The 1948 Communist Revolt in Malaya: A Note on Historical Sources and Interpretation & A Reply 9789814380140

Citation preview

The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies

Established as an autonomous corporation by an Act of the Parliament of the Republic of Singapore in May, 1968, the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies is a regional research centre for scholars and other specialists concerned with modern Southeast Asia. The Institute's research interest is focussed on the many-faceted problems of modernization and social change in Southeast Asia. The Institute is governed by a 24-member Board of Trustees on which are represented the University of Singapore and Nanyang University, appointees from the Government, as well as representatives from a broad range of professional and civic organizations and groups. A ten-man Executive Committee oversees day-to-day operations; it is ex officio chaired by the Director, the Institute's chief academic and administrative officer.

"Copyright subsists in this publication under the United Kingdom Copyright Act, 1911 and the Singapore Copyright Act (Cap. 187). No person shall reproduce a. copy of this publication, or extracts ' therefrom, without the written permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore."

THE 1948 COMMUNIST RE VOLT IN MALAYA: A NOTE ON HISTORICAL SOURCES AND INTERPRETATION MICHAEL STENSON

A REPLY GERALD DE CRUZ

OCCASIONAL PAPER NO . 9 INSTITUTE OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN STUDIES SINGAPORE P r ice:

$ 3 • oo

CONTEN TS Pa ge Pr e f ace · 1

The 1948 Communist Revolt i n Ma l aya: A Note on Histor i cal Sou r ces and Interpretation

Mi chael S t enson

A Rep l y

Gerald de Cruz

17

P R E F A C E Like a kaleidoscope, suddenly shaken, events occurred around the world in 1948 which marked the end of an old pattern of relations between states and the emergence of a new one. In Asia, the Chinese Communists marched tmvards victory in their war with the Nationalist Government; British colonialism ended peacefully in Burma while French colonialism fought a violent and losing battle to hold its positions in Indochina; India witnessed the assassination of Gandhi while Pakistan was shaken by the death of its founder, Jinnah. Interwoven with these events were the several Communist uprisings in India, Burma, Malaya, Indonesia and the Philippines. Was it an accident or coincidence that all these events were taking place at nearly the same time or was it a part of a grand design? The question has intrigued scholars and diplomats alike and there is no more agreement on their meaning today than there was in the past. The Communist uprising in Malaya which came to be known as the Emergency has been discussed, described and analysed by scholars and laymen alike. Despite the fact that they have had. access to the information available in the public domain and to some of the private papers of the key figures of the period, there is no clear agreement amongst them as to whether the Malayan uprising was a part of the general Communist revolt in Southeast Asia or the result of local conditions which caused the Communists to act at that time or lose their political position. The question began to intrigue Dr. Michael Stenson while he was doing research for his study, "Industrial Conflict in Malaya: Prelude to the Communist Revolt in 1948 '' (Oxford University Press, 1970) . As he studied the accounts of other scholars he was struck -by the gaps in their evidence, the contradictions in their analyses and the differences in their conclusions. At the invitation of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Dr. Stenson read an earlier version of this paper at the Institute on 25 November, 1970. Mr. Gerald de Cruz, an actor in some of the events of 1948 and afterwards, was invited to participate in the seminar as commentator. A lively exchange took place between the two and the invited audience. Because of the importance of the subject, the Institute is happy to publish both the revised version of Dr . Stenson's paper and Mr. Gerald de Cruz's response.

- ii When Dr. Stenson presented the original version of this paper at the seminar, he emphasised the considerable debt which he and other students of Malayan political history owe to Mr. Gerald de Cruz who has given so freely of his time, opinions and hospitality. He has asked me to repeat the acknowledgement with the comment that although his interpretations differ from those of Mr. de Cruz in many respects, his recognition of the important role played by the AMCJA-PUTERA in particular is not so far removed from Mr . de Cruz's as might appear from the following discussion. Dr. Michael Stenson is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and Mr. de Cruz is a feature writer in the New Nat i on Singapore . The Institute takes this opportunity to thank both for permitting it to publish their papers. The facts, interpretations and method of presentations are those of the authors alone and the Institute is not responsible nor should it be considered as advocating the ideas or interpretations included in these papers. ~

It is hoped that the dialogue between Dr . Stenson and Mr . de Cr u z will inspire scholars and laymen alike to look afresh at the origins of the Communist uprising in Malaya and seek new answers for old questions.

Josef Silverstein Director

November 1, 1971 .

The 1948 Communist Revolt in Malaya: A Not e on Historical Sources and Interpretation by Michae 1 Stenson

The Communist revolt , or the Emergency as it is often ca l l ed, is by far the most frequently examined aspect of twentieth century Malayan h i story. Ye t in surveying the mor e or less informed literature on the subject one is i mpressed above all by our scanty knowledge of Malayan Communist Party policy - of its context, the manner in which it was made, the debates which occurred, and even the details of some of the more important decisions . C.D. Cowan, C.N. Parkinson, W.D . Mcintyre, Khoo Kay Kim and others have read, as far as we know, virtually all the official, minuted correspondence relating to British intervention in Malaya in the nineteenth century. They have also examined some private correspondence and have had the advantage of numerous accounts of most of the British personalities involved. Private conversations have largely remained so . The fact still stands, however, that students of British interventi on have been able to draw upon a rela t ively wide range of reliable sources. Similarly, although analyses of the Malayan Union scheme of 1945-6 have been hindered by the unavailability of many confidential official documents, historians have benefited from the priva t e correspondence of and interviews with many of the leading antagonists . We may hopefully assume . that in seven years' t i me most of the 'i's will be dotted . Even the very recent separation of Singapore fr om Malaysia is in many respects already more fully documented than Malayan Communist Party policy as a whole, and its decision to revolt in 1948 in particular . Most published accounts rely upon an odd combination of secondary sources and a selective assortment of security service records. The sum total of such records is knowledged by security service officials to be fragmentary and is at present divided between at least two, and probably more, government departments in both Malaysia and Si ngapore.! With the possible exception of Mr. Anthony Short, who has so far been able to publish only a brief a r ticle, 2 no one researcher has seen the complete collection of documents he l d by the two Governments. When one considers that such documents as are held by government departments are often translated reports or summaries obtained by security agents, one begins to appreciate how critically it is necessary to evaluate such material. Memoi r s or recollections by Party members are minimal;

- 2 public collections hold only isolated copies of the many newspapers, pamphlets, or broadsheet_s_ published by the Party or its front organisations.3 With the exception of Short's brief survey in Malaysia, and McLane's useful commentaries in Soviet Strategies in Southeast Asia: An Exploration of Eastern Policy under Lenin and Stalin (Princeton, 1966), it is clear that most published accounts have been heavily reliant upon the original secondary sources: V. Thompson and R. Adoff•s, The Left Wing in Southeast Asia (Institute of Pacific Relations, 1950), and G.Z o Hanrahan's, The Communist Struggle in MaZaya(New York, 1954). The former possesses the virtue that the authors visited Malaya in early 1947 and possibly again in 1948; the latter that the author read Chinese and had unusually free access to official documents. But neither had the benefit of even a moderately consistent coverage of the English, not to mention the vernacular, press; neither had access to the complete range of official documents . Hanrahan's book contains a major error of chro~ology which has been repeated by L.W. Pye and Ruth McVey. When one compares their differing interpretations of the origins of the revolt one begins to understand how hypothetical, how dubious by modern historiographical standards the writing on the revolt has been. There are serious doubts, for example, about such a basic point as the Party's supposed formulation of an insurrectionary programme . C.B. McLane refers to three resolutions of the Fourth Plenum of the Central Executive Committee of March 1948 and a twelve point plan of struggle of the Fifth Plenum of May 1948, the texts of which were, he states, subsequently recovered and translated by the British . 5 His own account and interpretation of them seems convincing but when one considers the varying accounts of other authors in addition to the fact that McLane was relying upon a translation of a captured document the original of which he probably never saw, and the authenticity of which was probably attested by only one or two Chinese-reading officials, one remains uneasy. In any case the final resolutions alone were apparently recovered with little or no indication of the trend of discussion or the tone of the meetings. Some indication of the confusion surrounding the Party's alleged insurrectionary programme may be derived from the following discussion of five accounts of Party policy in early 1948 . McLane's summary of the three resolut i ons of the March Plenum is similar in essence to

