Malaya's secret police, 1945-60 : the role of the special branch in the Malayan emergency 9781876924522, 1876924527, 9789812308153, 9812308156, 9789812308290, 9812308296

Citation preview

Reproduced from Malaya's Secret Police 1945-60: The Role of the Special Branch in the Malayan Emergency by Leon Comber (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2008). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available at < http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg >

Malaya’s Secret Police tells the story of the organisation, the personnel, the troubles and the ultimate triumph of Malaya’s intelligence services. Former Special Branch officer Leon Comber provides information inaccessible to most researchers, including comprehensive charts and a wealth of details, especially on personalities. Together these provide a unique insight into the world of intelligence. This book reminds us that generating good counterinsurgency intelligence took time—years not months—careful experimentation, and painstaking acquisition of knowledge of the country and its people, culture and languages. —Karl Hack, History Lecturer, Open University, UK, Co-editor of Dialogues with Chin Peng: new views on the Malayan Communist Party (2004). Leon Comber’s admirable study of the vital role played by the Malayan Special Branch in the Malayan Emergency will undoubtedly become recommended reading for anyone interested in counterinsurgency intelligence. It could well provide, too, the framework for the use of intelligence in counterinsurgency operations in other parts of the world such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Dr Comber is well qualified to write it as aside from being a specialist in South East Asian affairs, he served as a Chinese-speaking Special Branch officer in the Emergency. —Dr Leong Chee Woh, former Malayan Special Branch officer (1953–84), retired Deputy Director of Operations, Malaysian Special Branch, Royal Malaysian Police.

Other books by Leon Comber 13 May 1969: A Historical Survey of Sino-Malay Relations Through a Bamboo Window: Fate and Fortune in 1950s Singapore & Malaya (Singapore Heritage Society book) The Hui: Chinese Secret Societies in 1950s Malaya & Singapore (Singapore Heritage Society book) Chinese Temples in Singapore The Traditional Mysteries of Chinese Secret Societies in Malaya The Strange Cases of Magistrate Pao Modern Malaysian-Chinese Stories (with Ly Singko) Prizewinning Asian Fiction (ed.) The Golden Treasure Box, Vol. 1 The Golden Treasure Box, Vol. 2 Golden Legends Indonesia Favourite Stories: The Philippines

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) was established as an autonomous organization in 1968. It is a regional centre dedicated to the study of socio-political, security and economic trends and developments in Southeast Asia and its wider geostrategic and economic environment. The Institute’s research programmes are the Regional Economic Studies (RES, including ASEAN and APEC), Regional Strategic and Political Studies (RSPS), and Regional Social and Cultural Studies (RSCS). ISEAS Publishing, an established academic press, has issued almost 2,000 books and journals. It is the largest scholarly publisher of research about Southeast Asia from within the region. ISEAS Publishing works with many other academic and trade publishers and distributors to disseminate important research and analyses from and about Southeast Asia to the rest of the world.

The Monash Asia Institute (MAI) is a multi-disciplinary research unit at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1988, the MAI brings together a wide range of Asia-related activities at the university to promote and support Monash’s expertise and interest in the Asian region. MAI Press is an imprint of Monash University Press, and specialises in books and working papers about Asia. The books represent a range of disciplines, such as politics, history, women’s studies, business and the environment. MAI Press welcomes authors from many countries and diverse backgrounds. MAI Press books are distributed in Australasia, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe.

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60 The Role of the Special Branch in the Malayan Emergency

Leon Comber

Monash Asia Institute Clayton

Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Singapore

First published in Australia in 2008 for distribution in Europe, North America and Australia by Monash University Press Monash University, Victoria 3800, Australia www.monash.edu.au/mai First published in Singapore in 2008 for distribution in Asia by ISEAS Publishing Institute of Southeast Asian Studies 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace, Pasir Panjang, Singapore 119614 E-mail: [email protected] Website: bookshop.iseas.edu.sg All Monash University Press publications are subject to double blind peer review © Leon Comber 2008 National Library of Australia cataloguing-in-publication data: Comber, Leon.

Malaya’s secret police 1945-60 : the role of the special



branch in the Malayan Emergency.



Bibliography.



Includes index.



ISBN 9781876924522 (Monash University Press paperback).



ISBN 978-981-230-815-3 (ISEAS Publishing paperback).



ISBN 978-981-230-829-0 (ISEAS Publishing hardback)



1. National security - Malaysia - Malaya. 2. Intelligence



service - Malaysia - Malaya. 3. Secret service - Malaysia -



Malaya. 4. Malaya - History - Malayan Emergency,



1948-1960. I. Title. (Series : Monash papers on Southeast



Asia ; 67).



363.28309595

Cover design by Minnie Doron. Cover based on an illustration by Michael Perkins. Printed in Singapore by Utopia Press Pte Ltd.

To Jack Barlow, MBE, BEM, CPM (1919–2002) trusted colleague, wise counsellor, loyal friend

About the Author Dr Leon Comber is an Honorary Research Fellow at Monash Asia Institute, Monash University, Melbourne, specializing in Asian studies. He speaks Malay, Chinese (Cantonese and putonghua) and Hindi. His interest in Malay(si)an affairs extends over half a century and dates from the time he landed on the west coast of Malaya in September 1945, after the Japanese surrender, as a Major in the Indian Army. Thereafter, he served for several years as a Chinese-speaking officer in the Special Branch of the Malayan Police dealing with political and security intelligence. He subsequently had a distinguished career in book publishing.

Foreword by Anthony Short Author of The Communist Insurrection in Malaya 1948–60 Leon Comber knows how Special Branch works, knows what happened during the Emergency, what went right and what went wrong. He knows because he was there from the beginning and because he has studied, collected, collated and assessed his material for a large part of his life. This is a profile of what has been the most successful intelligence agency in Southeast Asia for almost sixty years. For those used nowadays in Britain and America to the subordination of intelligence to political purposes, it all seems rather old-fashioned; a view of intelligence as it was and as it was intended to be. Piece the evidence together. If you don’t know, don’t pretend that you do. Let the professionals get on with their job and don’t tell them what to do or how to do it. Conventional wisdom now on the Malayan ‘Emergency’—an equally conventional expression for a largely communist insurrection that lasted for twelve years—is that intelligence was the key that locked counterinsurgency in place. Or, more precisely, intelligence was what eventually turned a largely unknown and alien force into numbers, names, locations and capabilities of a recognisable and credible enemy order-of-battle. Before and without that, the army would struggle and sweat all over the country in the hope of generating their own intelligence, the police would offer themselves in their unarmed vehicles as targets in a shooting gallery, and civilians, mostly Chinese, would suffer by far the heaviest casualties. To begin with, in 1948, post-war intelligence in the shape of the Malayan Security Service was undoubtedly looking the wrong way and had little idea of an impending Malayan–Chinese insurrection. Hardly surprising, suggests Dr Comber, when they were fifty per cent under strength, and only a dozen or so British police officers were able to carry on a simple conversation in Chinese. For the next year or so it was an open question whether the police or the army were in charge of counterinsurgency. Intelligence, which was not always shared, quite often just disappeared and was seldom of immediate operational use. Not until 1950 did the late, great General Briggs produce his master plan in which army, police and civil affairs were totally integrated and in which intelligence began to be recognised as being of supreme importance. ix

x

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

So much, in general terms, is fairly well known. Leon Comber’s outstanding contribution is to embed intelligence in what is, in effect, an additional history of the Emergency, and to show us how Special Branch achieved its pre-eminent position. Changing shape from time-to-time and with one or two unsuccessful initiatives—such as an independent Police Intelligence Bureau—there are some surprising additions to what is, in any case, far more than an administrative history. Arthur Young, as Commissioner of Police, took the major step of separating Special Branch from the CID, but more than one view from below suggests that he didn’t really understand the Malayan situation. Templer, as High Commissioner and Director of Operations, at least toyed with the idea of putting Special Branch and the entire police force under army control. A Director of Intelligence suggested a joint plan to penetrate the Malayan Communist Party leadership in Malaya and Singapore. Surprising, really, considering how different they were, but perhaps a mark of the desperation felt that Chin Peng and the Central Committee were impermeable almost to the end of the Emergency. In the meantime, from hundreds and thousands of pieces, the jigsaw puzzle of intelligence was taking shape. Techniques were refined, procedures standardised, MI5 and MI6 officers, including a future director, flit in and out, and the army provided Special Branch with military intelligence officers. But for the most part, once they have got their bearings, Special Branch were doing it themselves. Scores of Chinese inspectors were examining documents and defectors. One in five Malayan Police officers was working for the Special Branch. Putting together this formidable organisation was a remarkable achievement. Putting together this notable account is equally remarkable. In their anxiety to broadcast their surmises and speculations on the latest intelligence failure or success, it is astonishing nowadays how many purported experts just don’t know what they are talking about. This alone makes this book such a shining exception. This is how the Special Branch and a Special Branch officer should work. By contrast, in another part of Johore, early on in the Emergency, an army raid on the huts of some luckless peasant farmers revealed a framed portrait. The flashlight was rather dim, but the conclusion immediate. ‘Mao Zedong. Definitely. Communists. Round them up.’ Actually, it was Sun Yat Sen. Sorry about that. And a pity Special Branch hadn’t been there.

contents



Foreword by Anthony Short

ix



List of tables and charts



Map of Malaya 1948



Acknowledgments

xvii



Prologue

xix

Chapter one

The nature of the Malayan Emergency

1

Chapter two

The Malayan Security Service and the evolution of the Special Branch

25

Chapter three

The Special Branch takes over (1948–49)

59

Chapter four

The principles of intelligence collection

79

Chapter five

Agents of change (1949–52)

107

Chapter six

The rise of the Special Branch (1950–52): Sir William Jenkin

131

Chapter seven

The Special Branch and the Briggs Plan

147

Chapter eight

General Templer, Colonel Young and the Special Branch: the implementation of the Briggs Plan

173

Chapter nine

The Special Branch comes of age (1952–56)

197

Chapter ten

‘The weather has been horrible’—the Special Branch and communist communications: a case study

219

xiii xv

hapter eleven The Special Branch on the Malayan–Thai frontier C (1948–60): a case study

245

Chapter twelve Conclusion: the end of the Emergency (1957–60)

269

xi



Abbreviations, acronyms and glossary

295



Note on transliteration

298



Bibliography

299



Index

319

List of tables and charts

Table 1 Communist terrorist, police, army and civilian casualties (1948–1960)

page 6

Table 2

Gazetted officers, Malayan Security Service (1948)

33

Table 3

Evaluation of Special Branch information

84

Table 4

Location of MNLA regiments (1948–49)

90

Table 5

Police, army and civilian casualties (1948–49)

110

Table 6

Ethnic composition of Malayan police by ranks

114

Table 7

Rewards scale (1952)

135

Table 8

Police lieutenants employed on Special Branch duties at Malayan–Thai border posts, seaports and airports (1952)

137

Table 9

Communist terrorist contacts and casualties (15 June 1950–14 April 1951)

143

Table 10

Relative strengths of expatriate and Asian gazetted officers (1955 and 1956)

272

Table 11

Breakdown of communist terrorists in Peninsular Malaya (22 April 1959)

275

Table 12

Breakdown of communist terrorists as at 28 August 1959 and eliminations (killed, surrendered and captured) since June 1948

277

Table 13

Communist terrorists eliminated during ‘Operation Ginger’ (February 1958–April 1959)

280

Chart 1

Organisation of Malayan Police: Uniformed Branch, CID and Special Branch (1948–49)

62

Chart 2

Malayan Special Branch federal headquarters under the CID (1948–49)

63

xiii

xiv

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Chart 3

Integration of the Communist Party of Malaya: political and military (MNLA) structure

92

Chart 4

Federal Special Branch headquarters under Sir William Jenkin (1950–51)

140

Chart 5

Outline of government structure under the Briggs Plan (1950–51) Interrelationship between the Special Branch, CID, Uniformed Branch and army under the Briggs Plan (1951)

151

Chart 7

Map of Malaya (1956): locations of CT’s by state

163

Chart 8

Federal Special Branch headquarters under GC Madoc (1952–54) The end of the Emergency: Federal Special Branch headquarters (1960)

198

Map of the Malayan–Thai Frontier (1948–60)

248

Chart 6

Chart 9 Chart 10

156

211

Map of Malaya 1948

Map©Monash Asia Institute

xv

xvi

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Acknowledgments

There are many people I would like to thank for helping me in so many ways in writing this book. The first and foremost is Professor Marika Vicziany, Director of Monash Asia Institute, Monash University. She encouraged me to finish what I had started researching and writing several years ago as a doctoral thesis, and sent a copy of it to General David Petraeus, the supreme American commander in Iraq, to see whether a study of the recent past might be of some use in the shaping of the intelligence war in Iraq. Her comments, criticisms and suggestions were of great value and without her advice this study could not have been completed. Dr Gale Dixon and A/Professor Kevin O’Connor, of the Department of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University, too, gave me much of their valuable time and advice in the early stages of the project. Dr Justin Corfield and his father Robin, Dr John Leary and Dr Tony Donaldson provided useful comments and encouragement over several years. At Monash Asia Institute, I would like to thank Juliet Yee, Administrative Officer, Emma Hegarty and Jenny Hall, MAI’s Publications Officers and, especially for help in solving computer problems, Anthony Mays, Sanjeev Veloo, and Dr Guibin Zhang. There are many other friends and colleagues I would like to mention including: Helen Semadjio formerly head of the Asian Book Section of the Monash University Library; Marie Sexton, Principal Librarian, and Andrew Gosling of the Asia Collection, National Library of Australia; George Miller of the Southeast Asia Collection of the Australian National University Library (who kindly drew my attention to books that would have otherwise escaped my attention); and Flight Lieut. Anne-Marie Pope, RAAF, who supplied hard to get material from the Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra. In Singapore I am indebted greatly to Ambassador K Kesavapany, Director ISEAS (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies), who invited me to spend two months (May/June 2006) in Singapore as an ISEAS Visiting Research Fellow, thus providing me with ‘breathing space’ and xvii

xviii

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

an opportunity to conduct further research connected with this study. Ms Ch’ng Kim See, Head, ISEAS Library, was extremely helpful in making available library resources and offering assistance in so many other ways. Mrs Triena Ong, Managing Editor and Head, ISEAS Publications, and her staff were also of great help. I would especially like to thank all the persons who consented to providing me with information and gave up so much of their precious time in doing so, and even read parts of my study in which the information they provided appeared. The following persons went out of their way to provide me with information that I might otherwise have missed: Jack Barlow, to whom this study is dedicated, a fellow Special Branch officer who served with me in Johore during one of the most turbulent periods of the Malayan Emergency and participated with me in many adventures, Douglas Weir, Dr GED Lewis (my former housemate ‘in another existence’ in Kuala Pilah, Malaysia), and Peter Elphick in the UK, Dr Leong Chee Woh and Dato’ Seri Yuen Yuet Leng in Kuala Lumpur, CC Chin of Singapore and Macau, Dr Yong Ching Fatt of Adelaide, as well as David Brent in Sydney and Ian Morson in Bangkok, who were both former comrades-in-arms during the Malayan Emergency. A/Professor Karl Hack, then of the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, was always helpful with his stimulating ideas. I am indebted also to the distinguished Australian foreign correspondent Denis Warner, CMG, OBE, for allowing me to consult his papers relating to Malaya, and the late Brigadier Ted Serong, DSO, OBE, (Australian Army, retired), with whom I spent many interesting hours conversing about tumultuous times in Malaya and South Vietnam.

prologue The Malayan Emergency: a war that lasted 12 years The Malayan Emergency was a name given by the British colonial government to the uprising of the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) which lasted from 1948 to 1960. The objective of the CPM was to establish a Communist People’s Democratic Republic of Malaya. In all but name, it was a War remarkable for the fiercely-fought counterinsurgency operations fought in the Malayan jungle between the government security forces and the CPM’s guerrilla army, the Malayan National Liberation Army. The jungle fighting was waged concurrently with the political struggle for the hearts and minds of the Malayan people. Coming so soon after the end of the Second World War, the Emergency had wide-reaching effects and shook the country to its very foundations. Throughout the campaign, the Malayan Police played a vital part and, indeed, paid heavily for it as the police suffered more casualties (killed and wounded) than any of the other security forces. The intelligence branch of the Malayan Police, the Special Branch, was recognised by the government as its supreme intelligence organisation. It was tasked with providing the government with political and security intelligence and made responsible, too, for providing the army with operational intelligence on which counterinsurgency operations could be mounted. This is the story of the critical part played by the Special Branch in waging the intelligence war against the Communist Party of Malaya, which led to its defeat in July 1960 and the withdrawal of the remnants of its greatly-shattered forces into southern Thailand.

xix

xx

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Reproduced from Malaya's Secret Police 1945-60: The Role of the Special Branch in the Malayan Emergency by Leon Comber (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2008). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available at < http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg >

chapter one The nature of the Malayan Emergency

The historiography of the Malayan Emergency (1948–60), and what has been called the ‘shooting war’, has already been well-covered in the literature, but the role of secret intelligence and the Malayan Police Special Branch in the armed struggle against the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) and its military wing, the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA), has hitherto been largely neglected.1 In this book, the focus is on the Special Branch, the main intelligence agency of the Malayan government. Of course, there have been several emergencies in the history of Malaya since the end of the Second World War. The present study is focused exclusively on the First Emergency of 1948–60, at a time that tested the capacities of both the British colonial government and the local Malayan government after independence in 1957. Already, at the conclusion of that first Emergency, there was evidence of ongoing communist opposition, which led to what has been called the ‘Second Emergency’, but that subject is beyond the scope of this book. Although intelligence studies have come under the academic scrutiny of Western historians and political scientists, who have come to regard intelligence and political surveillance as a critical feature of modern state and society, similar studies have not emerged in the Asian context. This book attempts to make good this deficiency. It deals with the role of the Special Branch in the Emergency and argues that successful intelligence gathering was a crucial feature not only of British colonial rule in Malaya, but also of the independent Malayan government that took over from the British in 1957. There is little doubt from the evidence presented in the following chapters that without the political and military intelligence provided by the Special Branch, it would not have been possible for the Malayan authorities to defeat the CPM’s armed uprising and bring the Emergency to a successful conclusion in 1960. The expertise and operational intelligence provided by the Special Branch was critical. The central purpose of this account is to examine the organisation, training, modus operandi and role of the Special Branch and its predecessor, the Malayan Security Service, from the return 1

2

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

of British colonial power to Malaya at the end of the Second World War (1945) until the end of the Emergency (1960). This study also provides insights into how the colonial and Malayan authorities developed and refined the Special Branch so that it was able to play a vital part in defeating the attempt of the Communist Party of Malaya to overthrow the Malayan government by force and establish a Malayan People’s Democratic Republic. More specifically, the research addresses the following issues: • How did the Special Branch change over the course of the Emergency? • What were the main agents of change? • What part did the Special Branch play in bringing the Emergency to a successful conclusion? As the Bibliography suggests, the methodology followed was to carry out primary research in official archives in England, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia, and conduct interviews or correspondence with retired former Malayan Special Branch officers and other government officers now living in England, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia. These had participated in the Malayan Emergency and were able to provide information germane to the study. The author also interviewed Chin Peng, Secretary-General of the Communist Party of Malaya, in Canberra in February 1999. The author has been able to draw, too, on his own experiences as an officer in the Malayan Special Branch during the Emergency, though he has tried not to allow it to distort his view of the Malayan ecumene. The wide range of documents, interviews and other sources gathered for the analysis of the arguments in this book will hopefully demonstrate this point. Occasionally the author has used his own contemporaneous diaries and notebooks to document an observation that cannot be readily documented from other sources and which is referred to in the footnotes as ‘author’s notes’. As biographical data is not easily available about the main ‘agents of change’ and other officers and personalities who played a part in the intelligence war, detailed footnotes have been provided whenever necessary to remedy this omission. A study of this nature presents certain intrinsic problems. The subject is quite ‘elusive’ and it is difficult to obtain information about the Special



THE NATURE OF THE MALAYAN EMERGENCY

3

Branch and secret intelligence. Many of the official British, Malayan and Australian archives dealing with Special Branch activities remain closed in spite of the 30-year rule. This made it difficult to gain access to classified documents. However, in some cases these barriers could be circumvented, as copies of classified documents have sometimes been placed on ‘open’ archival files, where they have evidently been allowed to remain without attracting the attention of officials responsible for weeding out sensitive information. The main contribution of this study is to present an analytical account of the Special Branch in the context of the Malayan Emergency and an understanding of the dynamics of the Special Branch during what has come to be accepted as a critical period in Malaya’s history. Without the input of the Special Branch, it is quite likely that the conflict may have dragged on inconclusively for much longer and, even then, perhaps may have ended less favourably for the British and Malayan authorities, just as it did for the Americans in Vietnam in their struggle against the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong. At the beginning of the Emergency, the Special Branch was not ready to take over responsibility for intelligence at short notice from its predecessor, the Malayan Security Service, nor was it organised in those early days to provide the army with the right sort of operational intelligence on which successful counterinsurgency operations could be mounted. However, the situation improved rapidly when the retraining and restructuring of the Special Branch (as described in later chapters of this book) began to show results. From 1950 onwards, professional training in intelligence methods and techniques became available for the first time in the Special Branch/ Criminal Investigation Department (CID) Training Schools in Kuala Lumpur and in courses arranged in London by MI5 and the London Metropolitan Police Special Branch.2 In the latter years of the Emergency, the Special Branch Training School assumed greater importance as a regional training centre and it earned for itself a reputation outside Malaya as a centre of excellence for the training of intelligence officers. Aside from local Malayan officers, intelligence officers attended courses from neighbouring Southeast Asian countries and as far afield as Hong Kong and Australia. The lessons learned from the Malayan Emergency, applying the threepronged approach of a combined police, army and civil government offensive, waged concurrently with a campaign to win the hearts and minds of the people, were later followed successfully by the British in

4

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Kenya, Rhodesia and Cyprus.3 They were tried, too, in Vietnam by the British Advisory Mission (BRIAM) headed by Robert GK Thompson (later Sir Robert), the Permanent Secretary of Defence in Malaya during the later stages of the Emergency, who was invited by the South Vietnamese government and its ally, the United States, to share the Malayan experiences.4 The fact they were not successful in Vietnam was not due to any flaw in the Malayan plan but that the intelligence structure of the two countries was very different. There was not, for instance, a unified intelligence service in South Vietnam, such as the Special Branch in Malaya, but a multitude of intelligence agencies, often competing with each other for intelligence. The British colonial authorities in Malaya had the advantage, too, of being in charge of the administration of the country, whereas the Americans in South Vietnam were not in the same position, and had to work through a notoriously corrupt and inefficient local administration. These matters are well brought out in a confidential unpublished paper prepared by Jack Barlow, who was a senior Special Branch officer in Malaya during the Emergency and subsequently a member of the British police team sent to Saigon in the 1960s to help train the South Vietnamese police.5 A summary of the paper is given below. The points that Barlow brings out highlight, too, many of the strengths of the Malayan Special Branch that will be analysed in detail later in this study. • In Malaya, the collection, collation and dissemination of intelligence was unified under the Special Branch, and the Special Branch, the army, and the civil administration worked closely together as a team. (This was the ‘three-pronged approach’ referred to above.) In Vietnam, however, ‘there was an extraordinary multiplication of intelligence organisations, and an almost total lack of mutual trust or co-ordination’ with little central direction. • In Malaya, unlike South Vietnam, every communist guerrilla who surrendered (surrendered enemy personnel, SEP) or was captured (captured enemy personnel, CEP) was treated as a most valuable source of operational intelligence. Every inducement was offered to him to cooperate with government forces. All surrendered and captured guerrillas were thoroughly debriefed and, in some cases, employed on jungle operations against their erstwhile comrades as part of the Special Operations Volunteer Force (SOVF).6



THE NATURE OF THE MALAYAN EMERGENCY

5

• The Malayan Special Branch put to use immediately intelligence obtained from surrendered and captured guerrillas and, wherever possible, used them to take part in ‘Q’ jungle operations.7 • The British controlled the Special Branch, the armed forces and the civil service, and many senior British officers remained in post and continued to work for the independent Malayan government after 1957. • British Special Branch officers were required to speak Malay, as were all Malayan Police officers, and some spoke Chinese too. It helped that, for the most part, Chinese, Malay and Indian government employees spoke English. In Vietnam, the Americans were not in control of the civil service and Barlow said that he ‘never met a Vietnamese-speaking American’. Moreover, only a small minority of Americans were fluent in French, which was a second language for many middle-aged Vietnamese. English-speaking Vietnamese were ‘very thin on the ground’ and, when available, were eagerly sought after as interpreters. • The administration of South Vietnam was in a chaotic state and had not recovered from the departure of the French. Unlike Malaya, corruption was widespread, involving both South Vietnamese and American civilian contractors. • As far as external aid was concerned, Malaya was almost ‘hermetically sealed off’, whereas in South Vietnam, arms and ammunition were freely available from the north via the ‘Ho Chi Minh Trail’. Though this study deals primarily with the Malayan Special Branch and the security situation in peninsular Malaya, mention has been made en passant of the Singapore Special Branch and communist activities in Singapore, where they have a bearing on the main counterinsurgency operations that took place in Malaya.8 While communist activities in urban Singapore were of serious concern to the local Singapore authorities, it was recognised they were quite different in intensity, scale and ferocity from the internecine jungle war taking place in peninsular Malaya.9 As Francis Starner points out, there was some justification for considering the communist movement in peninsular Malaya as separate from communist activities on the island of Singapore.10 In conversations with the author in Canberra in February 1999, Chin Peng, Secretary-General of the Communist Party of Malaya, did not seem to place much weight on the activities of the communist Singapore Town Committee in the overall context of the Malayan insurgency. This is borne out in the scant attention that he paid to Singapore in his autobiography, Alias Chin Peng: My Side of History.11

619 337 251 1207

164 65 229

334 160 494

170 77 200 447 2377

89 60 149

315 90 405

119 92 149 360 1607

1949

374 263 56 693

1948

321 175 409 905 2992

646 106 752

314 79 393

648 147 147 942

1950

454 237 356 1047 3620

533 135 668

380 124 504

1079 121 201 1401

1951

278 123 158 559 2831

343 131 474

207 56 263

1155 123 257 1535

1952

53 64 15 132 1756

85 43 128

58 34 92

959 73 372 1404

1953

89 65 31 185 1411

97 57 154

53 34 87

723 51 211 985

1954

60 43 24 127 1048

62 57 119

47 32 79

420 54 249 723

1955

32 47 36 115 711

30 26 56

25 22 47

307 52 134 493

1956

11 22 7 40 556

22 2 24

5 6 11

240 32 209 481

1957

6 13 — 19 709

3 — 3

3 7 10

153 22 502 677

1958

8 1 — 9 131

3 3 6

1 — 1

21 8 86 115

1959

— — — — 48

— — —

— — —

13 6 29 48

1960

1601 959 1385 3945 19797

2473 810 3283

1346 519 1865

6711 1289 2704 10704

Total

Source: Adapted from Despatch no. 14, Top Secret. High Commissioner for the United Kingdom, Kuala Lumpur, to Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, London, 5 November 1960 & Arkib Negara Malaysia, Misc. 16, Emergency Statistics for the Federation of Malaya since 1948.

Legend: CTs = Communist Terrorists, SFs = Security Forces

Total CTs eliminated Killed Captured Surrendered (a) Sub-total SFs killed Police Army (b) Sub-total Civilians Killed Missing (c) Sub-total Wounded Police Army Civilians (d) Sub-total Grand total

Table 1: Communist terrorist, police, army and civilian casualties (1948–60)

6 MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60



THE NATURE OF THE MALAYAN EMERGENCY

7

Table 1 provides details of the casualties suffered over the twelve years of the Emergency by the communist terrorists (CTs) and the security forces (SFs), consisting of police and army units, and the appalling losses suffered by the civilian population. It depicts clearly the seriousness of the situation in Malaya between 1948 and 1960 and the casualties that resulted from the fierce fighting that took place. The casualty figures underscore the important part played by the police in the struggle against the communist insurgents and indicate, too, that the police suffered more casualties, both killed and wounded, than the army did, a matter that is not generally appreciated. However, what is more extraordinary is that the total number of civilians killed and missing (3283)—and ‘missing’ in this context must mean that they had perished—far exceeds the combined total of police and army killed (1865). The number of civilians wounded (1385), too, is far more than the number of army wounded (959) and only slightly fewer than the number of police wounded (1601). This could not have boded well for the communists, who asserted throughout they were fighting for the freedom of the people from British colonial rule and claimed to act as their champions. The inter-relationship between the Special Branch and the army in the early days of the Emergency was not always as close as it should have been. However, it improved enormously from 1952 onwards when British army military intelligence officers (MIOs) were attached to the Special Branch to provide a channel for the effective transmission of Special Branch operational intelligence to the army. Military intelligence officers did not collect intelligence themselves and, in every case, they worked under the Special Branch unit to which they were attached, as will be elaborated later in this study. They did not operate their own intelligence network. In the words of Richard Clutterbuck (who served as a colonel on the Director of Operations staff during the Emergency and was later to become one of the recognised leading British authorities on terrorism): There is no doubt the soundest (and, in the end, the cheapest) investment against Communist insurgency in any country is a strong, handpicked and well-paid intelligence organisation [Special Branch] backed up by the funds to offer good rewards.12

Professor Peter Edwards, the official historian of Australia’s role in the Malayan and Vietnam conflicts, echoed Clutterbuck’s views and commented in his study of the Malayan Emergency that ‘the most important weapon in counter-insurgency was [Special Branch] intelligence’.13

8

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

The Special Branch obtained intelligence from several sources. The most common was human intelligence, commonly referred to in the intelligence community as HUMINT. The traditional sources of human intelligence are informers and agents, and the evidence indicates that surrendered and captured guerrillas provided the most valuable sources of Special Branch information. As discussed in this study, the Special Branch’s success in exploiting and ‘turning’ surrendered (and sometimes captured) guerrillas to co-operate with the security forces and go straight back into the jungle to attack their erstwhile comrades-in-arms or induce them to surrender, played a critical part in the intelligence war. It enabled the security forces to inflict casualties on the guerrillas and, more importantly, it led to the mass defections referred to later, and incorporated in Table 1, that led ultimately to the collapse of the communist uprising. As Harry Miller has recorded, many surrendered guerrillas ‘showed utter single-mindedness about trailing and killing their former comrades’.14 It is extremely difficult to provide a satisfactory explanation for their action in betraying their comrades and becoming traitors to their cause, but perhaps Professor Lucien W Pye came closest to it in his book, Guerrilla Communism in Malaya, which he wrote after spending several months on the ground in Malaya in 1954 interviewing surrendered guerrillas. During the several weeks he spent at Johore Contingent Special Branch headquarters as part of his stay, he occupied a desk in the room adjoining the author’s room. In interviewing surrendered guerrillas, he had the advantage of being able to speak to them in Chinese and he did not have to rely on interpreters, which would have imposed another layer of understanding about what they said, especially as the Chinese language is rich in ‘political terms’ and the indirect expression of personal opinion. As Pye explained: Almost immediately after surrender, the SEPs [surrendered enemy personnel] sought to take on all the attitudes that they considered appropriate to their new role. They quickly adopted what amounted to an entirely new political vocabulary, readily repeated government propaganda views while trying to drop all traces of Communist terminology. They were not only generally prepared to cooperate with the authorities but usually eager to lead patrols back into the jungle to attack their former comrades. Even when this meant killing people with whom they had lived and worked for many years, they were not troubled by the prospect, since their break with the party had been a personal one. They no longer had any ties with those in the party; they had to establish new ones with those in the government.15



THE NATURE OF THE MALAYAN EMERGENCY

9

In order that the Malayan Special Branch may be seen in the round and against the background of the period, it has been necessary in various chapters to touch on the organisation and structure of the uniformed branch of the police. Although attempts were made from time to time to separate the Special Branch from the police and form a separate and independent intelligence organisation, it should not be overlooked that the Special Branch constituted a department of the police throughout the Emergency and the Head of the Special Branch reported directly to the Commissioner of Police. It has also been thought necessary to examine the organisation and structure of the Special Branch’s main adversary, the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) and its military arm, the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA). The aims of the CPM in Malaya and in Singapore were identical; that is, the overthrow of the British colonial power and the establishment of a Communist People’s Democratic Republic of Malaya. However, their tactics were not identical on account of the different political, economic and social patterns of the two territories.16 The ‘Maoist’ strategy adopted in Malaya by Chin Peng, the CPM’s Secretary-General, aimed to work inwards from the jungle, establish liberated areas from which to dominate populated areas, create a reign of terror among government officials, rubber planters and tin miners, disrupt the economy, and finally undertake a countrywide offensive, leading to the defeat of government forces.17 On the other hand, the ‘Leninist’ strategy adopted in urban Singapore aimed to undermine and seize control of open organisations, such as the labour movement, Chinese schools, cultural organisations and later even the People’s Action Party (PAP) when it came to power in June 1959, without actually resorting to guerrilla warfare.18 Communist activities in Singapore, unlike those in peninsular Malaya, formed part of a communist-controlled ‘National Open Front’ strategy, and although no MNLA units were deployed there, the communists did on occasion resort to ‘strong-arm’ tactics and political assassinations.19 The CPM’s Singapore Town Committee reported nominally to the South Malayan Bureau in Johore, which in turn remained in courier contact with the CPM’s Central Committee in Pahang before the Committee withdrew to southern Thailand; but, generally speaking, the CPM in Singapore was largely autonomous.20 The CPM’s policy for Singapore throughout the Malayan Emergency was aptly summed up in a communist document written in April 1957 and recovered by the Singapore Special Branch, which was quoted in the Singapore Annual Report for that year:

10

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Our fundamental policy is to remain under cover and act with dexterity and caution while we conserve our strength. Our basic strategy is to expand and consolidated the patriotic National United Front in order to mobilise the strength of the whole people.21

In 1950, the Singapore Special Branch effectively broke up the CPM’s Town Committee and arrested most of its members.22 A few of them managed to evade the police net and flee to the comparative safety of the Rhio Islands in Indonesian waters south of Singapore, where, according to Chin Peng, they formed a small working committee. While not very effective, it at least enabled them to keep in touch with events in Singapore and even, on occasions, to infiltrate back into Singapore to carry out assignments.23 The term ‘Emergency’ was a euphemism used by the British government for what was to all intents and purposes an all-out war between the Communist Party of Malaya and the British colonial government in Malaya, although the insurgency continued after Malaya attained independence from the British in 1957. It was adopted in order that the London commercial insurance rates on which the Malayan commerce and industry relied (and which, until 1957, determined the prosperity of trade within the British Empire) would not be adversely affected, as they would have been if the conflict had been described as a ‘war’.24 The CPM, however, did not have any such reservations and has always referred to it as a ‘war’, namely, the ‘Anti-British National Liberation War’.25 The establishment of a Malayan People’s Democratic Republic was, in fact, from very early on, the avowed aim of the Communist Party of Malaya and constituted one of the main points of the CPM’s revolutionary program for Malaya formulated at the Third Congress of the CPM in 1932.26 It was the first point of the CPM’s ‘Nine Anti-Japanese Principles’ promulgated during the Japanese occupation of Malaya in February 1943.27 But details of what exactly the CPM had in mind to achieve its objective did not emerge until a year after the Emergency started, when the Malayan Special Branch captured in June 1949 a copy of the clandestine communist newspaper Zhen Bao (True News), which devoted a whole article to the CPM’s political plans under the heading: ‘The Outline of the Malayan People’s Democratic Republic’. These included the expropriation of the property of British ‘imperialists’ in Malaya, the nationalisation of monopolistic capital, the guaranteeing of ‘genuine’ racial equality, the transfer of ownership of the land to the ‘tillers’, equal voting rights for all persons over 18, freedom of political beliefs, the institution of low tax rates and minimum wages, and free elementary and adult education. On the face of it, some of the clauses



