ‘some people didn’t like him … Although open to argument, he could be incredibly rude to people if he didn’t agree with them. He sent them packing.’8 To the astonishment of Kuala Lumpur’s European community, he criticized their mindset almost as sternly as he tongue-lashed the recalcitrant townsfolk of Tanjong Malim.9 Among those who came under his scrutiny was the Malayan Civil Service, which included men of the pre-war generation. (Some, it was said, had never fully recovered from their experiences during the Japanese occupation.) Templer described the British Advisers, for instance, as ‘an uninspiring lot’, but Mervyn Sheppard, ex-prisoner and now Adviser in Negri Sembilan, was one who felt energized by his dynamism.10 To the average District Officer, however, a visit from Templer could be ‘quite an ordeal: you’d wonder if he’d agree and like what you were doing, and if he didn’t you were probably out’.11 Although he was promoted with Templer’s approval, Guy Madoc, the extremely able head of the Special Branch, found him disconcerting. Recalling his appointment as Director of Intelligence, Madoc recounted that when offered the job he had asked for forty-eight hours to consider it. Templer agreed, but replied, ‘Remember that I don’t take “no” from anyone.’ Nevertheless, Madoc took his time before accepting.12 Templer’s severest critic was Victor Purcell, a Cambridge academic and former civil servant who had retired from the Malayan scene.13 Having observed him at close hand, Tom Morgan considered Templer to be ‘naturally autocratic’, and, echoing this, Hugh Humphrey, a pre-war District Officer and post-war Secretary for Defence, concluded, ‘he was ruthless – very ruthless indeed’.14
Templer’s overriding aim was to restore law and order and bring peace to the Federation. ‘If you pull it off,’ Churchill told him, ‘it will be a great feat.’15 First came an action plan to clarify priorities and select his team to devise and implement strategies. There were changes at the top: among those who left were the Chief Secretary, the Deputy Director of Operations and the GOC in Malaya, General Robert Urquhart, the hero of Arnhem. In Templer’s judgement, the people of Malaya needed to know that the Communist Emergency was not simply a problem for British imperialism but a formidable obstacle to a free, independent Malayan nation. The sooner peace was restored and the various ethnic communities learned to live in harmony, the quicker independence would come. In the last analysis, Templer is alleged to have said, ‘the answer lies not in pouring more troops into the jungle, but in the hearts and minds of the people’. This aphorism encapsulated the General’s legacy to Malaya, though it fell to his successor and to the political wisdom of the Malay, Chinese and Indian leaders to harness he
people’s trust and confidence to forge a free, democratic, multiracial state.
Templer’s arrival followed a volte-face in Communist strategy. In October 1951 Chin Peng had produced a new directive, prohibiting terror tactics against the Asian population – slashing rubber trees, killing for identity cards, machine-gunning villages and burning buses – and abandoning attempts to seize control of ‘liberated areas’ with units of battalion strength. Instead, the guerrillas retreated deep into the jungle, emerging to launch sudden attacks on the European ‘imperialists’ and their security forces. In November 1951, for instance, two senior planters and their escort of ten Malay Special Constables had been ambushed, leaving only one survivor from the attack, a badly wounded policeman. Then in March 1952 the water pipeline to the township of Tanjong Malim was cut by the CTs for the umpteenth time. A repair party, led by the Assistant District Officer, Michael Codner, and a police escort, was ambushed two miles outside the town by some forty guerillas. Fourteen men were killed, including the ADO, his Executive Engineer, a Public Works technical assistant and five policemen. This incident caused a massive outcry. Codner was a hero of the Second World War, having won the MC for his part in the ‘Wooden Horse’ escape from a German prison camp. The ambush also brought a fierce response from Templer, who imposed collective punishment on the townspeople for abetting the attackers. But, more significantly, it highlighted the urgency of winning over an alienated population, which now became a major priority.
Looking back over events, the Secretary for Defence conceded that ‘We struggled through this Emergency with the most extraordinary methods.’16 One group with whom the British authorities had to deal were the aborigines who lived in the high rainforests and the coastal swamps of states like Perak. The tea planter Bill Fairlie, who was familiar with the Sakai, found them to be ‘marvellous little people’, and, though shy and unsophisticated, they were honest, truthful and happy. They handled the blowpipe with deadly accuracy, and could become first-class shots with a rifle.17 In the dark years of the war, with British connivance, they had been recruited to help MPAJA guerrillas against the Japanese; and in 1949 some were suspected of collaborating with the Communists.
From his involvement in Force 136 and Ferret Force, the planter James Hislop knew the potential of the aborigines as intelligence sources, but also that they needed to be weaned from the Chinese connection. In March 1950 he was appointed to recruit a new body, the Perak Aboriginal Areas Constabulary (PAAC), officered by Europeans and manned mainly by Malays. Their task was to search for and befriend tribes such as the Negritoes, Temiar and Semai. One of the officers he recruited in 1951 was another Scots planter, Donald Macpherson, whose career had been badly disrupted by CT attacks. PAAC lasted longer than Ferret Force, despite being opposed by the regular police force. However, in 1952 its covert operations were revealed to the Communists through their screen of aboriginal supporters, and, after three of Macpherson’s fellow officers and a number of tribal headmen were killed in the jungle, PAAC was disbanded and the Malays were absorbed into the Police Jungle Company. Hislop, however, had drawn attention to the aboriginal issue. He set a precedent by building jungle forts for the protective custody of aborigines a tactic adopted by the security forces in the area south of the Thai border.18 Under Templer, an Adviser of Aborigines was appointed and village headmen were entertained at King’s House in Kuala Lumpur by General and Lady Templer. The logical conclusion of these initiatives to win the hearts of Malaya’s orang asli was the formation of an all-aboriginal fighting force – the Senoi Pra’aq – which eliminated a record number of guerrillas in 1959.