-

that of J . Ho Brimmell . 6

3 -

McLane states:

The first was a political analysis of the situation in Malaya which concluded that inasmuch as the Labour Government in London had shown itself no different f r om its predecessors in protecting Britain's imperialist interests, the struggle for independence must ultimately take the form of a "people's the MCP stood ready to provide revolutionary war"; The second l eadership in this glorious task. resolution, regarding political strategies, set two reveral of the former tas ks b e fore the party; "ost ri ch policy" of "surrenderism" (manifested in the dissolution of the MPAJA, the acceptance of selfrule instead of full independence, and the party's and retirement behind front organisations); uncompromising an r o f masses the of preparation struggle for independence, without regard to The third resolution considerations of legality. stressed the need to restore par;y discipline, afte r the laxness of the Loi Teck era. 'The resolutions did not, then, speciMcLane concludes: fically call for an armed uprising, although as internal party documents they might well have done so had it been the intention of the leadership to proceed immediately t o armed insurrection o They stressed the urgenc~ of preparing for rebellion, not yet of precip i tating one . ' With regard to the Fifth Plenum both Brimmell and McLane suggest that a 'plan of struggle' or a 'directive' was adopted in order to counter government reaction to the Party's more militant activities of April-May 1948.9 McLane summarises the twelve point programme as follows: the ''plan of struggle" emphasized the primacy henceforth of illegal work, urged that trade unions be called used as vehicles of anti-British propaganda; for strikes specifically aimed at the disruption of demanded a more vigorous the Malayan economy; assault on the democratic parties and on the national bourgeoisie (including Chinese elements sympathetic and proposed measures to attry8t to the Kuomintang) ; intellectuals and peasants to the Communist cause.• .. Brimmell and McLane seem agreed that the Fourth and Fifth P l enums moved the MCP 'closer to open rebellion' but d id not in fact prepare an explicitly insurrecti 9 nary Brimmell implies that lower level cadres programme. 1 and thus · open insurrection by their conflict precipit"ated over-hasty resort to indiscriminate terror. 12 McLane

-

4 -

suggests that, on the contrary, the Party initiated 'a wave of assassinations and public terror' in response to governmental restrictions.l3 However, Hanrahan states: With a new high command directing the course of the struggle, a reappraisal was made of the situation and it was decided to embark on a more militant programme, including everi,t ua1·. . ci vi 1 war. This new policy was reportly given final agreement in a meeting of the Central Committee of the M.C.P. held in March ...• More positive indications began to take shape in April as the party organs began to go underground. Gradually, posters and leaflets inciting the people to bloodshed and violence appeared in public places and the number of serious arson cases increased. British authorities began to prepare for the expected 14 a revolt which followed two months later, in June 1948 . Later Hanrahan adds: ... the , Malayan Communist Party elected to begin the armed rebellion. Over-all strategy was now dominated by the Chinese line and patterned after that evolved in the Chinese revolution. Such texts as Strategic Problems of the Malayan Revolutionary War, issued at the time by the insurgents, were not much different from Mao Tse-tung's own St rategic Prob le ms of China's Revolutionary Wars, first written in 1936.15 Harahan continues: The armed revolution was to go through three definite phases: (1) crippling the British economic system through guerrilla harassment and increasing guerrilla supplies and equipment by a series of raids and ambushes carried out against police stations, security forces, and so forth; (2) forcing the government out of the hinterland and into a position where it would occupy only the main supply and communication lines and strategic points; ( 3) establishing "liberated areas" in the regions controlled by the insurgents from which later to expand, finally taking control over all Malaya. Short (pp. 153-4) and E. O'Ballance U1alaya: The Communist l948-60, London, 1966, pp. 77-8) present four stage variations upon a similar theme.

Insurgent War,

-

5 -

Of the five interpretations noted, those of Brimmell and McLane are substantially more precise in terms of chronology and the detail of individual decisions, inadequate though their summaries may be for subsequent researchers. In the case of Hanrahan, Short and O' Ballance there appears to have occurred a form of post facto rationalisation whereby MCP actions were assumed to have been part of a specific insurrec·t ionary programme and whereby the outlines of such a programme were interpo l ated from translations of MCP documents deriving from March to December 1948 . In this respect the Strategic Pr oblems of the Malayan Revol~6ionary War~ produced, according to Hanrahan 'at the time', (which we find on page 101 was 7 months later in December 1948), seems greatly to have influenced their conclusions. Bearing these general comments in mind, let us turn to two points made by Mr. G. de Cruz (the only former Party member now prepared to comment publicly) in a letter to the Journal of Southeast As ian Studie s of March 1970 (I, 1, pp. 123-5). Firstly, Mr. de Cruz believes · that a 'decision' was made known' to the Malayan Communist Party 'in mid or late 1947'. Secondly, he states that L. Sharkey, the Australian Communist Party leader, definitely delivered a scathing criticism of the 'right wing de~iationist line' at 'the Calcutta Conference' of February 1948, and 'that a very clever strategy was worked out for the MCP in order to create the conditions which would make their return to the jungle both logical and effective. After the Calcutta Conference, Sharkey came to Singapore and spent two weeks here, dotting the i's and crossing the tis of the decisions arrived at by the Conference'. . Finally, Mr. de Cruz specula.t es regarding the fate of the All-Malayan Council of Joint Action (an MCP supported front organisation) had it 'not been stabbed in the back and ultimately destroyed as a result of Stalin's ordering the MCP into armed revolt' . With regard to the first point, the Cominform was established and Zhdanov's hard-line cold war doctrine announced only in September 1947. As there is no evidence of the new policy being fully formulated or privately circulated prior to that time we may fairly safely rule out the possibility of a 'decision' having been received by the MCP in mid-1947 . The MCP was in fact one of the most isolated of communist parties, one of the least in touch with the Soviet Union or with other communist parties. It had been in fairly regular contact with the World Federation of Trade Unions and the World Federation of Democr atic Youth but did it have direct contact with the Cominform or any other Soviet organisation before September or October 1947?

- 6 Mr . de Cruz suggests that Chin Peng may have received 'the decision' during a secret trip to China in late 1947 but there is much doubt about the Chinese Communist Party's links with the Soviet Party at that time and it is of note that the Chinese Communist Party was not represented at the formation of the Cominform nor were the Chinese ini;ially invited as delegates to the Calcutta Youth Conference . l Moreover Brimmell, a normally reliable source, states that Chin Peng and his associates 'apparently received no help from the Chinese Party which was the~ preoccupied 8 It is with its own war against the Kuomintang'. reasonable to suppose that the MCP was influenced by the increasingly manifest success of the Chinese Party and by the more militant tone of Soviet international policy but it is surely unreasonable to go further without overwhelming circumstantial or other evidence of the reception of a 'decision' or instructions. With regard to such circumstantial evidence we need also to ask ourselves what may have the 'decision' or even advice allegedly received by the MCP in mid or late 1947? To take up arms immediately, to take them up in rnid-1948, or simply to stop compromising and to become more militant? Assuming that any of these three forms of 'decision' or advice were received, why did the MCP require prodding from Calcutta and then detailed planning advice from Sharkey before it mustered the courage to act? Let us look more closely at the Calcutta Conferences, for it must be appreciated that there were two different conferences at Calcutta, that sponsored by the World Federation of Democratic Youth and the International Union of Students between 19 and 25 February, and the subsequent Congress of the Indian Communist Party held from 28 With respect to the Youth Conference February to 6 March. Ruth McVey has amply illustrated its militant tone while casting doubt upon the belief that it made, ratifigd, or conveyed revolutionary decisions or instructions.l Sharkey's 'scathing critism of the "right wing deviationist line" of the Communist parties in the colonies', to which Mr. de Cruz refers, was delivered not at the Youth 28nference but at the Congress of the Indian Communist The distinction is signifi~ant for ~t. was at the Party. Congress that the l ndian Communist Party's thesis regardi~~ the 'practical application of the new line' was ratified. But it is important to note that the thesis was prepared for specifically Indian conditions and that, although advocating a militant united front from below policy, it did not postulate open armed revolt against the government. Decisions regarding Malaya may, of course, have been In this case two questions reached or conveyed in private.