THE NATURE OF THE MALAYAN EMERGENCY

11

appeared to be quite unobjectionable, and the Special Branch commented at the time that it did not seem to be a particularly illuminating document, especially as the establishment of a communist republic by force of arms if necessary (on the lines of the Communist People’s Republic of China (PRC) that in many ways was regarded as the CPM’s mentor and role model) was not mentioned.28 At a World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) meeting in Beijing in November–December 1949, Liu Shao-chi, the vice-chairman of the Chinese Central People’s Government, made it quite clear that China supported the CPM’s struggle against British colonial rule in Malaya. He stated ‘the path taken by the Chinese party is the path that should be followed by many colonial and dependent countries in their struggle for national independence and people’s democracy’. An article in the Cominform journal, For a Lasting Peace: For a People’s Democracy, on 27 January 1950, repeated the same line that the victory of the Chinese people ‘was of enormous significance in strengthening the national liberation struggle in colonial territories’.29 Nevertheless, although the Chinese communists assumed ‘the role of mentors and champions of the Asian revolutionary movement’, their support of the CPM’s uprising was confined to moral and ideological back up only and, as far as it is known, they did not provide any personnel or matériel. Malaya was not placed under martial law during the Emergency and the civil government remained in place, with the army acting ‘in aid of the civil power’. The basic document on which Emergency operations were based, The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya (ATOM), prepared by the Director of Operations, was unequivocal about this point. It laid down that ‘the responsibility for conducting the campaign in Malaya rests with the Civil Government’ and reinforced the point later by adding ‘one of the underlying principles in all operations against the CT in the present Emergency is that the Armed Forces are acting in support of the Civil Power [emphasis added by author]’.30 The Malayan government made it clear that the Special Branch was to be regarded as its main intelligence agency and that it reported to the civilian police. As such, it was responsible for providing the government not only with political and security intelligence, but also, more importantly, with operational or combat intelligence on which the security forces could mount counterinsurgency operations. In the Malayan context, the difference between ‘political’ and ‘security’ intelligence was never officially defined. However, for all practical purposes

12

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

it was understood by the Special Branch that the former included ‘any information needed to protect lives, property and trade from subversion, sabotage and espionage, including communist and extremist nationalist activities’, and the latter was thought of in the broadest sense as covering ‘any other information required for the effective government of a colony’.31 It was, however, obviously difficult to keep the two definitions completely separate and, in practice, they often overlapped. The ‘elusiveness’ of the intelligence records for this period makes it difficult to document all aspects of the counterinsurgency responses to the communist uprising in Malaya. This has been partially addressed by fully understanding where the original records might be found and how the intelligence system worked at this time. In Britain, access to public records is governed by statute, namely the Public Records Act 1958 and the Public Records Act 1967.32 The official position in Malay(si)a 33, Singapore and Australia is very similar to the British one, and records selected for permanent preservation only become available for public inspection when they are thirty years old. However, most secret intelligence (including Special Branch) records are closed for longer periods if their release is considered likely to compromise national security or international relations. This policy obviously imposes a serious impediment to research into secret intelligence and Special Branch activities. It is likely, too, that not all secret Special Branch records were handed over by the British when Malaya was granted independence in 1957, and there is information to suggest that some ‘sensitive’ files were either destroyed or taken back to the United Kingdom.34 Intelligence operations from the time the British colonial power returned to Malaya in September 1945 after the Japanese surrender were the responsibility of the Malayan Security Service (MSS), which had incorporated the functions of the pre-war Malayan and Singapore Special Branches.35 Though the pre-war Malayan and Singapore Special Branches were part of their respective police forces, the Malayan Security Service operated independently and maintained a direct line of communication with the highest echelons of government in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. The Malayan and Singapore Special Branches were not re-established until August 1948: that is, around two months after the Emergency started, when the MSS was wound up and handed over its functions to them.36 There was a difference, however. Whereas the MSS had been a panMalayan organisation covering both Malaya and Singapore, the Malayan



THE NATURE OF THE MALAYAN EMERGENCY

13

and Singapore Special Branches were separate and assumed responsibility for intelligence in their own respective territories. In both territories, after the demise of the MSS, they were subsumed into their respective Criminal Investigation Departments, and they did not become separate departments until later in the Emergency, in 1952.37 At the onset of the Emergency, the British colonial government attempted to downplay the seriousness of the situation so as not to affect public morale. The government was anxious to ensure, too, that commercial insurance rates were not affected, as would have been the case if it were publicly acknowledged that a virtual state of war existed in Malaya, and that the Communist Party of Malaya was the central directing force behind the insurrection. Such secrecy also meant that little information about the Emergency is available in the public arena. Sometimes, such publicly available information can be used to cross-check other sources; in this instance, this methodology is of limited value. The High Commissioner of the Federation of Malaya, for instance, suggested to the Secretary of State for the Colonies that such emotive terms as ‘war’, ‘enemy’ and ‘rebellion’ should be avoided, and names such as ‘banditry’, ‘thugs’, ‘terrorism’ and so on be used instead.38 The true meaning of these euphemisms needs to be understood by the research scholar, for a literal interpretation of their meaning would lead to ill-formed conclusions that the British colonial power in Malaya was not faced with an outright war. It was not until 20 May 1952 at a meeting of the Federation of Malaya Executive Council that the British colonial authorities decided to replace the term ‘bandits’ with ‘communist terrorists’ (CTs) as the officially designated name for armed units of the MNLA and the Min Yuen, the People’s Movement.39 The legal definition of a terrorist in Malaya was a person: who by the use of any firearm, explosive or ammunition acts in a manner prejudicial to public safety or the maintenance of public order, incites to violence, or counsels disobedience to the law; carries, possesses or controls any firearm, explosive or ammunition without lawful authority; or demands, collects, or receives any supplies for the use of any person who intends or is about to act or has recently acted in a manner prejudicial to public safety or the maintenance of public order.40

By the time the Emergency had been declared in June 1948, most of the armed units of the CPM had taken to the jungle in peninsular Malaya

14

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

to form what was initially called the Malayan People’s Anti-British Army (MPABA). During the three-and-a-half years of the Japanese occupation, the military arm of the CPM fighting the Japanese in the Malayan jungle, aided by the clandestine British-led Force 136, adopted the name Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA).41 When the CPM took up arms against the British colonial government after the war, it was but a step to change the name to the Malayan People’s Anti-British Army. The use of these labels alone suggests that as far as the Malayan communists were concerned, and irrespective of the contributions of Force 136, both the Japanese and British were regarded as colonialists promoting their own national interests rather than those of Malaya. On 1 February 1949, the MPABA name was changed yet again and the guerrilla army became known as the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA), in accordance with a special manifesto promulgated by the CPM’s Central Committee.42 Although the English name, Malayan Races Liberation Army (MRLA), has been adopted in many published accounts of the Emergency, it would appear from the CPM’s own English-language publications that the correct version of the name should be Malayan National Liberation Army (Malaiya Renmin Minzu Jiefang Jun). The difference arises from the mis-translation of the Chinese characters for minzu appearing in the original Chinese name, which should be translated in this context as ‘national’ and not ‘races’.43 After the Second World War, the British government attached great economic importance to Malaya, as it had abundant supplies of rubber and tin. It was, in fact, the world’s largest source of natural rubber. There were therefore compelling economic reasons for Britain to ensure that Malaya did not fall into communist hands. In 1948, for instance, the USA imported from Malaya 371,000 tonnes of rubber and 155,000 tonnes of tin, earning Britain a most-welcome US$170 million at a time when the sterling area had an overall deficit of US$1,800 million.44 Clearly, after the defeat of the Japanese, the old relationship between Britain and its Asian dependencies had re-emerged, whereby Britain’s trade deficits with the US were balanced against exports to the US from the British colonies. The Soviet Union, although providing moral support for communist parties in Asia, and regarded at that time as the leader of the communist world’s opposition to Western imperialism in Asia, was not averse to trading with colonial Malaya and Singapore. In 1946 and 1947, for instance, attempts were made to establish a Soviet representative office



THE NATURE OF THE MALAYAN EMERGENCY

15

in Singapore to purchase rubber, and two representatives of the Soviet trading corporation Exportkhleb, AM Arinitohev and Papel Ivanovich Sizov, were granted visas to visit Singapore from Hong Kong for short stays from 2 to 28 December 1946 and again on 18 January 1947.45 While they were in Singapore, they were kept under close surveillance by the Malayan Security Service, and were observed to be in touch with known local communists.46 However, nothing came of their attempt to establish a purchasing office in Singapore at that time and most of the Soviet orders for rubber were placed through the London rubber market.47 While Malaya found itself back inside the familiar confines of the old colonial relationship with Britain, the attempts by the communists to provide some kind of alternative remained half-hearted and ineffective. Even during the Cold War (1945–90), that began after the end of the Second World War and arose from the fundamentally different ideologies and interests between the Soviet Union and the West and spread to every part of the world, international communist support for the Communist Party of Malaya was not very impressive. It was confined to the WFTU occasionally issuing protests against alleged repression of Malayan workers, communist-controlled Australian seamen and dockers boycotting the loading and shipping of war material to Malaya, the Indian ‘Peace’ Council calling for the observance of a ‘Malaya Day’ in support of the CPM (but nothing seems to have come of it), and the World Peace Council issuing resolutions calling for the cessation of the Emergency in Malaya.48 While it may have been expected that the British Communist Party would maintain close fraternal links with the Communist Party of Malaya, it does not seem to have provided much support aside from occasional references to the situation in Malaya in the Daily Worker, the British communist newssheet. It did, however, issue a declaration (which did not seem to be particularly objectionable) in support of the freedom of the ‘working class movement’ in Malaya at the Conference of Communist and Workers’ Parties of Countries within the Sphere of British Imperialism, held in London in 1947. When the Emergency was declared in June 1948, the British Communist Party confined itself to saying that the Emergency was the result of the ‘British government collaborating with British capitalists to maintain profits at the expense of the legitimate aspirations of Malayan workers’.49 The history of the tumultuous events of the Emergency, in which the Special Branch played such an important part, needs to be viewed in the light of the Cold War, which was fought essentially by secret intelligence agencies. Throughout this period, communism was perceived to be the

16

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

principal adversary of democracy, and anti-communism became virtually a crusade. In Asia, the Cold War brought about repeated crises, such as the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the First and Second Taiwan Straits Crises, and communist uprisings in many Southeast Asian countries. Chin Peng, the CPM’s Secretary-General, undoubtedly hoped, although he did not express it in so many words, that if he could hold out long enough, the People’s Republic of China would come to his aid as had happened in the Korean War, when the PRC had intervened on the side of the North Korean army.50 In the wider view of the events surrounding the Emergency, the ‘domino theory’ figured prominently in the minds of many contemporary military and political leaders. The term, coined in 1954, gave rise to a theory arguing that communism was advancing throughout the world in the same way that a row of dominoes falls until none is left standing.51 It brought about a sense of urgency and a real apprehension at the time that unless the communist insurgency in Malaya could be defeated, Malaya would be in danger of being overrun by the victorious communist forces that were sweeping through Indo-China into Thailand and southward toward the Malayan frontier. An important question raised by various people is what part did the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) play in defeating the communist uprising? Though the CIA station in Singapore kept in touch with what was going on and maintained close relations with the Malayan and Singapore Special Branches, it did not actually intervene.52 It is worth noting, however, that in the 1950s, intelligence operations in Southeast Asia were divided territorially between the British and the Americans. In 1954, Sir John Sinclair, a senior MI6 officer from London, and Fergie Dempster, the MI6 representative in Saigon, flew to Washington, DC, to discuss intelligence operations in the Far East with Allen Dulles, the CIA Director-General. They were accompanied by Maurice Oldfield (later Sir Maurice), the MI6 representative at Security Intelligence Far East (SIFE), Singapore.53 The discussions resulted in what is referred to as the ‘Four Square Agreement’; the corners of the so-called ‘square’ being occupied by the Philippines, Malaya, Singapore and Burma. Under the agreement, the CIA retained intelligence responsibility for the Philippines, formerly an American colony until it gained independence in 1946, leaving the British intelligence services to look after Malaya, Singapore and Burma, which were traditionally accepted as forming part of the British colonial empire. Both intelligence services agreed to co-operate in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Indonesia.54



THE NATURE OF THE MALAYAN EMERGENCY

17

Dick White (later Sir Dick), then head of MI6 in London, visited Kuala Lumpur in the latter part of 1954 to advise General Templer and GC (Guy) Madoc, then Director of Intelligence, of the effects of the ‘Four Square Agreement’.55 One of the results of White’s visit was the strengthening of the relationship between the Special Branch and MI5/MI6 and it became easier for the Special Branch to call on assistance from the British intelligence services. It was agreed, too, that MI5/MI6 officers would be made available from time to time to lecture at the Malayan Special Branch Training School.56 As explained earlier, the Malayan Special Branch re-emerged in August 1948 after the abolition of its predecessor, the Malayan Security Service (Chapter 2). Fortunately, the Special Branch’s appearance coincided with the onset of the Emergency, and was just in time for the conflict that lay ahead. The next chapter examines the role of the Malayan Security Service, the reasons for its demise, and the circumstances that led to it handing over its duties to the Special Branch. Chapters 2 and 3 serve as introductions to the organisational changes that had their roots in the return of the British to Malaya in 1945. Subsequent chapters deal with three major dimensions to the evolution and work of the Special Branch: Chapters 5, 6, 7 and 8 focus on the organisational changes that occurred and the key personnel involved in pushing them through; Chapters 4 and 9 focus on the circumstances of the Emergency and the role of intelligence collected by Special Branch; and Chapters 10 and 11 provide case studies to illuminate how the Special Branch engaged with the logistical demands of using intelligence to contain the Emergency.

Notes 1

2

Noteworthy studies of the Emergency are to be found in Karl Hack, Defence and Decolonisation in Southeast Asia: Britain, Malaya and Singapore 1941–1968, London: Curzon Press, 2001, and Chin Peng, Alias Chin Peng. My Side of History (as told to Ian Ward & Norma Miraflor), Singapore: Media Publishing, 2003. MI5, also known as the Security Service, originated in London in 1909 as the internal arm of the British Secret Service Bureau. It is Britain’s internal security intelligence agency. In 1931, it assumed responsibility for assessing threats to national security, which included international communist subversion. Traditionally, too, it liaised with and provided advice and assistance to the British colonies, which were regarded as part of the British Empire. It operates under the provisions of the Security Service Act 1989 and 1996, and is placed under the authority of the Home Secretary. Its responsibilities cover protection of the state against terrorism, espionage and, most recently, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In addition, MI6, also known as the British Intelligence Service, is Britain’s external or foreign intelligence service and is placed under the

18

3

4

5

6 7

8

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

authority of the Foreign Secretary. It is responsible for Britain’s intelligence activities in foreign countries (see National Intelligence Machinery, London: The Stationery Office Ltd, 2000). See Randall W Heather, ‘Intelligence & Counter-Insurgency in Kenya 1952–56’, Intelligence and National Security 5(3), July 1990. The Mau Mau Insurgency in Kenya and the Cyprus Emergency occurred in 1952–56 and 1952–59 respectively. Very little has been published about BRIAM in Vietnam, which was in Saigon for around three years from 1961. It consisted of four members, all with experience of Malaya during the Malayan Emergency: Robert KG Thompson, head of mission, and Dennis J Duncanson, both formerly of the Malayan Civil Service (MCS), and Jock Hindmarsh and DS (Desmond) Palmer, both former senior officers of the Malayan Police Special Branch (author’s discussion with Brigadier Ted Serong, DSO, OBE, Melbourne, 5 January 2000). Letter to author from Jack Barlow, c July 1995, enclosing a copy of the report. Jack Barlow, MBE, BEM, CPM (1919–2002) served in the London Metropolitan Police at the outbreak of the Second World War before being commissioned in the Royal Armoured Corps with which he served in Burma. At the end of the war, he was posted as Deputy Assistant Provost Marshal (DAPM) to the British occupying force sent to Japan. After demobilisation, he joined the Malayan Police as an assistant superintendent of police. He transferred to the Special Branch soon after and served for several years in Johore, where he was the author’s colleague. After leaving Malaya in 1956, he became Deputy Director of the Cyprus Special Branch (1956–59), and subsequently joined the littleknown British police mission to South Vietnam (1964–67) as Police Adviser to the South Vietnamese Police Force. The Police Mission worked alongside BRIAM (British Aid Mission to Vietnam) headed by Sir Robert Thompson. Barlow informed the author that he worked closely in South Vietnam with the CIA and, in particular, Major-General Edward G Landsdale and Daniel Elsberg of the Rand Corporation (author’s discussion with Jack Barlow in London, 12 August 1996, and Barlow’s letter to author 15 December 1996). By the time General Templer, then High Commissioner and Director of Operations, returned to England in 1954, 300 surrendered guerrillas were serving in the SOVF. ‘Q’ operations was a term used by the Special Branch to refer to jungle operations mounted by mixed squads of surrendered guerrillas, often members of the SOVF, who had agreed to cooperate with the security forces against their former comrades, and Special Branch officers disguised as guerrillas. After contacting their former comrades, the ‘turned’ guerrillas, relying on their party rank and status, endeavoured to persuade their former comrades to give up the struggle, lay down their firearms and surrender, or be killed. (See also Anthony Short, The Communist Insurrection in Malaya 1948–60, London: Frederick Muller Ltd, 1975, pp 490–1). The activities of the CPM in Singapore are well covered in Lee Ting Hui’s, The Communist Organisation in Singapore: Its Techniques of Manpower Mobilisation and Management, 1948–66, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1976, and the same author’s The Open United Front. The Communist Struggle in Singapore 1954–1966, Singapore: South Seas Society, 1996. For communist activities in mainly pre-war Singapore, see CF Yong, The Origins of Malayan Communism, Singapore: South Seas Society, 1997.



9

10

11

12

13

THE NATURE OF THE MALAYAN EMERGENCY

19

See CO 825/82/55404/4, Singapore Political Review, June 1950, Appendix A, Secret, ‘Review of Threat to Security of the Colony…by the Malayan Communist Party and Chinese Communist Party’, pp. 1–6. See also The Role of the Communists in Malaya, Division of Research for Far East, Office of Intelligence Research, Department of State, Secret, OIR Report No 3780, Washington, DC, 16 March 1947, p 7. Francis L Starner, ‘Communism in Singapore and Malaysia. A Multifront Struggle’ in Robert A Scalapino (ed), The Communist Revolution in Asia. Tactics, Goals and Achievements, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1969, p 236. Information provided to the author by Chin Peng, Secretary-General of the CPM, at the ‘Chin Peng Workshop’, Australian National University, Canberra, 22–23 February 1999. See also Chin Peng op cit. Chin Peng first visited Australia in February 1998 at the invitation of Professor Merle Ricklefs, then Professor of Southeast Asian History, Australian National University, to carry out research for his autobiography. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) cleared his visit. During his stay, he visited the Australian Archives and the Australian War Memorial Museum in Canberra, and met privately with some of his family members living in Sydney. In December of the same year, arrangements were made by Professor Anthony Reid, then Director, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, for him to visit Canberra again, when the author and several other persons were invited to participate in a workshop with him on the Malayan Emergency. Before the workshop, on 12 February, Chin Peng gave a talk to academics and graduate students in the Australian National University Asian Studies’ tearoom on his reasons for becoming a communist. The participants in the workshop that followed came mainly from universities in Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Canada, Scotland and Japan. The author also met Chin Peng separately for lunch and discussions at the Ruby Restaurant, Dickson, Canberra, on 19 February, in the company of CC Chin, and contacted him on other occasions too. A record of the dialogue and papers originating from the February 1999 workshop with Chin Peng, edited by CC Chin and Karl Hack, has been published by Singapore University Press, 2004, under the title Dialogues with Chin Peng. New Light on the Malayan Communist Part. Richard Clutterbuck, The Long, Long War. The Emergency in Malaya 1948–1960, London: Cassell & Co, 1967 (2nd edition), p 100, and letter to author from Clutterbuck dated 21 October 1994. Colonel Clutterbuck (later Major-General RL Clutterbuck, CB, OBE), entered academia after retiring from the regular British army and became a lecturer in political science at Exeter University. He is generally recognised, together with Sir Robert Thompson and General Sir Frank Kitson, as being one of the leading British authorities on counter-insurgency for that period. However, in more recent times, all three have attracted criticism for advocating that the army and police could employ what their critics referred to as ‘unnecessary force’ and ‘controversial methods’ in putting down disturbances (see Adam Roberts’ paper, ‘The British Armed Forces and Politics: A Historical Perspective’, in Cynthia H Enloe and Ursula Semin-Panzer (eds), The Military, the Police and Domestic Order. British and Third World Experiences, London: Richardson Institute for Conflict and Peace Research, 1976). Peter Edwards, ‘The Malayan Emergency (1948–1960) as a Case Study in Low Density Conflict’ in Barry Carr and Elaine McKay, Low Intensity Conflict, Theory and Practice in Central America and South-East Asia, Melbourne: La Trobe University Institute of Latin American Studies & Monash University, Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, n.d., p 45.

20

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

14 Harry Miller, Jungle War in Malaya. The Campaign against Communism 1948–60, London: Arthur Barker Ltd, 1972, pp 107–8. 15 Lucian W Pye, Guerrilla Communism in Malaya. Its Social and Political Meaning, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1956, pp 338–9. 16 Starner, op cit, p 236. 17 See Mao Zedong’s Primer on Guerrilla War, translated by SB Griffith II in TN Greene (ed), The Guerrilla and How to Fight Him, New York: Frederick A Praeger, 1962, pp 5–11. Griffith translates Mao’s often-quoted dictum referring to the relationship between the masses and the guerrillas (which applied to Malaya just as much as it did to China) as follows: ‘the former may be likened to water and the latter to the fish who inhabit it…’. See also Sam C Sarkesian, Unconventional Conflicts in a New Security Era, Westport, Connecticut & London: Greenwood Press, 1993, pp 66–7. 18 Lee Kuan Yew, From Third World to First. The Singapore Story: 1965–2000, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000, p 121. 19 On the evening of 28 April 1950, a communist terrorist threw a hand grenade at the Singapore Governor, Sir Franklin Gimson, as he was leaving the ‘Happy World’ Amusement Park in Singapore with Air Vice-Marshall FJW Mellersh, the senior-most RAF officer in Malaya, where both men had attended a boxing tournament. The hand grenade hit Gimson in the knee and fell to the ground two paces away, but fortunately the detonator was faulty and the grenade failed to explode (Melbourne Herald, 29 April 1950). For a detailed account of a communist killer squad in Singapore, based on confidential documents held by the Singapore Police Force, see Peter Clague, Iron Spearhead. The True Story of a Communist Killer Squad in Singapore, Singapore: Heinemann Educational Books (Asia) Ltd, 1980. After the Second World War, Clague served in the Judge Advocate General’s office, Singapore, and then as a magistrate, before taking up the newly created post of Police Secretary of the Singapore Police Force for six years in the 1950s, and was privy to much confidential information. 20 Starner, op cit, p 247. 21 Singapore Annual Report 1957, Singapore: Government Printing Office, 1959, p 11. 22 Melbourne Herald, 29 April 1950. 23 See also Starner, op cit, p 237. 24 See CO 537/4773, No 3, Secret Despatch No 5, para 16, ‘Insurance’, 30 May 1949, from Sir Henry Gurney, High Commissioner, Federation of Malaya, to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. 25 See ‘A Short History of the Communist Party of Malaya’ in The Communist Party of Malaya. Selected Documents, published by the South East Asia Documentation Group, 1979, p 53. No author’s name or place of publication is given. The document is to be found in the Australian National University Library, Canberra (call number ApHX400.6.A6.M34). According to the foreword, ‘The aim of the documentation is to publish some of the important statements of the Communist Party of Malaya…[and to] inform readers of the political line, programme and history of the Communist Party of Malaya and the revolutionary struggle of the Malayan people’. Material collected in this publication was assembled over the years from ‘transcripts of the Voice of the Malayan Revolution, a clandestine radio station of the Communist Party of Malaya’, broadcast from China. It is interesting to note, too, that the United Nations similarly avoided the use of the word ‘war’ in referring to the Korean War (1950–53), and preferred to call



26

27

28 29

30

31 32

THE NATURE OF THE MALAYAN EMERGENCY

21

it a ‘police action’ in order to lessen the risk of the Soviet Union becoming involved and the hostilities escalating into a general nuclear conflict. See Cheah Boon Kheng, From PKI to the Comintern, 1924–1941: The Apprenticeship of the Malayan Communist Party, Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 1992, p 104. National Archives of Singapore, BMA HQ Singapore Division, Secret, 54/1945 dated 5 September 1945, ‘Singapore Town Committee of the Malayan Communist Party’, BMA 1945–46, Box 5, Ministry of Social Affairs. CO 717/178, Eastern Department, Colonial Office, 1–7 July 1949, citing Pan Malayan Review, No. 13. Australian Archives, Canberra, Series No. A7133/3, Australian Secret Service – Records on Singapore and Malaya – Part 2 (Australian Secret Intelligence Service, ASIS, Malayan Communist Party, Malayan Emergency), Secret, ‘Soviet Imperialism, The Malayan Communist Party—An Analysis of Subversive Tactics’, pp 26–7. This should be contrasted with the joint statement issued some years later by Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Indian President KK Narayan, on the occasion of the latter’s visit to China in May 2000, that ‘there is no justification in using terrorism as a political tool’ (Indian Perspectives, New Delhi: August 2000, p 3). But by then, of course, the policy of the Chinese government had changed. The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya, Restricted, prepared under the direction of the Director of Operations, Malaya, 1952, Chapter III, ‘Own Forces’, Introduction, p. 1 and ‘The Police’, p 10. It would appear, however, that General Templer, when he was High Commissioner and Director of Operations, must have given some thought to bringing the police under army control. Colonel Young, then Commissioner of Police, has recorded in his personal papers an extraordinary exchange he had with General Templer in 1952 that appears to confirm this. According to Colonel Young, Templer referred several times in conversation with him to his intention to bring the police under army control. The last time Templer did so, he said, ‘I am going to do it’, to which Young replied, ‘No, you’re not’. Templer continued, ‘Then, who is going to stop me?’ Young answered, ‘I am, because I shall go back to the City if you do’ (Young had been seconded from the City of London Police as Commissioner of the Malayan Police). Then one evening not long afterwards, Templer telephoned Young in his bungalow, ‘Is that you, Arthur?’ Young answered, ‘Sir’. Templer said, ‘Was all that ballyhoo I was talking about?’ Young said, ‘Not entirely but substantially [sic]’. Templer replied, ‘Good night, old cock’, and according to Young the matter was never referred to again (see Rhodes House Library, Oxford, ‘Young Papers’, folder headed ‘Malaya 1952. Narrative Report, 1967’). Young related the same incident to Lewis James Hawkins in New York when the latter interviewed him on his way through to London in 1953. Hawkins was then researching a University of Delaware MA History thesis, ‘British Administration of Malaya during the Emergency’ (see ACC 8011-132, ‘Correspondence of Major DL Lloyd Owen, DSO, MC, Military Assistant to General Sir Gerald Templer, High Commissioner, Malaya, March 1952–September 1953’, National Army Museum, Chelsea). CAB 158/20/ JIC (55) 28, Secret, ‘Asia Official Documents 1945–65, Chief of Staffs Committee’. The Public Records Act 1958 stipulated that public records are to be made available to the public after fifty years and the 1967 amendment reduced the period to thirty years.

22

33

34

35 36 37 38

39

40 41

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Even so, some records containing information dealing with security and intelligence that, it is considered, may damage national security, are held back beyond thirty years and closure periods may extend to fifty, seventy-five and even one hundred years. In some cases, records are not transferred to the public archives at all, but are retained by the relevant government department. Malaysia was formed as a political entity in 1963 and comprised peninsular Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak and Sabah. Singapore ceased to be a member in 1965 and became a separate independent republic in the same year. When the author was carrying out research in Kuala Lumpur in 1996, he was reliably informed by an officer of the research unit attached to the federal headquarters of the present-day Malaysian Special Branch that it was experiencing problems in obtaining information about Special Branch operations during the Emergency as many ‘sensitive’ files had been taken back to Britain by the British colonial authorities. An account of the Malayan Security Service will be given in the next chapter. The term ‘re-established’ has been used, as the two Special Branches actually existed pre-war until they were absorbed into the Malayan Security Service in 1941. Colonial Annual Report, Malaya 1948, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1949, p 124. CO 537/4773, No 3, Secret Despatch No 5, para 16, ‘Insurance’, 30 May 1949, from Sir Henry Gurney, High Commissioner, Federation of Malaya, to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. CO 1022/48, File SEA 10/172/01, ‘Proposed the Bandits in Malaya be officially known as Communist Terrorists’. The Min Yuen, the Romanised spelling of the two-character abbreviated form of the Chinese name Minzhong Yuendong, meaning literally ‘People’s Movement’, was an undercover communist organisation on the jungle fringes and in villages and towns that was providing support for the communists’ jungle army. The Chinese language readily lends itself to abbreviations of this kind. The Min Yuen was under direct Communist control and was primarily a network of party sympathisers supplying intelligence and supplies to the CPM (Australian Archives, Canberra, Australian Secret Service Records on Singapore & Malaya, Part 2, Item No 13, Series No A71133/3, Top Secret. ‘Soviet Imperialism—The Malayan Communist Party—An Analysis of Subversive Tactics, April 1956’). See also Malcolm Postgate, Operation Firedog. Air Support in the Malayan Emergency 1945 [sic]—1960, London, HMSO, 1992, p 4, and The Straits Times, Allington Kennard & Harry Miller, ‘The End of the Emergency’, 29 July 1960, and in the same newspaper, ‘The Great Victory Series. Continuing the Story of the Emergency in Malaya’, 30 July 1960. In their articles on the end of the Emergency, Kennard and Miller describe the Min Yuen as ‘a sort of CPM Home Guard’. Laws of Malaya, Act 18, Internal Security Act, 1960. Force 136, a clandestine British army organisation, was originally formed in India during the Second World War to contact, supply and direct guerrillas in Japanese-occupied Burma, Malaya, Thailand and Indo-China. In July 1942, the headquarters of Force 136 moved to Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and a section (Group B) was added for Malaya. (See SOE. Operations in the Far East. An Introductory Guide to the Newly Released Records of the Special Operations Executive in the Public Records Office, London: Public Records Office, 1993).



42

43

44

45 46

47

48 49 50 51

52

53

THE NATURE OF THE MALAYAN EMERGENCY

23

CO 717/178, 20–26 May 1949, Secret, Appendix A to Report 17, ‘Summary of Manifesto dated 1 February 1949 issued jointly by the Central Executive Committee CPM and the General HQ MNLA’. See also Salient Operational Aspects of Paramilitary Warfare in Three Asian Areas, Washington, DC; Department of the Army, Office of the Asst. Chief of Staff, 1954, p 35. See minzu in The Chinese English Dictionary, Hong Kong: The Commercial Press Ltd, 1979, p 474. See also Dato’ JJ Raj, The War Years and After. A Personal Account of Historical Relevance, Kuala Lumpur: Pelanduk Publications, 1995, p 261. AJ Stockwell, British Policy and Malay Politics during the Malayan Union Experiment 1942–1948, Kuala Lumpur: MBRAS Monograph No 8, 1979, p 74 and Clyde Sanger, Malcolm MacDonald, Bringing an End to Empire, Montreal & Kingston: McGill Queen’s University Press, 1995, p 269. For details of world natural and synthetic rubber production and consumption 1948–49, see Economic Colonialism in Southeast Asia, Division of Research for the Far East, Office of Intelligence Research, Department of State, Secret OIR Report No. 5036 (PY), Washington, DC, 26 August 1949, pp 16–18. See The Role of the Communists in Malaya, op cit, p 107, and New York Times, 18 January 1947. MI6, the foreign section of the British secret service, advised the British Board of Trade in 1946 that the Russian KGB (Committee for State Security) and the GRU (Chief Directorate for Intelligence, Russian Army Staff) were running secret intelligence networks undercover in Soviet trading companies such as Amtong Trading Corporation and the Soviet Purchasing Commission, and the exact status of Exportkhleb in Asia was viewed with some suspicion. (See NAB 250, Foreign Office Weekly Political Summary, ‘Indo-China 1946’, and secret telegram No 348, 16 November 1946, from the British Embassy, Saigon, to the British Foreign Office). Geoffrey Jukes, The Soviet Union in Asia, Sydney: Angus and Robertson (Publishers) Pty Ltd in association with The Australian Institute of International Affairs, 1973, p 146. Richard V Hall, A Spy’s Revenge, Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 1987, p 29. Nicholas J White, ‘Capitalism and Counter-insurgency? Business and Government in the Malayan Emergency, 1948–57’, Modern Asian Studies, 32(1), 1998. See Chin Peng, op cit, p 255. As far as it is known, the term ‘domino theory’ was first used by President Eisenhower at a news conference on 7 April 1954. He applied it to French Indo-China, and stated that if the communists succeeded in Indo-China they would then advance successfully from one country to another in Southeast Asia. When the author visited the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Division of Security, State Department, Washington, DC, in 1949, under arrangements made by the US Consul-General, Kuala Lumpur, several officers showed a keen interest in the Malayan Emergency. Tom Bower, The Perfect English Spy and the Secret Intelligence War 1935–90, London: Mountain Books Paperbacks, 1986, p 226–7. There was an Australian connection with SIFE at the time, as Harvey Barnett (T Harvey Barnett, AO), afterwards Director-General of ASIO (1981–88), was attached to Oldfield’s office in Singapore. He was then an

24

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) officer, though he later transferred to ASIO (author’s conversation with Harvey Barnett, Melbourne, 17 March 1993). 54 Bower, ibid. At an earlier secret meeting between French, British and American intelligence services in Singapore in May 1951, it was agreed that the CIA and the French foreign intelligence service (Service de Documentation Extérieux et de Contreespionage) should meet twice weekly to exchange ‘raw’ air and naval intelligence on China. The listening duties for broadcasts from China were divided among the British, French and American intelligence services (see Douglas Porch, The French Secret Service. From the Dreyfus Affair to the Cold War, New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1995, p 316). Some MI6 officers worked closely with BRIAM, headed by Robert Thompson, which has been referred to earlier (see Anne Blair, There to the Bitter End. Ted Serong in Vietnam, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, 2001, pp 55, 113 and 160). 55 Interview DA Weir, London, 3 August 1996. Weir was Assistant Commissioner Special Branch at Kuala Lumpur Federal Special Branch headquarters when White visited Kuala Lumpur in 1954. 56 Conversation with the author, Douglas Weir, London, 12 August 1996.