Another successful tactic, in Hugh Humphrey’s view, was a policy used against Communists before the Japanese War, of deporting Chinese and Indians suspected of collusion with the enemy. The former Secretary for Defence later revealed ‘a story that can now be told but was kept under wraps for a long, long time’. It was a saga of official involvement in bribery and corruption and in a cloak-and-dagger operation to ship some 35,000 Chinese back to China under the Norwegian flag in the years l948-51. He told how it was necessary to reassure an alarmed Norwegian ship’s Captain, whose Chief Officer had been clapped into prison by the Chinese authorities, that Britain’s man in Hong Kong would arrange to buy his way out. Greasing the Captain’s palm with a hefty package of dollar notes – it happened to be Christmas Day – Humphrey told him, on behalf of the British government, how ‘we’d very much appreciate it if they could continue’, even though ‘it was costing as much to send a deportee to Swatow as it was to send a European First Class to London’.19
Templer inherited a blueprint to tackle the insurgency called the Briggs Plan, devised in 1950 by the previous Director of Operations. After a slow beginning, the security forces had been increased by 1951 to a peak of 67,000 police, 300,000 Home Guards and twenty-three infantry battalions, to confront a maximum of 8,000 guerrillas. Co-operation between the administration, police and military was maintained by a system of Central, State and District War Executive Committees. ‘They all worked together and all activities were very well planned and co-ordinated at each level,’ recalled Dermot Barton, District Officer in Alor Gajah in 1953. As the intelligence war heated up in 1954 to eradicate CT units deep in the jungle, the membership of the War Executive Committees was broadened to include certain civilian representatives.
The Guthrie’s planter J. S. Potter was initially a member of his District Committee in Negri Sembilan before serving the planting and European interests on the main state bodies, including the State War Executive Committee, but had reservations about the DWECs and SWECs. ‘Representing community interests, co-operating with the Government and helping to protect the lives of my fellow planters took a lot of reconciliation and compromise! In fact I became one of W. S. Gilbert’s “apologetic statesmen of a compromising kind” whom Koko had on his list. Under the stress of the times tempers could become frayed.’ It was a subcommittee (from which unofficials were excluded) which did ‘the real business’, but, he went on, ‘unofficials were expected to provide information for the Security Forces to bring the enemy to battle. So keen were the Government to get kills that it was even suggested at one meeting from the chair that planters should be used as decoys almost to attract the enemy. My feelings on this can be well imagined!’ However, Potter did admit that ‘on SWEC I got to know intimately many senior Officers as we thrashed our problems out at weekly meetings. The army certainly worked hard at their task and on the whole co-operated wonderfully well with us.’20
The enlistment by the government and police of planters like Donald Macpherson was another sign of the times. With his incomparable knowledge of the country, Macpherson was given numerous gazetted ranks, such as Honorary Superintendent of Police in Perak and Honorary Inspector in Negri Sembilan, Selangor and Johore, and honorary roles as Game Warden and Inspector of Smallholdings in several states, and made many friends in these circles. The doyen of planters, Dato James Crawford, was the recipient of the Colonial Police Medal for his intelligence work in Perak during the Emergency. However, Guy Madoc knew that ‘the spearhead of the Special Branch intelligence effort was not the European but the Asian inspector’, for these Chinese and Malay officers were both highly intelligent and able to absorb their special training and the skills of disguise and infiltration.21
In the 1950s the symbiotic civilian and military objectives in the Briggs Plan focused on communications and the severing of the umbilical cord between the terrorists and the Min Yuen. One essential was to cut off supplies of food which the squatters on the jungle fringes had been forced to contribute to the terrorists. Guy Madoc revealed the security forces’ tactics:
We were able quite deliberately to enforce food control all round the perimeter of the Communist districts, but we would choose one or two places, and weaken the controls accidentally on purpose … we allowed a certain amount of food to trickle out on the fringe. We called that the honeypot. And then when the Communists had really begun
to get a bit careless, we put in ambushes.22
Successful ambushes weakened terrorist morale and, short of food, they began to surrender in growing numbers.
Potter, however, put his finger on the key strategy. ‘One of the biggest achievements of the Emergency was the resettlement of some half a million scattered squatters … into compact villages where the amenities of Government could easily reach them,’ he remarked.23 To convey the new spirit behind the government rural housing estates, the term ‘Resettlement Area’ was replaced under Templer by ‘New Village’. From his vantage point as Secretary for Chinese Affairs, Brian Stewart saw that ‘The New Village was an important battleground in the campaign for Hearts and Minds.’24 The prototype had been conceived in Negri Sembilan by a resourceful young District Officer, whom Hugh Bryson, the British Adviser, felt ought to have had more credit for his pioneering work.
Negri Sembilan was the first State to construct a ‘New Village’. This was the scheme for bringing small-holders, mainly Chinese, in from isolated areas where they were liable to pressure from guerrillas, to whom they supplied – willingly or under threat of death – food and information, and to concentrate them in an easily protected area. When I arrived in Seremban in 1949, Charles Howe, District Officer, Jelebu, had started working on a plan for the area around a Chinese mining centre at Titi. I paid an early visit there … The shopkeepers in the village were frightened, surly and unwilling to talk to any Government official, and my attempts to open conversation with the Chinese who sold me a packet of cigarettes and a cup of coffee were a dismal failure. The scheme took many months to complete … When the job was finished there were three protected areas, including Titi village, and no small-holders residing outside the perimeter fences, though they went out each day to work on their land. When I made a second visit, the Chinese of Titi were a completely changed lot, ready to chat, smile and joke. I took Sir Henry Gurney, High Commissioner, there in 1950 and we travelled without any escort.
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