-

7 -

arise . Firstly, who was or were the MCP representative or representatives at the Conference? Ian Morrison states only one MCP representative attended, most others two. 2 2 Brimmell mentions Rashid Maideen as returning from the Empire Communist Conference via the Calcutta Youth Conference, a suggestion which is almost certainly inz~rrect, the two conferences being separated by nearly a year. McLane mentions Li Sung, President of the New Democratic Youth League (Malaya), but says he wa2 evidently not 4 present at the crucial Fourth Plenum. In any case it seems probable that the representative or representatives were of only middle or low rank o Secondly, the belief that Sharkey held important discussions with MCP leaders in early March 1948 is widely accepted and almost certainly correct, but may we accept the view that he ~Sought instructions from Stalin without further evidence? The propaganda of a militant line and verbal encouragement of revolutionary action are quite different from the passage of instructions. That the MCP was influenced by international trends cannot be doubted, for these were widely reported in the press and there is abundant evidence of such influences in Party statements of the period after February 19 48; that i"ts pol-icies were dictated from outside is, however, doubtful in the extreme. And in this respect it is of note that a careful reading of the more or less academic sources does not support Mr. Yeoh Kim Wah's conclusion, in h i~ reply to Mr. de Cruz, that the view that directions were transmitted via Calcutta 'is the orthodox view and by far the most wid2GY accepted version of the communist uprising in Malaya'. Having suggested that there is good reason t o doubt the validity of either Mr. de Cruz ' s or Mr. Yeoh Kim Wah's interpretation in the absence of corroborating evidence and in the light of Brimmell's and McLane's summaries of the resolutions of the Fourth and Fifth Plenums, I wou l d suggest that there were numerous reasons why the MCP should have considered the internal Malayan situation necessitated revolt. When I first elaborated this thesis it seemed to me largely original but we should note that it more or less corresp2~ds with MCP and Soviet justifications of the revolt r and that it was foreshadowed by Thompson and Adloff as ear l y as 1950, 2:tgd affirmed by Ruth McVey in 1964, and McLane in 1966 . Thompson and Adloff commented, for example: 'fluctuations Lof MCP policy/ apparently reflected local circumstances rather than external directives, and they did not dictate British strategy but were determined by it.' And again: 'The synchronization of this uprising with similar outbreaks in other parts of Southeast Asia appears to substantiate the existence of

-

8 -

some overall communist scheme. Yet the steadily tightening British controls, the decreasing effectiveness of labour agitation, and diminishing popular support for the leftwing groups in Malaya may of themselves have furnished the requisite impetus.•29 McVey has argued more generally that by 1948 most Southeast Asian communist parties recognised that power was consolidating in other hands; that the alternative to rovolt was elimination from a significant political role.3 Before outlining what I can only describe as the aggressively restrictive measures taken by the British to curb the MCP and its front organisations in 1947 and early 1948, 31 I should emphasise the fact that MCP policy between August 1945 and ea+lY 1948 was that of a Peaceful United Front with the object of achieving a more or less constitutional takeover of power. The policy was predicated upon British acceptance of open political, trade union and similar activities which would be considered legal in Britain itself. It was no doubt partially predicated upon the MCP's retention of a significant administrativecum-intimidatory power. I would argue that it was only when it became apparent that both major avenues of expression, political and trade union, administrativecum-intimidatory, were almost completely to be denied to militant left-wing groups that the MCP decided to reverse its previous policy. The reorganisation of the police force during 1946 and early 1947 and the more effective enforcement of law and order were to be expected of any regime, colonial or otherwise, in the chaotic aftermath of the Japanese occupation . But in the Malayan situation they were more significant to a radical party than elsewhere: firstly because the MCP's main front groups were born in and throve on an atmosphere of disorder, fear and intimidation; secondly because banishment was revived, and although used sparingly by comparison with pre-war times, and mainly for non-political offences, affected the Party's intimidatory power and leadership cadre; thirdly, because the police were extens .i:vely used in "19 4.7 to enforce the trespass law on estates and thus to cut Indian estate workers off from radical political or trade union influences. The first measure ~ay be regarded as normal in even the most liberal society; the two latter were thoroughly inimical to the development of democra,t ic forces. More specifically they were inimical to the pursuance of a Peaceful United Front policy by the MCP. In the constitutional sphere the Malayan Union scheme aroused little enthusiasm in left-wing and Chinese circles

- 9 as a whole because, as far as they were concerned, it was but the old colonial regime writ large. It offered no immediate prospect of progress towards electoral politics and thus the circumstances under which a Peaceful United Front policy might be expected to succeed. The Malayan Union scheme was bad enough and would have been subject to continuing left-wing and liberal criticism had it been implemented; but the promulgation of the Federation of Halaya proposals, which denied citizenship and thus any real hope to responsible, constitutional political involvement of most Chinese and Indians, was to invite recourse to extra legal avenues of expression. And with regard to those who have claimed that the rejection of the Malayan Union scheme was largely the consequence of intense Halay indignation and non-Malay apathy, I would suggest that there is sufficient negative and some positive evidence that leading British officials were well aware of the challenge to their authority posed by the MCP, which they were increasingly determined to exclude from effective political influence. Similarly I would comment upon the debate about the best method of nation-building, and in particular upon the question as to whether citizenship should be granted as a reward for loyalty or as a means of engendering it, that the British made no real attempt before 1949-50 to create a sense of national unity by one means or the other. In the main they merely. manipulated disparate political forces to what appeared to be their immediate advantage . Thus the PUTERA-AMCJA, a non-communal pressure group sponsored by the MCP in order to agitate for a more liberal constitution, was not 'stabbed in the back' by Stalin, as Mr. de Cruz suggests. It was excluded from political influence by the intransigent, even aggressive, British response to the People's Constitutional Proposals, and the Hartal (general stoppage and closure of offices and shop~} of October 1947. The PUTERA-AMCJA failed, as Mr. Yeoh Kim Wah rightly notes, to embody a sufficiently united massbased national front, 32 but one must add that the British left few ~jones unturned in their attempts to divide and decry it. · In the process they removed yet another essential condition for the continuance of the MCP's Peaceful United Front policy. More significant for the MCP were successful British measures to curb trade union activities. The PUTERA-AMCJA was a useful but never more than loosely articulated and financially dependent front. The Pan-Malayan Federation of Trade Unions (PMFTU) was by contrast centrally organised, relatively highly disciplined, and the financial backbone of an MCP which was desperately short of funds

- 10 after Lai Teck absconded in March 1947 . By that time the PMFTU had staged more strikes, gained greater concessions, and enrolled more members than any other union movement before or since . However by mid-1947 the PMFTU was a relatively quiescent force; by the end of the year it was selfconfessedly on the defensive, failing to gain significant concessions, losing members, suffering from a declining funds, morale and prestige. By February 1948 it was almost certainly aware that the British were preparing its destruction as a centralised organisation. The PMFTU's decline related to three main factors: first to the inevitable problems of consolidation after the spate of militant unionisation in 1946 and early 1947. The core of truly industrialised, longer established unions remained fairly solid but most adjusted inadequately to the new tasks of consolidating their organisation, providing mutual help benefits, and establishing regular consultation and negotiation with employers. Secondly, the PMFTU had gained sufficient concessions for its members, on the one hand, and economic conditions had stablised sufficiently, on the other, for the cutting edge of militant dissatisfaction with living conditions to be blunted. Thirdly, the British were determined after early 1946 upon increasingly close guidance and control of trade unions, mainly by means of registration under the restrictive 1940 Trade Unions Ordinance. It is important to note at this stage that British policy in general and trade union policy in particular evolved only gradually and that for a variety of reasons the PMFTU was led to believe that it could gain official acceptance by means of registration while maintaining centralised control over the affiliated unions. This belief was not entirely unfounded, as the registration of the Singapore Federation of Trade Unions in June 1947 demonstrated. But in the peninsula the pattern was one of increasing moderation by the PMFTU with the object of gaining registration, as opposed to increasingly restrictive requirements upon the part of the Registrar of Trade Unions. In effect the restrictive amendments in the Trade Unions A111.endment Ordinance, which was passed only on 31 ~ 1ay 1948, we re gradually applied from mid-1947 in order to deny rapidly registered and more effectively supervised; alternative forms of centralised organisation, such as the Pan-Malayan Council of Rubber Workers' Unions, were blocked by a blunt refusal to register. Although the PMFTU was not officially refused registration until 13 June 1948 (4 days before the declaration of a state of emergency in Perak) it was