Reproduced from Malaya's Secret Police 1945-60: The Role of the Special Branch in the Malayan Emergency by Leon Comber (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2008). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available at < http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg >

chapter two The Malayan Security Service and the evolution of the Special Branch 1 Planning for the military administration of Malaya had been carried out in London as early as 1943 by the War Office and the Colonial Office. After the Japanese surrender in August 1945, units of the British Military Administration of Malaya landed in Singapore with the occupying British forces in September 1945. The British Military Administration’s main intelligence organisation was the Malayan Security Service. It was responsible for the provision of political and security intelligence, and operated on a pan-Malayan basis, covering both Malaya and Singapore under a Director MSS based in Singapore.2 This chapter examines the functions of the Malayan Security Service from September 1945 until it was wound up and handed over to the Malayan and Singapore Special Branches in August 1948. It provides an account, too, of the unsettled security situation that prevailed in Singapore and Malaya at the end of the war, when the MSS returned as part of the British Military Administration. Although the MSS was separate from the BMA Civil Affairs Police and reported directly to the higher echelons of the government in both territories, it liaised closely with the BMA Civil Affairs Police commanding officers in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.3 Short describes the MSS as ‘a sort of super intelligence organisation’ that was ‘supernumerary to the police and in particular to the CID’.4 Aslie and Ibrahim refer to it in their study of the history and role of the Malayan police as the ‘Malayan Secret Service’.5 Both these definitions are not far from the truth, but its official charter listed its functions as follows: (a) To collect and collate information on subversive organisations and personalities in Malaya and Singapore. (b) To advise, so far as they [sic] are able, the two Governments [Malaya and Singapore] as to the extent to which Internal Security is threatened by the activities of such an organisation [sic]. 25

26

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

(c) To keep the two Governments informed of the trends of public opinion which affect, or are likely to affect the Security of Malaya. (d) To maintain a Central Registry of Aliens. (e) To maintain a close liaison with other Security Intelligence Organisations, and the Defence Security Officer [MI5].6 Although it has been stated that the MSS only came into existence postwar,7 it had actually been formed pre-war, and it became operational some time before the Japanese invasion in December 1941. It was established in September 1939 by Arthur Dickinson, Inspector-General of the Straits Settlements Police, with the approval of the Straits Settlements and the Federated and Unfederated Malay States governments.8 The MSS then took over the functions of the Straits Settlements and Malayan Police Special Branches.9 As Dickinson writes: The political layout of pre-war Malaya necessitated multiple separate Police Forces and Police Intelligence Services. The ‘Fortress Defence Scheme’ of MI5 provided not only for the (Military) Defence Security Officer, but also for a Civil Security Officer in the person of the Straits Settlements InspectorGeneral of Police. In 1939, this officer [Dickinson] recommended the setting up of the Malayan Security Service to coordinate the work of the various Police organizations in the Peninsular [sic], to establish a central control and uniform legislation for aliens, to provide security control of the Northern Border and pan-Malayan direction from a central office in all police civil security affairs, which covered a very wide field…And ‘Malayan Security [Service]’ was in operation some time before the outbreak of the Malayan Campaign giving aid in local state intelligence and executive action, and assisting the Governor and High Commissioner…10

The control and registration of aliens referred to above was primarily a measure aimed at keeping under surveillance the activities of Japanese businessmen and ‘tourists’, who often turned out to be agents working for the Japanese intelligence services.11 This particular need, of course, did not arise post-war. Pre-war, the MSS was charged, too, with liaising and cooperating with intelligence organisations outside Malaya, that is, the British colonial Special Branches in Hong Kong and Burma, and the Dutch and French intelligence agencies in the Netherlands East Indies and French Indo-China respectively.12 Dickinson candidly admitted, however, that the MSS was still in its infancy in 1941, and said that the sheer rapidity of the Japanese advance down the Malayan peninsula towards Singapore and the fall of Singapore



THE MALAYAN SECURITY SERVICE

27

on 15 February 1942 prevented it from becoming as effective as had been hoped.13 As stated above, the MSS resumed its function as the main government intelligence agency after the return of the British colonial power at the end of the Second World War.14 However, as will be discussed later, it was disbanded in August 1948, not long after the start of the Emergency, and its functions taken over by the newly resuscitated Malayan and Singapore Police Special Branches. Throughout its post-war existence, the MSS faced considerable difficulties in operating in the troubled and uncertain times that prevailed in Malaya and Singapore following the Japanese surrender. When the British forces reoccupied Singapore in September 1945, some weeks after the Japanese surrender, the city was already gripped by lawlessness and violence. The Singapore police force was completely disorganised and unable to restore law and order after the depredations of the Japanese occupation.15 According to the Japanese scholar Akashi, the behaviour during the Japanese occupation of members of the former Singapore Police Special Branch and Criminal Investigation Department in helping the kempeitei, the much-feared Japanese secret police, carry out anti-Chinese purges, had aroused deep resentment among the local Chinese community.16 In peninsular Malaya, the situation was no better, where some members of the police had earned for themselves an unsavoury reputation in collaborating with the Japanese in killing and torturing civilians. The majority of the population regarded the police with fear. By the end of the war, police morale was at an all-time low. Equipment was poor and in short supply. There were no standard police uniforms; no two men were dressed alike. As soon as the Japanese forces had surrendered and withdrawn to their barracks and camps to await the arrival of the British forces, and in the hiatus of several weeks that ensued before the re-occupying British forces landed, armed gangs of civilians emerged to take the law into their own hands to mete out summary justice to those members of the police force who had collaborated with the Japanese in ill-treating the local population. At the time the British forces landed in Singapore, reliable information was received that a plan was afoot to destroy and raze to the ground the former Special Branch/CID headquarters at Robinson Road, and it was necessary to place a British army guard on it. The building symbolised in many ways the inhumanity and brutality of the Japanese kempeitei and its police supporters. It had, in fact, already been looted and stripped of its

28

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

fittings before the return of the British, and whatever furniture remained had been removed. Most of the confidential and secret Special Branch and CID files stored in it had been scattered or destroyed.17 Both in Malaya and Singapore, there was a virtual breakdown of law and order, and after the British forces returned, first priority had to be given to restoring some semblance of law and order, combating the crime wave, and restoring public confidence by putting police patrols on the streets, backed up by British troops.18 From the early days of the British return, disturbing reports of lawlessness continued to be received from various parts of Malaya, but there was little that could be done to deal with the situation, as the police for the most part were disorganised and no longer functioning as a disciplined force. More alarmingly, there was a dangerous flare-up of inter-racial ill feeling between Malays and Chinese, which led to ugly armed clashes in many places. In a muted form, there had been pre-war latent inter-racial friction between some misguided members of the Malay and Chinese communities, the two main races of Malaya. This had been kept in check by the British colonial power maintaining an even-handed approach, but during the Japanese occupation, relations were exacerbated by the Japanese policy of favouring Malays over Chinese; the Japanese used the predominantly Malay police to support operations undertaken by the Japanese army and kempeitei against the predominantly Chinese MPAJA, the military wing of the CPM, and its sympathisers.19 The first annual report of the Malayan police, published in 1946 after the Japanese occupation, gives prominence to the serious increase in violent crime, including murders, kidnapping and armed robbery, which was mainly attributed to the CPM that had by then emerged from the jungle to fill the vacuum left by the withdrawing Japanese forces, before the return of the British.20 It was clear that the CPM was already the most powerful and well-organised political organisation in Malaya, with branches throughout the country.21 In January 1945, some seven months before the end of the war, as a portent of things to come, the CPM had in fact prepared a secret ‘analysis of the international situation and notes on the Malayan revolution’, which fell into police hands much later on. It claimed inter alia that it was ‘the only political party which had all along been leading the revolution in Malaya’, and went on to say rather ominously ‘if the Malayan people want to achieve their complete emancipation they must be self-reliant, expand



THE MALAYAN SECURITY SERVICE

29

their own strength and be prepared for a more determined and more bitter bloodshed struggle [sic]’.22 The Communist Party of Malaya had been banned pre-war, and many known communists were detained. However, just before the fall of Singapore, the Singapore Governor agreed to some of the communists being released to join Dalforce, a hastily assembled guerrilla unit under the command of Lieutenant Colonel JD (John) Dalley, a Malayan Police officer, to take part in the defence of Singapore.23 At the end of the war, the British Labour Party then in power in Britain adopted a liberal approach towards political parties and the Communist Party of Malaya was afforded recognition, until it was once again banned on 23 July 1948 a month after the declaration of the Emergency.24 Meanwhile, there were mass anti-government demonstrations in Singapore and many towns in peninsular Malaya, orchestrated by the CPM on a variety of pretexts, as well as widespread labour disturbances on tin mines and rubber estates. In keeping with Leninist theory, the aim of the CPM, in the early days after the return of the British colonial power to Malaya, was to undermine through civil disturbances and political crises the determination of the British to govern and, at the critical moment, take over the government, by force if necessary, and establish a Malayan People’s Democratic Government. However, this policy was abandoned when it became apparent that the CPM’s attempt to paralyse the economy had failed, and subsequently, when the CPM took up arms against the British authorities in June 1948 and a state of emergency was declared, the CPM’s Secretary-General, Chin Peng, adopted instead the policy that had been successfully followed by Mao Zedong in China. He decided that as the industrial proletariat in Malaya did not provide a sufficiently large base from which to mount a successful revolution, the way forward lay in establishing rural bases in peninsular Malaya, which could be supported by Chinese squatters living on the jungle fringes. The CPM’s attempt to overthrow the government was part of the Cold War. The term ‘Cold War’, as opposed to an atomic ‘hot war’, then came into popular usage to indicate the struggle between the Soviet bloc countries and their supporters on the one hand, and the USA and Britain on the other.25 In the early days after the war, the Malayan Security Service was staffed by gazetted police officers, inspectors and detectives seconded for duty from the Singapore and Malayan police forces, who retained their police

30

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

rank, seniority and pay. At that time, the senior cadre of the Singapore and Malayan police forces, which formed part of the British Colonial Police Service, was made up for the main part of British gazetted police officers. They were usually appointed as cadet assistant superintendents of police until they passed the required examinations in police law, Malay language and government regulations, for confirmation as assistant superintendents (ASPs).26 The inspectorate consisted mainly of locally appointed Asian officers, although in the early post-war period there was a cadre of British police inspectors too.27 Vacancies for confidential clerks, stenographers, translators, photographers, drivers, and telephone operators were filled by the appointment of suitably qualified locally employed civilians. As Onraet emphasised in his report to the BMA Chief Civil Affairs Officer, it was of the utmost importance for the civil governments of Malaya and Singapore to maintain a unified and strong intelligence organisation.28 It appears that Dalley, the MSS Director, intended that the MSS should become the local equivalent of MI5, the British Security Service. Like MI5, the MSS did not exercise any powers of arrest and arrests had to be carried out on its behalf by the Malayan or Singapore police. With the return of the MSS after the war, Dalley ensured that it remained separate from the police and had direct right of access to the highest echelons of the government in Singapore and Malaya. Dalley clearly considered that, in terms of the government hierarchical structure, the Director MSS was at least the equal in rank of the Malayan or Singapore Commissioners of Police. Many of the experienced pre-war Singapore and Malayan MSS/ Special Branch officers had been killed during the war, and those who had survived were either medically boarded out or required lengthy periods of convalescence before they were fit to return for duty. Those officers with pre-war MSS or Special Branch experience who did return for duty were in most cases seconded for service with the MSS so that their experience of intelligence work could be used. ML Wynne, the pre-war head of the Singapore Special Branch, and HB Sym, the pre-war head of the Malayan Special Branch, who had been absorbed into the pre-war MSS, died in Sumatra in 1942, when they were captured by the Japanese after escaping from Singapore in an attempt to get away to Australia or India. Major KS Morgan, a former Indian Army officer and a fluent Japanese speaker, who had been in charge of the Japanese Section of the Singapore Special Branch, was captured by the Japanese in Sumatra with Wynne and Sym. He survived the war, but was medically



THE MALAYAN SECURITY SERVICE

31

boarded out and did not return for duty after the war.29 D Matheson, another experienced Malayan police officer with Special Branch experience, died in Sumatra. Lieutenant Colonel Dalley, the Dalforce commander during the fighting in Singapore who had considerate intelligence experience, was captured in Sumatra with his colleagues and transferred back to Singapore where he was interned for the rest of the war. After taking recuperative leave in Britain, he returned to Malaya to become Director of the MSS.30 In September 1945, when the MSS returned to Singapore with the British Military Administration, the head of the Singapore division was Major JC Barry. His counterpart in Kuala Lumpur was Lieutenant Colonel JM McLean. Both were pre-war Malayan police officers. According to the Annual Report of the Singapore Police 1946, Barry was credited with retrieving an ‘amazing amount’ of the pre-war Special Branch records, which provided a ‘valuable foundation for the new Central Registry of Records’, but even so many secret Special Branch records were irrevocably lost as a result of the war. When Barry returned to Britain on sick leave on 26 November 1945, he was replaced by EAG (Alan) Blades, another senior pre-war Singapore Special Branch officer.31 Both Barry and McLean subsequently retired on medical grounds. When GC (Guy) Madoc, a senior pre-war Malayan police officer (who was afterwards to become head of the Malayan Special Branch and later Director of Intelligence, Malaya), returned in May 1946 from leave in Britain, he took up the appointment of deputy director MSS in Kuala Lumpur.32 After the war, the MSS was faced with a daunting task in view of the total disruption of the pre-war police intelligence organisation and the unsettled state of the country. In particular, the loss of experienced police intelligence officers as a result of casualties suffered during the Japanese war, who would otherwise have undoubtedly served in the MSS, was a serious blow to the MSS. In the immediate post-war period, there was a shortage of police officers trained in intelligence duties and the MSS was operating as best it could at 50 per cent below its authorised gazetted officer establishment. The MSS, too, had to make a fresh start to establish from scratch a network of secret agents and informers to replace the secret intelligence network that had existed pre-war and, at the same time, begin to rebuild police intelligence records. It has been well said that secret intelligence is a slow, plodding business and it was realised at the time that an undertaking of this magnitude would inevitably take time.33 It was fortunate, however, that the

32

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

MSS could still obtain information from Lai Teck, Secretary-General of the CPM, who had been successfully planted as a secret agent in the CPM by the Singapore Special Branch in around 1935, and had survived the war. He re-established contact with the British authorities in Singapore early on after the Japanese surrender. However, when Lai Teck disappeared in March 1947, taking with him the CPM Party’s funds, the MSS was deprived of an important source of intelligence about the CPM at the highest possible level, which placed it at a considerable disadvantage.34 By the end of January 1947, Dalley had settled in as Director of the MSS in Singapore after returning from recuperative leave in Britain. The MSS was a much larger organisation than it had been pre-war; no doubt because Dalley was ambitious and had built it up. At the pan-Malayan headquarters in Singapore, Dalley was assisted by a deputy director, and additionally there was an assistant director in charge of Singapore and another deputy director in Kuala Lumpur responsible for peninsular Malaya (see Table 2). At the beginning of 1948, the MSS consisted of 13 British gazetted officers, 44 Asian inspectors, and two archivists in charge of the MSS secret registry: JF Allen, Chief Archivist, assisted by T Knott.35 A British gazetted officer was posted for duty in each of the state capitals of Johore, Negri Sembilan, Selangor, Perak, Penang and Kedah/Perlis (regarded as one state or contingent from the police point of view), with three in Singapore. They were officially termed ‘Local Security Officers’ (LSOs).36 As Director MSS, Dalley was ex officio member of the Joint Intelligence Committee (Far East) in Singapore, which processed intelligence reports from Southeast Asia for the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) in London. The Joint Intelligence Committee in London was the ‘supreme’ intelligence coordinating body in Britain and, through its secretary, had right of access to the Prime Minister. In the early days after the British return to Singapore, Norman Bain, Chief of Staff of Lord Killearn, British Special Commissioner for South East Asia, chaired the JIC (Far East), and Francis Stuart, Political Secretary at the Australian Commission in Singapore (1947–50), was Secretary of the Committee. Aside from Dalley, the other members were the heads of the Singapore and Malayan CIDs, the local MI5 and MI6 representatives, the British navy, army and air force Directors of Intelligence, and a representative of the local Joint Planning Staff at Lord Killearn’s headquarters.41



THE MALAYAN SECURITY SERVICE

33

Table 2: Gazetted officers, Malayan Security Service (1948) Name

Rank

Location

JD Dalley

Director, Pan-Malaya

Singapore

NG Morris37

Acting Deputy Director

Singapore

EAG Blades

Assistant Director

Singapore

CMJ Kirke

Acting Deputy Director

Kuala Lumpur

IS Wylie38

Local Security Officer

Selangor

W Elphinstone

Local Security Officer

Johore

DN Livingstone

Local Security Officer

Kedah/ Perlis

HTB Ryves39

Local Security Officer

Perak

KB Larby

Local Security Officer

Penang

RW Quixley

Local Security Officer

Negri Sembilan

JE Fairbairn

Local Security Officer

Singapore

RB Corridon40

Local Security Officer

Singapore

HJ Woolnough

Local Security Officer

Singapore

Source: Malayan Establishment Staff List 1948, pp 90–1.

The MSS had often been criticised for not forewarning the Malayan authorities of the impending uprising by the CPM. Both Sir Edward Gent, the Malayan High Commissioner, and Malcolm MacDonald, then Commissioner General, had expressed their dissatisfaction about the paucity of intelligence provided by the MSS concerning the CPM’s intentions.42 Although Dalley had provided a general review of the CPM at a meeting attended by Gent and MacDonald on 26 June 1947,43 it was not actually until a subsequent meeting on 22 June 1948, a few days after a state of emergency had been declared, that he reported that the MSS had received information from a reliable source of the CPM’s plan of action.44 However, the following points should be born in mind:

34

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

(a) The authorised establishment for Local Security Officers was 18 (11 in peninsular Malaya and 7 in Singapore),45 but with only 9 LSOs (6 in peninsular Malaya and 3 in Singapore), the MSS was operating 50 per cent under-strength, which would have seriously restricted its intelligence gathering capabilities. (b) There was a gap in the MSS coverage for Pahang, Malacca, Kelantan and Trengganu, due to a shortage of trained police intelligence officers, and the criminal investigation branches in these territories were expected to cover political intelligence and security matters for the MSS. Even though MSS officers sometimes visited these territories,46 it was not entirely a satisfactory arrangement, although it was the best that could be done in the circumstances. (c) While one of the main targets of the MSS was the CPM, which had to all intents and purposes a predominantly Malayan–Chinese membership, the only LSO who could speak Chinese was Wylie in Selangor, who had been sent pre-war by the Malayan government to study Cantonese in Canton.47 In 1947, the Chinese constituted 38.4 per cent of the total population of peninsular Malaya,48 but there were only 12 British police officers, or 3.6 per cent, out of a total establishment of 333 gazetted police officers (nearly all of whom were British) in the Malayan Police, who were able to carry on a simple conversation in Chinese.49 Moreover, throughout the Emergency, the rank-and-file of the uniformed branch of the Malayan police were handicapped by the small number of Chinese in the force, which made it difficult for Malay policemen, the vast majority of whom had no knowledge of Chinese, to establish close relations with the Chinese community. The differences of language, religion and culture acted as a formidable barrier between the two ethnic groups.50 As mentioned previously, the Director MSS maintained the right of direct access to the British Governors of Singapore and Malaya, as well as other senior government officials and service officers in both territories. Sir Edward Gent, Governor, Malayan Union, and later High Commissioner of the Federation of Malaya, referred to the MSS as a ‘combined department of the Malayan and Singapore governments’, and noted that its establishment and staff were subject to the control of the two governments.51 He confirmed that it had ‘no executive powers, [and] actual raids or arrests’ were carried out by ‘the regular police acting on the advice of the Malayan Security



THE MALAYAN SECURITY SERVICE

35

Service’.52 In this respect, as previously noted, it resembled closely MI5, the British domestic intelligence service.53 Apropos MSS’s sources of information and the running of agents, Dalley wrote in a secret letter, dated 13 July 1948, to Sir Ralph Hone, the SecretaryGeneral of the Commissioner-General for South East Asia, Singapore, in the following terms: The sources of information are too many to enumerate here but mention should be made of the potential source. It would be expected that the Police would be prolific sources of information, but mainly because they have been so absorbed in the investigation of criminal activities the amount of information received from the Police has been negligible. The main sources of information are (1) underground and secret agents (2) surveillance in all its forms. Secret agents are operated by all ranks and the results pooled in the Central Registry at HQ. Results of surveillance are also collated in the Central Registry.54

From as early as 1947, the security situation in Malaya and Singapore began to cause the government serious concern. In February 1947, an armed gang of 40 ‘bandits’ (a code name for communist terrorists) had raided Klian Intan, looted the shops in the village, and had shot dead a customs officer and several Chinese villagers, before withdrawing into the jungle. In March of the same year, acting on information received, the police recovered 230 firearms and 10,000 rounds of ammunition that had been buried in a dump some nine miles from Kuala Lumpur. It is believed that the CPM had secreted them there during the war with the intention of retrieving them later. In May 1947, what were described to the police as an ‘armed gang of communists’ derailed the Kuala Lumpur–Penang night mail train and killed eight passengers. In the same month, another armed communist gang threatened to burn down Klian Intan unless the village paid a collective ransom of $30,000. In June, Short relates that a police party and twenty ‘bandits’ engaged in an hour-long gun fight near Grik.55 ‘Bandits’ ambushed two buses with a police escort in a lorry near Klian Intan in September. Three police and six civilians were killed in this incident and 14 wounded.56 Labour unrest was growing steadily and alarmingly, both in Malaya and Singapore. In 1947–48, it became clear that the CPM was making an all-out attempt to control the trade union movement, by intimidation and force if necessary. It seemed that acts of violence and lawlessness were building up to a crescendo. In Singapore, the powerful communist-controlled Singapore

36

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Federation of Trade Unions (SFTU) called a general strike in April 1948, and issued leaflets inciting workers to ‘bloodshed and violence’. The SFTU’s request to hold a May Day celebration with a huge procession through the city centre was refused by the Singapore Commissioner of Police, who considered that it might get out of hand and lead to rioting.57 The communists then turned their attention to Malaya, and in April and May 1948, according to government reports, there were waves of strikes throughout the country.58 The communists seized a rubber estate in north Johore and what were described as ‘communist agitators’ held it for a month. In Kedah, reliable reports were received that the communists had formed workers into military units and had drilled them. The Labour Department reported that vast quantities of rubber had been stolen by communists and some rubber estates even burnt down. On 28 May 1948, the security forces found an abandoned camp in the jungle ‘north of Baling’ large enough to contain an estimated 40 guerrillas. Twelve hand grenades were found in it.59 In the three weeks between 17 May and 7 June 1948, the communists murdered 12 rubber estate managers and foremen (11 Asian and 1 European).60 By early June 1948, the overall security situation in peninsular Malaya had deteriorated further and there were numerous reports of determined attempts by armed gangs of communists to intimidate and control labourers on rubber estates and tin mines. In the first half of June, according to government reports, there were 19 murders and attempted murders, 3 cases of arson, and armed attacks on isolated police stations in Pahang, Perak, Selangor, Negri Sembilan and Johore.61 There was reliable information that members of the communist-controlled Pan-Malayan Federation of Trade Unions (PMFTU) were being mobilised in the jungle to prepare for an armed struggle. On 12 June 1948, the government banned the PMFTU and it was declared an illegal association.62 The situation in Selangor was described as serious. Police reinforcements were sent to a number of isolated areas, local constabulary units were formed on rubber estates, and estate managers were issued with Sten guns for self-protection. Some managers on remote isolated rubber estates were advised to move to safer areas. In the first half of June 1948, the MSS received reliable reports that at a secret CPM meeting held at the end of April near Kajang in Selangor, a program of armed violence against the government had been adopted that involved the organisation of killer squads of former MPAJA members to carry out assassinations.63 The MSS had reported in early June that former MPAJA members in the Ipoh and Sungei Siput areas had taken to the hills,



THE MALAYAN SECURITY SERVICE

37

and ‘open’ CPM-affiliated establishments in towns, including the MPAJA Ex-Comrades Associations, were being closed.64 On 9 June 1948, Chinese detectives led by Assistant Superintendent of Police W Stafford, acting on MSS information, arrested Liew Yit-Fun, a Chinese Eurasian born in Jamaica, on a charge of sedition.65 Liew, who spoke excellent English as well as several Chinese dialects, was the ‘open’ representative of the CPM in Kuala Lumpur and manager of the Min Sheng Pau (Voice of the People), a newspaper that had commenced publication in Kuala Lumpur under communist auspices on 1 June.66 The police raided the premises of the newspaper on 15 June and arrested twenty persons found there.67 Two days later, a police raid was carried out on the headquarters of the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army Ex-Servicemen’s Association in Kuala Lumpur, where eight Chinese were detained. This was the signal for police raids to be carried out on the offices of the CPM and its affiliated organisations throughout the country. By this time, most of the CPM leaders had gone underground and taken to the jungle, but 600 suspected communist supporters were detained for questioning.68 Matters were brought to a head on 12 June 1948, when a communist killer squad shot dead three Kuomintang (KMT) leaders in central Johore who were suspected of collaborating with the British colonial authorities.69 Four days later, a gang of twelve communist terrorists, armed with Sten guns and pistols, shot dead in cold blood three British rubber estate managers in the Sungei Siput district of Perak: Arthur E Walker on Elphil Estate, and John M Allison and his newly arrived assistant, Ian D Christie, on Phin Soon Estate. Although the government (and the MSS) were criticised for being slow to react to the unfolding of events, and the governor Sir Edward Gent was specially singled out for blame, a state of emergency was declared in parts of Perak and Johore, which were the most troublesome areas, on 16 June 1948.70 It was extended to the remainder of both states on 17 June and finally to the whole country on 18 June 1948. Although the murders did not mark the start of violence in Malaya, they did trigger the declaration of the state of emergency. A state of emergency was declared in Singapore a week later on 24 June 1948 and the CPM’s Singapore offices in Queen Street and the Singapore Federation of Trade Unions’ offices were raided by the police and closed down three days afterwards.71 All Malayan Police officers on leave in Britain were recalled to Malaya by air, while officers on local leave were told to report for duty.

38

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Finally, on 23 July 1948, the CPM and its associated organisations in Malaya and Singapore were declared illegal.72 The stage was now set for the ‘shooting war’ between the Communist Party of Malaya and the Malayan authorities that was to last twelve years. Meanwhile, at midnight on 20 June, the British colonial government had promulgated a series of Emergency Regulations that provided for the death penalty for the unlawful possession of firearms, ammunition or explosives. The writ of habeas corpus was suspended and authorised police officers were conferred with wide powers of arrest and detention. The regulations provided the authorities with extraordinary powers, such as the imposition of curfews, the seizure of any article that could be used as an offensive weapon, and the requisition of buildings, vehicles and boats. Later in the Emergency, the movement of foodstuffs and other essential supplies was controlled and the population was issued with identity cards. The Secretary of State for the Colonies recalled Gent to London on 26 June for what were described diplomatically as ‘consultations’.73 Malcolm MacDonald, at that time Governor-General, Malaya, had in fact earlier reported adversely on Gent to the Secretary of State,74 and his report was supported by the British army’s Commander-in-Chief for the Far East, and the Air Officer Commanding Malaya. MacDonald’s main complaint was that Gent had underestimated the seriousness of the situation and failed to appreciate the challenge to law and order posed by the CPM. Further, he criticised Gent for ignoring warnings by the MSS about the impending communist uprising, and failing to take action to deal with complaints about the inadequacy of the Malayan police higher command.75 It was understood that Gent would resign on arrival at London. Tragically, the RAF York transport aircraft in which he was travelling collided with a Skymaster Scandinavian Airlines airliner in bad weather on its approach to Northolt airport, and crashed. All on board the two aircraft were killed.76 The CPM’s resort to arms in many ways placed Dalley and the MSS in an awkward position. Although it appeared that Malcolm MacDonald had criticised Gent for ignoring warnings given to him by the MSS, in London, British Colonial Office officials were highly critical of what they perceived to be MSS’s failure to provide advance warning of the communist uprising that resulted in the Malayan authorities being caught off-balance when the communists took to the jungle. A Colonial Office official, for instance, writing on 29 September 1948, considered ‘there is some justification for saying authorities in Malaya were not given full warning of the scale and



THE MALAYAN SECURITY SERVICE

39

manner of the attack’. Another minute dated 11 October records, ‘By 1 June 1948, there was still no evidence produced by the MSS that the Malayan communist party was directly or indirectly involved in the campaign of lawlessness and it was not until 7 July this was forthcoming’. And later in the same minute, ‘The MSS gave no warning of the outbreak of the campaign of violence’, although it was conceded that intelligence had been received from the MSS pertaining to ‘our general knowledge about communist techniques’.77 The omission of a ‘warning’ on the part of the MSS was ascribed to ‘the insufficiency of the intelligence service’ and ‘attributed to a communist purge and to the loss of many trusted agents during the [Japanese] occupation’. The fact that the MSS was greatly understrength, and the disappearance of Lai Teck, its most important agent, has been adverted to earlier.78 The difficulty may well have been that Dalley, while providing a considerable amount of general information about the CPM, did not actually spell out the actual scale and timing of the CPM’s decision to resort to an armed struggle.79 It could be said, too, that in many cases the information he provided in the MSS’s Political Intelligence Journal was diffuse and spread over a wide range of topics, without necessarily singling out the CPM as the main target. As Short comments, Dalley did tend to give prominence to Malay, Indonesian and Kuomintang activities rather than the CPM’s, and his reports often contained inordinately long sentences that were difficult to unravel. In Short’s view, ‘the problem of having Dalley as an intelligence adviser was that he nearly always hedged his bets’. 80 The Governor of Singapore took a slightly different view and considered that the ‘pictures painted by Dalley of the Security Service’ were inclined to be too lurid and ‘he tends to assume that any agitation is communist and then looks about for evidence in support of this, where really he should proceed in the other way’.81 In any event, Dalley does not seem to have been successful in communicating, at least to the Malayan authorities, that the main threat came from the CPM and not Malay or Indonesian nationalists, such as the Malay Nationalist Party (MNP) and the Malayan Democratic Union (MDU), that were opposed to British colonial rule. Nevertheless, the records do indicate that Dalley did expound at some length in general terms on the threat posed by communism in Malaya and Singapore on 26 June 1947 at a special conference convened by Malcolm MacDonald in the Governor General’s office at Phoenix Park, Singapore, one year before the declaration of the Emergency.82 The conference was attended inter alios by Sir Edward Gent, Governor, Malayan Union; the

40

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

officer administering the Singapore government; the commander-in-chief British Southeast Asia Land Forces; the naval commander-in-chief; Major PH Winterborn, the acting Director of Security Intelligence Far East (the joint MI5/MI6 office located in MacDonald’s office in Singapore); as well as other senior government officials.83 It may well have been that MacDonald had this conference in mind when he said that Gent had ignored the warnings given to him by Dalley, but the records are not clear on this point. In his capacity as the senior British representative in Southeast Asia, MacDonald had observed the rise of communism in post-war Malaya and Southeast Asia, and he opened the conference with the words ‘Communism is Enemy No. 1 in these territories and in South East Asia’. He continued at some length to expatiate on the threat posed by the CPM to law and order in Malaya and Singapore, as well as the necessity for devising an effective programme of counter-measures against it.84 Dalley, as Director of the MSS, reinforced MacDonald’s account and traced in some detail the activities of the CPM, including its penetration of trade unions and Malay political organisations, such as the MNP, the MDU and left-wing anti-British political bodies, and their use as instrumentalities of subversion to foster anti-British sentiments.85 He produced a chart showing ‘the whole political set-up from the extreme left to the extreme right’. MacDonald felt that perhaps more use could be made of Kuomintang supporters in Malaya,86 who could be counted on as being anti-communist, especially in view of the civil war raging in China between the Kuomintang and CCP. But Gent and the Secretary of Chinese Affairs for Malaya did not favour this suggestion and took the view that the government should not be seen to be supporting any one political party. Dalley referred to the CPM’s overseas links, particularly with China and Russia,87 and said that three CPM representatives had been sent to attend the recent conference of British Empire communist parties in London, convened by the British Communist Party.88 MacDonald and Dalley both made it clear that the CPM’s first aim was to overthrow the British colonial government in Malaya.89 With regard to police intelligence, MacDonald remarked that the MSS and SIFE were ‘complementary’ and working together,90 but he was aware that both organisations were short of ‘competent trained personnel’. He said that consideration could be given to augmenting their staff from overseas if suitably qualified staff were not available locally. Gent pointed out that the establishment and staff of the MSS, as a ‘combined department’ of the Malayan and Singapore governments, was subject to the control of the two governments. It was then proposed that Dalley should first consult the Malayan and Singapore Commissioners of Police to see whether they



THE MALAYAN SECURITY SERVICE

41

agreed to the establishment of the MSS being increased by the seconding of any suitably qualified officers from their respective police forces before consideration was given to bringing in officers from outside. Winterborn agreed that qualified personnel with intelligence training were scarce, but said that nevertheless MI5 had been able to obtain some recruits, mainly from former British officers of the Indian Police.91 As this high-level conference was held in June 1947, it is likely that Dalley’s presentation about the CPM was based on information that had been provided by Lai Teck, the CPM’s secretary-general, before he disappeared in March 1947. But from then on, once Dalley’s main source of ‘inside’ toplevel information about the CPM was no longer in place, he would obviously be at a great disadvantage in providing detailed information about the CPM’s plans. This, in fact, may well explain why Dalley later laid himself open to criticism for not forewarning the government in more precise terms of the CPM’s decision to take up arms,92 although it was generally acknowledged that he was able to provide a great deal of valuable background information about the CPM and his intelligence canvas was not entirely blank. However, Dalley’s reports on Malay and Indonesian subversive activities in Malaya, in which he had showed a special interest dating back to 1930–31 when he had been stationed in Perak dealing with Malay political activities and Malay secret societies, continued to be impressive, and his network of Malay informers was still intact.93 Dalley was not a ‘Chinese-language officer’ and it is probably fair to say that he was more at home in dealing with Malay and Indonesian political movements than Chinese. Both Tan Sri Dato’ Mubin Sheppard, a senior Malayan Civil Service officer, and Norman Cleveland, a tin-miner and member of the Malayan Legislative Council in Kuala Lumpur, who knew Dalley well, testify to his expert knowledge of Malay criminal and subversive movements.94 Dalley also continued to be well-informed about Kuomintang activities in Malaya. His source was most probably Khaw Kai Boh, then an MSS inspector in Perak, who was responsible for breaking up the Kuomintang underground organisation in Perak in 1946–47.95 Khaw himself maintained close links with the Kuomintang, which provided him with unrivalled knowledge about its activities. Khaw was undoubtedly a capable intelligence officer, if somewhat controversial, and on the demise of the MSS, he transferred to the Special Branch. After qualifying as a barrister in London, he later left the Special Branch to become a junior minister in Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman’s government after Malayan independence.96