- 11 undoubtedly aware that registration was unlikely by November and perhaps earlier. By February 1948 it was served sufficient notice of the Government's intention to destroy its authority in two ways: first, by the Registrar's order that registered unions should pay no subscriptions to an unregistered federation; secondly, by the passage through the Labou3 Advistory Council of the amended Trade Unions Ordinance. 4 The Council's deliberations were supposedly confidential; in practice it was a leaky sieve and it would have been surprising were the PMFTU not aware of its decisions. In short the moderation which the MCP's two main 'front' organisations espoused as part of its attempt to achieve its ends by more or less constitutional means was exploited by government and employers to exclude them from substantial influence upon Malayan politics and society. By February 1948 if not by November 1947, the PUTERA-AMCJA's programme for constitutional reform had clearly failed for the near future. Meanwhile the destruction of the PMFTU was being prepared. The stage at which the MCP became fully aware of the implications of its own and British policies is not definitely known. There appears to have been a militant element within the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army Ex-Comrades Association throughout the period. Debate within the MCP itself may well have caused Lai Teck's defection in March 1947 and undoubtedly continued throughout the year. According to Mr. de Cruz and others it was still continuing at the Fourth Plenum of March 1948 when Sharkey allegedly played a major role in convincing the waverers. Whether Sharkey attended the Plenum or not, it seems likely that it was influenced, directly or indirectly, by the Calcutta Conferences. There can be no real doubt it was influenced by the successes of the Chinese Communist Party and the rising international tension associated with the cold war. However we should recognise both that the effect of external influences related to the extent with which they corresponded with the MCP's assessment of the internal situation, and that there.were some signs of a turn towards more militant action prior to March 1948. For example in December 1947 Chin Peng and Lau Yiew were reported a$ urging the annual conference of MPAJA exComrades Association to reorjanise, to collect funds, and to be prepared for struggle. 5 The PUTERA-AMCJA' s · 'Constitutional Campaign Fighting Fund' of November 19 4 7 was referred to in January 1948 as the 'People's Fighting Fund' or even as the 'Struggle Fund! o 36 Moreover there is some suggestion of a drift to the jungle on the part of

-

12 -

hard-core militants 9r those in danger of arrest from at least January 1948 " 3 The preceding discussion indicates the necessity for the collection and authentication of all available documents relating to the origins of the revolt before historians may come to even moderately consistent conclusions. At present most scholars have access only to second-hand summaries of translations of the crucial resolutions of the Fourth and Fifth Plenums of the Central Executive Committee. We have even less information about the important March and May Plenums of 1947, and in the case of the 1 October 1951 directive, which set out major alterations of policy, we are reliant upon a relatively brief summary in the Lori d on Times (1 December 1952) of a translation which w~B reported to be originally 57 tyoewritten pages in length. Within the limits of our present knowledge we may conclude fairly definitely however, that it is unlikely that precise 'instructions' were conveyed via Calcutta or by any other medium . What was conveyed · by a number of media, public and private, was a general message of rising international militancy which was both necessary, because of capitalist agression, and prop.i tious, because 'democratic' forces, such as those in China and Vietnam, were on the offensive. The MCP seems to have been generally receptive to the international 'message' because it fitted in with Malayan facts o The only alternative to much more decisive action in 1948 was governmental elimination or erosion of most of the organisational and other gains made by the Party since 1941. In neither Brimmell's nor McLane's summaries of the resolutions of the Fourth and Fifth Plenum's is there any clear indication of a staged or explicitly timed .prograrnme with a 'general insurrection' planned for August or any other date . 39 May we conclude that there was no specific 'insurrectionary programme'? McLane cites both communist publications and the official Communist Banditry in Malaya: The Emergency, Jun e Z948 - December Z949, in favour of the thesis that the MCP was provoked into open revolt in Jun'e 19 48. 40 The MCP undoubtedly recognised that open armed conflict was likely to occur during the course of 1948 or possibly 1949 and made preparations towards that end, but there is good reason to believe that it did not expect the Government to restrict its activities as decisively as it did from the . end of May.41 The evidence for a specifically insurrectionary

-

13 -

and precisely timed programme is tenuous and circumstantial while Thompson and Adloff's original thesis that MCP tactics 'did not dictate British strategy but were determined by it' can be sustained by a growing body of information.

- 14 FOOTNOTES AND REFERENCES TO THE 1948 COMMUNIST REVOLT 1.

The Ministry of Horne Affairs and the Prime Minister's Department have the most relevant documents in Malaysia, the Ministry of Horne Affairs in Singapore, but other departments sometimes have copies of · documents not held elsewhere.

2.

'Communism and the Emergency', Malaysia, ed. Wang Gungwu, London, 1964.

3.

For example, the Malaysian National Archives have holdings of the Malayan Communist Party's weekly, Democrat, only from March to July 1946, and of the Chinese Language Combatant's Friend only for the latter part of 1947. However the Straits Ti mes library contains many broadsheets and clippings all of which should be copied and placed in a public collection.

4.

The error relates to the date of Lai Teck's defection which occured in 1947 not 1948. L.W. Pye, Guerrilla Communism in Malaya. Its Social and PoLitical Meaning, Princeton, 1956. R.T. McVey, "The Southeast Asian Revolts 10 , Communism and Revolution: The Strategic Uses of Po liti cal Violence, ed. C.E. Black and T. Thornton, Princeton, 1964.

5.

Soviet Strategies •.. ,p. 386-7.

6.

Communism in South East Asia, London, OUP, i959, p. 211.

7.

Soviet Strategies .. . , p.

8.

Ibid,

9.

Soviet Strategies .. . , Asia, p. 211.

386.

p . 386. p. 387;

Communism in South East

10.

Soviet Strategies . .. , p. 387. According to McLane the Fifth Plenum was convened on the lOth of May.

11 .

Brimmell states (p. 211) that the Plenum 'adopted a directive providing a plan of action in the very likely event. of the Malayan Government's taking countermeasures against the acts of violence which the Party was preparing. It was decided to withdraw the greater part of the Party's organisation underground, leaving only a few front groups in the open . The action to be taken was aimed at disrupting the economy, by strikes and intimidation. The United Front would still proceed, but in a more militant form. '

-

15 -

12.

Ibid .

13.

Soviet Str>ategier; .. . ,

14 .

Han r ah an , p • 6 0 .

15 .

I b i d~

16.

Ibid.

17.

R.T. McVey, The Calcutta Confer>ence and the South East Asian Upr>isings~ Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 1958, p. 8 0

18 .

Communism in South East

19.

The Calcutta Confer>ence . .. , passim.

20.

Communism in South East Asia, p. 263.

21.

See McVey, The Calcutta Conference ... , pp. 19-22.

22.

11

23.

Communism in South East Asia, p. 210.

24.

McLane, p. 386, n . III.

25.

Thompson and Adloff comment that Sharkey 'is thought to have left the question of a Malayan uprising to local decision' (p. 154).

26.

Yeoh Kim Wah letter in Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, !, 2, September 1970, p. 155 . M.D. Kennedy, A Short Histor>y of Communism in Asia, London, 1957, p. 443, Pye, p. 84, and less definitely, Brirnrnell, p. 210, are of the view that instructions were conveyed. Hanrahan, p. 63, terms it an 'open question'. McLane pp . 359-60, Short, pp. 152-3, and O'Ballance, pp. 76-7, note the influence of other factors.

27.

See, for example, Malayan pp. 3-7.

28.

Thompson and Adloff, pp. 132-3; McVey, 'The Southeast Asian Revolts', pp. 171-2; McLane, p. 388.

29.

Thompson and Adloff, p. 132.

30.

McVey,

P' .

Pf·

38 7-8.

63.

Asia~

p . 210.

The Communist Uprising in Malaya," Far Eastern Survey, XVII, 22 December 1948, p. 282.

Monitor>~

I, 10

August 1948,

'The Southeast Asian Revolts', p. 183.

31.

16 -

For more detailed and fully documented discussion of this interpretation see my Industrial Conflict in

Malaya:

Prelude to the Communist Revolt of l948,

London, 1970, chapters X and XI. 32.

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, I, 2, September 1970, p. 154.

33.

See, for example, Malcom MacDonald's radio broadcast of 20 October reported in British Malaya, XXII, 7, December 1947 and Sir Edward Gent's in the Indian Daily Mail, 30 September 1947.

34.

The headline 'Pressure on Trade "Unions' followed by a report that because of communist domination of the PMFTU a mission was sent to inquire into the trade union situation, published in Malayan Monitor, I, 3, January 1948, indicates a probable prior indication of Government intentions.

35.

Straits Echo, 16 December 1947.

36.

Indian Daily Mail, 10 December 1947; Monthly Review of Chinese Affairs, 17 January 1948, p. 16; letter G. de Cruz to Tan Cheng Lock, Cheng Lock Papers.

4 January 1948 in Tan

37.

For example, two militant leaders of Se langor rubber estate workers disappeared in December 19 4 7 or January 1948.

38.

See Hanrahan, p. 130.

39.

Malcom MacDonald mentioned August in his radio broadcast of 3 August 1948 but it is noteworthy that the date is not mentioned in the more important official publications. MacDonald, upon whose statements Pye relies very heavily, may also be regarded as a prejudiced witness who had been referring publicly to the Communist threat since October 1947o

40.

Soviet Strategies ... , p. 388.

41.

For example, the Party acquired the daily Min Sheng Pau and established the MCP Review only at the beginning of June 1948.

A REPLY by GERALD DE CRUZ

The first point I wish to make is that if a historian or political scientist discusses communism in Malaya or anywhere else, he should make a study of both communism and of Malayan history. Otherwise he can come a nasty cropper. I believe this is the first trap into which Dr. Micheal Stenson has fallen in his paper on the 1948 Communist Revolt in Malaya . He has not fully realised that he is not dealing with parlour pinks playing at revolution, but with deadly serious communist revolutionaries. They are not going to put down everything in writing in detail for the comfort of future historians especially when they are planning armed revolt, and more especially if the orders have come from outside, and in this case from the Soviet Union . What a windfall for the enemies of communism to be able to prove that the local communist party is the agent of a foreign government! This was the very kind of windfall that both the local communists and their foreign masters would be certain to deny them. At the same time, the communists will definitely draw up resolutions in communist jargon which make it quite clear to their own cadres that a radical change has been made in their policy from peaceful constitutional struggle to preparing the masses for "an uncompromising struggle for independence without regard to considerations of legality"to quote E.B. McLane (as quoted by Dr. Stenson himself on page 3). And on pages 3 and 4, Stenson liberally quotes several other writers on the Malayan insurrection who give similar evidence, though they differ in details or sometimes in interpretation. But this is not enough for Dr. Stenson. What he wants is "overwhelming circumstantial or other evidence of the reception of a 1 decision 1 or instructions" ." (page 6). That I am afraid he will not obtain. The second point I wish to make is that a criticism of the origins of the Communist armed struggle in Malaya should be preceded by a painstaking study of communism and its history in Malaya. This quite clearly had not been undertaken by Dr. Stenson . One glaring example should suffice to show this.

- 18 He writes: "The MCP was in fact one of the most isolated of communist parties, one of the least in touch with the Soviet Union or with other communist parties, etc." (page 5) . This is totally inaccurate and there is much evidence to show that Dr. Stenson has not given any attention at all to this part of his argument, although it is vital and he makes it so dogmatically. In the first place, the MCP was in constant contact with the British Communist Party at least be tvieen 19 45 and 1956" I for one can vouch for this. On many occasions when, as a member of the executive of the Malayan Democratic Union, I, with others like Lim Kean Chye, the MDU treasurer,was sent to the MCP office in Singapore, to ask them to support certain decisions we had made, we were told that we were going along too "leftist" a path; and that the BCP had advised the MCP to be patient and give the British Labour Government more time to settle down in office, and not to embarrass it. At that time the MCP followed the BCP advice to the letter. One specific occasion I remember was when the MDU decided, in mid-1947, not to accept the re-imposition of the old ore-war Societies' Ordinance, as was contemplated by the British administration. The MCP, however, when informed of this, counselled more patience, and as we walked away, Lim Kean Chye, (now a lawyer in Penang) , snorted in disgust: "At least we can say we've got a very strong tail -the MCP!" Then there was, following Sharkey's speech at the Calcutta Conference in 1948, the acrimonious polemics between the BCP and the Australian Communist Party after Sharkey's severe strictures on the BCP as having totally misled the communist parties of the British colonies as to the true class-nature of the British Labour Government. This went on, if my memory is correct, for years and if Dr. Stenson would like to study that correspondence I think it would show him that the Russians, and their spokesmen, the Australians, firmly believed in the close contact which had existed from the end of the war between the communist party of the 'mother' country and that of the colonies, including Malaya. There is, finally, one concrete and absolutely conclusive evidence on this point which anyone who had studied the development of communism in Malaya between 1945-1948 would have known: that as early as the autumn of 1946, Lim Hong Bee, the principal founder of the Malayan Democratic Union, and its first secretary-general, had

- 19 left Singapore to go to London, ostensibly to renew his law studies, but actually to become the official representative, not only in Britain but also in Europe as a whole, of the Malayan Communist Party. He was also the representative in Britain and Europe of the All-Malayan Council of Joint Action & Pusat Tenaga Ra'ayat (I signed the letter to him certifying this in my capacity as Executive Secretary of the AMCJA-Putera) . Lim Hong Bee kept that position for at least 10 years between 1946 and 1956. It has been only since the open split between the Russian and Chinese Communist Parties that there have been rumours that he does not function in the same way any more - but of that I have no positive proof. For all I know, he still is the MCP representative in Europe. The fact remains that during the time that Dr. Stenson so boldly claims that the MCP was one of the "most isolated" of communist parties - it was in constant touch, through Lim Hong Bee, with the BCP (which indeed largely financed him) and also with the Soviet Union and several East European communist states to which Hong Bee regularly travelled, attending all the big meetings of communist parties and communist fronts, and many small ones as well. I myself had the dubious pleasure of meeting hin-, in November 19 49 in Czechoslovakia, where my wife and I were under threat of arrest by the Czech Security Police and where, true to his communist bigotry, since he had heard of my defection from the MCP, he refused to stand up for us . Later I saw him often in London, until 1956 when I returned home " When Dr. Stenson asks " .. did it (the MCP) have direct contact with the Cominform or any other Soviet organisation before September or October 19 4 7?" - the answer is - yes, for a whole year before that, from the autumn of 1946, and for at least a decade later, the MCP had its own representative in Europe, in constant contact with Stalinism and the Cominform - a representative in the person of Lim Hong Bee who also participated, I was told in Britain in 1950, in the meetings of the Cominform at which the hard Zdhanov line was loudly and clearly enunciated so that the parties of the world would take their formal, militant cue from ito G

The persons who~ve me this information were Mr. and Mrs. Sam Bardell and Mr. and Mrs. Bill Brooks - all four of whom were prominent members of the so-called "Colonial