42

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

The evidence appears to support the view that Dalley’s focus on subversives other than the Malayan Communist Party was due to his having to rely on skewed sources of information to which he had access after March 1947 when his main agent, Lai Teck, vanished from the scene. Malay political associations and their connection with Indonesia were always given prominence in MSS reports. When Malcolm MacDonald informed the Colonial Office on 6 July 1948 that the MSS, for various reasons, had not succeeded in getting more than a fraction of the information needed about the CPM’s strength and plans and that ‘we are groping in the dark’, it should have been clear to Dalley that the very existence of the MSS was under threat.97 This is probably the reason why, a month after the declaration of the Emergency, Dalley wrote on 13 July 1948 to Sir Ralph Hone98 to say, rather ominously, that he had heard of ‘a number of discussions which have been taking place regarding the future of MSS’. He added that a ‘Brigadier from Far East Land Forces Headquarters’, Singapore, had told him the previous day that the ‘MSS as present constituted was about to cease to exist’.99 The main purpose of Dalley’s writing the letter, which reads somewhat like an apologia, was to ensure that Hone was aware of the role, organisation and activities of the MSS and the difficulties under which it had operated since the end of the war. He wrote that the MSS had been ‘desperately short of staff’ from early 1947, and although he had requested the Malayan and Singapore Commissioners of Police to second suitable police officers to the MSS to bring it up to strength, they had not fully acceded to his request. He went on to complain that he had been hampered throughout by an acute shortage of office staff and translators, and that the government pay scale for these positions was unattractively low compared with the going rate in the open market. The result of this had been a considerable backlog of CPM documents in Chinese awaiting translation. It is odd that he did not refer to the CPM by name in his letter. He did maintain, however, that he had forecast on several occasions ‘the events which are occurring in Malaya today’, and asserted that ‘much detailed information has been passed on to various authorities in Malaya, including the Police, most of which recommended action’.100 There is no trace in the files of Hone’s reply to this letter. In any event, as it turned out, the information Dalley had received about the future of the MSS proved to be correct, and soon afterwards, he was instructed to wind up the operations of the MSS and hand over its staff and functions to the Singapore and Malayan Special Branches. The MSS was



THE MALAYAN SECURITY SERVICE

43

officially disbanded on 23 August 1948 and its functions taken over by the two Special Branches, which had been re-formed and subsumed as subdivisions respectively of the Malayan and Singapore CIDs,101 where they came under the overall command of the respective Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of the CID in each territory.102 The official annual reports of the Malayan and Singapore police forces are silent as to the actual reasons for the demise of the MSS but the Report of the Police Mission to Malaya (1950), in referring to the winding-up of the MSS, concludes rather laconically (although it gives the date incorrectly as the ‘early part of 1949’) that ‘it made for efficiency to distribute its [MSS] work and staff among the two Special Branches’.103 But the real version is likely to be found in the dissatisfaction with the performance of MSS as the government’s main intelligence agency and its perceived failure to warn the Malayan government in good time of the CPM’s intentions to wage war against it. On reviewing the information now available, there is no doubt, too, that Dalley’s personality played a not inconsiderable part in the government’s decision to dissolve the MSS. He was by all accounts untactful and a rather difficult person to deal with and he did not entirely endear himself with many of his former police colleagues when he made it clear that he regarded the MSS as his own separate ‘empire’ outside the established police structure. He has been described by several Special Branch officers who knew him as a ‘prima donna’ and a ‘loner’, who ran the MSS very much as his own ‘cloak and dagger’ operation.104 There is a little-known incident, too, involving Dalley and Sir Percy Sillitoe, the Director-General of MI5, who was visiting Singapore at the time and staying with Sir Franklin Gimson, the Singapore Governor.105 According to the Governor’s Secretary, Christopher Blake, Dalley was ‘irritated’ at the way he thought he had ‘been sent for’ to meet Sillitoe to provide him with a briefing on MSS’s activities, which he interpreted as implying criticism of what the MSS had been doing, and he referred to Sillitoe in a derogatory fashion as a ‘Glasgow corner boy’, or a good-fornothing loafer or idler. When this somehow came to Sillitoe’s ears, he was incensed by what Dalley had said, especially as he was rather sensitive about his social background as he had not come from the usual privileged background of most of the MI5 officers at the time and had started life as a constable in the Glasgow Police Force. Before the meeting commenced, which was attended by Gimson, Blake and Dalley, Sillitoe ‘confronted a startled Dalley with his alleged remark’

44

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

and refused to start the meeting until Dalley tendered an apology. Blake writes that he had ‘seldom witnessed so tense a scene’ and it was obvious that the head of the British domestic intelligence service and the head of the Malayan Security Service had got off to a bad start.106 On the dissolution of the MSS, Dalley retired as Director MSS and returned to Britain, thus ending his long career in Malaya, which had begun in 1920.107 However, the matter did not end there. Many years later, Dalley entered into correspondence with Hugh Bryson, a former Malayan Civil Service officer and then Secretary of the Association of British Malaya, London, whom he had known in Malaya, to provide his version of events. It is not known why he waited so long to write about events that had occurred some twenty years earlier. In letters he wrote on 10 February and 3 July 1965, he maintained that he had written in September 1947 to Sir Edward Gent, the Malayan Governor, to urge action against ‘armed Communists training and encamped in the jungle’, but Gent had been reluctant to do so.108 According to Dalley, his concern had been referred to the Malayan Commissioner of Police (HB Langworthy), and the British Residents of Johore and Perak for their comments. The Malayan Chief Secretary had replied to him on behalf of Gent that the Commissioner of Police, the two British Residents, and the Chief Police Officers of Johore and Perak, had disagreed with the information he had provided and his assessment of it. However, on a visit to Ipoh, Perak, during the first part of 1948, when Dalley had called on the British Resident, Dalley wrote that the latter had then admitted that the information he had provided was correct. According to Dalley, he had persistently advocated the coordination of action by the security forces against the CPM throughout Malaya and Singapore, and had recommended that known ‘open’ and ‘secret’ communist offices should be raided by the police, and combined police and army operations mounted against the communist guerrilla camps that he had by then located in the jungle. Dalley maintained that although the Singapore government was willing to take action on his reports, and the Governor-General, Malcolm MacDonald, supported him, Gent was reluctant to do so and refused to accept the veracity of his reports.109 In his correspondence with Bryson, Dalley wrote that ‘in December 1947, I was desperate. I wrote out about three pages of Gent’s omissions and commissions. I sent one copy to MacDonald and one copy to Gent. In April 1948’, he continued, ‘a number of conferences were held when it was



THE MALAYAN SECURITY SERVICE

45

obvious to everybody that an uprising was about to take place (Singapore took independent action on April 14th)—Malayan Union refused to cooperate or coordinate [sic]’.110 Further, Dalley asserted that in May 1948, at a conference in Kuala Lumpur, he had produced an estimate of the strength of the CPM, details of their plan of action, and proposals for counter-action. He estimated there were 5,000 ‘activists’ (presumably referring to armed members of the MNLA who had already taken to the jungle) and 250,000 supporters (Min Yuen and other ‘open’ communist-affiliated organisations) among the population in towns and villages. The figure of 5,000 activists, he asserted, was based on reliable information obtained by the MSS, while the 250,000 was an estimate of the known membership of communistcontrolled organisations. The last conference Gent attended before he departed for London was held at Malcolm MacDonald’s residence at Bukit Serene in Johore Bahru early in June 1948. According to Dalley, Gent was ‘very subdued’ on this occasion. He asked to see Dalley privately, and then, according to Dalley, ‘he produced from an attaché case the memorandum I had written on his omissions and commissions and went through it paragraph by paragraph, admitted it all and asked me if we could continue to be friends. As we shook hands on it, I felt quite emotional but my main feeling was one of relief, feeling that when he reached London he would give full support to all-out action. It was sad that he did not reach London’.111 As stated earlier, it is not clear why Dalley waited so long to provide an account of his version of events and answer the strictures that had been passed on him. It is possible, of course, that he did issue a rebuttal at the time but, if so, it has not been possible to trace any record of this in the official records. There is no record, too, of Bryson’s replies to what Dalley had written. It may well be that additional information will come to light when further official files dealing with police intelligence are released into the public domain. In view of the lack of official documents, it is sometimes a puzzle to understand actions and intentions.112 In the meantime, too, the main characters referred to by Dalley who would be in a position to substantiate his version of events, such as, Gent, MacDonald, Langworthy (then Commissioner of Police), J Innes Miller (British Resident, Perak) and ENF Pretty (British Resident, Johore), have all passed from the scene. This long chapter describes why the British Colonial Office was so dissatisfied with the MSS, although evidence to explain the decision to abolish the MSS altogether is not available. In this dissatisfaction we note a

46

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

rising tone of alarm about the successes of the Malayan–Chinese communists and the incapacity of the MSS to respond to the challenge. However, some of the problems facing the MSS were endemic to the nature of British intelligence in Malaya at this time and the lack of expertise in Chinese languages. Other problems were endemic to the state of lawlessness and confusion that confronted the British when they returned after the Second World War. Did the effectiveness of British intelligence improve when the Special Branch took over in August 1948? This is the subject of the next chapter.

Notes 1 2 3

4 5

6

7 8

An earlier version of this chapter (‘The Malayan Security Service (1945–1948’) appeared in Intelligence and National Security, 18(3), 2003. See BMA Annual Report Singapore Police 1946, Singapore: Government Printer, 1947, passim. The Japanese surrendered on 15 August 1945. Lieutenant Colonel HB Langworthy, a senior pre-war Malayan police officer, commanded the Malayan Civil Affairs Police unit, and Lieutenant Colonel RE Foulger commanded the Civil Affairs Police unit in Singapore. Langworthy joined the Federated Malay States Police as a cadet gazetted officer in July 1920. He served mainly in the uniformed branch of the police, and was Chief Police Officer, Selangor, with the rank of police superintendent, at the time of the Japanese invasion. RE Foulger, a pre-war officer of the Straits Settlements Police, became Commissioner of Police, Singapore, 1945–50. (See Sir John Harding and GEJ Gent (eds), The Dominions Office and Colonial Office List for 1940, London & Dunstable: Waterloo & Sons Ltd., 1941, p 392, and FCO Library JF 1521, Malayan Establishment Staff List as at 1 July 1941, p 53). Short, op cit, p. 80. Short’s book, which has been reprinted in Singapore by Cultured Pearl Pte Ltd, remains the standard account of the Malayan Emergency. TPP Mohd Reduan Haji Aslie and Inspector Mohd Radzuan Haji Ibrahim, Polis Diraja Malaysia: Sejarah, Peranan dan Cabaran (‘The Royal Malaysian Police: History, Role and Challenge’), Kuala Lumpur: Kumpulan Karangkraf Sdn Bhd, 1987, p 311. The authority for the use of the name ‘Malayan Secret Service’ is not given and the author, who was in the Malayan police at the time, never heard it used. The MSS was usually referred to in Malay as Cawangan Khas, and the same term was used later for the Special Branch (see ‘Laporan Madoc dan Reaksi Tanah Melayu’, www.pulo.org/ laporan.htm, 28 October 2002). MSS Ind Ocn S.254 (2), Rhodes House Library, Oxford, JD Dalley, Director MSS, secret letter reference MS.86 dated 13 July 1948 to Sir Ralph Hone, KBE, MC, TD, KC, Commissioner-General’s Office, Singapore, p 2. John Coates, Suppressing the Emergency. An Analysis of the Malayan Emergency, 1946–1954, Boulder: Westview Press, 1992, pp 24–5. See report by AH Dickinson, CMG, OBE, former Inspector-General of the Straits Settlements Police, to the Colonial Office, dated 12 January 1946, entitled ‘Organizations in Malaya Concerned in the Period September 1939–February 1942 with Political Intelligence and Security’, pp 1–4, BEAM Collection, Royal Commonwealth Library,



9

10 11

12 13 14

15 16

THE MALAYAN SECURITY SERVICE

47

Cambridge University. Peter Elphick drew the author’s attention to this document, and both he and DA (Douglas) Weir supplied copies of it to the author. The latter is a former senior Malayan police officer who served in the uniformed branch, CID, and Special Branch of the Malayan Police (1939–55). He was police staff officer on General Sir Harold Brigg’s staff when the latter was Director of Operations in 1951. After retiring from the police, he qualified in law. Arthur Harold Dickinson, CMG, OBE, joined the Straits Settlements police in Singapore in 1912. He spent most of his career in the Special Branch in Singapore, Malacca and Penang, and was promoted Inspector-General of the Straits Settlements Police in July 1939. See letter PA.1/3 dated 19 January 1946, p 5, from René H de S Onraet, Police Adviser, BMA, to Chief Civil Affairs Officers, HQ BMA, Kuala Lumpur. The Special Branch had been formed in late 1918 as part of the CID of the Straits Settlements Police. Its first Director was G Savi (see Ban Kah Choon, Absent History. The Untold Story of Special Branch Operations in Singapore 1915–1942, Singapore: SNP Media Pte Ltd, 2001, p 74). Onraet was Dickinson’s predecessor as Inspector-General of the Straits Settlements Police, 1936–39. After the Second World War, he was recalled from retirement by the Colonial Office to advise the BMA on the constitution and reorganisation of the Malayan and Singapore police forces. Onraet’s article ‘Building the Special Branch’, The Straits Times, 12 January 1946, p 6, also adverts to Dickinson forming the MSS pre-war to amalgamate the work of the Singapore and Malayan Special Branches. See Dickinson, op cit, p 2, and ‘The Intelligence Organisation’ www.britain-at-war. org.uk/WW2/London_Gazette_1948/html/body_p1s8.htm (28 October 2002). For an interesting account of Japanese intelligence operations in Malaya before the war, see Eric Robertson, The Japanese File, Hong Kong: Heinemann Educational Books (Asia) Ltd, 1979, especially chapters headed ‘The Growth of the Japanese Community in Malaya’ (pp 23–9) and ‘The Espionage Network’ (pp 156–64). Robertson’s book is based on secret Special Branch records brought out of Singapore just before it fell to the Japanese, and the book had to be cleared by the British Foreign Office before it was published. See also GJ Roberts, ‘British Management of the Japanese Problems in Malaya during the Tenure of Governor Shenton Thomas, 1934–1942’, BA (History) thesis, Faculty of Social Sciences, Flinders University of South Australia, 1 November 1996. Dickinson, op cit, pp 2–4. ibid. See also Peter Elphick, Singapore: The Pregnable Fortress. A Study in Deception, Discord and Desertion, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1995, p 80. Onraet in his letter to the BMA Chief Civil Affairs Officer (see fn 9 supra), in referring to the post-war MSS, opined that he and the BMA Malayan and Singapore Commissioners of Police would actually have preferred to call the MSS by its ‘old name of Special Branch’. However, as Onraet brings out, the BMA Chief Civil Affairs Officer favoured the re-establishment of the pan-Malayan Malayan Security Service to meet the security problems resulting from the aftermath of war, the Japanese occupation, as well as the ‘future conditions of uncertainty’. See BMA Annual Report, op cit, passim. See Yoji Akashi, ‘Lai Teck, Secretary General of the Malayan Communist Party 1939–1947’ in CF Yong, (guest editor), Journal of the South Seas Society (special issue ‘Singapore Politics in the Late Colonial Era’), Vol 49, 1994, p 58 et seq. The kempeitei, a Japanese term meaning literally ‘military police unit’, has a much more sinister

48

17

18 19

20

21

22 23

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

connotation in Japanese than in English and it is much closer to the German Gestapo, the secret state police noted for its ruthlessness and brutal methods of interrogation, than it is to the British idea of ‘military police’. Author’s personal knowledge. The author was then a major in the BMA Civil Affairs Police, initially based at Central Police Station, High Street, Kuala Lumpur, and was kept in close touch with events in Singapore. After a few weeks, he was transferred to Kota Bharu, the capital of Kelantan, on the northeast coast of Malaya, as Commissioner of Police, Kelantan. After the civil government took over from the military administration in April 1946, the post was designated Chief Police Officer (CPO), Kelantan. BMA Annual Report, op cit. Akashi, op cit, p 59; Paul H Kratoska, The Japanese Occupation of Malaya 1941–1945, St Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 1998, p 360, and Willard H Elsbree, Japan’s Role in Southeast Asian Nationalist Movements 1940 to 1945, New York: Russell and Russell, 1953, p 148. See also Vice-Admiral The Earl of Mountbatten of Burma, Post Surrender Tasks. Section E of the Report to the Combined Chiefs of Staff by the Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia 1943–1945, London: HMSO, 1969, pp 301–2. BMA Annual Report, op cit, passim. A good description of the social effects of the war is given by TN Harper in his unpublished paper ‘Health, Welfare and the Reconstruction of the Colonial State in Malaya 1945–1948’, presented at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Conference held at the Centre for Advanced Studies, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 1–3 February 1989. In the three years leading up to the outbreak of the Emergency in June 1948, there were several other political parties in existence in Malaya that were of interest to the MSS, including the Kuomintang, Malay Nationalist Party (MNP), Malayan Democratic Union (MDU), Malayan Indian Congress (MIC) and United Malays National Organisation (UMNO). The CPM had close connections with the left-wing MDU and MNP. According to Lieutenant Colonel John Dalley, Director, Malayan Security Service, the CPM had ‘seeded’ the MNP with a large donation of funds at the end of the war (MSS. Ind. Ocn. S. 254, Rhodes House Library, Oxford, Top Secret, ‘Special Conference held under the Chairmanship of H.E. the Governor-General on 26 June 1947’, contained in JD Dalley, ‘Threat of Communism in Malaya and Singapore, 1947’). By the end of 1948, only UMNO and MIC survived. The CPM itself was proscribed on 23 July 1948, about a month after the declaration of a state of emergency. Four other political parties with communist connections were banned at the same time: MPAJA Ex-Servicemen’s Association, New Democratic Youth League, Ikatan Pemuda Tanah Ayer (PETA) (a Malay youth movement), and the Indian New Democratic Youth League. See CAB 128/13, CM 52 (48) 5, ‘Proscription of the Malayan Communist Party’, and Cheah Boon Kheng, ‘Some Aspects of the Malayan Emergency: 1948–1960’, in Khoo Kay Kim (ed), The History of South-East, South and East Asia. Essays and Documents, Kuala Lumpur, Oxford University Press, 1977, pp 111–23. CO 537/3752, Malayan Security Service Political Intelligence Journal, no. 14/48, Supplement No. 9 of 1948, dated 31 July 1948. Dalforce, originally called Dalco, was formed in Kuala Lumpur in December 1941 as a guerrilla unit to operate behind the Japanese lines. When it withdrew to Singapore, it was augmented by Chinese volunteers, including some communist cadres released from Changi Jail, and took part in the fierce fighting against the Japanese that ensued in Singapore in February 1942. Lieutenant Colonel Dalley’s second-in-command



24

25

26 27

28 29

30

THE MALAYAN SECURITY SERVICE

49

was Major Foh Toh Cheng. Each company was commanded by a British officer. (See Singapore Records Office, MLF11. MLF/377, HQ Chief Civil Affairs Officer, British Military Administration (Malaya), Kuala Lumpur, 8 January 1946, and Peter Elphick, Far Eastern File. The Intelligence War in the Far East 1930–1945, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1997, p 338). After the war, Dalley became the Director of the Malayan Security Service. A Short History of the Malayan Communist Party, Confidential, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1955, p 22. No author’s name is indicated, but it was an official document with the aim, as described in the preface, of describing ‘the origins and development of the Communist Party of Malaya and its policies for the information of Government Officers in South-East Asia’. It is believed to have been written by JH Brimmell, a senior MI5 officer, who was recognised as an authority on communism in Southeast Asia. The Cold War was officially ended at a summit meeting in Malta in December 1989 between Presidents Bush and Gorbachev. By then, the communist regimes of the Warsaw Pact countries in Europe were collapsing and NATO began to change its role and invited the former Soviet countries, including Russia, to join a ‘partnership for peace’. Gazetted officers were considered the equivalent of commissioned officers in the British armed forces and inspectors the equivalent of senior non-commissioned officers. After the Second World War, the rank of British inspector was gradually abolished. Some of the British inspectors were offered promotion to gazetted rank if they were considered suitable, while the remainder were allowed to retire on pension (see Onraet’s letter of 19 January 1946, op cit, p 2). Suitably qualified Asians then filled the vacancies for inspectors left by the departure of the British inspectors. In 1948, there were 250 gazetted officers, 226 Asian and 28 British inspectors, 495 British sergeants, 693 detectives, and 10,900 rank and file (9,764 Malays and 1,136 Indians) in the Malayan Police (see WO106/5990, ‘Strength and Composition of the Army and Police’, Tables I and II, Appendix B, and Annual Report, Federation of Malaya Police 1948, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printers, 1949, pp 122–3). ibid., p 6. Major Kenneth Sayce Morgan (b. 1895), a British officer of the Indian Army, was recruited by Onraet in 1936 as an assistant superintendent of police in the Singapore Special Branch to head the newly formed Japanese section. While in the Indian Army, he qualified as a first-class interpreter in Russian as well as Japanese, and had served in the Indian Intelligence Bureau at Simla. See Elphick, op cit 1997, pp 127–8, 130, 134–6, 138, 149, 176–8, 184, 230 and 461. Lieutenant Colonel John Douglas Dalley (b. 1900) joined the Federated Malay States Police in November 1920. Before the war he served in Kedah, Selangor, Johore, Perak, Singapore and Trengganu, and was promoted to superintendent in 1938. On 1 January 1940, he was Director of Criminal Intelligence, Federated Malay States. He commanded Dalforce during the fighting in Singapore with the temporary rank of lieutenant colonel, and escaped to Sumatra at the fall of Singapore, where he was captured by the Japanese and brought back to Singapore. He was interned in Singapore 1942–45. On his return to Malaya after the war, he became Director MSS in 1947. (The Dominions Office & Colonial Office List 1940, London & Dunstable: Waterlow & Sons Ltd, 1940, p 688; FCO Library JF 1521, Malayan Establishment Staff List as at 1 July 1941, p. 53; The Colonial Office List 1948, London: HMSO, 1948, p 428). Dalley had a long connection

50

31

32 33

34

35 36

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

with Malaya. His only son, Peter John Layard Dalley, a captain in the Royal Artillery attached to the British Army Air Corps, was tragically killed in an aircraft crash in Taiping in February 1958, during the Emergency (letter to author from Robin Corfield dated 8 April 1992. See also Justin Corfield and Michael Thomson (eds), The Corian 1998, Corio, Victoria: Geelong Grammar School, 1999, p 420). BMA Annual Report, op cit. EAG Blades, OBE, CPM (b. 1907), a quintessential ‘career’ Special Branch officer, had a distinguished career in the Singapore Police, culminating in his being appointed the last British Commissioner of Police 1958–63. He joined the Malayan Police as a cadet on 21 February 1930 when gazetted British police officers formed part of a combined Malayan–Singaporean police establishment and were liable for service in either territory. He was confirmed as an assistant superintendent of police in 1932, and in 1936 was sent to Japan for Japanese language training. On returning to Singapore, he was appointed head of the Counter-Japanese Encroachment Unit of the Singapore Special Branch, dealing with the growing menace of Japanese espionage in pre-war Singapore and Malaya. At the fall of Singapore, Blades escaped to India, where he was employed from 1942 to 1945 on intelligence duties in the Far Eastern Bureau of the Ministry of Information in New Delhi. On returning to Singapore after the war, he joined the MSS until it was disbanded in 1948. He was promoted to Superintendent of Police in 1948, and Assistant Commissioner Special Branch in 1950. In 1953, he was promoted to Senior Assistant Commissioner, and two years later became Director of the Singapore Special Branch. In 1958, he was appointed Commissioner of Police, Singapore, a post he held until he retired to Britain in 1963. He was the last British officer to hold this appointment. Blades had a distinctive appearance, as he was the only gazetted officer in the Singapore/Malayan police forces allowed to wear a small goatee beard, which he kept neatly trimmed. Letters to author, dated 10 June 1994 and 10 March 1995, from GC Madoc, CBE, KPM, CPM, former Director of Intelligence, Malaya. GJA O’Toole, Honorable Treachery. A History of US Intelligence, Espionage, and Covert Action from the American Revolution to the CIA, New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991, p 447. CO 537/3752 cited in Richard Stubbs, Hearts and Minds in Guerrilla Warfare. The Malayan Emergency 1948–1960, Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1989, pp 58–9. After Lai Teck fled overseas with the CPM’s funds, Chin Peng was detailed to track him down. He was eventually located in Bangkok in 1947 where, according to Chin Peng, he was inadvertently strangled by Communist Party of Thailand cadres when he put up fierce resistance to being apprehended by them. His body was placed in a hessian sack and thrown into the fast-flowing waters of Bangkok’s Chao Phraya River. The missing CPM Party funds were never recovered (Chin Peng, op cit, p 1980; Chin & Hack, op cit, p 131: Xing Zhou Daily News, 19, 21–29 June 1998). Lai Teck led a life of political intrigue and adventure, and was a triple agent who was employed during his time by the French, British and Japanese secret services. Federation of Malaya Annual Report 1953, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1954, p 232. See also Malayan Establishment Staff List 1948, pp 90–1. Short, op cit, p 80, refers to them as ‘Security Liaison Officers’ but this title was actually used for the MI5 officers stationed in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore and not MSS officers.



THE MALAYAN SECURITY SERVICE

51

37 NG (Nigel) Morris joined the Straits Settlements Police in 1934, and served as an Assistant Superintendent in the Special Branch (1937–39). He was promoted to Assistant Commissioner of Police in 1948 after leaving the MSS, and served again in the Special Branch before eventually becoming Singapore’s Commissioner of Police (1953–57). 38 IS (Ian) Wylie was an Assistant Superintendent of Police in 1941. He escaped from Singapore to Australia at the time of the Japanese invasion and was commissioned in the British army. He served in the Inter-Service Liaison Department, a cover name for the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), and was dropped by parachute into Johore towards the end of war. After leaving the MSS, he headed the Malayan Special Branch at Federal Police headquarters in 1949, and eventually became Deputy Commissioner of Police (1955–58). 39 HTB (Harvey) Ryves was head of the Johore State Special Branch in 1953, and subsequently became head of the Malayan Special Branch at Federal Police headquarters before retiring to England. 40 RB (Richard) Corridon was the only MSS officer who had not served pre-war in the Malayan/Singapore Police. He was born in India, and during the Second World War served as an officer in the British Army Intelligence Corps in India. He came to Malaya with the BMA. After leaving the MSS as Assistant Director for Indian Affairs, he joined the Singapore Special Branch. He remained in Singapore after independence as a Special Branch officer and later headed the Singapore Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau. He worked closely with the then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. (The author is grateful to Mrs Claire Corridon for the information she provided in her letters of 26 April and 10 May 1994 about her late husband). 41 Author’s interview with Francis Stuart in Canberra, 28 January 1993. See also Francis Stuart, Toward Coming of Age. A Foreign Service Odyssey, Brisbane: Division of Asian and International Studies, Centre for the Study of Australian–Asian Relations, Griffith University, 1989, pp 117–18. 42 Short, op cit, p 85. 43 Rhodes House Library, Oxford, Mss Ind Ocn S 254, JD Dalley papers, Top Secret, ‘Threat of Communism in Malaya and Singapore, 1947’, containing minutes of Special Conference held Under the Chairmanship of HE the Governor-General, 26 June 1947. 44 Short, op cit, p 85. 45 Malayan Establishment Staff List 1948, pp 90–1. 46 Secret letter MS 86, dated 13 July 1948, from Dalley to Hone, op cit. 47 Author’s notes. 48 The 1947 total mid-year population of peninsular Malaya was 4,908,086. The racial composition by percentages was Malays 49.5 (2,427,834), Chinese 38.4 (1,884,534), Indians and Pakistanis 10.8 (530,638), and others 1.3 (65,080). The Malays outnumbered the Chinese as a whole. 49 See Straits Budget, 15 December 1949, and Federation of Malaya Annual Report 1949, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printers, 1950, p 139. 50 See Leon Comber, 13 May 1949. A Historical Survey of Sino-Malay Relations, Kuala Lumpur: Heinemann Educational Books (Asia) Ltd, 1983, p 6. 51 MSS Ind Ocn S.254, Top Secret, ‘Special Conference, etc,’ op cit, p 27.

52

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

52 ibid. 53 See Nigel West, MI5, New York: Military Heritage Press, 1981, p 158, and Tony Bunyan, The History and Practice of the Political Police in Britain, London: Julian Fiedmann Publishers, 1976, p 118. Sir John Moylan in his book Scotland Yard and the Metropolitan Police (London & New York: Putnam & Co, 1934, p 217) describes the British Special Branch as the ‘English substitute for a political police’. Like the MSS and MI5, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation has no powers of arrest, which have to be carried out on its behalf by the Australian police. ASIO was founded in 1949, with responsibility for Australia’s internal security, and it maintained from its early days a fraternal relationship with the Malayan Special Branch. (See Richard Hall, The Secret State. Australia’s Spy Industry, Stanmore & North Melbourne: Cassell Australia Ltd, 1978, p vi). 54 ibid, pp 4 and 5. 55 Short, op cit, pp 27, 32. 56 ibid, p 27. 57 ibid. 58 The Federation of Malaya and its Police, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1952, pp 28–9. 59 Short, op cit, p 27. 60 The Federation of Malaya and its Police, op cit, p 29, and Yuen Yuet Leng, ‘Operation Ginger. A Federal Food Denial Operation, 1958–1959’, unpublished ms, pp 21–2. Dato’ Seri Yuen Yuet Leng served as a District Special Branch Officer (DSBO) and thereafter occupied several senior positions during the Emergency in the Malayan Special Branch before becoming Chief Police Officer in Perak (February 1976–February 1981) and a key figure in the Perak State Security Committee. 61 A Short History of the Malayan Communist Party, op cit, p 21. 62 Yuen Yuet Leng, op cit, p 3–4. A succinct account of the events leading up to the outbreak of the Emergency is given in Keesing’s Contemporary Archives, 7th Volume (10–17 July 1948), London & Bristol, Keesing’s Publications Ltd, 1948, columns 9391–9392A. The CPM’s decision to resort to violence was taken at the 4th Plenary Session of the Central Committee on 21 March 1948 and it was ratified at the 5th Plenary Session of the Central Committee held on 10 May 1948 at a rubber estate in south Johore, at the 17½ milestone Johore Bahru–Kulai Road. The MPAJA issued a ‘call to arms’ against the British on 10 June 1948. See Chin Peng, op cit, p 207 and Chin & Hack, op cit, p 287. 63 At the time, a communist ‘killer squad’ sent the author—who at the beginning of the Emergency was Officer-in-Charge Police District (OCPD), Kuala Lumpur South, Central Police Station, High Street, Kuala Lumpur—a death threat through the post. 64 Yuen Yuet Leng, op cit, p 4. 65 Stafford was then Officer-in-Charge Detectives, Central Police Station, High Street, Kuala Lumpur, and usually carried two revolvers on his belt, for which he was dubbed ‘Two-Gun Stafford’ in the local press (author’s notes). 66 According to MSS records, Liew was born in Jamaica in 1914, and educated in Hong Kong. His father was Chinese and his mother English. He joined the CPM in 1938, and served with the 3rd Regiment MPAJA during the Japanese occupation (CO 537/3751,



67 68 69 70 71

72

73 74 75 76 77

78 79

80 81 82

THE MALAYAN SECURITY SERVICE

53

Supplement no. 3, MSS PIJ no 1/48, dated 1 April 1948, Who’s Who Serial No 50, PF No 11/282). See also Keesing’s Contemporary Archives (10–18 July 1948). The Times (London), 17 June 1948. Keesing’s Contemporary Archives, 10–18 July 1948. The Times (London), 14 June 1948. Throughout the Emergency, Perak and Johore were to remain hotbeds of communist terrorist activity and a thorn in the side of the Malayan Special Branch. The Times (London), 17, 18, 25 and 28 June 1948. On the afternoon of 16 June, a delegation from the Malayan rubber planting industry met Sir Edward Gent, the Malayan High Commissioner. Their spokesman said, ‘There was straight talking, and we demanded immediate, ruthless action’ (see Peter Edwards, ‘The Adoption of Armed Struggle by the MCP in 1948’, discussion paper presented at the Chin Peng Workshop, Australian National University, Canberra, 22–23 February 1999, pp 1–3; and Yuen Yuet Leng, op cit, pp 4–5). CO 537/3753, No 35, MSS Political Intelligence Journal No 15/48, 15 August 1948, and A Short History of the Malayan Communist Party, op cit, p 22. The delay of one month in banning the CPM was probably due to the British government wishing to ensure without any possible doubt that the Communist Party of Malaya was responsible for the campaign of violence in Malaya. The Times (London), 29 June 1948. CAB 129/28, CP (48) 171, dated 1 July 1948,’The Situation in Malaya’: Cabinet memorandum by Mr Creech Jones, para 15 (viii). Sanger, op cit, pp 293–5. The Times (London), 5 July 1948, and Keesing’s Contemporary Archives, op cit, 4 July 1948, column 9379C. CO 537/3753, ‘Malaya—Political Developments. Political Intelligence Journals’. See minute from JB Williams dated 4 September 1948 to JD Higham, Assistant Secretary, Head of the Colonial Office’s Eastern Department, South East Asia Department, and Trafford Smith. The minute dated 29 September is signed by a Colonial Office official named ‘Robertson’, but it is not possible to decipher the signature appended to the subsequent minute dated 11 October 1948. ibid. CO 537/3753, ‘Malaya—Political Developments. Political Intelligence Journals’. See minute from JB Williams, dated 4 September 1948, to JD Higham, Assistant Secretary, Head of the Colonial Office’s Eastern Department, South East Asia Department, and Trafford Smith, which acknowledged, however, that intelligence had been received from the MSS pertaining to ‘our general knowledge about communist techniques’. Short, op cit, pp 80–2, 84. CO 537/3751, Top Secret letter from Sir Franklin Gimson, Governor of Singapore, to HT Bourdillon, Colonial Office, dated 26 February 1948. Rhodes House Library, Oxford, Mss Ind Ocn S 254, JD Dalley papers, Top Secret, ‘Threat of Communism in Malaya and Singapore, 1947’, containing minutes of Special Conference held Under the Chairmanship of H.E. the Governor-General, 26 June 1947. This report does not appear to have been referred to by Anthony Short.