-

20 -

Bureau" of the British Communist Party . My wife and I stayed with the Barde lls in their flat in Maida Vale for several months after our arrival in Britain . My th ird point i s that the armed revolt in Malaya was part and par cel of a Stalinist strategy conceived and carried out t hroughout the Southeast Asian region, from India to the Philippines, which were all begun in the same year - 1948 - the year which also signalled the crucial cao t ur e of power by communism in Eastern Europe o I am not interested in disputing that the British were trying to put more restrictions and severe ones too in the path of the Communist Party and its organisations. Of course they were . All I am saying is that the fact that the revolt took place in 1948 , the year when all the other armed revolts in Southeast Asia took place, is "overwhelming circumstantial evidence" that it was part and parcel of a concerted commun i st uprising, heralded openly by the enunciation of a new hard line by Zdhanov . As I have written elsewhere: "When a long row of shophouses goes up in flame it seems special pleading to argue that the fire in the house in the middle of the row had its own unique cause . " Si nce Dr . Stenson may never discover the explicit documentary evidence about the armed insurrection that he repeatedly asks for, let me add another bit of circumstantial evidence on t he origin of the communist uprisings in Southeast As i a . In 1949, when crossing the Mediterranean from Istanbul to Rome, my wife and I met Richard Slansky and his wife Anna who were travelling on the same boat, and we became very friendly . While havi ng lunch in Athens together one day, he told me that he had been informed about the Soviet plans for an armed uprisings in Asia as early as late 1946 . He had met a Burmese comrade who was returning home after attending some Communist congress or other in Europe, and gave him a shock by saying to him: "Look after yourself in the jungle . " Richard invited me to go to Prague, and arranged for our visas . Later, because he was the younger brother of Rudolf Slansky, then the general secretary and leader of the Czech Commun i st Party who was arrested in the socalled "treas on" trials in Czechoslovakia and e x ecuted Richard was sentenced to life imprisonment.

- 21 -

He has since been released (after the de - Stalin i ~~tion campaigns) and, I am informed, is now teaching history in a high school in a Prague suburb " So desperately did Stalin need an important diversionary strategy to distract American attention from his planned coups in Eastern Europe, (because the u.s. had the atom bombs and he did not) , that in countries like India, Burma.· and Indonesia he ordered the communist parties to revolt against their own national and nationalist leadership . Every one of these CP's has stressed, from that time to this, that their revolts were indigenous, home-grown, spontaneous, with no inspiration or support of any kind from outside; but they have to do that, this is elementary. What seems surprising is that so much faith seems to be placed by Dr. Stenson and others on what the local c.o mmunists say is the case, but so little attention is paid by Dr. Stenson himself to the extraordinary spectacle of the whole of Communist Southeast Asia in revolt in 1948, even unto the Philippines. This is brushed aside in his paper in what appears to me to be a most flippant manner. Instead he makes his repeated demand for "the collection and authentication of all available documents relating to the origins of the revolt before historians may come to even moderately consistent conclusions." And further: "In neither Brimmell 1 s nor McLane • s summaries of the resolutions of the Fourth and Fifth Plenums is there any clear indication of a staged or explicitly timed programme with a 'general insurrection' planned for August or any other date. May we conclude that there was no specific • insurrectionary programme~?" No, we may not, Dr . Stenson o

There was, and what you

call "the preparations" for it, were part of this programme. How can a distinction be made between the preparations for revolution and the revolution itself when such preparations included, as McLane shows and Stenson himself quotes: "the plan of struggle emphasised the primacy henceforth of illegal work, urged that trade unions be used as vehicles of anti-British propaganda; called for strikes specifically aimed at the disruotion of the Malayan economy; demanded a more vigorous assault on the democratic parties and on the national bourgeoisie (including the Chinese elements sympathetic to the Kuomintang) ; the proposed measures to attract intellectuals and peasants to the Communist cause."

- 22 -

Or again: "McLane's summary of the three resolutions of the March Plenum (in 1948) is similar in essence to that of J.H. Brimrnell . McLane states: 'The first was a political analysis of the situation in Malaya which concluded that inasmuch as the Labour Government in London had shown itself no different from its predecessors in protecting Britain's imperialist interests, the struggle for independence must ultimately take the form of a 'people's revolutionary war'; the MCP stood ready to provide leadership i n t his glorious task . The second resolution, regarding political strategies, set two tasks before the party: reversal of the former 'ostrich policy' of 'surrenderism' (manifested in the dissolution of the MPAJA, the acceptance of self-rule instead of full independence, and the party's retirement behind front organisations); and preparation of the masses for an uncompromising struggle for independence, without regard to considerations of legality . The third resolution stressed the need to restore party discipline, after the laxness of the Loi Teck era . ' " Does this not speak loudly and clearly of what the MCP's new policy was to all except those who do not want to hear? I can only testify that these quotations from McLane are what my own cell leader told me, in April or thereabouts, after the March Plenum. He gave, too, a few more details . He explained, for example, that before the flag of liberation was raised and the call made to support the liberation army against the British, conditions had to be created to destroy any confidence which the people had in the British administration, and to undermined the efficiency and order of their rule, through organising economic chaos. He .· sai d also, that the • strikes specifically aimed at the disruption of the Malayan economy," as McLane puts it, were to be nationwide, and to embrace first the rubber estates, then the t.iri mines, then the transport and factory workers, and, finally, the dock workers in Singapore, Penang and Port Swettenham. They would be a series of national stoppage of work which would not be settled, and would steadily accumulate until there would in effect be a general strike throughout the country. c

At t he same time the MCP had demarcated four main · areas of Ma l ay peasant concentration in which the Party's picked Ma l ay-speaking cadres, led by my cell leader

- 23 himself (who was also a member of the Central Committee), were about to commence work to "soften up" the peasants, spread propaganda, attempt to sabotage peasant support of the British administration and of UMNO, and fill them with forebodings and despair over their future. As a result of these immense, long drawn-out struggles, predicted my cell leader, there would be economic chaos in the country; po l ice and wo r kers would clash up and down the peninsula; ships would lie at anchor rotting in the harbours; Singapore and the other ports would die; and gloom and despair would envelop the country. "Then we shall go into the jungle and -r a is e the banner of revolt", he said, "and ask the peop l e to support us against British imperialism as once they supported us against Jaoanese fascism". He added that they had been totally misled by the British Communist Party, "which was rather weak in analysis", but now they were back on the correct revolutionary path . They had made a great mistake, before, in holding down the militancy of the workers and putting all the emphasis on political action through the AMCJA-Putera. They should have combined action on both the political and economic fronts o There is no doubt in my mind, when I recall this situation, that there was no fixed date fo r the uprising, which would follow on the nation-wide strikes and the consequent paralysis of the country . In the upshot none of the nationa l strikes - took place though there were individual ones in various places . What went wrong? Here I tend to agree with J.H. Brimmell who, as Stenson says (page 3), "implies that lower level cadres precipitated conflict and thus open insurrection by their over-hasty resort to indiscriminate terror" . I agree about their "over-hasty reso r t to indiscriminate terror", but it must not be forgotten t h a t for the most part the ten!or took place during the raicl :Ln'g · and looting of distant estates for money. For money was tQ.e commodity that the Party was very short of, as a result Of Loi Teck' s defalcat ion with a l l the party funds - "nearly one million dollars" said my cell-leader to me . The other aspect of this situation must not be forgotten - the swift and ruthless reaction by the British authori t ies, who first banned the Communis t -led PanMalayan Federation of Trade Unions, then the MCP and its

- 24 -

front organisations, and gradually almost all the other political parties which had been associated with the communists in the AMCJA-Putera and imposed Emergency Regulations. In effect, the British forced the MCP into the jungle before it could put its plan of wrecking the economy and sabotaging the morale of the people and the government There are several concrete facts to support into action . this. The largest propaganda organ of the MCP, the Chineselanguage daily newspaper, !Hn 8lzeng P.au , _ p Ubiished in Kuala Lumpur, was operating as usual in J-une 19 48 when the police raided the building and arrested all the MCP cadres running the paper, about 100 of them including the brilliant Liew Yit Fun, Selangor representative of the MCP and member of the Central Committee, who was later banished to China. It is unlikely that these able Party propagandists would have been H~ft like "sitting ducks" to be easily apprehended by the Poli6e, if the MCP had not been taken by surprise. Liew Yau1, the commander-in-chief of the Another fact: MPAJA, was still at his home 'in Cheras, just outS·ide K.L. when a police party broke through the front door of the He managed to escape by jumping out of a rear window, house. but they pur~ued him and three days later, catching up with him on the fringe of the jungle, put 16 bullets into him. In Singapore, the MCP representative, Wu Tian Wang (who I believe is still alive) came to my home in Chapel Road and begged me to hide him for a few days until he could make arrangements to slip over the Causeway. He said that the stern British action on the other side of the Causeway had caught the Party by surprise, and he was afraid that if he remained in his Queen Street office, they would arrest him and give him "the ' third degree~: ..: He stayed quietly at my home for three days and nights; then one evening, with a felt hat pressed deep over his head and half-hiding his face, Wu disappeared. I think all this adds up to the fact that the swift British response to the murders in Perak pushed the MCP into the jungle before i t could implement its strategy of economic chaos and paralysis.