54

83 84 85 86

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

ibid. ibid, p 2. Chin Peng, op cit, p 155. There were Kuomintang consular representatives in Malaya until Britain recognised communist China on 6 January 1950. Although they were anti-communist and manoeuvring to obtain official recognition by the British of the Kuomintang in Malaya, they were not averse at the same time to criticising British colonial policy. For instance, YT Ma (Ma Tin Ying), the Kuomintang Chinese Consul in Kuala Lumpur, who was a Chinese Moslem, made several forthright remarks in this respect in 1948. While deploring the CPM’s recourse to arms, he suggested that the British colonial government in Malaya was responsible for what had happened because they had treated the MPAJA shabbily at the end of the war ‘by paying them a few hundred dollars’ for their wartime services, whereas British government officials who had been interned by the Japanese during the war were paid ‘thousands of dollars arrears in salary’ (CO 717/183, Pan Malayan Review, No 2, Part 1, ‘Sino-Malaya Relations’, Secret Political Intelligence Review, 19 January 1949). 87 Most of the communist parties in Southeast Asia accepted the premises of the Chinese view of the Asian situation. The pro-Chinese parties then included those in Malaya, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand, North Korea, Vietnam and Thailand (see DE Kennedy, The Security of Southern Asia, London: Chatto & Windus for the Institute for Strategic Studies, 1965, pp 113–15). In mid-1949, after the Malayan Special Branch took over from the MSS, it was instrumental in arranging for the New China News Agency’s Morse transmissions from what was then referred to as Peiping (Beijing) to be monitored by the Telecommunications Department, Kuala Lumpur. Similarly, the Special Branch arranged for Radio Malaya to monitor on its behalf the language broadcasts from the same station (CO 717/183, Secret, Federation of Malaya Monthly Newsletter, No 6, 16 June–16 July 1949). 88 The full name of the conference held in London in February 1947 and convened by the British Communist Party, was the 2nd Empire Conference of Communists and Workers’ Parties. The CPM was represented by Wu Tien Wang, Abdul Rashid bin Maidin (also known as Rashid Mydin) and RG Balan (see The Role of the Communists in Malaya, Secret OIR Division of Research for Far East, Office of Intelligence Research, US Department of State, Report No 3780, 16 March 1947, p 106). Balan was arrested on 30 May 1948 for instigating labour unrest on rubber estates in Perak, and eventually detained for ten years under the Emergency Regulations. (Short, op cit, p 92). Lim Hong Bee, the Singapore-Chinese, London-based editor of the communist Malayan Monitor, which was the mouthpiece of the CPM, attended the 3rd Empire Conference of Communists and Workers’ Parties in London in April 1954. He presented a paper, ‘Malaya Fights for Freedom’, calling for the withdrawal of British forces and civil servants from Malaya, and the establishment of a provisional people’s government. (Dato Sri CC Too papers, Sp127/A/3, ‘Notes on History of the Communist Party of Malaya’, p 120, University of Malaya Library, and John J Coe, Beautiful Flowers and Poisonous Weeds. Problems of Historicism, Ethics and Internal Antagonism: the Case of the MCP, PhD thesis (restricted), University of Queensland, 1993, pp 174–5). A chart displayed at the conference placed the number of communists in Malaya at 10,000 (Salient Aspects of Paramilitary Warfare in Three Asian Areas, Operational Research Office, Johns Hopkins University, operating under contract with the US Department of the Army, reference ORO-T-229 (nd, probably 1952), p 32, citing Basic Paper,



89 90

91

92 93

94

95

THE MALAYAN SECURITY SERVICE

55

Special Branch, Federation of Malaya, October 1950, and Intelligence Review, G-2, US Army, No 193, June 1952, p 36). This figure probably referred to the CPM’s armed units as well as their supporters. Wu Tien Wang, alias Ng Tin Wong (the Cantonese pronunciation of the Chinese characters for his name), tabled a 23-page paper at the 2nd Empire Conference entitled ‘The Communist Party of Malaya’, which presented a potted history of the party from 1930 to 1946. He called upon the ‘Communist Party of Britain to leave no stone unturned in your effort to help us in the fight for the attainment of democratic rights’. He later expressed his disappointment that the British Communist Party’s support of the CPM’s armed insurrection, at least in tangible terms as opposed to vocal support, was negligible (letter to author, dated 5 March 1994, from John J Coe, enclosing a copy of Wu’s paper). India, Burma, Indonesia and Vietnam were already demanding independence from their colonial masters, and the Indian Communist Party’s delegates at the conference could not understand why Wu Tien Wang did not take a much stronger line and demand independence for Malaya (see Cheah Boon Kheng, ‘Legal Period, 1945–48. MCP and Relations with Malays, British and “bourgeois nationalists”’, p 2, discussion paper, Chin Peng Workshop, Australian National University, 22–23 February 1999). Wu Tien Wang , who was undoubtedly a dedicated communist, although prepared to criticise what he perceived to be the CPM’s shortcomings, survived the Emergency only to be executed in an ‘internal purge’ carried out by the CPM’s North Malayan Bureau in south Thailand in early 1969. According to Special Branch information, Secretary-General Chin Peng opposed Wu’s execution, but as he was away in Beijing at the time, he did not come to hear about it until it was too late (author’s telephone conversation with CC Chin, 15 October 1999). Sanger, op cit, p 293. MacDonald was correct in stating this, as the Special Branch, MI5 and military intelligence are considered to be part of an interdependent matrix (see Bunyan, op cit, p I). JD Dalley papers, Top Secret, ‘Threat of Communism in Malaya and Singapore, 1947’, op cit. No MI5 officers were actually attached for duty to the MSS, although later during the Emergency in the 1950s, when HTB Ryves was head of the Malayan Special Branch, some MI5 officers were seconded to the Special Branch at Federal Special Branch headquarters, Kuala Lumpur, and MI5 officers lectured, too, at the Malayan Special Branch Training School. See Dalley, ibid, p 36 fn 54. CO 537/3752, Top Secret Supplement No 5 of 1948, MSS PIJ, No 11/48, dated 15 June 1948, MSS paper on ‘Malay/Indonesian communists and the growth of communism among Malays/Indonesians in Malaya since 1924’, which appeared just a few days before the outbreak of the Emergency. Letters to author from Sheppard and Cleaveland, dated 17 November 1992 and 27 April 1993 respectively. Dalley is mentioned in Mubin Sheppard’s Taman Budiman. Memoirs of an Unorthodox Civil Servant, Kuala Lumpur: Heinemann (Asia), 1979, pp 34–5, and Norman Cleaveland’s Bang! Bang! in Ampang: Dredging Tin During Malaya’s Emergency, San Pedro: Symcon Publishing Co, 1973, pp 81–2. The Kuomintang in Perak, in the area from Kuala Kangsar to Grik, was supported by the Ang Bin Hoey secret society (ABH, literally ‘Men of the Ang’ (or ‘Hung’, according to the Cantonese pronunciation)). The ABH’s traditional rival, supporting the CPM, was the Han group of Chinese secret societies, based in Johore and the area inland from

56

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Sungei Siput. The ABH was practically destroyed around the end of January 1947 by MSS action initiated by Khaw Kai Boh, leaving the CPM intact (see Dalley’s letter, dated 5 February 1965, to Hugh P Bryson, formerly of the Malayan Civil Service and more latterly Secretary of the Association of British Malaya in London, in Bryson Papers, BEAM Collection, Royal Commonwealth Library, Cambridge University). The relationship between Chinese secret societies and the CPM has not yet been sufficiently explored, although Leong Yee Fong has provided a useful preliminary essay in his paper entitled ‘Secret Societies and Politics in Colonial Malaya with Special Reference to the Ang Bin Hoey in Penang (1945–1952)’, presented at ‘The Penang Story—International Conference 2002’, 18–21 April 2002, City Bayview Hotel, Penang. 96 Khaw Kai Boh (b. 1918) served in both Malaya and Singapore, first as an MSS inspector and then as an assistant superintendent in the Special Branch, before resigning from the police to take up law. Before the Second World War he had been an assistant boarding officer, Chinese Protectorate, Singapore (1939), and immediately after the Japanese surrender, he was seconded to the British army field security unit at SEAC HQ (1945–46), before joining the MSS. When the People’s Action Party came to power in Singapore, he was in the Singapore Special Branch, and after being warned that he was considered persona non gratia by the PAP, probably due to his allegedly dabbling in local politics and being involved in local dubious business deals, he decided to leave Singapore for Malaya. He subsequently joined the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA) and eventually became a junior minister in Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman’s government. 97 Author’s conversation with Malcolm MacDonald at King’s House, Kuala Lumpur, in July 1949. The author was then an honorary police aide-de-camp to Sir Henry Gurney, the Malayan High Commissioner. MacDonald used to fly up to Kuala Lumpur from Singapore regularly to brief the Malayan Legislative Council on the security situation in Malaya and Southeast Asia. See also Short, op cit, pp 80–90. 98 Sir Ralph Hone was Secretary-General to the Governor-General of Malaya (Malcolm MacDonald), 1946–48, Deputy Commissioner-General for South East Asia, 1948–49, and Governor, British North Borneo, 1949–52. 99 Rhodes House Library, Oxford, MSS Ind Ocn s.254 (2), ‘Dalley Papers’, Secret letter MS86, dated 13 July 1948, from John Dalley to Sir Ralph Hone, KBE, MC, TD, ED, Commissioner-General’s Office, Singapore. 100 ibid. 101 Federation of Malaya Annual Report 1948, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1949, p 144, and Annual Report of the Singapore Police Force 1948, Singapore: Government Printer, 1949, p 19. 102 Colonial Annual Reports—Malaya, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1948, p 124. 103 Report of the Police Mission to Malaya March 1950, Kuala Lumpur: Government Press, 1950, p 11. 104 Letters to author from Norman Cleaveland and DA Weir, dated 17 November 1992 and 5 May 1995 respectively. 105 Sillitoe was then en route to Australia for discussions with the Australian Prime Minister, Ben Chifley, which were to lead eventually to the establishment of ASIO, the Australian domestic intelligence organisation.



THE MALAYAN SECURITY SERVICE

57

106 Christopher Blake, A View from Within. The Last Years of British Rule in South-East Asia, Somerset: Mendip Publishing, 1990, p 89. 107 Report on the Police Mission to Malaya, March 1950, op cit, p 11. 108 Bryson Papers, BEAM Collection, Royal Commonwealth Library, Cambridge University. Letters from JD Dalley to Bryson, dated 10 February and 3 July 1965. Dalley must have been on familiar terms with Bryson as his letters are addressed to ‘Dear Hugh’ and signed ‘John’. 109 Gent was not alone in ignoring the warnings he had been given. JB Williams, Assistant Under-Secretary of State, Colonial Office, minuted on 24 May 1948 that he did ‘not think that any information which has reached the Eastern Department during the last month would lead us to suppose that any serious trouble is brewing in Malaya’. See CO 537/4733, minutes by JB Williams and GF Seel, 28–31 May 1948. 110 Rhodes House Library, Oxford, Mss Ind Ocn S. 254, JD Dalley papers, Top Secret, contain copies of Dalley’s correspondence. Dalley is referring to the action taken by the Singapore government in April 1948 and subsequently as part of ‘Operation Bulldog’, when the Singapore Special Branch raided the communist-dominated Singapore Federation of Trade Unions, and obtained banishment warrants against communist party members engaged in criminal intimidation of the labour force and other illegal activities. The MSS was instrumental, too, in the police banning a proposed public assembly and procession by the CPM on 1 May (Labour Day), which it had cause to believe would result in an outbreak of violence, and instructing the Singapore police to carry out arrests of persons suspected of being responsible for the throwing of a hand grenade in a coffee shop (CO 537/3753, ‘Effect of Action by the Governments in Malaya to Counteract Malayan Communist Party Plans’, Supplement No 11, MSS PIJ, No 15/48, dated 15 August 1948, and Singapore Annual Report 1948, Singapore: Government Printer, 1949, p 7). 111 Rhodes House Library, Oxford, Mss. Ind. Ocn. S. 254, JD Dalley papers, Top Secret, containing copies of Dalley’s correspondence. 112 In spite of the 30-year rule covering the release of government records, the Public Records Office (PRO) CO 1035 Series dealing with intelligence, security and police matters had still not been released in its entirety at the time of writing this account. Moreover, all enclosures in CO 1030/16 dealing with security and intelligence services in Malaya during the Emergency and pre-Emergency period had been removed from the file, and CO 968/727 (1945–51), dealing with the organisation of intelligence services in the colonies, had been ‘returned to department’, which meant effectively that it was not available for consultation. In the Arkib Negara, Kuala Lumpur, 22 files (A/1, 3, 39,116, 127,154, 178, 206, 268, 289,300, 496, 616, 664, 869, D/21/SJ, 21/SJ.3 and P/6, 14, 15, 17 and 23), dealing mainly with police personnel and other police matters, remain closed to researchers. If these sources become available for research purposes, it may be possible to shed light on many areas that still remain obscure.

58

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Reproduced from Malaya's Secret Police 1945-60: The Role of the Special Branch in the Malayan Emergency by Leon Comber (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2008). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available at < http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg >

chapter three The Special Branch takes over (1948–49) The Malayan Special Branch found itself at a considerable disadvantage in taking over responsibility for political, security and operational intelligence at such short notice from the Malayan Security Service. Though the Special Branch absorbed most of the former Malayan Security Service personnel based in Malaya, it was still under-strength in the first few years of the Emergency. As related in the preceding chapter, the MSS itself was understrength when it handed over its functions to the Malayan and Singapore Special Branches, and in Malaya Lieutenant Colonel Dalley had to arrange, at least temporarily, for the local police CIDs in the territories of Pahang, Malacca, Kelantan and Trengganu to cover political and security intelligence on behalf the MSS. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that at the beginning of the Emergency, the Special Branch was criticised by the higher echelons of the military and the civil administration for its perceived unpreparedness and slowness in providing operational intelligence. In many cases, handwritten and cyclostyled communist documents recovered from communist camps or found in the possession of captured or dead communist insurgents were discarded as being of little more than routine value and not afforded the importance they deserved. From the evidence available, it would seem there was some validity to the criticisms.1 One of the reasons for the jam of documents was, of course, that the Special Branch was under-staffed and simply unable to cope with the backlog of documents awaiting translation. The MSS may have inadvertently contributed to this state of affairs by handing over a large backlog of communist documents awaiting translation to the Special Branch in August 1948. In Dalley’s letter of 13 July 1948 to Sir Ralph Hone, for instance, he admitted the MSS had a considerable accumulation of communist documents awaiting translation because of an acute shortage of translators and supporting office staff (Chapter 2). As the tempo of counterinsurgency operations increased, so an increasing number of communist documents recovered from communist jungle camps or seized from surrendered, captured or dead insurgents was passed to the Special Branch. In March 1949, the Malayan High Commissioner (Sir Henry Gurney) reported to the Colonial Office that the Special Branch 59

60

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

had insufficient translators to deal with the ‘flood of [captured] Chinese documents pouring in’.2 It was, in fact, not until a few years later, when the Special Branch had expanded and there were additional Special Branch translators at State and federal level, often aided by translators from the Psychological Warfare section of the government information service, that it became possible to give due attention to the examination of communist documents. It then became apparent that a careful analysis of their contents often disclosed important information about communist plans and intentions.3 Aside from the shortage of Chinese translators and the other problems facing the Special Branch, there was, too, a serious shortage of Chinese personnel at all levels in both the Special Branch and the uniformed branch of the police. At the beginning of the Emergency in June 1948, the regular Malayan police force consisted of: • 250 gazetted officers, nearly all of whom were British (13 were employed in the Special Branch)4 • 23 British inspectors (uniformed branch) • 226 Asian inspectors (44 employed in the Special Branch) • 495 British sergeants (ex-Palestine Police, employed mainly in training Special Constables) • 10,900 uniformed rank-and-file, made up of 9,764 Malays and 1,136 Indians; there were no Chinese • 132 detectives employed in the Special Branch and the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) against an approved establishment of 693 (thus, there was a significant shortfall of 561 detectives).5 The lack of Chinese in either the junior or the senior ranks of the police was a serious matter. For instance, out of 250 gazetted officers in the police in 1948, only three were Chinese. The vast majority of the 226 Asian inspectors were Malays, with some Indians, and only 27 were Chinese. There were no Chinese ‘other ranks’, or ‘rank-and-file’ to use police terminology, in the uniformed branch of the police. Bearing in mind that the Chinese constituted 41.7 per cent of the total population of Malaya in 1947, the lack of Chinese representation in the police was clearly unacceptable.6 Even though steps were taken to deal with the situation, the problem was never completely solved by the British colonial authorities, although there was a marked improvement after Malaya became independent in 1957.7 By



THE SPECIAL BRANCH TAKES OVER (1948–49)

61

1958, for instance, there were 98 Chinese gazetted officers and 395 Chinese inspectors. As Komer brings out in a report he prepared for the Rand Corporation in 1972, the ‘Special Branch [in 1948–49] was not adequately trained and prepared to deal with the communist uprising’.8 Even so, many critics of the Special Branch in those early days simply did not realise that even in normal circumstances the process of creating and training an intelligence service is inevitably a slow and painstaking one. In professional intelligence circles, it is usually accepted that it takes at least two or three years before an intelligence service can be brought up to a sufficiently efficient level to enable it to deal with the various and often urgent demands that are made on it. There is little doubt, too, that the criticisms levelled at the Special Branch could have been applied with equal cogency not only to the Special Branch but also to the Malayan police force as a whole, since it was still struggling to regain its former peacetime level of efficiency after the disruption of the war years and the Japanese occupation. Chart 1 illustrates how the Special Branch fitted in with the uniformed branch of the police, from federal level down to police district level. The chart shows the position in 1948–49 when the Special Branch was subsumed into the CID to form what was virtually a ‘political intelligence sub-division’ of the CID. The Special Branch then came under the overall command of BMB (Basil) O’Connell, Deputy Commissioner of Police (CID), and his second-in-command, Assistant Commissioner JN (Ken) Duthie, both of whom were senior prewar Malayan police officers. O’Connell had been appointed Director CID in 1946. When the Special Branch was subsumed into the CID, he selected two outstanding police officers, IS (Ian) Wylie and CH (Claude) Fenner, to establish and take charge of Federal Special Branch headquarters.9 The way in which the Special Branch developed during this initial period owes much to the groundwork put in by these two officers, which undoubtedly helped to counter the earlier criticisms of the Special Branch. Federal Special Branch headquarters was then divided into five sections (see Chart 2): a Communist Section (headed by a British army Intelligence Corps captain attached to the Special Branch), and four ‘racial’ (the term used by the Special Branch at the time) sections, Chinese, Malay, Indian, European and ‘Others’. ’Others’ was used for Eurasians and other small ethnic groups in Malaya. The racial sections were headed by Asian inspectors, although in 1949, in view of the over-riding importance of Chinese political activities, the Chinese section was headed by an assistant superintendent of police.10

62

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Chart 1: Organisation of the Malayan Police: Uniformed Branch, CID and Special Branch (1948–49) Commissioner of Police

Deputy Commissioner

Administration

Operations

Supply/Finance

CID

Criminal Investigation

Contingent Police HQ Chief Police Officer Dy. Chief Police Officer Police Circles each under an OSPC

Administration

Operations

CID/Special Branch

Special Branch (see Chart 2)

10 Contingents Selangor Negri Sembilan Malacca Johore Perak Pahang Trengganu Kelantan Kedah/Perlis Penang

Police Districts each under an OCPD

Assistant Officer in Charge

Police Stations

Police

CID/Special Branch

Village Constables

Special Constables

Legend: Contingents = States/Settlements. OSPC = Officer Superintending Police Circle/ OCPD = Officer in charge Police District. Source: Adapted from Sam Sarkesian, Unconventional Conflicts in a New Security Era: Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, Westport, Connecticut & London, Greenwood Press, 1993, p. 140, and author’s notes.



THE SPECIAL BRANCH TAKES OVER (1948–49)

63

Chart 2: Malayan Special Branch federal headquarters under the CID (1948–49)

Dy.Commissioner CID

Supt. Crime

Crime Records

1xSupt. 1xASP Special Branch

Investigations

Registrar of Criminals

Photographic Section

Chinese Section 1xASP

Malay Section 1xInsp

Railway CID

10 contingent or State CID units - see below

Indian Section 1xInsp

European & Others 1xInsp

Communism Section 1xCapt

Secret Registry 2xArchivists

10 contingent or State Special Branch units: Johore, Malacca, Negri Sembilan, Selangor, Perak, Penang/Province Wellesley, Pahang, Kedah/Perlis, Kelantan, Trengganu. Notes: Deputy Commissioner CID: BMB O’Connell. Superintendent Crime: KJN Duthie. Head Special Branch: Superintendent IS Wylie. Dy. Head Special Branch: Assistant Superintendent CH Fenner (promoted Superintendent in 1949). Assistant Superintendent Chinese Section: (1949) Leon Comber. Archivists: JF Allen & Chan Fook Wing. Source: author’s notes.

64

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

The function of the racial sections was to collect, analyse and report on issues of current political and security interest relevant to the particular ethnic groups concerned. The racial sections also monitored newspapers, magazines and radio programs in the appropriate vernacular languages. The Communist section was responsible for collating intelligence about the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) and its military wing, the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA), and other communist movements in Southeast Asia that were likely to affect the local situation. Special Branch confidential, secret and top-secret files and reference materials were housed in a secret registry that was maintained by two archivists who had formerly been working in the Malaysian Security Service’s secret registry.11 In June 1949, an inspector from the London Metropolitan Police (Scotland Yard) Special Branch was invited to visit Federal Special Branch headquarters to advise on the setting up of the secret registry and the general organisation of the Special Branch.12 While no details are available of the discussions that took place, his visit marked the beginning of the cooperation and assistance that the Special Branch received over the course of the Emergency from the London Metropolitan Police Special Branch.13 In general, the pre-war functions of the Malayan Police were law enforcement, the maintenance of public order and the investigation of crime, and this was the first time it had faced a terrorist insurgency aimed at overthrowing the government by force of arms. The Special Branch now found itself standing in the first rank of national defence, with prime responsibility for providing combat intelligence to the army as well as safeguarding the integrity of the country (see Chapter 7, Chart 6). From the Special Branch point of view, the communist uprising could not have come at a worse time. The Japanese occupation had been characterised by a massive displacement of the work forces from rubber estates and tin mines, and shortages of foodstuffs and medicines. The general social, political and economic state of the country was still in disarray.14 The Japanese had in many places replaced senior local officers in charge of police stations. The police was given only limited powers of investigation and serious cases had to be referred to the much-feared kempeitei, the Japanese secret police, which was noted for its brutal methods of interrogation and torture. It was virtually a law unto itself and wielded extraordinarily wide power over both the Japanese military and the Malayan civilian population. In pre-war British colonial times, the Malayan police had been a disciplined,



THE SPECIAL BRANCH TAKES OVER (1948–49)

65

armed force, organised along para-military lines, but the Japanese withdrew the .38 revolvers and .303 Lee Enfield rifles that the British had issued, and replaced them with old shotguns confiscated from villagers in rural areas.15 Many people could still remember the apparent ease with which the Japanese had overthrown the seemingly invincible British colonial power in 1942 and could not help wondering whether the British would suffer the same fate at the hands of the communists.16 It did not help, too, that the civil administration of the country was still not firmly established. It was not until October 1948 that Sir Henry Gurney, who had been appointed Sir Edward Gent’s successor as High Commissioner of Malaya, arrived at Kuala Lumpur.17 To compound matters, it was unfortunate that just after the start of the Emergency, the Commissioner of Police, Lieutenant Colonel HB Langworthy, a well-respected senior pre-war Malayan police officer who had headed the Malayan police since the time of the British Military Administration, retired on medical grounds.18 His replacement did not arrive for another two months, when Lieutenant Colonel WN (Nicol) Gray, the former Inspector-General of the Palestine Police, was appointed on 12 August 1948.19 Gray arrived in Singapore a few days after his appointment was officially announced in London, at about the same time that the Special Branch took over from the Malayan Security Service. He brought with him an advance contingent of ex-Palestine Police officers, mainly sergeants, which had been hastily recruited by the Colonial Office to reinforce the Malayan police after the disbanding of the Palestine Police in 1948.20 At this critical stage, too, the offices of Attorney-General and Financial Secretary, the country’s chief law officer and treasurer respectively, who had a vital role to play in the rebuilding and development of Malaya, had still not been filled substantively and they were occupied by relatively junior officers in an acting capacity.21 An added element to the general uncertainty and lack of direction characterising Malaya at this time that affected the police (and the Special Branch) more than any other government department, was that the General Officer Commanding the army in Malaya, Lieutenant General Sir Charles Boucher, had assumed command only a few weeks before the Emergency started. He had hardly had time to acquaint himself with the local situation before having to exercise operational control over the military units under his command.22

66

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

It was unfortunate for police and army relations that Boucher and Gray did not see eye-to-eye almost from the time that Gray arrived at Malaya. Following the departure of Colonel Langworthy, Boucher had taken over the co-ordination of counterinsurgency operations prior to Gray’s arrival.23 When Gray arrived, he maintained that he had been tasked by the Colonial Office to assume the overall direction and control of counterinsurgency operations, with authority to co-ordinate police and army operations, including intelligence operations. Gray argued that the army was acting in support of the civil power and that martial law had not been declared. The High Commissioner, Sir Henry Gurney, supported Gray’s point of view. In a despatch to the Colonial Secretary, dated 30 May 1949, he stated unequivocally that: the military force available to aid the civil power should be at the disposal of the Commissioner of Police and operate under his general instructions… the manner to which troops are employed is, of course, a matter for the military commander but there should be no difference of opinion that the general power of direction of the operations in which police and troops are engaged belongs to the Commissioner of Police.24

When the Chief of the British General Staff, Field Marshall Sir William Slim, visited Malaya in October 1949, he made it quite clear in his report that he supported Gray’s and Gurney’s viewpoint and that he regarded the situation in Malaya as more a matter for civil rather than military action.25 However, the difference of opinion between Gray and Boucher did not do anything to improve police–army relations. Fortunately, the matter resolved itself when Boucher left Malaya in 1950.26 The paramountcy of the civil government vis-à-vis the army was subsequently confirmed in the officially sanctioned ATOM (The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya), prepared under the direction of the Director of Operations, Malaya, as related in Chapter 1. The confusion over the control of the counterinsurgency campaign may well have arisen because the War Office Notes on Imperial Policing, published in 1934, with which Boucher was familiar, did not make it clear whether the army or the police was to exercise the leading security control.27 Further, in referring to intelligence, one section of the Notes read: ‘In the case of prolonged operations it is desirable that the whole intelligence system should come under military control, and in extreme cases it may ultimately be necessary to replace the civic system’. However, as Keith Jeffery comments, any remaining doubts were cleared up when the War



THE SPECIAL BRANCH TAKES OVER (1948–49)

67

Office issued a revised edition of the Notes in 1949, not long before Boucher left Malaya, confirming that in the Malayan situation the army’s role was to act in aid of the civil power, and making it clear there was no question of military intelligence controlling or taking over the work of the Special Branch.28

The relative strengths of the opposing forces When eventually the Malayan government declared a state of Emergency in June 1948 to counter the lawlessness that was engulfing the entire country, there was at least a sense of relief that positive steps were being taken to deal with the situation. From the military point of view, the security situation was summed up in a few words in a War Office statement, dated 18 August 1948 (some two months after the declaration of Emergency), which emphasised the importance of defeating the communists as soon as possible and not allowing the conflict to drag on: Militarily, it is of the utmost importance that we get the upper hand as soon as possible. Delay in doing this adversely affects the situation in other Far Eastern countries faced with the same communist problems.29

‘The situation in other Far Eastern countries’ referred to the ongoing struggles with local communist movements that were taking place in Thailand, Burma and French Indo-China. Obviously, no-one realised at the time that the Malayan Emergency would take twelve years to resolve. Meanwhile, according to a Special Branch assessment, there were an estimated 6,000 to 7,000 communist guerrillas under arms in the jungle at the beginning of Emergency.30 In the early days, they usually operated in mobile groups, which gave them the advantage of being able to strike at will from their jungle hideouts. They were helped by receiving material support and information about the movements of security forces from the large numbers of Chinese squatters living on the jungle fringes who had been allowed to exist mostly outside the British colonial administrative framework since the end of the war. At the beginning of the Emergency, the army itself was largely untrained and unready to engage in counterinsurgency operations on the scale required. There were only two battalions of British troops and one battalion of the Malay Regiment immediately available for deployment, making up a force of not more than around 2,500 men. An under-strength and largely untrained

68

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Brigade of Gurkhas, providing an additional estimated 2,500 men, was in reserve.31 It was not until much later in the Emergency, after the establishment of an army jungle training school at Kota Tinggi, Johore, that the army acquired the experience and expertise necessary to fight a ‘low-intensity’ war against guerrillas of the type facing it in Malaya.32 Consequently, in the early days of the Emergency, the police, as the only other readily available armed and disciplined force, was called upon to provide paramilitary units or jungle squads to undertake what was virtually an infantry role alongside the army in counterinsurgency operations.33 On the civil government side, as Gurney reported in May 1949 in a despatch to Creech Jones, the Colonial Secretary in London, the uniformed branch of the Malayan police (including Special Police constables and auxiliary police) was in the forefront of the fight against the communists. It strength amounted to over 72,000 men.34 As he observed, however, a formation of this strength approximated that of two army corps, each of which would have had an elaborate headquarters’ staff under a lieutenant general, whereas Gray, with far fewer staff officers at federal police headquarters, was administering and controlling a police force that was just as large.35 Moreover, the duties of the largely understaffed Special Branch had increased considerably, as it was now expected to provide not only non-operational political and security intelligence but also operational intelligence to enable the army to carry out counterinsurgency operations. Army reinforcements did not arrive until 1949, by which time it was apparent that the government was faced with a more serious security situation than at first had been envisaged. By the end of the year, four British infantry battalions, one British Field Regiment Royal Artillery (without its artillery pieces and operating in an infantry role), two battalions of the Malay Regiment, a Squadron of the RAF Regiment (employed in an infantry role) and additional Gurkha troops were committed. Further reinforcements consisting of the 4th Hussars (an armoured car unit) were on their way to Malaya at the request of the British army commander for the Far East, and three battalions of the Scots Guards were placed on stand-by to arrive within a matter of a few months.36 Later in the Emergency, the military forces available were greatly increased. British, Malayan, Australian, New Zealand, African and Fijian army units were committed, supported by aircraft of the Royal Air Force (RAF), Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), Royal Malayan Air Force



THE SPECIAL BRANCH TAKES OVER (1948–49)

69

(RMAF), Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) and vessels of the Royal Navy (RN), Royal Australian Navy (RAN), Royal Malayan Navy (RMN) and the Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN).37 The navy patrolled the Malayan coastline to guard against external infiltration,38 and its vessels were sometimes called upon to bombard suspected communist camps in the jungle. The security forces on the ground were supported by the air force’s strafing and bombing of communist formations and hideouts in the jungle. The air force also dropped propaganda leaflets prepared by the Psychological Warfare Section (Psyops) of the Department of Information over target areas in the jungle, calling upon the terrorists to surrender. Police and army patrols operating in the deep jungle were also supplied by air, and specially adapted aircraft fitted with loudspeakers broadcast pre-recorded messages in Chinese (Hokkien and Cantonese, the two most common southern Chinese dialects used by the guerrillas, together with putonghua, the Chinese national language), calling upon the communist guerrillas to surrender. The air force allocated three DC3s and two Auster aircraft for this purpose. Apropos ‘external infiltration’, it is worth noting that in 1949, when the author was in the Chinese Section at Federal Special Branch headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, low-grade intelligence reports were received of unmarked aircraft dropping supplies in the Malayan–Thai border area, and ‘Chinese submarines’ landing supplies and even personnel (reportedly Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officers) on deserted stretches of beach on Malaya’s east coast. However, none of these reports was ever substantiated. When the author subsequently raised the matter with Chin Peng in Canberra on 19 February 1999, the latter stated that the CPM/MNLA had not received supplies from any external source during the Emergency. While this may be so, there is little doubt that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), acting as the CPM’s mentor, constantly provided ideological encouragement and support.39 In 1951–52, when the fighting was at its fiercest, the Special Branch estimated there were some 10,000 communists under arms in the jungle, supported by an estimated 50,000 members of the Min Yuen.40 The Special Branch attributed the increase in strength of the communist jungle army to the encouragement given to communist supporters to go underground and join the MNLA by the successes of the Chinese Communist Party in China. Reports in the local Chinese-language press of the likely arrival of Chinese Communist consuls in Malaya following the recognition of the

70

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Chinese People’s Republic of China by the British government on 6 January 1950 contributed to the situation. In the event, the opposition of Malcolm MacDonald and Sir Henry Gurney to the appointment of consuls by the People’s Republic of China convinced the British Foreign Office that it would be unwise to agree to any such arrangement.41 During the critical years 1951–2, when the fighting was at its highest, an estimated 10,000 communist guerrillas were opposed by some 40,000 regular troops, supported by not fewer than 67,000 regular police and approximately 350,000 Home Guard, which for operational purposes came under police command.42 But the conflict was, in essence, an infantry subaltern’s or a police jungle squad commander’s war. The fact remained that the war had to be fought on the ground, and although there were no pitched battles between large bodies of opposing forces, as happened in the Vietnam War, there were often bloody clashes between the communist guerrillas and the security forces, and the fighting between the two sides was internecine. During the twelve years that the Emergency lasted, there were 21,022 ‘incidents’ (the official term used for guerrilla-initiated incidents) and 8,714 ‘contacts’ (engagements initiated by the army or police when the security forces opened fire first).43 Both sides suffered severe losses. The casualties suffered by the communist insurgents during the Emergency amounted to 6,711 killed, 1,289 captured and 2,704 surrendered. Police casualties were higher than the army’s and amounted to 1,346 killed and 1,601 wounded of all ranks (including Special Police Constables and Auxiliary Police), twice the combined total of all other security force casualties.44 Army casualties, of all ranks, amounted to 519 killed and 959 wounded (see Chapter 1, Table 1).45 Victory did not come cheaply. Harry Miller, the senior reporter of the Straits Times, who covered the Emergency, was given access to privileged material by the authorities and was on good terms with several senior police and army officers, estimated the cost for the British and Malayan governments of the twelve-year insurrection at some M$5,150 million, a figure that was generally accepted.46 Over the period of the Emergency, the security forces (excluding the Home Guard) opposing the MNLA were often between five to twelve times larger than the MNLA. Although the imbalance in the strengths of the opposing sides was large, it fitted the classic pattern of low-intensity, counterinsurgency operations. According to Colonel John Cross, a recognised jungle warfare expert, one of the characteristics of guerrilla



THE SPECIAL BRANCH TAKES OVER (1948–49)

71

warfare is the large number of government forces required to hold down and take the offensive against much smaller insurgent forces.47 However, as Sir Henry Gurney remarked to the Secretary of State for the Colonies as early as 1949, and repeated several times subsequently, in the final analysis, the communist insurrection would not be subdued by the sheer weight of security forces arrayed against it, but by reliable operational intelligence provided by the Special Branch on which successful military operations could be mounted.48 Based on his previous experience as Chief Secretary in Palestine, Gurney was aware of the central importance of intelligence in dealing with civil unrest. Thus, from the time he arrived at Kuala Lumpur, he took every opportunity to emphasise the importance of the Special Branch as the government’s main intelligence arm and the vital role it would have to play in the Emergency.49 Gurney’s task as High Commissioner was probably made easier by his being well acquainted with Nicol Gray, as they had served together in Palestine and, as Short said, ‘they enjoyed each other’s mutual confidence and support’.50 It helped, too, that Malcolm MacDonald supported Gurney’s views on the importance of the Special Branch, and in a despatch to the Colonial Office, he recommended the expansion of the Special Branch’s role by the establishment of interrogation centres and the provision of improved translating facilities.51

Conclusion The Special Branch that had been resurrected from its pre-Second World War existence immediately found itself confronted by a range of exceedingly difficult problems of both an intelligence and operational kind. These difficulties have been documented at length in this chapter. Above all else, the lack of Chinese language competency was evident from the start. In hindsight, the problems surrounding the reconstruction of the Special Branch in a manner that would enable it to respond effectively to the communist insurgency were of such an order that questions arise as to why the MSS itself was abolished at all. One can only speculate about what the answer might be. What is certain, however, is that the degree of disenchantment with the MSS was so deep that by 1948 nobody in high authority had any confidence in its capacities. It could be that the head of MSS, namely Dalley, had had such an impact on the MSS that it created a mindset within the organisation that the highest authorities judged to be incapable of reform. Only in such extreme circumstances can one begin to

72

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

understand why the Colonial Office took the risky step of abolishing the MSS at the outbreak of the Emergency and rebuilding, virtually from scratch, an entirely new infrastructure for intelligence gathering. By 1948–49, a new Special Branch had been built in the manner described in this chapter. The following chapters deal first with the basic principles observed by Special Branch in the collection of intelligence. After that, an analysis is given of the inevitable reforms that followed a series of urgent visits by various British government officials, ranging from Cabinet Minister down to a Police Mission of Inquiry.

Notes 1

2 3 4

5

In 1950, Lieutenant General Sir Harold Briggs, Director of Operations, complained about the dearth of operational intelligence coming forward from the Special Branch. The eponymous Briggs Plan that he introduced called for the army to act in support of the police to provide a striking force to clear communist terrorists from the south to the north of Malaya. An important element of the plan was the compulsory resettlement of around half a million Chinese squatters in New Villages throughout the country. However, as Briggs reported to the High Commissioner, the army had had to undertake operations with little or no operational intelligence (see Michael Carver, War Since 1945, London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1980, pp 20–1 and Ng Ngee Seng, ‘Sir Henry Gurney as High Commissioner during the Emergency Oct. 1948–Oct. 1951. A Critical Assessment’, MA thesis, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 2002, p 34). CO 967/84, Secret, ‘Briefs—Federation of Malaya’, 1949. See Lim Cheng Leng, The Story of a Psy-Warrior. Tan Sri Dr CC Too, Kuala Lumpur, published privately, 2000, p 76. By the end of 1952, the Special Branch had expanded considerably, with 93 gazetted officers (nearly all gazetted Special Branch officers at that time were British) and 195 inspectors and police lieutenants serving in it. By the following year, Special Branch strength had increased further to 126 gazetted officers and 279 inspectors and police lieutenants (WO 106/5990). WO 106/5990, ‘Strength and Composition of the Army and the Police, Tables I and II’, Appendix B; Annual Report Federation of Malaya Police 1948, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1949, pp 122–3, and Annual Report Federation of Malaya Police 1949, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1950, p 139. During service in the regular police, a police constable could expect promotion, depending on ability and seniority, to lance corporal, corporal, sergeant, sergeant major, sub-inspector (ranks sometimes referred to as subordinate police officers) and inspector. Gazetted officer ranks were cadet assistant superintendent, assistant superintendent, deputy superintendent (a rank introduced in 1952), superintendent, assistant commissioner, senior assistant commissioner, deputy commissioner and commissioner. After the formation of Malaysia in 1963, the Malaysian police force was commanded by an inspector general of police. On 1 August 1950, a new rank of police lieutenant was introduced. Police lieutenants were employed on a renewable contract basis; it was a temporary rank junior to



6

7

8

9

THE SPECIAL BRANCH TAKES OVER (1948–49)

73

inspector, filled mainly by former British sergeants who were serving in the police, and ex-servicemen recruited from Britain and Australia. The Chinese out-numbered all other ethnic groups in Malaya. According to the 1947 Census, there were 2,614,667 Chinese out of a total population of 5,848,910. The largest Chinese group was Hokkien (827,411) and the second largest Cantonese (641,945). The Malays and aborigines (orang asli) combined totalled 2,543,569. Arkib Negara, Kuala Lumpur, Royal Federation of Malaya Police Annual Report 1958, ‘Racial Composition’, mimeograph, p 3. See also National Army Museum, Chelsea, London, ACC 9501-165-11, ‘Memorandum on the Police Force, Federation of Malaya’, by Colonel WA Muller, Colonial Office Adviser on the Colonial Police. In conversation with Chinese friends and contacts in 1948–49, the author was given many reasons for the apparent Chinese disinclination to serve in the police—an aversion to serving in a British force to fight against their own countrymen, a general dislike of serving in a disciplined force, the perceived low salary scales, and the perceived low social status of serving as a policeman. To sum up the situation, an old Chinese adage was often quoted: ‘You don’t use good steel to make nails and you don’t use good men to make soldiers’. There is little difference in Chinese eyes between ‘soldiers’ and ‘policemen’. RW Komer, The Malayan Emergency in Retrospect. Organisation of a Successful Counterinsurgency Effort, Santa Monica, Rand Corporation, 1972, pp 42–3. The Rand Corporation is a research body with close connections with the CIA. See also Federation of Malaya Annual Report 1952, Kuala Lumpur, Government Printer, 1953, p 220. Wylie joined the Malayan Police in 1929 and was senior to Fenner. He had been sent to Canton (Guangzhou) pre-war to study Cantonese for two years. At the fall of Singapore, he escaped to Australia, where he served as an army officer with the clandestine InterService Liaison Department (ISLD, a cover name for the British Secret Intelligence Service or MI6) that had been formed for special operations against the Japanese in Japanese-occupied territories (see Richard J Aldrich, Intelligence and the War against Japan. Britain, America and the Politics of Secret Service, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, p 214). In 1942, Wylie commanded a small guerrilla group that was infiltrated by submarine into Japanese-occupied Portuguese Timor to carry out reconnaissance and establish contact with local anti-Japanese resistance movements. Towards the end of the war in 1945, Wylie parachuted into Johore to join up with the MPAJA forces operating in the jungle there. After the MSS was dissolved in 1948, he became the first head of the Malayan Special Branch. He retired from the Malayan Police as Deputy Commissioner of Police in 1958, after holding several senior appointments (See AJ Stockwell, ‘British Imperial Police and Decolonisation in Malaya 1948–52’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 13(1) 1984, p 291). Stockwell gives Wylie’s initials incorrectly as ‘IC’ instead of ‘IS’. Fenner joined the Malayan police as a Cadet Assistant Superintendent in 1936. He was sent pre-war to study Hokkien for two years at Amoy (Xiamen). On escaping from Singapore at the time of the Japanese invasion, he was initially posted to the Nigerian Police, but shortly afterwards he was commissioned in the British Army and posted to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) to join Force 136 (Group B). In July 1945, he parachuted with Captain LVC White into Negri Sembilan, close to Titi, where he joined up in the jungle with the local MPAJA unit. When the Special Branch took over from the Malayan Security Service in 1948, he became Wylie’s second-in-command at Federal Special Branch headquarters. After filling several senior appointment, he was appointed Commissioner of Police in 1958 (paradoxically Wylie was then his deputy but Fenner had received accelerated promotion although

74

10

11 12

13

14

15 16

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

junior to Wylie on the Malayan Police Staff List). After the formation of Malaysia in 1963, he became Inspector General of the Royal Malaysian Police. He was knighted by both the Malaysian and British governments, and he retired in 1966 as Tan Sri Sir Claude Fenner, PMN, KBE, CMG. He died in Britain in 1978 (see Ian Trenowden, Operations Most Secret SOE: The Malayan Theatre, London: Wm Kimber Ltd, 1978, pp 13–5, 87,90, 98, 104, 190–1; Aldrich, op cit, pp 189–90, Mohd Reduan & Mohd. Radzuan Ibrahim, Polis Diraja Malaysia. Sejarah, Peranan dan Cabaran, pp 543–6, Federation of Malaya Staff List, 1941, Foreign & Commonwealth Office Library, pp 56 & 58, and Malayan Police Magazine, 33(1) 1966, pp 10–14). After the war, Arthur Dickinson, the pre-war Inspector General of the Straits Settlements Police, included both Wylie’s and Fenner’s names in a list of Malayan police officers whom he brought to the attention of the Colonial Office for allegedly escaping from Singapore without permission. However, it does not appear that the Colonial Office pursued the matter further (see AH Dickinson’s report, dated 22 December 1945, headed ‘The Colonial Office—Its Policy in regard to officers who deserted immediately preceding the fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942’ addressed to GEJ Gent, Eastern Department, Colonial Office, and Gent’s reply (Colonial Office reference 50745/3/45), and letter to author from JM Gullick, dated 13 May 1993. The author is grateful to DA Weir for providing him with copies of the Dickinson correspondence). The author joined the Federal Special Branch HQ in March 1949 on transfer from the uniformed branch, and was posted to the Chinese Section. See letter reference SF/1/3 (Y), dated 16 March 1949, from BMB O’Connell, Deputy Commissioner CID, to Deputy Commissioner, Uniformed Branch, and letter reference CP/FM/193/49, dated 23 September 1949, from DP Macnamara, Assistant Commissioner (Personnel) to Chief Police Officer, Selangor (copies in author’s possession). In his letter, O’Connell wrote, ‘I am satisfied that Mr Wylie and Mr Fenner have far too much work to enable them to do it with the thoroughness and attention that its great importance deserves. The maintenance of control in Special Branch is of paramount importance to the war effort’. Author’s notes. Federation of Malaya Annual Report 1949, Government Printing Office, Kuala Lumpur, 1950, p 144. The Metropolitan Police Special Branch became the executive arm of MI5, the British domestic intelligence service, after MI5’s creation in 1909. The Metropolitan Police Special Branch sets the national policy and standards for all British regional police forces Special Branches (Richard M Bennett, Espionage. Spies and Secrets, London: Virgin Books Ltd, 2002, p 294). The London Metropolitan Police Special Branch was merged in September 2005 with the Anti-Terrorist Branch of the Metropolitan Police to form a new department known as the ‘Counter-Terrorism Command’. See TW Harper, ‘Health, Welfare, and the Reconstruction of the Colonial State in Malaya, 1945–48’, Paper presented to the Asian Studies Association of Australia, Centre for Advanced Studies, National University of Singapore, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, 1–3 February 1989. Kratoska, op cit, p 59. Such comments were not made publicly, but the author, who was Officer-in-Charge Police District, Kuala Lumpur South, High Street Police Station, Kuala Lumpur, at the



17

18

19

20

21 22

23 24

THE SPECIAL BRANCH TAKES OVER (1948–49)

75

declaration of the Emergency, frequently heard them from members of the public with whom he came in contact. It emerged after Gent’s death that some 400 banishment orders covering the expulsion to China of communists in the trade union movement that had been prepared for his signature by the MSS in early 1948 had been left unsigned, and ‘all who should have been apprehended disappeared into the jungle’ to join the communist army (see Stockwell, 1984, op cit). Gent’s Private Secretary, Basil Chapman, attributed Gent’s delay in signing the orders, in spite of urgent reminders, to his having doubts about the policy of banishing communists to China where they would most likely fall into the hands of the Kuomintang government that was then in power in China. Steve Hurst, ‘The Crisis in the Malayan Police Force, 1948–52’, MA dissertation, Department of Modern History, Royal Holloway College, University of London, September 1999, p 9. CAB 129/28, ‘The Situation in Malaya’, 1 July 1948. Secretary of State for the Colonies to Prime Minister. The Secretary of State reported that WN Gray, late Inspector-General of the Palestine Police, with special experience in combating terrorism, had been sent out to Malaya, and that ‘very active measures’ were being taken to strengthen the Malayan and Singapore police forces. Sir Alec Newboult, then Officer Administering the Government of Malaya, had requested Gray’s services. In Newboult’s view, there was no suitable officer in the Malayan Police to fill this appointment. Lieutenant Colonel William Nicol Gray, DSO and bar, CMG, KPM (1908–88), did not have an intelligence or Special Branch background. He had been appointed Inspector-General of the Palestine Police (1946–48) after serving with distinction in the Royal Marines (1939–46) (Who Was Who, London, A & C Black Publishers, 1996). Gray landed at RAF Changi Airfield, Singapore, on 15 August from Britain with 40 handpicked ex-Palestine policemen. CWD Hall, the Deputy Commissioner of Police, announced that a further batch of 300 former Palestine Police officers would arrive by the end of August (The Age, Melbourne, 16 August 1948). Short, op cit, p 120. Short, ibid. Lieutenant General Sir Charles Boucher, KBE, CB, DSO and bar, (1898–1951), a regular Gurkha Rifles officer in the Indian Army, had served with distinction during the Second World War in India, the Middle East, Italy and Greece. He was General Officer Commanding (GOC), Malaya District (1948–50) (Who Was Who, op cit). His predecessor as GOC, Malaya, was Lieutenant General Galloway. It is worth noting that in June 1947, a year before the declaration of the Emergency, Galloway had prepared an assessment for the High Commissioner that the maintenance of law and order depended on the highest-grade intelligence system (Short, op cit, p 78). General Boucher is, unfortunately, best remembered in Malaya for the over-optimistic statement he gave at a press conference shortly after the declaration of the Emergency: ‘I can tell you this is by far the easiest problem I have ever tackled…In spite of the appalling country, the enemy is far weaker in technique and courage than either the Greek or Indian Reds’ (Henry A Shockley, ‘The Reluctant Raj: Britain’s Security Role in Malaysia (1940–1970)’, PhD dissertation, American University, Washington, 1973, p 167). Ng Ngee Seng, op cit, p 35. CO 537/4773, No 3, Despatch No 5, dated 30 May 1949, from Sir Henry Gurney to Creech Jones, ‘Insurgency & Counter-Insurgency’.

76

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

25 CO537/4374, No 5, ‘Notes on Tour of South-East Asia, October 1949. Report by Field Marshall Sir William Slim on Importance of Civil Action in Counterinsurgency’. 26 When General Sir Harold Briggs became Director of Operations on 3 April 1950, he took over from Colonel Gray ‘full powers of coordination of the Police, Naval, Military and Air Forces’. But Briggs, a retired regular Indian Army officer, was appointed in a civilian capacity. See AIR20/777, Secret, ‘Early History of Emergency. Report on the Emergency in Malaya from April 1950 to November 51’ by Lieutenant General Sir Harold Briggs, KCIE, CB, CBE, DSO, Director of Operations, Malaya, p 3. 27 Notes on Imperial Policing, London: War Office, 1934, p 8, quoted in Keith Jeffery, ‘Intelligence and Counter-Insurgency Operations: Some Reflections on the British Experience’, Intelligence and National Security, 2(1) 1987, p 121. 28 ibid. 29 FO371/69698, ‘Military Situation in Malaya in August 1948’. 30 It was not always possible for the Special Branch to be definitive about the actual strength of the MNLA, as its estimates were based on information provided by SEPs and CEPs and gleaned from captured communist documents. Moreover, estimates provided in the literature and official documents do not always tally. Chin Peng, the CPM’s Secretary-General, himself was rather vague on this point when he wrote in his memoirs: ‘In all, several thousand troops—from army, navy and air force—would be committed against our guerrilla strength, which at its peak numbered no more than 5,000 men and women and for the most part functioned at around 3,000’ (Chin Peng 2003, op cit, pp 26, 398). Further, as he admitted, ‘At the height of the Emergency… we didn’t have proper communications, didn’t have the proper statistics—so we had different estimates. My estimate was that at the height of the Emergency it is about 5,000. Another one of my colleague’s estimate, at the height of the Emergency in 1951 was about 8,000 [sic]. So the number varied from five to eight’ (see Chin & Hack, op cit, p 151). Nevertheless, by 1952–53, the Special Branch probably had a clearer view than anyone else of the guerrilla strength, as it had already started to make considerable progress in building up an accurate order of battle for the communist guerrilla army, based on information obtained from surrendered and captured guerrillas and a detailed analysis of captured communist documents. 31 According to Short (op cit, p 113), the number of army battalions available for counterinsurgency operations in Malaya at the outbreak of the Emergency varied according to source. 32 Since 1945, the British army has spent more time in what is referred to as ‘low intensity’ operations against guerrillas, terrorists and insurgents than in conventional warfare. The major counterinsurgency operations in which it has been involved are Palestine (1943–48), Malaya (1948–60), Kenya (1952–56), Cyprus (1955–59) and Aden (1964–67) (see Jeffery, op cit, p 118). The term ‘low intensity’ operations, often used synonymously for ‘counterinsurgency’, is defined in this context as a politico–military conflict between contending forces, below the level of conventional war involving the clash of armies and large military formations. 33 By the end of 1949, there were 253 police jungle squads. They subsequently formed the nucleus of the Police Field Force, totalling some 3,000 men, that was organised on military lines (Komer, op cit, p 38). 34 Special Constables (SCs) were mainly ex-regular policemen employed full-time on static defence duties as guards on rubber estates and tin mines. Some of them were



35 36 37

38 39 40 41 42

43

THE SPECIAL BRANCH TAKES OVER (1948–49)

77

used, too, to augment regular police formations and as members of police jungle squads. Auxiliary police were unpaid, part-time volunteers. Many rubber estate managers were appointed as auxiliary police inspectors (CAB 129/48, C (51) 59 (Malaya), Cabinet Memorandum by Oliver Lyttelton, dated 21 December 1951). CO537/4773, op cit. See Coates, op cit, p 73, fn 46. In 1949, the governments of Australia, New Zealand and the UK agreed to co-ordinate defence planning in the ANZAM (Australia, New Zealand and Malaya) region covering Australia, New Zealand and the British colonial territories of Malaya, Singapore and Borneo. During the early phases of the Emergency, both Australia and New Zealand provided small air and naval units in support of ground forces fighting the communist insurgents. Later in 1955, ANZAM arrangements expanded to cover the defence of Malaya, and Australian and New Zealand ground units joined British and other British Commonwealth forces in counterinsurgency operations. They also formed part of the British Commonwealth Strategic Reserve based in Malaya. Even after Malaya attained independence in 1957, Australia and New Zealand continued to contribute limited air, naval and ground forces in support of Malaya against internal and external aggression under terms of the Anglo–Malayan Defence Treaty 1957 (see Robert L Rau, ‘The Role of the Armed Forces and the Police in Malaya’ in Edward A Olsen & Stephen Jurika Jnr (eds), The Armed Forces in Contemporary Asian Societies, Westview Press, Boulder & London, 1986, pp 153–70). See CO1022/145, ‘External Aid for Malayan Communists’. See Chapter 1 regarding Liu Shao-chi’s declaration of ideological support for the CPM. Australian Commissioner’s Office, Singapore, Top Secret memo No 1746 (25/5/2/1), dated 4 December 1954, to Department of External Affairs, Canberra. Short, op cit, pp 213–6. In April 1952, Major General ER de Fonblanque, a retired British army officer, was appointed Inspector-General of the Home Guard, which was reorganised under his direction. It assumed responsibility for the defence of Malay kampongs and eventually took over the defence of 74 ‘New Villages’ (see Chapter 4). It co-operated with the police in the defence of other New Villages, too, and carried out patrols and sometimes participated with security forces on counterinsurgency operations in areas assigned to it (Federation of Malaya Annual Report 1953, op cit, p. 346). Arkib Negara Malaysia, Misc 16, Emergency Statistics for the Federation of Malaya since 1948, Appendix B, D Inf 7.60/160 (Emerg). ‘Incidents’ were officially classified under two headings: (a) major incidents carried out by CTs, resulting in loss of life, serious injury or considerable damage to property; and (b) minor incidents, that is, all other incidents carried out by CTs. ‘Incidents’ were further subdivided into Type A or B, depending on whether they resulted from ‘careful’ CT planning, involved a degree of risk to the CTs, and demonstrated aggression on the part of the CTs. An ‘incident’ that occurred when the CTs opened fire first was classified as an ‘encounter’. A ‘contact’ was the term used for an encounter between CTs and security forces when the security forces opened fire first. For these detailed classifications, see The Conduct of AntiTerrorist Operations in Malaya, op cit, ‘Definitions’, p xvii.

78

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

44 Despatch No 14, Top Secret. High Commissioner for the United Kingdom, Kuala Lumpur, to Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, London, 5 November 1980, and Zakaria bin Haji Ahmad, ‘The Police and Political Development in Malaya. Change, Continuity and Institution Building of a “Coercive” Apparatus in a Developing Ethnically Divided Society’, PhD thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, May 1977, p 47. 45 Despatch No 14, Top Secret. High Commissioner for the United Kingdom, Kuala Lumpur, to Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, London, 5 November 1980. 46 Miller, op cit, p 181. 47 Colonel Cross illustrated this point by saying that in Central America in 1957 a strike force of no fewer than 43,000 of Guatemala’s soldiers was required to contain 3,000 guerrillas; in El Salvador 49,000 government troops were arrayed against 4,000 guerrillas; in Honduras 22,000 against 2,000; and in Nicaragua 75,000 against 18,000 (see JP Cross, Jungle Warfare. Experiences and Encounters, London: Guild Publishing, 1989, p 100). 48 CO 171/178. Confidential Inward Telegram No 215, 14 February 1949, from Sir Henry Gurney to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. 49 Julian Paget asserted that ‘good intelligence is undoubtedly one of the greatest battlewinning factors in counter-insurgency warfare’ (Julian Paget, Counter-Insurgency Campaigning, London: Faber & Faber, 1967, pp 163–4). 50 Short, op cit, p 141. 51 ibid, p 145. The Right Honourable Malcolm Macdonald, PC, had dual responsibility for colonial and foreign affairs in the area. He was appointed Governor-General of Malaya, Singapore and British Borneo in 1946, and in 1949, he took over from Lord Killearn as British Commissioner-General in South East Asia, with the personal rank of ambassador (Sanger, op cit, p 335). MacDonald’s father, Ramsey MacDonald, was Britain’s first Socialist Prime Minister (1924 and 1929–35).

Reproduced from Malaya's Secret Police 1945-60: The Role of the Special Branch in the Malayan Emergency by Leon Comber (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2008). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available at < http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg >

chapter four The principles of intelligence collection

In this chapter, the methods used by the Special Branch in obtaining intelligence will be discussed, together with the system used to evaluate and grade information. A description will be provided, too, of the CPM’s/ MNLA’s hierarchical structure and organisation. This chapter will also examine how intelligence collected in the Malayan region, including Special Branch intelligence, fitted in with the overall British intelligence picture. The role of SIFE, the combined MI5/MI6 intelligence centre for the Far East, based in the sprawling Singapore offices of the British CommissionerGeneral for South East Asia will be looked at, as well as SIFE’s relationship with the British Joint Intelligence Committee (Far East). Throughout the Emergency, the Special Branch depended heavily on what is referred to in the intelligence community as HUMINT, or human intelligence, rather than technical intelligence. Although the Special Branch was successful in planting agents in the Min Yuen, in detention camps and New Villages, and penetrating the communist courier system, it did not meet with the same success in planting agents in the ranks of the CPM and its military arm, the MNLA, in the jungle. The CTs were extremely suspicious of outsiders. Rather, the Special Branch was able to construct de novo a comprehensive picture of the CPM’s/MNLA’s structure and organisation from information obtained from the interrogation of captured and surrendered guerrillas, as well as the careful examination and analysis of captured communist documents. Captured and surrendered CTs were an unrivalled and unique source of intelligence, as they were able to provide information about the inner workings of the CPM/MNLA that was not available from any other source in the intelligence war. By the early 1950s, the Special Branch had succeeded in constructing a good model of the MNLA’s order-of-battle (or military organisation) and had obtained a clear understanding of the close interrelationship between the CPM and MNLA. It was clear that the Malayan National Liberation Army was a political army and an integral part of the CPM; where necessary, party 79

80

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

officials commanded MNLA units, and MNLA leaders, in turn, carried out political functions. Pre-war, the Special Branch had gathered a considerable amount of information about the Communist Party of Malaya from Lai Teck, the agent it had planted in the heart of the party in the 1930s and who rose to become Secretary-General of the party. But a fresh start had to be made after the war, as most of the pre-war records had been lost during the war or destroyed by the Japanese at the end of the war, and Lai Teck himself had disappeared from the scene in March 1947, when he absconded with CPM funds. It took the Special Branch several years of painstaking work to complete its task of constructing an order-of-battle for the communist insurgents. As soon as a guerrilla was identified, he was charted and allocated a Wanted List (WL) number, and a personal file (PF) or dossier was opened for him in the Special Branch secret registry containing his personal and family particulars, the Chinese characters for his name, including any known aliases, a photograph if available, his rank in the communist organisation, his known operational area, and other pertinent information. In Special Branch terms, he became a ‘charted CT’. While Wylie and Fenner were at Federal Special Branch headquarters (1948–50), they instructed Special Branch units under their command to give top priority to obtaining information about the organisation and structure of the communist forces and securing operational intelligence. At the same time, at federal headquarters itself, a wide-range of ‘non-operational’ intelligence was collected on topics such as: • communist infiltration of ‘open’ organisations, such as trade unions, Chinese schools, political parties and clubs • CPM links with overseas communist parties • trafficking in arms and ammunition • religious sects and practices of political or security importance • politically interesting ‘open source’ material from English and vernacular language newspapers, magazines, and radio programs • prominent political personages.1 By the early 1950s, the Special Branch had constructed a reliable model of the CPM’s/MNLA’s organisation and had established files on almost every individual ranking communist terrorist in the country.2 The Special Branch liaised, too, with the Secretary for Chinese Affairs in the Labour Department3 and the Director of Immigration, who were often



THE PRINCIPLES OF INTELLIGENCE COLLECTION

81

able to provide information of Special Branch interest that came to their notice in their respective departments. There is no doubt that the best intelligence about the communist organisation could be obtained by planting agents or ‘moles’ within its ranks, but this was not easy as the guerrillas were extremely suspicious of outsiders joining them in the jungle. In any case, once an agent had been planted in an MNLA unit in the jungle, there would rarely be an opportunity to meet with or pass on information to his Special Branch case officer. In the relatively few instances where the Special Branch succeeded in inserting agents into the communist jungle army, their debriefing had to wait until an opportunity occurred to extricate themselves and return to the outside world.4 Although the membership of the CPM was predominantly Chinese, a few Malayan-Indians and Malays had joined the communist movement and gone underground at the outbreak of the Emergency. However, the degree of their involvement in the Malayan communist movement was always small and not significant. The Special Branch estimated, for instance, that Malayan-Indians never accounted for more than 5 per cent of the insurgent force. Although Chin Peng intended to ‘Malayanise’ the CPM, he had little success in recruiting either Malay5 or Malayan-Indian members, though the communists encouraged wherever possible the revolutionary potential of both these ethnic groups, especially Indian labourers, who had been active in the Malayan trade union movement before the Emergency. The Indian minority provided the greater part of the labour force on rubber plantations, although some Indians occupied leading positions in the professions, as lawyers, doctors and teachers. The communist movement suffered throughout the Emergency by having a predominantly Chinese membership. It failed to obtain the support of the Malay and Indian populace, which, combined, represented 53.7 per cent of the total Malayan population (with the Indian component only representing around 7 per cent of the total). The result was that the CPM remained throughout a predominantly Chinese party.6 In his autobiography, Chin Peng does not discuss the failure of the CPM in enlisting Malay and Indian support, but in hindsight it is clear that without their support the communist insurrection was doomed to failure.7 The Special Branch was successful in placing undercover agents in the Min Yuen on the jungle fringes. This was often achieved by ‘turning’ targeted Min Yuen members and known communist supporters and threatening to detain them under the Emergency Regulations unless they agreed to co-

82

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

operate.8 The Emergency Regulations (ERs) that were promulgated at the beginning of the Emergency to combat communist terrorism conferred on the Special Branch and the police uniformed branch extraordinary powers of arrest and detention without trial. The writ of habeas corpus was suspended and police were empowered to carry out arrests under the Emergency Regulations for what in more normal times would not have constituted ‘seizable offences’. They were also given authority to search persons and premises without warrant, impose curfews to restrict the movement of persons and vehicles, control the movement of certain foodstuffs (to prevent food being passed to the guerrillas in the jungle), and so on.9 The mandatory sentence under the Emergency Regulations for the unlawful possession of firearms or explosives was death.10 The Secretary of Defence was empowered under Section 17 of the Emergency Regulations, to extend the detention of any persons arrested under the Emergency Regulations for up to twelve months without trial. The period was later increased to two years.11 Another strategy was relocation. By 1952, some half a million Chinese squatters had been moved from areas previously dominated by the communists into resettlement areas or New Villages.12 The Special Branch was successful in placing agents in detention centres and New Villages, especially where, according to Special Branch information, some of the detainees and ‘New Villagers’ were known to be in contact with the guerrillas. The Special Branch also succeeded in penetrating the guerrilla courier system and arresting and ‘turning’ some couriers, who were induced to hand over the documents they carried for reading and copying before they were allowed to be passed on to the next stage in the communist communications system.13 From the point of view of operational intelligence, the Special Branch’s most immediate and valuable sources of information were surrendered and captured guerrillas. As Keith Jeffrey observes, ‘the immediate, thorough and systematic interrogation of a captured terrorist is the most important source of operational intelligence, which should be obtained and acted on immediately if it is to produce results’.14 The extent of the information surrendered and captured guerrillas were willing to reveal was always surprising, and many of them displayed a prodigious memory for names and events. They were often prepared to co-operate with the security forces and provide information about their erstwhile comrades, reveal the location of ‘dead-letter boxes’ where messages were left for collection in the jungle, indicate the jungle paths used by CTs, and guide police and army



THE PRINCIPLES OF INTELLIGENCE COLLECTION

83

units to attack camps and mount ambushes, literally within hours of giving themselves up or being captured. Concerning interrogation methods, it is worth noting that some intriguing questions have been raised in a little-known booklet on the Emergency written by RJW (Dick) Craig, a former head of the Federal Special Branch, which has only recently become available. It would appear that he wrote it at the time he retired from the Malayan Special Branch to join MI6 in 1964. As Craig specifically mentions ‘the employment of excessive strong-arm measures’ [sic] and the use of ‘truth drugs’ to extract information, it is worth quoting the passage in full: Officers on the ground were left to collect information in whatever manner they saw fit. The employment of excessive strong-arm measures to extract information was common, and much use was made of the highly vaunted truth drug [author’s emphasis]. Such instances were symptomatic of the times. The immediate need was for operational intelligence and this was obtained without convention [sic] or restraint. Fortunately, the police soon realised that such measures were proving to be counter-productive because in a guerrilla situation it is of fundamental importance that at least part of the civil population is won over. Prisoners were at least treated in a humane manner and once this was general knowledge, surrenders from the terrorist organisation began to occur. Surrendered enemy personnel (SEPs) quickly provided valuable tactical information for use by Security Forces and from their full interrogation, a wide range of exploitable intelligence was later obtained.15

Though Craig made it clear that he felt that torture was not justified and that prisoners should be treated in a ‘humane manner’, his account refers to practices that were clearly at odds with the generally accepted ‘British’ standards of fair treatment of prisoners and detainees and the constraints of the Geneva Convention. The author wrote to Craig on 7 April 1994 to invite elucidation of his comments but he did not receive a reply, probably because Craig was seriously ill at the time. Although the author subsequently sent him a reminder, he did not hear from him and Craig unfortunately passed away on 25 July 2000 without being able to shed further light on the subject.16 However, as far as it is known, Craig’s reference to ‘strong-arm measures’ and a ‘truth drug’ being used in interrogations has not been mentioned elsewhere in the extensive literature on the Emergency. The author attempted to verify what Craig had written by contacting retired

84

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

British and Asian Special Branch officers but they, too, were unable to confirm his assertions. Nevertheless, unsubstantiated allegations of police brutality do emerge from time to time, though it is always difficult to pin down their source so that they can be investigated. The author himself has no knowledge of such practices. However, it is possible that such allegations may have been fuelled by published reports of the Cyprus Police using strong-arm methods during the British administration of Cyprus, which were subsequently substantiated after enquiry by the British authorities. During the Northern Ireland conflict, it was alleged, too, that the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) Special Branch used force to interrogate IRA prisoners, although in this instance, while admitting there had been some physical ill-treatment of prisoners, the allegations were dismissed by an official British government enquiry. In more recent times, of course, allegations have been made of the ill-treatment of prisoners by US and British forces in Iraq.17 Meanwhile, it is interesting to note that in her doctoral thesis dealing with the Emergency, the Korean scholar Dr Park Bum-Joo Lee quotes the reply of an unidentified senior Malayan police officer who, on being asked in 1954 what was in his opinion the biggest difference between the Emergency then and the Emergency in 1948, replied: ‘less beating up’.18 The subject is clearly of some importance and worthy of further research. The Special Branch’s grading of intelligence supplied by agents and informers was based on the well-known ‘Admiralty System’, as shown in Table 3. Table 3: Evaluation of Special Branch information Source reliability

Information accuracy

A—Completely reliable

1—Confirmed

B—Usually reliable

2—Probably true

C—Fairly reliable

3—Possibly true

D—Not usually reliable

4—Doubtfully true

E—Unreliable

5—Improbable

F—Reliability cannot be judged

6—Accuracy cannot be judged

Source: National Army Museum, Chelsea, ARC 9501–16, ‘Intelligence Grading’, General Sir Rob Lockhart’s Papers.