- 25 Finally, on some specific points raised by Dr. Stenson, here are my comments: in preparing for armed revolt the first necessity a) is to get agreement of the Central Committee of the Party concerned for the drastic change in the Party line: this is done extremely secretively and long before b) the open formulation of the new line itself, either globally o r regionally; it is only when this sine qua non of revolt has c) been successfully accomplished, as it was in Malaya in June 1947 with the purge of Loi Teck and his followers, that the official promulgation of the new hard "united front from be low" line is made. this is followed by the regional formulation, which d) I in the case we are discussing, took place at Calcutta . think that the reason why there were two conferences, one of the communist youth and the other of the Indian Communist Party, held one after the other, was to give more time for important conversations and explanations to be made in private . "the prodding from Calcutta" as Dr. Stenson calls e) it, was the official ideological incantation necessary to legitimise the armed revolt and to show the necessary "respect" to the "autonomy" of the Asian Communist Parties assembled there . the "detailed planning advice" from Sharkey was I f) By this time the Central Committee think mainly explanatory. of the MCP had been totally cleared of all Loi Teck adherents, and was u.·- 1doult.edl.y unanimously in favour of the policy of "united front from below"." But they still needed a lot of clarification from Sharkey because, now that they were split from the supervision of the British C.P., it was the Australians, presumably, who filled this role . Sharkey "crossed the t's and dotted the i's " of the resolutions adopted at Calcutta and gave an in-dept background of the world situation as seen through the perspective of the new hard line of the "united front from below" - which includes armed revolt . My cell members and I had the privilege of meeting and talking lengthily to Sharkey on three occasions and that is the impression I formed, though he did not go into any details with us .

- 26 g) There were, as McLane says, two delegates of the MCP to t he Calcutta Conference . I know because I was asked to see them off and to welcome them on their return . Also, as McLane says, one of them was Lee Soong, then the leader of the Communist Youth Front or New Democratic Youth League (Malaya) . Unfortunately I hav e forgotten the name of the other. h) I must also challenge the arguments of Dr . Stenson regar ding certain government measures which he argues "were inimical to the pursuance of a peaceful United Front policy by the MCP," and that when "the major avenues of expression, political and trade union • •• were almost completely to be denied to the militant left-wing groups . • . the MCP decided to reverse its previous policy." Dr. Stenson argues that these were the main reasons why the MCP decided to revolt, a decision which had nothing to do with directions from the Soviet Union . The government measures he alludes to were the reorganisation of the police force and more effect~ve enforcement of law and order; the revival of banishment although, as he himself admits, it was "used sparingly by comparison with pre-war times and mainly for non-polit i cal offences," and the enforcement of the t r espass law on estates in order to cut Indian estates workers off from radical political or trade union influences n Dr. Stenson's own qualifications of the use of the ban i shment weapon emasculate his argument where banishment was concerned . As far as law and order enforcement are concerned he says it was important because the MCP's main front groups were "born in and throve on an atmosphere of disorder, fear and intimid~tion . " There were two main fronts of the MCP: the political united front or AMCJA-Putera; and the economic front, the Pan-Malayan Federation of Trade Unions . In neither of these was intimidation widespread in 1947. As the executive secretary of the political body, I travelled widely throughout that year and the following one in Malaya, and my whole impression was quite the contrary. I also discovered that the trespass law, on which Dr . Stenson places such emphasis, was honoured more in the .:Pre ach · than in observance . I was smuggled in easily into such estates to give rabble-rousing speeches to the Indian rubber tappers, and I was informed that the support of the tappers made entry into and exit from estates quite convenient despite the trespass law and the management's warn i ngs.

27 -

Turning to the positive side, I cannot recognise, in Dr . Stenson's account of the position of the PMCJA-Putera, the pictur e of debilitation which he paints . (a) "the intransigent, He gives three reasons for this: even a ggress i ve, British response to the People's Constitutiona l Proposals and the Hartal (general stoppage and closure of offices and shops) of October 194 7 ; (b) its "failure" to "embody a sufficiently united mass-based national front" and (c) the many attempts made by the British "to divide and decry it" (the AMCJA-Putera) . I was at the hub of the AMCJA-Putera and my impression was totally different. We had succeeded for the first time in getting the Malay nationalists and leftists to work together with us on democratic proposals for a new self-governing country; all over the area gigantic multiracial mass meetings were held of a kind this country had hitherto never seen, with crowds ma~s±ng in their tens of thousands to listen to us spread our good news. Everywhere there were special meetings at which the flag of the people's constitution 'Was raised andpledges taken . The MCP made the study of Malay compulsory among all its members . They composed several moving songs about the Constitution, some of them being love songs. We had three hartals. The first, organised by Tan Cheng Lock whom I had persuaded to lead the AMCJA-Putera, was in Malacca. It was extraordinarily successful. The second was in Perak and was equally effective . Then we called the Pan-Malayan hartal of October 1947. Here are some comments from the Strait s T i mes on the effectiveness of this hartal. Reporting on the Pan-Malayan hartal which took place the previous day the Stra i ts Ti me s {Oct . 21 , 1947) said: "Singapore commercial life carne to a vi tal standstill with the closure of most non-European business houses and the strike of thousands of workers . ... There was no d amage to property and no · injury to p ers ons .... I n Kuala Lumpur ... all Chinese and almost all Indian shops were closed~ . . . In Selangor every rubber estate contacted by the S t ra it s Ti mes said that the Indian and Chinese labourers were not tapping". And the Strait s Ti mes editorial of the same date, October 21,1947, said: "Singapore presented an impressive spectacle ye$~terday with miles of shuttered shops and its streets almost empty of traffic . The organisers of the hartal

- 28 certainly made a proper job of it, as might be expected from a unique and extraordinary combination of forces which included the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, the Communist Party and the Federation of Trade Unions •..• These organisations, with the genteel co-operation of the Malayan Democratic Union and the not so genteel support of the Communist Party, succeeded in bringing about an almost complete shut-down in Singapore yesterday". How Dr. Stenson can maintain, in the face of such evidence, that we "failed to embody a sufficiently united mass-based national front", or that we were "excluded from political influence", I fail to understand. In under a year we had brought strong elements of all communities together, we had combined workers, intellectuals and employers, we had organised three successful hartals, we had held scores of huge mass meetings up and down the country, we had persuaded the majority of British subjects in Singapore to boycott registration as voters and later to boycott the polls; - and Dr. Stenson says we were "excluded from political influence". If he means the "seats of power" he is correct, but that did not bother us much. We knew we were in for a long uphill pull, and we were extremely grateful that we had, in such a relatively short time, gathered so much support. He is indeed, quite wrong. Our morale was high. We had even decided, for the sake of un i ty with our Malay partners in Putera, the Malay nationalist-leftist groupings, to boycott the Singapore elections since Malays who were British-protected subjects were being denied the ·Vote, which was confined only to British subjects. When we made this decision we were the only existing political organisations in Singapore. The Progressive Party did not come into existence . until after we had declared that we w:ould boycott the polls. This was certainly poor tactics on our part, but it was a testimony to our high morale, sense of dedication, and readiness to sacrifice "political influence" for the sake of unity with Putera. Then again, if the insurrection was totally indigenous in inspiration and direction, how was it that no attempt whatever was made to find a place in the preparations for revolt for the many non-communist organisations which formed our united front - the AMCJA-Putera? As executive secretary I can state positively that to my knowledge not one of our organisations or the individuals comprising the leadership of the non-communist organisations were given even any hint of what was in store. r myself, as I have al ready testified, was told of the strategy but not