THE PRINCIPLES OF INTELLIGENCE COLLECTION

85

According to this system, ‘A–5’, for instance, would mean that a source is ‘completely reliable’(based on past performance) but the information provided is ‘improbable’ (based on available evidence).19 The Police Frontier Force, which was established in 1949, provided yet another valuable source of Special Branch information about the movement of guerrillas on and across the Malayan–Thai frontier.20 The Special Branch regularly received reliable information in the early days of the Emergency that small groups of guerrillas were crossing Malaya’s northern frontier into southern Thailand to take refuge and re-train in safe havens they had established there, out of reach of the Malayan security forces. There were unconfirmed reports, too, of the CTs being involved in smuggling drugs across the international border from southern Thailand into Malaya.21 Although technical intelligence gathering was not very sophisticated, the Special Branch was able to arrange through the government Posts and Telegraphs Department for small Special Branch teams to tap the telephones of ‘persons of interest’ whose names were on a Special Branch Watch List. These practices were made easier by the obsolete telephone equipment used and the relatively small number of telephone exchanges and post offices. The Special Branch made similar arrangements for the interception and reading of mail addressed to or from selected target addresses. The simplest equipment was used for this purpose—steam tables and plastic blades.22 Sir Henry Gurney outlined his views on the role of the Special Branch in an official dispatch, dated 9 May 1949, addressed to Creech Jones, the Colonial Secretary in London. They are worth repeating, as they reflect very closely Wylie’s and Fenner’s own interpretation of the functions of the Special Branch: Under modern conditions and trends the police must be sufficiently well informed to forestall where possible and meet if necessary any threat to internal security. They require detailed and precise information regarding political movements, trends and personalities. Politics and crime can quickly become integrated and almost inseparable. The Police must therefore know and understand political movements and trends and their interaction. In other words, the Police must have an efficient Special Branch, which will in fact be the eyes and ears of the Government and the Police themselves. They must work in the closest co-operations with other intelligence organisations and the intelligence branches of the armed forces in the territory.23

In 1950, the Special Branch took over a top-secret interrogation centre, or Holding Centre, that had been originally established earlier in

86

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

the Emergency by a British army research team sent out by the British War Office ‘to cater for the reception, interrogation and the aftercare of surrendered enemy personnel’.24 It was located at Jalan Gurney (now renamed Jalan Semarak), on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, near the Kuala Lumpur Police Training Depot. It was well-concealed on ten acres of land and surrounded by a ten-foot high barbed wire fence that was patrolled by armed police guards. Auster aircraft of the British army Air Corps used a light aircraft landing strip that ran alongside the Centre to fly in high-level captured or surrendered guerrillas for interrogation and important communist documents for translation. It was ‘custom built’ and the ceilings of some rooms or cells had listening devices wired into them. Interrogation rooms were fitted with two-way mirrors, and there was a room for opening and copying intercepted mail, and a workshop for making ‘technical devices’.25 The Holding Centre was seldom referred to openly, even among Special Branch officers, at the time and its existence was not widely known. In the early days of the Emergency, it was referred to among a small group of Special Branch officers at federal Special Branch headquarters who were aware of its existence as the ‘White House’.26 One of the most effective of the ‘technical devices’ was a homing device that could be fitted to battery-operated radio receivers of the type known to be used by the guerrillas in the jungle. The Special Branch ensured that some radio sets ‘adapted’ in this way were made available at attractively cheap prices to Chinese sundry-goods shops known to be covertly supplying goods to the guerrillas. When the radio was switched on, it transmitted a ‘silent signal’ that could be detected by a spotter aircraft flying overhead, thus enabling it to ‘fix’ the location of a guerrilla camp.27 Very little has been written about the ‘technical services’ provided by the Holding Centre for the Special Branch’s more clandestine operations, but it produced a variety of ‘gadgets’, as the various implements of sabotage and destruction were known. It maintained close contact with the British army’s small research team that was attached to the Director of Operations’ staff in Kuala Lumpur. The research team played an important role in developing new techniques and weapons and its personnel often accompanied police and army patrols on operations to experience first-hand the effects of Malaya’s climatic conditions on both men and equipment (especially weapons and radio transmitters) in the jungle, and participated in ambushes.28 Many of the team’s findings were incorporated in The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya (ATOM), a restricted operational manual for the security forces published under the imprimatur of the Director of Operations, Malaya.29



THE PRINCIPLES OF INTELLIGENCE COLLECTION

87

After he became High Commissioner and Director of Operations in 1952, General Templer, too, showed a great interest in the Holding Centre. According to his biographer, he often visited it to observe the Special Branch staff there using ‘tooth-picks to prise open the thin, delicate, easily-hidden, rice paper rolls’ on which the communist guerrillas preferred to write messages, and observe messages being decoded and translated.30 The thin rice-paper rolls on which these messages were written in minute Chinese characters were typical of the messages carried by communist couriers and left at dead-letter boxes in the jungle as part of the communist’s underground communications system. A small specially selected team of high-ranking CPM/MNLA defectors who were experts in ‘turning operations’ assisted the Special Branch officer in charge of the Holding Centre. As they were familiar with communist terminology, they were of great help in translating ‘difficult’ communist documents.31 In the mid-1950s, the most important of the communist defectors working with the Special Branch at the Holding Centre were William Chow Yong Bin, Wong Lin Hong, Tay Ah Meng and Goh Chin Kim.32 William Chow Yong Bin, known colloquially as the ‘Gen’, was the commander of the 1st Regiment MPAJA in Selangor during the Japanese war. He took part in the Victory Parade in London at the end of the war as a member of the MPAJA contingent. Early on in the Emergency, he had a major disagreement with the CPM hierarchy on a matter of ideology and defected to the Special Branch. Wong Lin Hong, whose party name was Chan Choong, was the General Secretary of the communist-controlled Malayan Rubber Workers’ Union in Perak before the Emergency. He became disillusioned with the party and defected to the Special Branch, where he was given the nom de plume of ‘Hardy’. Tay (sometimes spelt ‘Teh’) Ah Meng was arrested by the Special Branch in Singapore. He was at the time the Secretary of the Communist Singapore Town Committee. The details of his arrest and agreeing to work for the Special Branch are as follows. A Chinese Special Branch detective’s attention was drawn to a man waiting for some time at a bus stop in Singapore, who seemed to be ill at ease. Presently, another man approached him and, after greeting each other, the two men exchanged the magazines they were carrying. When they parted, the detective, whose suspicions were aroused by the men’s behaviour, arrested both of them and the magazines

88

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

were found to contain communist documents. The Singapore Special Branch was able to identify one man as Tay Ah Meng and the other as the Secretary of the communist-controlled Singapore Students’ Committee. The documents they were carrying implicated other members of the Singapore Town Committee, all of whom were arrested in 1950. Tay was ‘turned’ and agreed to work with the Special Branch.33 It has not been possible to obtain any information about Goh Chin Kim’s background or how he was ‘turned’, but while working at the Holding Centre, he acquired a formidable reputation as a skilful interrogator and he participated in the interrogation of most of the leading communist guerrillas brought into the centre. In the mid-1950s, the Special Branch referred to him as the ‘Communist Party of Malaya’s most wanted man’. At the end of the Emergency, Goh was provided with a new identity and the Special Branch arranged for him and his family to immigrate to Canada.34 Tay Ah Meng was given a new identity, too, at the end of the Emergency, before disappearing into the community.35 ‘Hardy’ met his death at the hands of an unknown assailant in 1973. His murder remained unsolved, but it was believed to be the work of the Malayan communists levelling scores. The ‘Gen’ survived the Emergency and died of cancer in 1992. Following the appointment in May 1950 of Sir William Jenkin, a retired senior Indian Police Special Branch officer, as Special Branch/CID adviser, the Federal Special Branch headquarters was further fine-tuned and new sections or units were formed to take over responsibility for some of its more specialised interests (which will be reviewed in Chapter 6).36 It took some time to build up the Special Branch, but gradually the improvements that were made began to show results. At the end of 1954, for instance, Lieutenant General Sir Geoffrey Bourne, the Director of Operations, singled out the Special Branch for praise in his Review of the Emergency Situation in Malaya, copies of which were circulated to the Colonial Secretary and the Chiefs of Staff Committee in London: It has taken some time to build up the strength and efficiency of the Special Branch but it is now producing information of increasing accuracy about the Communist Terrorists. Besides dealing in terrorist and underground communism, the Special Branch watches for extremist tendencies in the domestic political field and for local evidence of aspirations of neighbouring countries which may seek to take advantage of the situation. Some 30



THE PRINCIPLES OF INTELLIGENCE COLLECTION

89

military intelligence officers have been integrated with the Special Branch. Their task is to assist in the collation and presentation of tactical intelligence for Emergency operations.37

CPM/MNLA structure and organisation As mentioned earlier, as the Special Branch became organised on a more efficient basis and its expertise improved, it built up a comprehensive picture of the communist organisation—the CPM hierarchy, the MNLA and the Min Yuen—from information supplied by captured and surrendered guerrillas and a study and analysis of captured communist documents.38 As related in Chapter 1, the genesis of the MNLA was the MPAJA, the wartime underground army of the CPM.39 Like the MNLA, the MPAJA was a political army on the usual communist pattern, with political curbs at all levels. Though the MPAJA was disbanded in October 1945, it did not hand in all of its weapons to the authorities. A large quantity of firearms and ammunition, including Bren light machine guns, Sten guns, revolvers, carbines and rifles, that had been dropped by parachute during the war and never reported to the British forces operating with the MPAJA were hidden in secret caches in the jungle for future use.40 As the MPAJA stood down at the end of the war, its members joined the MPAJA Ex-Service Comrades Association. The latter became, in effect, an ‘MPAJA reserve unit’ to be re-activated when the time came for the CPM to take up arms against the British colonial government. The political and military wings of the CPM were always closely integrated, and the MPAJA Ex-Service Comrades Association and its various branches throughout the country shared premises with the CPM’s political branches.41 When it became inevitable that there would be an armed conflict, members of the MPAJA Ex-Service Comrades Association were instructed to take to the jungle and form what became known in February 1949 as the Malayan National Liberation Army. The name ‘Malayan’ was deliberately chosen to attract Malay and Indian participation, and a cap badge of three red stars symbolising the three main ethnic groups of Malaya was adopted. By mid-1950, the guerrillas began to wear uniforms, usually either khaki or green coloured shirts or trousers, with short puttees and rubber-soled boots, to reinforce the concept that they were an ‘army’, though some continued to wear non-descript plain clothes that often made them indistinguishable from rubber tappers or farmers.42

90

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

At the beginning of the Emergency, in June 1948, the MNLA consisted of 10 regiments, totalling some 4,000 personnel. Its strength was later increased nominally to 12 regiments, but the additional two regiments, the 9th and 11th, existed in name only and were never formed (see Table 4). According to CC Too, who headed the Psychological Warfare Section of the Director of Operations Staff and became widely known as an authority on the Communist Party of Malaya, it was intended that those two regiments would operate in east Johore and central Pahang respectively.43 The communists planned to raise, too, an all-Indian 13th Regiment MNLA, but because of a lack of support from the Indian community, it was never formed.44 Although lacking precise information, the Special Branch estimated that about 10 per cent of the guerrillas operating in the jungle were women, who were armed and trained to fight alongside their male comrades.45 Each of the 10 regiments was divided into five companies of four platoons each.46 The strength of a regiment varied from 300 to 800. As O’Ballance has stated, although the actual strengths of the regiments may have changed from time to time during the Emergency, their formation titles continued to be used.47 Because of communication difficulties in the jungle and the delays imposed by the courier system used, each regiment was allowed a certain amount of freedom in interpreting military policy according to local conditions. Table 4: Location of MNLA regiments (1948–49) 1st Regiment MNLA

Selangor

2nd Regiment MNLA

Negri Sembilan

3rd Regiment MNLA

Malacca/North Johore border

4th Regiment MNLA

South Johore

5th Regiment MNLA

Perak

6th Regiment MNLA

North Pahang

7th Regiment MNLA

Perak/Trengganu border

8th Regiment MNLA

Kedah/Province Wellesley

9th Regiment MNLA

Not activated

10th Regiment MNLA

Malay Regiment, Pahang

11th Regiment MNLA

Not activated

12th Regiment MNLA

South Thailand/Perak border

Source: Adapted from Arkib Negara, CC Too, Secret, ‘Notes on the Malayan Communist Party’, p 138 & Lim Cheng Leng, op cit, p 164–5, 169.



THE PRINCIPLES OF INTELLIGENCE COLLECTION

91

Later in the Emergency, probably from 1957 onwards when the government security forces were gaining the upper hand, the MNLA regiments were split up into Independent Platoons varying in strength from about 15 to 30 each, with each platoon consisting of three or four sections. Female nurses often accompanied platoons. When MNLA losses began to mount and increasingly large numbers of guerrillas surrendered to take advantage of the government’s amnesty offers, the surviving platoons were reformed and given dual numbers.48 For example, the remnants of the 13th and 15th platoons in Perak were consolidated into a composite Independent Platoon and renamed the 13/15 Independent Platoon.49 Independent Platoons then became the principal striking forces of the MNLA.50 This was most likely done to retain some semblance of organisation and strength at a time when the military campaign was turning against the communists, and possibly to confuse the Special Branch’s charting of the MNLA order of battle.51 Independent Platoons usually operated under the control of a State Committee Member. According to Craig, locally raised Armed Work Forces (AWFs) were formed to provide a light, forward screen for the Independent Platoons, which relied on them ‘for supplies, intelligence and often for the identification of targets’. An AWF unit usually numbered 14 men.52 Chart 3 shows in diagrammatic form the CPM/MNLA organisation. The CPM itself did not produce an organisational chart showing its political and military structure, and the chart has been constructed from information obtained by the Special Branch from captured and surrendered CTs and a detailed examination and analysis of captured documents. The political and military sides of the CPM were closely integrated, and both Regional Bureaux and State Committees combined, as necessary, political and military functions.53 O’Ballance came close to the situation when he described the CPM’s Central Military Committee as the ‘Politburo under another name’.54 The CPM was organised on orthodox Communist Party lines. As shown in Chart 3, the Central Committee was at the apex of the party structure. It usually consisted of 11 to 15 top-ranking CPM members under the direction of Chin Peng, the Secretary-General. The Central Committee created in plenary session the Politburo, consisting of the Secretary-General, Deputy Secretary-General and one or two other members of the Central Committee. In practice, because of the difficulty of convening meetings of the Central Committee, whose members were scattered in various parts of the jungle throughout Malaya, the full Central Committee rarely met and the Politburo issued policy directives in the name of the party.55

92

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Chart 3: Integration of the Communist Party of Malaya: political and military (MNLA) structure Central Committee (11–15 members) Politburo (3–4 members) Central Military Committee MNLA General HQ MNLA

3 Regional Bureaux North Malayan Bureau (3 members) Central Malaya Bureau (4 members) South Malaya Bureau (2 members) (political-military leaders controlled MNLA units within their respective Regions)

State Committee Members (3–11 members)

State Secretariat Political State/Regional Committee Members (Chairman/Members often commanded MNLA Regiments or acted as Political Officers) District Committee Member Branch Committee Member (providing jungle couriers) Cell Leader/ Min Yuen Member

MNLA Regimental Commander Company Commander Ind. Platoon Commander Armed Work Force (AWF) Section leader Combatant (See Table 4 for location of MNLA Regiments)

Party Membership MNLA approx. 1,000 CPM approx. 3,000 (June 1948) Singapore Town Committee (4 members—no MNLA units) Source: Adapted from Special Branch, Federation of Malaya, ‘Organisation of Malayan Communist Party (since June 1948)’; Salient Operational Aspects of Paramilitary Warfare in Three Asian Areas, The John Hopkins University Operational Research Office, ORO-T-228 (operating under contract with the US Department of the Army); Dato’ Yuen Yuet Leng, Operation Ginger: A Federal Priority Food Denial Operation, 1958–59, unpublished ms, 20 January 1993, p 191; Edgar O’Ballance, Malaya: The Communist Insurgent War, 1948–60, London: Faber & Faber, 1966, pp 98–101; The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya, Director of Operations, Malaya, 1958, Restricted, Chapter II, ‘The Communist Terrorists (CT)’, Section 7, ‘Armed Forces of the MCP’, p 8.



THE PRINCIPLES OF INTELLIGENCE COLLECTION

93

The Special Branch established that the CPM divided Malaya geographically into three regional bureaux: North, Central and South (see Chart 3).56 Directives and instructions were passed from the Central Committee through the Regional Bureaux for transmission to the State Committees operating under the Regional Bureaux. The State Committees, in turn, passed them on to the District Committees, which transmitted them to the Branch Committees. Each State was divided into a number of Districts that were, in turn, sub-divided into Branches to facilitate political and military activities. The District Committees were the main functional organisations of the CPM, with each District Committee controlling an average of four Branch Committees. The District and Branch Committees directed the Min Yuen, the organisation of the masses.57 In large States, where for tactical and administrative convenience it was considered necessary, the CPM established Regional Committees, which worked under the State Committees, such as the North Johore Regional Committee and the South Johore Regional Committee. The CPM’s organisation consisted of ten State/Regional Committees, fifty District Committees and about 200 Branch Committees, with some key personnel serving as both CPM and MNLA leaders.58 The CPM’s state boundaries did not correspond exactly in every case with the official administrative boundaries; they were demarcated by population distribution rather than geographical features. This sometimes caused operational problems when security forces operated across the boundaries of two official administrative states, but any problems that arose were usually solved in a practical way by liaison between the security forces of the two states involved. Towards the latter part of the Emergency, following the general withdrawal of the MNLA to southern Thailand and the Malayan–Thai border area, the MNLA was reduced to three regiments: the 8th Regiment MNLA (or ‘West Regiment’), the 10th Regiment MNLA (or ‘East Regiment) and the 12th Regiment MNLA (or ‘Central Regiment’). The use of the terms ‘West’, ‘East’ and ‘Central’ provided an indication of the locations of the three regiments in southern Thailand. The 10th Regiment MNLA (‘East Regiment’) was a predominantly Malay unit recruited in Temerloh, Pahang. The Special Branch estimated that it consisted of approximately 160 Malays. There were estimated to

94

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

be 140 Malays in other guerrilla units. When the 10th Regiment MNLA retreated into southern Thailand, it was re-organised into a ‘Department of Malay Work’ and allocated the task of promulgating communist propaganda among the local Malay community and supporting the long-standing Malay irredentist movement in southern Thailand, which will be discussed in Chapter 11.59 There was a special reason behind the formation of an all-Malay 10th Regiment in Pahang. As the Communist Party of Malaya claims in its short history published in 1946, under the title Nan Zao Zhi Chun (‘Spring in the South Seas’), Pahang was the centre of a protracted Malay uprising against British rule in the late 19th century that took the British five years to quell.60 In the 1950s, the British colonial authorities still regarded Pahang as a centre of Malay disaffection and it was considered a ‘difficult’ state to administer. The Pahang uprising became enshrined in local folklore and it was kept fresh in the memory of local Malay nationalists, who held it up as an example of Malay resistance to British colonial rule. The sizeable population of recent Indonesian immigrants, who had settled in the state and were hostile to British colonial rule, did not make the situation any easier.61 Generally speaking, Malays and Indians were not attracted to communism, though there were some notable exceptions, and even when they joined the communist movement, it was difficult to determine whether they were motivated by nationalist or communist ideals.62 In any event, they were mistrusted by the Chinese-dominated CPM and usually kept in their own separate sections or units. Towards the end of the 1950s, some changes in the CPM’s organisation took place. The Central and the West Regional Bureaux (see Chart 3) ceased to exist after most of the guerrilla units under their control had moved across the border into southern Thailand. The North Regional Bureau remained to cover the northern Malayan territories of Penang/Kedah, Kelantan and Perak, but it was later replaced by two branch committees covering the same area.63 At the beginning of the Japanese war, Chin Peng was based in Perak with the 5th Regiment of the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army. By the end of 1943, he became Secretary of the CPM’s Perak State Committee, with responsibility for the Party and the MPAJA in Perak. He was responsible for liaising with the British Force 136 officers, who had been infiltrated by submarine from Ceylon (Sri Lanka) early on in the Japanese occupation to establish contact with the MPAJA.64



THE PRINCIPLES OF INTELLIGENCE COLLECTION

95

The Secretary-General of the Communist Party of Malaya, Lai Teck, a Vietnamese of obscure origins, remained in Singapore and did not go underground to join the MPAJA in the jungle.65 Not long after the fall of Singapore, his identity was revealed to the Japanese kempeitei and he was forced under pain of death to change sides and work for them. His case officer was Major Satorou Onishi, who was arrested at the end of the war as a war criminal and sentenced to life imprisonment.66 Lai Teck betrayed to Japanese intelligence many of his erstwhile comrades in the CPM. At the end of hostilities, when it seemed likely that he would be denounced to the CPM as a Japanese spy, and his pre-war activities as a British secret agent unmasked, he absconded with the CPM’s funds, only to be tracked down in Bangkok, after some months on the run, where he was killed by communist cadres.67 This led the way open for Chin Peng to take over as Secretary-General of the CPM. Many volumes could be written about Lai Teck, who had worked prewar for the French intelligence service Sureté Général Indochinoise in French Indo-China and had been handed over by them firstly to the Hong Kong Special Branch when his activities as a French agent were about to be unmasked, and then passed on to the Singapore Special Branch. His communist credentials were impressive and the Singapore Special Branch planted him in the early 1930s as a mole in the Communist Party of Malaya. It says much for the expertise of the Singapore Special Branch and Lai Teck’s own ability and deviousness that he quickly rose through the CPM’s ranks to become Secretary-General of the Party.68 Although Chin Peng does not refer to it in his memoirs, Lai Teck’s pre-war Special Branch case officer was FI (Innes) Tremlett, an assistant superintendent in the Singapore Special Branch, who escaped from Singapore at the time of the Japanese invasion, and was commissioned in the British army. He joined Force 136 in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and became head of Force 136’s Malayan Country Section. Tremlett returned briefly to Singapore as a lieutenant colonel in Force 136 at the end of the war, but was tragically killed in an air accident returning to Force 136 headquarters in Ceylon in October 1945.69

The British Central Intelligence machinery How did Special Branch intelligence collected on the ground in Malaya fit in with the matrix of British intelligence in the area and the central intelligence machinery in London? It did impinge at some points, though

96

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

not in a significant or direct way, as will be examined below. The Special Branch was mainly concerned with real-time operational intelligence that could be used by the security forces on the ground in Malaya to fight the communist terrorists, whereas the London intelligence organisation was concerned with higher-level strategic intelligence of national importance. The hub of Britain’s intelligence interests in the Far East was SIFE in Singapore.70 It maintained an office staffed by MI5/MI6 officers from Britain in the regional headquarters of the British Commissioner General for South East Asia in Singapore. The Times (London) aptly described the Commissioner-General’s sprawling offices at Phoenix Park, Tanglin Road, Singapore, as a ‘tropical duplication of Whitehall’.71 They consisted of five departments: diplomatic, colonial, economic, technical and labour, each headed by a senior British civil servant and supported by a large staff of expatriate secretaries. Though SIFE maintained contact with the heads of both the Singapore and the Malayan Special Branches, as stated, it was not concerned with routine ground-level counterinsurgency intelligence with which the Special Branch was feeding the military in Malaya, but it was provided by both Special Branches with copies of any higher level intelligence papers that were likely to be of strategic interest.72 In Malaya, MI5, as Britain’s domestic security service with an interest in security intelligence in British colonial territories, maintained contact with the Malayan Special Branch in Kuala Lumpur through the MI5 Security Liaison Officer based there. Although it did not run its own agents in Malaya and it did not interfere in the work of the Special Branch, it was understood that its advice would be available if requested. On the other hand, MI6, as Britain’s foreign intelligence service, was not directly concerned with internal security in Malaya, and it used Singapore as its regional hub for intelligence gathering in non-British territories in Southeast Asia. SIFE prepared intelligence briefs as instructed by the Joint Intelligence Committee (Far East) in Singapore, which submitted regular reports to the British JIC in London, the most important element of the British central intelligence machinery with a direct link to the Prime Minister.73 The JIC in London was part of the British Cabinet Office and employed an assessment staff of about forty intelligence officers, seconded from the armed forces, MI5, MI6 and the Foreign Office. At the time of the Emergency, the JIC in London prepared a Weekly Review of Current Intelligence for the British Chiefs of Staff and government ministers dealing with secret intelligence



THE PRINCIPLES OF INTELLIGENCE COLLECTION

97

matters.74 The JIC had an important role to play in providing British ministers and departments with regular assessments of matters likely to require highlevel policy decisions relevant to Britain’s security, defence and foreign affairs. The committee members were senior officers of the Foreign Office, Ministry of Defence, Department of Trade and Industry, Treasury, and the Heads of MI5, MI6 and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). Other departments, including the Home Office, attended JIC meetings by invitation. The Colonial Office, however, ensured that colonial intelligence matters were not neglected by appointing a permanent representative to the JIC on 8 October 1948, probably as a result of the deteriorating security situation in Malaya resulting from the communist uprising in Malaya. The chair of the JIC, known as the Intelligence Coordinator, had the right of direct access to the British Prime Minister through the Secretary of the Cabinet.75 At the same time, there was a parallel reporting channel to the Colonial Office in London through the British High Commissioner in Kuala Lumpur, who drafted monthly intelligence reports incorporating Special Branch intelligence for the information of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, copies of which were supplied to the service directors of intelligence in London. It was from these reports, and similar reports from other British colonies, that the Colonial Office compiled its own monthly Colonial Office Political Intelligence Summary for the heads of British government departments. Additionally, the Colonial Office prepared an abstract from the summary, called the Colonial Office Review of Current Intelligence, for the information of the JIC.76 As Britain’s most senior and prominent Colonial and Foreign Office representative in the area, Malcolm MacDonald, the British CommissionerGeneral for South East Asia, played an important part in furthering Britain’s diplomatic and political interests, and he was particularly interested in the role of intelligence in the struggle that was taking place in Malaya. At his headquarters in Singapore, he chaired annual meetings of the Joint Intelligence Committee (Far East) and the Defence Co-ordinating Committee, attended by senior civil and service intelligence officers to review regional political, economic and security intelligence matters. MacDonald used to visit Kuala Lumpur regularly to be briefed by the High Commissioner, Sir Henry Gurney, on the progress of the Emergency and at the same time he provided informal briefings to members of the

98

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Malayan Legislative Council on political developments in the wider field of Southeast and Northeast Asia. When General Templer became High Commissioner and Director of Operations in 1952 (Chapter 8), he paid particular attention to the Special Branch and intelligence matters, and ensured that Special Branch intelligence was not overlooked in his monthly reports to the Secretary of State for the Colonies.

Conclusion In summary, although after taking over from the MSS in August 1948 the Special Branch had been criticised by senior officers of both the civil administration and the army for failing to provide timely operational information on which the police and army counterinsurgency operations could be mounted, by the early 1950s, there had been a noticeable improvement in its performance. At federal level, the Special Branch had been organised on a functional basis, and Special Branch officers had been posted on the ground at police contingent (state) and district levels. Information was being gathered at Federal Special Branch headquarters on a wide range of operational and non-operational topics, and Special Branch and army relations had begun to improve after it was accepted that the Special Branch was the government’s main intelligence agency and that the army was acting in support of the civil power. By the early 1950s, the Special Branch had begun to settle down as the ‘eyes and ears’ of the government. It had become more confident and proficient in establishing a widespread network of agents and informers and collecting, collating, analysing and disseminating information. By 1951, based on information provided by captured and surrendered CTs and an analysis of captured documents, it had obtained a good understanding of the close relationship between the CPM and its military arm, the MNLA, and had worked out the hierarchical structure of the CPM/MNLA. Most of the leading communist terrorists had been identified and allocated Wanted List numbers. Despite these achievements in setting up the infrastructure for intelligence gathering, by the end of 1949 the British government was so anxious about the threat of the communist insurgency that it decided to send a series of high-level visitors and delegations to review the counterinsurgency strategies that had been developed after the abolition of the MSS and the establishment



THE PRINCIPLES OF INTELLIGENCE COLLECTION

99

of the Special Branch. In particular, the Colonial Office was concerned to develop a much more effective system for monitoring and countering the activities of the Malayan–Chinese communists, who continued to evade detection partly because of the low level of Chinese language expertise at the Special Branch. The colonial administration was all too aware of the weaknesses of the Special Branch at this time and hence sought to find out how the police, military and civil administration could be harnessed more effectively. This was no mean task, given the ongoing commitment to running the counterinsurgency response as a civilian action rather than a military campaign. The next chapter looks at these ‘agents of change’ as a prelude to the appointment of the first Director of Intelligence in 1950 and the Briggs Plan of the same year. The chapters following emphasise the administrative initiatives that followed the high-level visits, and look at more fundamental logistical assumptions about the intelligence war.

Notes 1 2

3

4

5

Author’s notes. WO 106/5990, Secret, ‘1957 Review of Director of Operations Malaya’, p 27, and Komer, op cit, pp 42–5. See also Karl Hack, ‘British Intelligence and Counter-Insurgency in the Era of Decolonisation: The Example of Malaya’, Intelligence and National Security, 14(2), 1999, pp 124–55, and Zakaria bin Haji Ahmad, ‘The Police and Political Development in Malaya’ in Zakaria bin Haji Ahmad (ed), Government and Politics of Malaysia, Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1997, p 116. The Secretariat for Chinese Affairs was known before the Second World War as the ‘Chinese Protectorate’. It was, in effect, an administrative department staffed by British Malayan Civil Service (MCS) administrative officers who could speak Chinese and whose duties brought them into close contact with the Chinese section of the population. It acted virtually as a ‘bridge’ between the Chinese labour force and the government. Its name was changed post-war to ‘Secretariat for Chinese Affairs’ when it was merged with the Labour Department (see JM Gullick, Malaysia, London: Ernest Benn Ltd, 1969, p 108). An outstanding example is that of Inspector TS Sambanthamurthi, a Special Branch officer, who risked his life by ‘joining’ a small Indian guerrilla unit in the Kluang area of Johore. Details of his exploits are still embargoed but when he emerged from the jungle he brought with him a considerable amount of valuable information. He was awarded the George Medal (GM) for bravery at a secret ceremony held at King’s House, Kuala Lumpur, in 1955, but it was not until 1957 that the award was publicly announced (see Tim Hatton, Tock Tock Birds. A Spider in the Web of International Terrorism, Sussex: The Book Guild Ltd, 2004, p 211). In 1947–48, the CPM seeded the formation of the Malay Nationalist Party (MNP), a left-wing anti-British political body, with an initial grant of 50,000–60,000 Straits dollars. The intention was that the MNP would throw its support behind the CPM, but the MNP was soon proscribed by the British colonial authorities and the CPM’s attempt

100

6

7 8

9

10

11 12

13

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

to obtain Malay support in this way failed. See Short, op cit, pp 25, 58, and Chin Peng, op cit, p 155. Approximately 90 per cent of the CTs were Chinese. However, in addition to some Malay and Malayan-Indian members, there were, too, a few Javanese, Thais and Japanese (see The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya (ATOM), Director of Operations, Malaya, Restricted, Chapter II, ‘The Communist Terrorists (CT), Section 9, ‘Notes on the CT Organisation’, 3rd edn, 1958, p 10). The small Japanese group consisted initially of perhaps as many as 100 Japanese soldiers, together with some Japanese civilians who had worked in Malaya during the Japanese occupation, who had refused to surrender at the end of the war and had thrown in their lot with the CPM to fight against the return of British colonial rule. The most prominent Malayan-Indian member of the CPM was RG Balan, who had been one of three CPM representatives sent to attend the Empire Conference of Communist Parties in London in 1947. He had been active pre-Emergency in the left-wing Perak Rubber Labourers’ Union. He was arrested in May 1948 when he was about to enter the jungle to join the guerrillas, and detained for ten years under the Emergency Regulations. He was elected in absentia Vice-President of the CPM Central Committee in 1955. (See Cheah Boon Kheng, ‘The Legal Period: 1945–8. The Malayan Communist Party and its Relations with Malays, British and “Bourgeois Nationalists”’, in CC Chin & Karl Hack (eds), Dialogues with Chin Peng: New Light on the Malayan Communist Party, Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2004, pp 255–9). See Leon Comber, review of Alias Chin Peng. My Side of History (Chin Peng, op cit), in Intelligence & National Security, 19(1) 2004, pp 125–9. For a definition of ‘turning operations’ see Chapter 1. Turning operations are said to have derived from the practice followed by MI5 in 1939 after the start of the Second World War, of ‘turning round’ captured German spies who had been infiltrated into England, rather than executing them, and then using them to transmit false information back to Germany (see Desmond Ball & David Horner, Breaking the Codes. Australia’s KGB Network, St Leonard’s: Allen & Unwin, 1998, p 277). CO 717/167, ‘The Emergency Regulations Ordinance, 1948’ (Federation of Malaya No 10 of 1948), Supplement to the Federation of Malaya Government Gazette, 15 July 1948, and subsequent revisions and additions enacted in 1949 and 1953. See also Short, op, cit, pp 141–2. On 1 June 1950, the mandatory death sentence was extended to cover ‘anyone demanding, collecting or receiving supplies for guerrillas’ (Short, op cit, p 241, fn 7). Up to 30 November 1949, 77 CTs had been hanged. By the end of 1949, 5,000 persons had been detained under the Emergency Regulations. DEF 7/421/10A, Secret, Despatch No 3, dated 12 January 1950, from Sir Henry Gurney, High Commissioner, Federation of Malaya, to Secretary of State for the Colonies. Short devotes a whole chapter to the squatter problem (Short, op cit, pp 173–205). After Chin Peng moved his headquarters from Pahang to the Betong Salient in southern Thailand in 1952, the Special Branch ascertained that there was a clearly defined courier route stretching some 800 kilometres from the Malayan–Thai border to Johore and Singapore in the south. Guerrilla units in the jungle usually maintained contact with each other through a network of trusted couriers operating to pre-arranged ‘dead letter’ boxes or rendezvous where messages could be left or handed over for onward



14 15

16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23 24 25

26 27

THE PRINCIPLES OF INTELLIGENCE COLLECTION

101

transmission. Wireless communication in the Malayan jungle was notoriously unreliable and difficult (see The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya (ATOM), op cit, Chapter XVI, ‘Wireless Communications in Malaya’). See Jeffrey, op cit. RJW (Dick) Craig, ‘A Short Account of the Malayan Emergency’, cyclostyled booklet, September 1964, p 6. Richard Craig, OBE, MC, CPM (1921–2000) had a distinguished career as a soldier, colonial police officer (Special Branch) and intelligence officer (MI6). He served in the Palestine Police in 1946 and joined the Malayan Police in 1948 soon after the beginning of the Emergency. He retired from the Malayan Police in 1964 as Head of the Federal Special Branch, with the rank of Senior Assistant Commissioner of Police. He was subsequently employed by MI6 and served in the Gulf States (1966–69) and in Delhi (1973–75). According to The Times (London) obituary, 10 August 2000, ‘His public face was that of a large, talkative and boisterous Irishman—an impression of which he was well aware and which he was not above exploiting. Underneath was a conscientious, hardworking, professional with a sensitive feeling for situations and people’. The Guardian, 20 April 2004, and The Australian, 7 January 2005. See The Age (Melbourne), 6 November 2006 p 14. Park, Bum-Joo Lee, ‘The British Experience of Counterinsurgency in Malaya: The Emergency, 1948–1960’, American University, PhD, 1965, p 126. See also Henry Howe Robinson, The Intelligence Establishment, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970, p xv. A similar system used by some US intelligence organisations is referred to as the ‘Double Six’ system. Federation of Malaya Annual Report 1949, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1950, p 142. Author’s notes. Letter from Guy C Madoc to author, dated 10 March 1995. CO717/178, Confidential, Despatch No 2, dated 9 May 1949, from Sir Henry Gurney to Secretary of State for the Colonies. Lim Cheng Leng, op cit, p 82. Author’s notes and conversation in Kuala Lumpur on 17 November 1995 with VK Jeganathan, KMM, AMN, former Superintendent of Police, Special Branch, who was employed in the Holding Centre in the 1950s. The design of the Holding Centre resembled a similar MI5 specialist interrogation centre at Latchmere House, known during the Second World War as ‘Camp 0200’, near the Surrey village of Ham Common in Britain, which was enclosed within two perimeter fences surrounded by a thick wicket fence cutting off visual contact with the outside. It had cells that were ‘bugged’ and an interrogation room with a two-way mirror (see West, op cit, pp 141–50). Author’s notes. Lieutenant General John Coates, former Chief of Staff of the Australian Army, told the author that the transmission of such a signal gave away the location of the communist camp in the jungle near Ipoh that enabled it to be bombed by Lincoln bombers (author’s telephone conversation with Lieutenant General Coates, Defence Force Academy, Canberra, 5 March 1990).