- 29 i ns t ructed to prepare myself for going into the jungle or underground until after the emergency regulations had been passed . It was only after the banning of our member organisations in the Front, after the arrest of hundreds of alleged communists, after the shooting of Liew Yau, after the arrest of Liew Yit Fun and the closing down of the Min Sheng Pau~ after Wu Tian Wang hid in my house and then disappeared only after a l l these events was my cell called up one day and told that our responsibility was to start the underg ro und "Freedom News" which was to be the official organ of the Party in this new phase of armed revolt, and that we should settle our personal affairs before crossing the Causeway and disappearing into the jungle. This seems to me to be a pretty poor state of preparation which can only be explained if, as I have suggested, the Party's plans to create chaos were nipped in the bud and ,J:tw as forced into the jungle before it was It had nothing to do with the so-called ready to go. "success" of the British in counter-action against the AMCJA-Putera. At the same time I am not discounting the fact that there was a large grounaswell of frustra~~on amongst the rank-and-file over the difficulties of the "peaceful united front" struggle . From 1926 the Party had worked and survived underground, and for three-and-a-half years had Its been involved in guerilla war against the Japanese . entire experience therefore was in underground work, or armed revolt,and it found the demands of ~he peaceful, constitutional battle particularly wearing. After the MPAJA Ex-Service Association annual meeting in December of 1946, my cell leader had told me that voices had been raised at the congress demanding a return to the jun gl e and armed insurrection, but had been "firmly held down". He gave me to understand that these demands came, not from I am certain that the leadership, but from the members. by these hailed was it came when the change in policy elements as both correct and welcome. The last point I would like to make concerns what I believe Dr . Stenson describes as "Loi Teck 's defection" . that this was part and parcel of the "Russian-directedLoi Teck was removed because of this revolt-syndrome". drastic change in policy, and because he was the leader of the old and now condemned "peaceful united front" I am s ure he had been involved with both the strategy. Japanese and the ' British authorities - what revolutionary

-

30 -

leader worth his salt does not find himself in such a situation from time to time with his "establishment" and that these were raked up and exaggerated to justify his denunciation and later his assassination. I recall my cell leader coming to me some time in November or December 1947 and, with a broad smile on his face, telling me that a Hong Kong "comrade" had discovered Loi Teck there and had put a knife into his back. I also recall that when Rudolf Slansky was executed in Prague, he was accused of being both an American agent and an Isreali spy. Today they place wreaths on his grave and say, "Sorry, comrade, it was a mistake". Perhaps they' 11 do the same with Loi Teck one day.

EJK/ISEAS

ISEAS PUBLICATIONS Occasional Papers 1.

Harry J. Benda, Research in Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. 10 pp . Gratis.

2.

P. Lim Pui Huen, Newspapers published in the Malaysian Area: with a union list of local holdings. 42 pp. Gratis.

3.

Chan Heng Chee, Nation-Building in Southeast Asia: The Singapore Case . 19 pp .· Price: $2.00

4.

Eva Horakova, Problems of Filipino Settlers. Price: $2.00 (Out of Print)

5.

Mochtar Nairn, Merantau: Causes and Effects of Minangkabau Voluntary Migration. 19 pp. Price:

24 pp.

$2.00

6.

Paul Pedersen, comp ., Youth in Southeast Asia: A Bibliography. Modified and Expanded oy Joseph B. Tamney and Others. 69 pp . Price: $4. 00

7.

J.L . S. Girling, Cambodia and the Sihanouk Myths . . 26 pp. Price: $2 . 00

8.

R.P. Dore, Japanese Industrialization and the Developing Countries: Model, Warning or Source of Healthy Doubts? 18 pp. Price: $2.00 (Out of Print)

9.

Micheal Stensen, The 1948 Communist Revolt in Ma l ay a A Note of Historical So urces and Interpretation and A Reply by Gerald de Cruz. · 30 pp. Price: $3.00

10.

Riaz Hassan, Social Status and Bureaucratic Contacts Among the Public Housing Tenants in Singapore . 16 pp. Price: $2.00

11.

Youth in Southeast Asia: Edited Proceedings of the Seminar of 5th - 7th March 1971. Edited by Joseph B. Tamney. 75 pp. Price: $4.00

12.

A.W. Stargardt, Problems of Neutrality in South East Asia: The Relevance of the European Experience. 29 pp. Price: $3 . 00

13.

William R. Roff, Autobiography & Biography in Malay Historical Studies. 21 pp. Price: $2.00

14.

Lau Teik Soon, Indonesia and Regional Security: Djakarta Conference on Cambodia. 20 pp. Price: $2.00

The

15.

Syed Hussein Alatas, The Second Malaysia Plan 1971 - 1975: A Critique. 16 pp. Price: $2.00

16.

Harold E. Wilson, Educational Policy and Performance in Singaoore, 1942 - 1945. 28pp. Price: $3.00

Trends in Southeast Asia 1.

Trends in Indonesia: Proceedings and Background Paper. 58 pp. Price: $3.00 (out of print)

2.

Trends in Malaysia: Proceedings and Background Paper. Edited by Patrick Low. 120 pp. Price: . $5.00

3.

Trends in the Philippines. Edited by Lim Yoon Lin. (Singapore University Press). 136 pp. Price: $7.00

4.

Trends in Indonesia. Edited by Yong Mun Cheong. (Singapore University Press). 140 pp. Price:

$7.00

Library Bulletins 1.

Rosalind Quah, Library Resources in Singapore on Contemporary Mainland China. 11 pp. Price: $2.00

2.

Quah Swee Lan, comp., Oil Discovery and Technical Change in Southeast Asia: A Preliminary : BibliGgraohy 23 pp. Price: $2.00

3.

P. Lim Pui Huen, comp., Directory of Microfilm Facilities in Southeast Asia. 24 pp. Price: $2.00

4.

Checklist of Current Serials in the Library. P r i ce : $ 3 . 00

5.

Tan Sok Joo, Library Resources on Burma in Singapore. 42 pp. Price: $3 . 00

30 pp.

Oral History Pilot Study 1.

Philip Hoalim, Senior, The Malayan Democratic Union Singapore's First Democratic Political Party. 26 pp. Price: $3.00

2.

Andrew Gilmour, My Role in the Rehabilitation of Singapore: 1946 - 1953. 100 pp. Price: $6.00

Field Report Series 1.

Yong Mun Cheong, Conflicts within the Prijaji World of the Parahyangan in West Java, 1914 - 192 7. 42 pp. Price: $3.00

2.

Patrick Low and Yeung Yue-man, The Proposed Kra Canal: A Critical Evaluation and Its Impact on Singapore. $3.00 39 pp. Price:

3.

~ob ert

4.

The Indonesian Petroleum Industry: Miscellaneous Source Materials. Collected by Robert Fabrikant. $15.00 516 pp. Price:

5.

C.V. Das and V.P. Pradhan, Some International Law Problems Regarding the Straits of Malacca. 95 pp. Price : $10.00

Fabrikant, Legal Aspects of Production Sharing Contracts in the Indonesian Petroleum Industry. 235 pp. Price: $15.00

Southeast Asian Perspectives 1.

U. Khin Mg. Kyi and Daw Tin Tin, Administrative Patterns $3.00 67 pp. Price: in Historical Burma.

Current Issues Seminar Series 1.

Multinational Corporations and Their Implications for Southeast Asia. Edited by Eileen Lim Poh Tin. $10.00 140 pp. Price:

2.

Economic and Political Trends in Southeast Asia. 60 pp. Price: $6.00

International Conference 1.

New Directions in the International Relations of Southeast Asia . 2 Vols. (Singapore University Press) . Economic Relations. P r i ce : $ 8 . 50

Edited by Lee Soo Ann .

135 pp .

The Great Powers and Southeast Asia . Edited by Lau Teik Soon. 208 pp . Price: $10.00

The above publications are available for sale at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Cluny Road, Singapore 10. Telephone: 514211