102

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

28 See The Straits Times, 9 March 1958, for an interesting article by Harry Miller on the British Army’s Research Unit. The operational research unit sent an officer to Kenya during the Mau Mau uprising to see if there were any worthwhile techniques used there that could be adapted for use in Malaya. As a result of observing the ‘natural’ tracking expertise of local ethnic tribes, it was decided to bring in some Iban trackers from Borneo who, after first attending a course at the British Army Far East Jungle Warfare Training Centre at Kota Tinggi, Johore, were employed as trackers on jungle patrols with the security forces. 29 The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya, Restricted, Kuala Lumpur: Director of Operations, Malaya, 1958. 30 John Cloake, Templer, Tiger of Malaya. The Life of Field Marshall Sir Gerald Templer, London: Harrap, 1985, p 234. 31 The ‘turning’ of communist terrorists to win them over to the government side, referred to previously, required an intimate understanding of communist terrorist psychology. It depended largely on the interrogating officer’s ability, skill and rapport in dealing with the person under interrogation. Arguments were developed to emphasise: (a) the overwhelming strength of the security forces and the sheer futility of carrying on the struggle and existing for years in the jungle without any benefit; (b) the prevalence of internal rivalries and differences within the CPM and the MNLA; and (c) the fear of the death penalty that was mandatory for the unlawful possession of firearms, ammunition and explosives. The system of large rewards offered by the government for the capture, surrender or killing of their erstwhile comrades, and the recovery of firearms, explosives and ammunition, undoubtedly provided a powerful incentive. 32 Singapore National Archives, Oral History Centre, Interview No B000032/030, George E Bogaars. Bogaars was a local senior Singapore civil servant who was appointed by the then Singapore Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, to head the Singapore Special Branch. It was the first time a non-serving police officer had been appointed to the post. In Bogaars’ oral testimony, he referred to the communist experts at the Holding Centre as the ‘Brains Trust’. 33 See John Drysdale, Singapore. Struggle for Success, Singapore: Times Books International, 1984, pp 69–70. 34 Letter to author from Yoong Siew Wah, a former senior Singapore Special Branch officer, dated 7 June 1994, and discussions with VK Jaganathan, former Superintendent, Malayan Special Branch, Kuala Lumpur, 17 November 1995. Yoong had a distinguished career in the Singapore Special Branch in the 1950s. In 1961, he was appointed Director of the Singapore Anti-Corruption Agency before returning to intelligence duties in 1971 and becoming Director of Singapore’s Internal Security Department (ISD), the successor of the Singapore Special Branch. 35 Yoong Siew Wah, ‘Reminiscences of a Special Branch Executive (1984)’ (unpublished manuscript in possession of the author), p 1, and letters to author from Yoong, dated 16 May and 7 June 1994. The author is grateful to Yoong Siew Wah for his assistance in providing him with a copy of his unpublished manuscript. 36 Sir William Norman Prentice Jenkin, Kt, CSI, CIE, KPM (1899–1983), a former senior Indian Police officer, was brought out of retirement in the UK to take up the appointment of Director of Intelligence, Malaya (1950–51). He joined the Indian Police Service in 1919 and was promoted to Superintendent in 1927. Before retiring in 1947, he had been



37 38

39 40 41 42 43

44 45 46 47 48

49 50 51 52 53 54 55

56

THE PRINCIPLES OF INTELLIGENCE COLLECTION

103

Deputy Director, Indian Intelligence Bureau, Home Department, Government of India (Who Was Who, op cit). Secretary, Director of Operations Review of the Emergency Situation in Malaya at the end of 1954 (10 January 1955). The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya, Restricted. Kuala Lumpur: Director of Operations 1958 (3rd edn), Chapter II, ‘The Communist Terrorists (CT)’, Section 7, p 8. Edgar O’Ballance, Malaya: The Communist Insurgent War, 1948–1960, London: Faber & Faber Ltd, 1966, p 103. The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya, op cit, Section 4, ‘The Disbandment of the MPAJA and After’, p 4. Short, op cit, p 33. O’Ballance, op cit, pp 105–6. Arkib Negara, Kuala Lumpur, CC Too Papers, Secret, ‘Notes on the Malayan Communist Party, Précis of a Talk given at the Information Services Headquarters on 3.5.56’, p 318, and Lim Cheng Leng, op cit, pp 164–5, 169. Lim Cheng Leng, a senior Special Branch officer, was a long-term colleague of CC Too in the field of psychological warfare. Author’s notes. O’Ballance, op cit, p 89. Komer, op cit, pp 7–8. O’Ballance, op cit, p 140. The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya, op cit, Chapter II, Section 7, ‘Armed Forces of the MCP’, p 8, and Kumar Ramakrishna, ‘Content, Credibility and Context: Propaganda Government Surrender Policy and the Malayan Communist Terrorist Mass Surrenders of 1958’, Intelligence & National Security, 14(1), 1999. Leong Chee Woh’s email to author, 25 March 1999. The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya, op cit, Chapter II, Section 7, ‘Armed Forces of the MCP’, p 8. Arkib Negara, Kuala Lumpur, CC Too Papers, Secret. ‘Appendix ‘B’, Précis of Talk given on 8.3.56’, p 39. Craig, op cit, p 10. The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya, op cit, Chapter II, Section 6—Present Organisation, para 5, ‘Military High Command’. O’Ballance, op cit, p 89. Arkib Negara, Secret, CC Too Papers, ‘Notes on the Malayan Communist Party’, PWS/ Conf/79/72, para 34, and The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya, op cit, Chapter II, ‘The Communist Terrorists (CT), Section 6, ‘Organisation of the MCP’, p 7. CO 717/178 (20-26/5/49), Annex to Report No 17, paras 6, ‘Secret Strategic Plan, October & December 1948’, Eastern Department, Colonial Office. A document recovered by the Special Branch, believed to be in the handwriting of Chin Peng, confirmed the establishment of the three bureaux prior to December 1948.

104

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

57 The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya, op cit, Section 6, ‘Organisation of the MCP’, p 6. 58 Rhodes House Library, Oxford, Young Papers, ‘Organisation of MCP (January 1955)’. 59 Starner, op cit, p. 145; Leong Chee Woh, Scorpio. The Communist Eraser, Taiwan: Lao Bai & Tang Publishing House, 1996, p 40; and Craig, op cit, p 5. 60 A British expeditionary force put down the Pahang Rebellion in 1895 (Amarjit Kaur, Historical Dictionary of Malaysia, Metuchen, & London: The Scarecrow Press Inc, 1993). 61 See Short, op cit, pp 208–9. 62 CO 1022/205, CIS (53) (3) (Amended Final). Secret. ‘Malay Participation in the Present Emergency’, paper by the Combined Intelligence Staff. 63 Starner, op cit, p 245. 64 Chin Peng, op cit, pp 102, and 138. Chin Peng has provided an interesting account of this period in his autobiography. See also CC Chin, ‘In Search of the Revolution: A Brief Biography of Chin Peng’ in CC Chin & Karl Hack (eds), Dialogues with Chin Peng: New Light on the Malayan Communist Party, Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2004, p 350. 65 ibid, p 23. According to Denis Warner, the distinguished Australian foreign correspondent, Lai Teck’s original Vietnamese name was Nguyen Van Long (see Denis Warner, Out of the Gun, London, Hutchinson, 1956, p 138 and Warner’s letter to author, dated 4 May 1994) but it has not been possible to confirm this from any other source. Warner gives his source as Tran Vin Dinh, a Vietnamese who was heavily involved with the Vietnamese resistance to French colonial rule. Lai Teck adopted many aliases, including ‘Mr Wright’ (a name probably based on the Cantonese pronunciation of the Chinese characters for ‘Lai Teck’), Chang Hung, Wong Siu Tong, Wong Kim Geok and many others. Chin Peng (op cit) gives his name as ‘Lai Te’, following the putonghua pronunciation. 66 Chin Peng, op cit, pp 82–3. 67 ibid, p 190. 68 An excellent account of Lai Teck and his activities is provided by the Japanese scholar Yoji Akashi (op cit, pp 37–103). See also Ban Kah Choon, op cit, p 133. 69 According to the Malayan Establishment Staff List (FCO Library, JF 1521, 1 July 1941, p 57), Tremlett was an assistant superintendent in the Singapore Special Branch in 1941. For mention of Tremlett in Force 136, see Charles Cruikshank, SOE. Special Operations Executive in the Far East, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986, pp 12, 129, 209fn, 210fn. Edward Gent, then a senior Colonial Office official, reported his death in a letter, reference 50745/5/445 dated 14 December 1945, to AH Dickinson, former Inspector General of the Straits Settlements Police. Chin Peng told the author on 19 February 1999 in Canberra that he was introduced to Tremlett by Colonel John HL Davis, Force 136, in Kuala Lumpur in 1945 after the Japanese surrender, which must have been just before Tremlett left Singapore to return to Ceylon. After Tremlett’s tragic death, AEG (Alan) Blades, then in the Malayan Security Service, became Lai Teck’s case officer until Lai Teck absconded in 1947 (author’s notes).



THE PRINCIPLES OF INTELLIGENCE COLLECTION

105

70 See Richard J Aldrich, The Hidden Hand. Britain, American and Cold War Secret Intelligence, Woodstock & New York: The Overlook Press, 2002, p 496. 71 The Times, London, 5 December 1952. 72 An example of this, according to the author’s recollection when he was at Federal Special Branch headquarters in 1949, was a paper that he prepared on arms trafficking across the Straits of Malacca between Malaya and Indonesia. 73 Philip HJ Davies, ‘The SIS Singapore Station and the Role of the Far East Controller: Secret Intelligence Structure and Process in Post-War Colonial Administration’, in Richard J Aldrich, Gary D Rawnsley & King-Yeh T Rawnsley, The Clandestine Cold War in Asia, 1945–65, London & Portland: Frank Cass Publishers, 2000, pp 105–6. See also National Intelligence Machinery, London: The Stationery Office Ltd, 2000, passim. 74 CAB 158/20/JIC (55) 28, Top Secret. ‘Methods of Handling and Distribution of Intelligence Reports from the Colonies’, pp 8–9. 75 National Intelligence Machinery, op cit, passim. See also Sir Rodvic Braithwite, ‘Assessment and Analysis: Building an Accurate Picture’, in Harold Shukan (ed.), Agents for Change. Intelligence Services in the 21st Century, London: St Ermine’s Press, 2000, pp 97–107. 76 CAB 158/20/JIC (55) 28, Top Secret, ‘Methods of Handling and Distribution of Intelligence Reports from the Colonies’, p 7.

106

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Reproduced from Malaya's Secret Police 1945-60: The Role of the Special Branch in the Malayan Emergency by Leon Comber (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2008). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available at < http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg >

chapter five Agents of change (1949–52)

From 1949 onwards, the British government sent several senior officials, a police mission, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), and a Cabinet minister to Malaya to assess and report on the situation on the ground. It was becoming increasingly clear to the government that the communist insurgency could only be defeated by an improvement in the higher direction of the campaign and the re-thinking of the strategy to be followed. This chapter seeks to review the above visits and the impact they had on the Special Branch and the intelligence war. As noted at the end of Chapter 3, reform of the Special Branch was badly needed and it fell to these ‘agents of further change’ to suggest what should be done. In particular, the lack of Chinese-speaking expatriate officers in the Special Branch and the civil administration received special attention. One of the first senior officers to visit Singapore and Malaya from the Colonial Office after the declaration of Emergency was Colonel WC Johnson, Police Advisor to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. He arrived in Singapore in September 1949.1 Before being appointed to his Colonial Office post in 1948, Johnson had been one of His Majesty’s Inspectors of Constabulary in Britain. He was responsible for reviewing the organisation and performance of the various British colonial police forces, especially the work of the Special Branch.2 The appointment, which was new one, was made when it became apparent to the British authorities that the Comintern was attempting to stir up ‘disaffection and disturbances in the colonial dependencies of Western “imperialism”’.3 It is likely that Johnson’s visit resulted from a memo that Ernest Bevan, the British Foreign Secretary, sent to the British Prime Minister in the autumn of 1948 indicating that as ‘our colonial territories are likely to be the principal objectives of communist attack…we should have the best possible intelligence about communist activity’.4 General Hollis, the Principal Staff Officer to the Ministry of Defence, supported Bevan’s submission to the Prime Minister. In furtherance to what Bevan wrote, he expressed the view to the Prime Minister that ‘the best way to achieve this is to strengthen and 107

108

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

tune up our colonial police forces. We must have good intelligence on the spot so that communist activities can be apprehended right from the start… recent events…in Malaya demonstrated this need’ (see Table 5).5 The Prime Minister accepted the proposals and it was decided on 8 October 1948 that the Colonial Office should appoint a permanent representative to the Joint Intelligence Committee to ensure that secret intelligence matters referring to the colonies were not overlooked.6 At the same time, Creech Jones, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, sent a secret despatch to all colonial governors advising them to ensure that their Special Branches were ready and up-to-strength, and their police forces placed on alert to deal with what was likely to be a serious threat to internal security posed by local communist parties. As Creech Jones pointed out, the Special Branch would be the vanguard of any counter-offensive against communist subversion.7 As far as the Colonial Office in London was concerned, as early as 1948 it had considered establishing a ‘political intelligence section’ to replace the existing Defence and General Department to deal specifically with matters that were likely to fall within the purview of police intelligence. Nothing came of it at the time, but when the matter was raised again and given further consideration, a Defence, Intelligence and Security section or department was formed in the Colonial Office in 1955.8 How serious was the internal security situation at the time of Johnson’s visit? Bearing in mind that Johnson visited Singapore in September 1949 and went on to Kuala Lumpur in early October, Sir Henry Gurney’s despatch to the Secretary of State for the Colonies covering the period from the outbreak of the Emergency to the end of November 1949, provides an overall impression of the security situation at the time of Johnson’s visit.9 In the general body of his report, Gurney pointed out that ‘information given by bandits [sic]10 who have surrendered…has furnished most valuable intelligence not obtainable earlier in regard to the composition, condition and plans of the bandit forces, and as to their communications and sources of supply’. Gurney’s comments confirm the importance the Special Branch attached to information obtained from captured and surrendered CTs referred to in the preceding chapter. Nevertheless, Gurney sounded a note of warning by adding that ‘the political brains behind the Communist effort remain for practical purposes untouched and unlocated’.11



AGENTS OF CHANGE (1949–52)

109

In his despatch, Gurney recounted the government’s successes during the 18 months under review against the communist terrorists, which are summarised below: • 942 communist terrorists had been killed, 303 wounded, 241 surrendered and 569 captured. • 4,456 firearms/explosives of various sorts had been recovered, including 3,600 rifles, 45 machine guns, 1,488 hand grenades and 565,000 rounds of small arms ammunition.12 • 72 communist terrorists had been hanged for capital offences under the Emergency Regulations. • 1,108 terrorist camps in the jungle had been located and destroyed. • Approximately 10,000 communist terrorists and ‘their supporters and families’ had been deported to China.13 • Approximately 5,000 communist supporters had been detained under the Emergency Regulations for participation in the armed uprising in one form or another.14 • 4,500 Chinese squatters had been resettled from areas ‘previously dominated by the Malayan Communist Party’. Gurney did not provide details of civilian or security force casualties for the same period, but the figures for June 1948 to December 1949 are indicated in Table 5. They substantiate that the police were in the vanguard of the struggle against the communist insurgents and consequently suffered more casualties, killed and wounded than the army did, but more importantly, they cast a spotlight on the grievous losses suffered by the civilian population. They were far larger than the police and army’s combined losses—836 police/army were killed and wounded, while 1,248 civilians were killed and wounded. In fact, throughout the twelve years of the Emergency, civilian casualties remained high (see Chapter 1, Table 1), which does not appear to have been remarked on in the literature. The high rate of civilian casualties, mostly inflicted by the insurgents, would reflect badly on the CPM’s attempts to win over public support for its cause.

110

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Table 5: Police, army and civilian casualties (1948–49) Security forces and civilians

June 1948–December 1949

Killed Police

253

Army

125

Civilians

899*

Wounded Police

289

Army

169

Civilians

349

*includes 250 ‘missing’, who must be considered killed. Source: Adapted from Despatch no. 14, Top Secret, High Commissioner for the United Kingdom, Kuala Lumpur, to Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, London, 5 November 1960 & Arkib Negara Malaysia, Misc. 16, Emergency Statistics for the Federation of Malaya since 1948.

In spite of the losses suffered by the MNLA that Gurney referred to, the strength of the communist jungle army remained unchanged, and it was evident that the guerrillas were able to make up their losses by attracting recruits from the Min Yuen and other communist supporters. O’Ballance remarks there was no shortage of keen young men and women who opposed British colonial rule and were willing to join the MNLA. They were encouraged, too, by the successes of the Chinese Communist Party in China in the civil war against the Kuomintang forces. There was even a ‘waiting list’ for recruits and some volunteers were told to return home after receiving basic training in jungle warfare and communist doctrine to await call-up when they were required.15 Further, the Special Branch received reliable information that members of the Chinese community were paying subscriptions to the communists, (whether extorted or voluntary was not always clear), ‘augmented by the proceeds of rubber stolen from Chinese estates whose owners live in towns and exercise no proper supervision’.16 To revert to Johnson’s visit, after spending several weeks in Malaya, he prepared his inspection report, which was addressed to the Commissioner of Police through the High Commissioner, with a copy for information to the Secretary of State for the Colonies.17 Johnson paid particular attention to the Special Branch in his report, no doubt bearing in mind the importance the Secretary of State for the Colonies attached to the Special Branch, and



AGENTS OF CHANGE (1949–52)

111

recommended that steps should be taken urgently to increase its strength and provide further training in intelligence techniques. And after his return to London, he made arrangements for Malayan Special Branch officers to be sent on courses dealing with the general organisation and duties of the Special Branch, organised by the London Metropolitan Police Special Branch at New Scotland Yard, and for training at MI5’s headquarters in London in domestic intelligence and counterintelligence methods.18 Johnson arranged too for uniformed branch officers to attend courses at British police training centres, such as the Police College, Ryton-on-Dunmore.19 From 1951 onwards, cadet assistant superintendents on first appointment to the Malayan Police were required to attend an eight-month training course before leaving for Malaya. The course included three months’ training at a police recruits’ basic training centre (for example, the No 4 Police District Training Centre, Mill Meece, Staffordshire), and another three to four months’ training on the Special Colonial Police Course at the Hendon Police College. The latter course included short attachments to various British police forces, both metropolitan and country, as well as military police units.20 The program was a great improvement on the system that had prevailed in the immediate post-war period of allowing cadet assistant superintendents to take up their appointments without formal training, thus leaving themselves, as Johnson put it in his report, ‘almost entirely in the hands of their subordinates’. However, although Johnson does not refer to it, there was simply no time after the end of the Second World War for the handful of officers appointed directly to gazetted officer rank in the Malayan Police to be given formal police training, since they were required to take up their duties immediately on account of the prevailing unsettled conditions in Malaya and the shortage of gazetted police officers. There was an urgent need to fill vacancies as soon as possible, as many pre-war officers of the Malayan Police has become casualties during the Malayan campaign. British officers appointed directly at this time had held commissioned officer rank in the British armed forces.21 Johnson arranged, too, for regular conferences of colonial police commissioners to be held in Britain to provide a forum for colonial police matters to be discussed and to share experiences and strategies. The conferences provided the commissioners with an opportunity to meet senior military intelligence officers, the Director-General of MI5, other senior British intelligence officers and senior Colonial Office officials.22

112

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Colonel Gray, the Malayan Commissioner of Police, attended the first conference held from 1 to 7 April 1951 at the Police College, Ryton-onDunmore. Other officers attending included Colonel Arthur E Young, then Commissioner of the City of London Police who was later in February 1952 to succeed Gray as Commissioner of Police in Malaya; Sir Percy Sillitoe, Director-General of MI5; and DG (Dick) White, a senior MI5 officer who was afterwards to head successively both MI5 and MI6.23 Sillitoe and White spoke at the conference on a wide range of topics of Special Branch interest, including: • the organisation of MI5 • the role of MI5 and its relationship with colonial police Special Branches • the system of posting MI5 Security Liaison officers to the colonies to work closely with local Special Branches • methods and techniques of Soviet subversion throughout the world • the objects and capabilities of the British Communist Party. There was a general discussion on the best strategies to be followed to control the spread of communism and counter communist propaganda and ideas in the colonies, and the commissioners were ‘in complete agreement’ that the primary task of the colonial police in the present circumstances was to protect the community against politically inspired terrorism.24 The colonial police commissioners were presented to King George VI and the Queen when they visited the College on 5 April. Further conferences were held in 1954, 1957 and 1960. At the 1957 conference, it was stated that the visits of MI5 officers to the colonial Special Branches, which had been taking place since the last conference, had brought about a considerable strengthening of the organisation of the Special Branches, and MI5 officers had been able to advise on the setting up of a system of local intelligence committees in the colonies.25 One of the most important officers to visit Malaya from the Special Branch point of view was Field Marshal Sir William Slim, Chief of the British Imperial General Staff.26 He arrived in October 1949, just after Johnson’s visit, as part of a tour of Britain’s Southeast Asian colonies. Probably of all the visitors to Malaya at this time, he was the best qualified to comment on the Emergency and the local situation, due to his extensive Asian experience as a regular Indian Army officer, both before and during



AGENTS OF CHANGE (1949–52)

113

the Second World War. His ensuing report highlighted several matters of Special Branch interest.27 While acknowledging the improvements to the general organisation of the police that Colonel Gray had made since taking over as Commissioner of Police in July 1948, Slim pointed out that the Special Branch required restructuring on ‘sound modern lines’ and that it should have a ‘proper central Headquarters’. His comments were undoubtedly well-founded and, in fact, Sir William Jenkin made it his task to attend to these issues soon after his arrival at Kuala Lumpur in June 1950 as Adviser to the Special Branch/CID. Slim stressed in his report that it was important for the civil administration, police and army to work closely together. He recommended, too, that Chinese squatters, who occupied land in outlying areas outside the effective administrative control of the government, should be brought under police control to disrupt their contact with the communist guerrillas. This could be done, he said, by either establishing police stations or posts in the squatter areas or resettling the squatters in alternative sites where the police could protect them. Slim’s recommendations in many respects presaged the action taken in the following year as a result of measures introduced by General Briggs, Malaya’s first Director of Operations, as part of his Briggs Plan (see Chapter 7).28 Slim undoubtedly put his finger on a sensitive spot by commenting that the police and civil administration were not, in his words, ‘capable of dealing with the Chinese’. He gave two reasons for this: (a) the lack of British administrative officers and police officers, especially in the Special Branch, who could speak Chinese; and (b) the lack of uniformed Chinese police constables in the police.29 To remedy the situation, he recommended the transfer or secondment of Chinese or British Cantonese-speaking Special Branch officers and uniformed Chinese police constables from the Hong Kong Police to the Malayan Police. The main Chinese dialect spoken in Hong Kong is Cantonese, which is one of the two most widely spoken Chinese dialects in Malaya, the other being Hokkien. Although the Colonial Office doubted whether any police officers could be spared from Hong Kong in view of the tense internal security situation prevailing there, following the advance of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army to Shumchun (Shenzen) on the border with Hong Kong, it was clearly a novel idea that deserved serious consideration. In the end, a compromise was reached. While no uniformed Chinese police constables were transferred, some Cantonese-

114

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

speaking British police officers were transferred from Hong Kong to serve in the Malayan Special Branch.30 Table 6: Ethnic composition of Malayan Police by rank, 1947 and 1958 1947

1958

Ethnic group

GOs (a)

Insp

P/Lt

SPOs & PCs (b)

GOs

Insp

P/Lt

SPOs & PCs

European (c)

130

8

–

–

165

–

197

–

Malay

19

115

–

7,999

141

629

–

17,006

Indians & Pakistanis

3

41

–

1,469

87

240

–

948

Chinese*

2

24

–

402

98

395

–

1,927

Others

–

4

–

33

17

35

–

83

Total

154

192

–

9,903

508

1,299

197

19,964

(a) Gazetted officers. (b) Subordinate police officers and police constables. (c) ‘European’ was the term commonly applied to British officers in the Malayan Police and colloquially to all Caucasians in Malaya at the time. * The figures for 1958 reveal the significant increase in the number of Malay, Chinese and Indian/Pakistani gazetted officers and Inspectors employed as the result of the government’s ‘Malayanisation’ program introduced after independence in 1957. However, the Chinese percentage of the total was still low, viz, in 1947: GOs 1.3 per cent, Insp. 12.5 per cent and SPOs & PCs 4.1 per cent; and in 1958: GOs 19.3 per cent, Insp. 30.4 per cent and SPOs & PCs 9.6 per cent. Source: Adapted from Federation of Malaya Police Annual Reports 1955 and 1958; and Arkib Negara, Kuala Lumpur, 120/8/4, ‘Racial Composition of the Malayan Police’, p. 3.

With regard to Slim’s comments about the lack of Chinese-speaking British police officers, the matter had in fact been adverted to several times since the British returned to Malaya after the war. In 1949, not long after arriving at Kuala Lumpur, Sir Henry Gurney had written a despatch touching on the same subject to the Secretary of State for the Colonies.31 Gurney realised, however, that there was no easy solution to the problem, as the study of Chinese, unlike Malay and most other Asian languages, posed unique difficulties for foreigners because of the tonal nature of the spoken language and the complexity of the Chinese written ideographs. Later, Sir Richard Catling, a former Senior Assistant Commissioner in the Malayan Police, was to write:



AGENTS OF CHANGE (1949–52)

115

If I were asked to sum up our main difficulty in one word I would say ‘Language’…A British officer in the field was ineffective unless he had a good working knowledge of at least the main local language [Malay]…In addition, we needed specialists in other languages and were hampered by the lack of sufficient Chinese speakers [author’s emphasis] in Malaya.32

As Leung Chee Woh, a former senior Chinese Special Branch officer, relates in his memoirs, Chinese officers played a very significant part in the work of the Special Branch ‘as the Communist insurgency problem was mainly a Chinese one’.33 There is no doubt that most former British officers of the Malayan Special Branch would agree with him. As there were few Chinese gazetted officers in the police during the first few years of the Emergency, British Special Branch officers had largely to rely on the assistance of Chinese inspectors to overcome the language problems they encountered in dealing with the Chinese populace. They provided invaluable assistance in the interrogation of surrendered and captured communist guerrillas and the running of informers and agents. In July–August 1951, the government attempted to overcome the shortage of British Chinese-speaking officers by providing Chinese language courses locally for selected Malayan police and civil service officers. Two courses in colloquial Cantonese and Hokkien were started, each lasting five-and-ahalf months, at a newly established government Chinese language school in the Cameron Highlands under the directorship of Robert Bruce, a British Council officer and former missionary in China. Bruce was well-versed in Cantonese and Mandarin (putonghua), the Chinese national language. Thereafter, Chinese language courses were held at regular intervals.34 Twenty police officers (mainly Special Branch) and four Malayan Civil Service (MCS) officers attended each of the first two courses, and the same number of officers attended each of the next two courses, commencing in January and February 1952.35 In February 1953, courses were offered in colloquial putonghua and Hakka too. In pre-war days, it was the practice to send a small number of selected British police and administrative officers to China to learn Cantonese in Canton (Guangzhou) or Hokkien in Amoy (Xiamen) for 18 months’ to two years’ full-time study. They employed individual tutors on a one-to-one basis to study intensively both the spoken and written language in order to sit for oral and written examinations set by the Malayan government. While the shorter Chinese language courses held at the Cameron Highlands did not aspire to reach this level of competency, they did aim to train officers

116

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

to be able to carry on a simple conversation in Chinese. No instruction was offered, however, in the written language, although one or two dedicated Special Branch officers did try to overcome this omission by studying written Chinese in their own time and at their own expense.36 The appointment of Gray as Commissioner of Police in 1948 to fill the vacancy left by the retirement of Colonel Langworthy, and the ensuing influx of large numbers of ex-Palestine Police officers in 1948 and 1949 after the withdrawal of the British from Palestine, eventually brought about a schism between the pre-war members of the Malayan Police and the newly arrived ex-Palestine Police contingent.37 Colonel Gray himself had been Inspector-General of the Palestine Police before coming to Malaya. There was perceived to be a wide difference in their views, attitudes and approaches to policing in Malaya. As the top echelons of the police became increasingly embroiled in what had developed into a power struggle between the two factions, Sir Henry Gurney moved decisively to resolve the problem. He recommended to the Colonial Office that a high-level police mission should be sent out to Malaya to investigate the causes of the friction and carry out a widesweeping review of the Malayan Police. 38 The Mission appointed by the Colonial Office was chaired by Sir Alexander Maxwell, a former Permanent Under-Secretary at the Home Office, assisted by Major JF Ferguson, Chief Constable of the Kent Police Force, and RL Jackson, Secretary at Scotland Yard to the London Metropolitan Police Commissioner. Jackson was a barrister, specialising in police intelligence (Special Branch) and criminal investigation, who afterwards became Assistant Commissioner (CID) of the London Metropolitan Police and later head of Interpol. The Mission arrived one month after Field Marshall Sir William Slim’s visit. John Gullick, a Malayan Civil Service officer, was appointed Secretary of the Mission, and remained with it as escort officer during the two-and-a-half months from 27 November 1949 to 12 February 1950 that it remained in Malaya.39 The Mission’s report was diplomatic. While acknowledging there was a ‘preponderance at police headquarters of officers who were newcomers to Malaya’, which was a tactful way of referring to the ex-Palestine Police officers who had been brought in by Gray, it downplayed the suggestion that had been made that pre-war Malayan Police officers had been discriminated against. It also did not find favour with the view that there had been a significant number of premature retirements or resignations of pre-war Malayan Police officers on account of the animus between the two factions



AGENTS OF CHANGE (1949–52)

117

in the police. The reference to ‘retirements’ and ‘resignations’ clearly alluded to the resignations of Basil O’Connell and Ken Duthie, Deputy Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner respectively, who headed the Criminal Investigation Department (CID)—it will be recollected that the Special Branch was then subsumed in to the CID—and who had resigned after some disagreements with Gray not long after he became Commissioner of Police.40 With reference to the lack of Chinese police officers, the Mission recommended that ‘Malaysians’, that is, Malays, Chinese and Indians, should be appointed to gazetted rank as British officers were, and that Chinese should be encouraged to assume a greater share in the work of policing the country. From the Special Branch point of view, the most important recommendation was that a police officer experienced in intelligence work should be appointed as adviser to the Special Branch/CID. The Mission recommended that ‘the most suitable man would be one with Colonial or Indian [Special Branch] experience of conditions similar to those now existing in Malaya’.41 It was as a result of this recommendation that Sir William Jenkin was appointed in May 1950, on one year’s contract in the first place, as ‘Adviser on CID methods and the reorganisation of the Branch [Special Branch/ CID]’.42 He arrived in Kuala Lumpur on 22 June 1950. Jenkin was an experienced Indian Police Special Branch officer who had retired three years earlier as Deputy Director of the Intelligence Bureau, Home Department, Government of India, on India becoming independent.43 By the end of the year, Jenkin had come to the view that his title as ‘Special Branch/CID Adviser’ did not provide him with the executive authority over police intelligence matters that he required. It was therefore agreed that his appointment should be redesignated as Director of Intelligence ‘to facilitate his work in advising and assisting in the reorganisation of the Special Branch/CID’.44 He thus became Malaya’s first Director of Intelligence. His contract was later extended, and during the 18 months he spent in Malaya, he reorganised and retrained the Special Branch, although unfortunately not all of the measures he put forward met with the approval of Gray. Jenkin intended, for instance, that the Special Branch, like the Malayan Security Service before it, should be separated from the CID (and the police) and play a more independent role as an intelligence organisation, with a direct line of reporting to the High Commissioner. When Gray disagreed with him, relations between the two men deteriorated further and Jenkin resigned. He returned to Britain in January 1952.

118

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

While there is no evidence to suggest that Tan Cheng Lock (later Tun Sir Cheng Lock Tan), the leader of the Malayan Chinese Association, was privy to the several official reports that were in existence at that time dealing with the problem of obtaining greater Chinese support for the government and encouraging Chinese to join the police, it did emerge that he and his colleagues in the MCA had been thinking along similar lines.45 In May 1950, for instance, he submitted a confidential memorandum to the Colonial Secretary (Creech Jones) and the Secretary of State for War (John Strachey), who were then visiting Malaya, advocating the greater use, as he put it, of ‘Chinese to fight Chinese’. He urged the setting up of what he called a ‘Malayan Chinese secret service’ and a ‘Malayan or Chinese Brigade’ under the command of British Special Branch officers to fight communist terrorism.46 Tan’s proposals, however, were not taken up by the government at the time, probably because the Special Branch was concerned that if they were accepted, an opportunity would be provided for former Kuomintang (KMT) army officers then living in Malaya to participate in and form what would become a ‘Third Force’ to fight the communists. The difficulty was that on 6 January 1950 Britain had recognised the Communist government in China, after the Kuomintang under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek had been driven into exile in Taiwan, and it did not wish to be seen as favouring the Kuomintang in Malaya. According to Special Branch intelligence, many members of the Malayan Chinese Association and the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Malaya and Singapore supported the Kuomintang, which in the meantime had had considerable success in penetrating the auxiliary police in Malaya. In 1951, there were some 2,300 auxiliary police in Malaya.47 The Special Branch reported that the officer-in-charge of the Chinese auxiliary police unit in Johore Bahru was Deputy Director of the Singapore office of the Alumni of Chinese Military Academics. He was a graduate of the KMTaffiliated Central Military Academy, Chungking, who had fought against the communist army in China during the Second World War. The alumni of the Academy were scattered throughout Malaya and Singapore, and included three former KMT colonels, six lieutenant colonels, twelve majors, fifty captains, forty lieutenants and twelve second-lieutenants.48 The three main constituent parts of Tan’s plan were as follows: • to ‘create, train and equip a Malayan Chinese Brigade under British officers’ to be deployed as a counterinsurgency force



AGENTS OF CHANGE (1949–52)

119

• to form a ‘Malayan Chinese Constabulary’, together with a force of kampong guards under British control, ‘in every squatter settlement and every village’ to help the regular police win over the confidence and active co-operation of the Chinese population • ‘to create, train and maintain a large Malayan Chinese secret service’ under the Special Branch to penetrate the communist network outside the jungle. As Tan put it, ‘the best man to catch the Chinese bandit [sic], communist agent or rebel is the Chinese policeman, Chinese spy or Chinese soldier’. Although the government did nothing about Tan’s plan, he discussed it several times later with the High Commissioner, Sir Henry Gurney. In a further proposal made in October 1951, which resembled in some ways the recommendations that had been made by Slim, he suggested that an approach should be made to the British colonial government in Hong Kong to send ‘a strong body of Hong Kong Chinese police to form the nucleus of an adequate Malayan Chinese police force’. Gurney agreed to meet Tan and a small committee representing the MCA on 28 October 1951 at King’s House, Kuala Lumpur, to give further consideration to Tan’s proposals, and he invited Malcolm MacDonald, the British Commissioner-General for Southeast Asia, and Sir Franklin Gimson, the Singapore Governor, to attend. It was unfortunate that the meeting did not take place, as Gurney was killed in a guerrilla ambush on his way up to Fraser’s Hill on 6 October.49 Although it was suspected at the time that there was a communist agent among Sir Henry’s domestic staff who had revealed details of his travel plans to the communist guerrillas, subsequent Special Branch enquiries confirmed that this was not the case. From communist documents that were recovered at the ambush site, it was determined that the communists intended to ambush an easy target to capture firearms. The ambush had not been specifically laid to kill Gurney, and it was a ‘chance’ ambush. It was unfortunate that Sir Henry’s limousine was seen by the communist guerrillas to present an easy unprotected target, as his police escort had become dispersed on the narrow winding road leading up to Fraser’s Hill and one of the police armoured cars forming part of his escort had broken down.50 In spite of this setback, Tan did not let the matter drop. He submitted his proposals in a slightly modified form to Oliver Lyttelton (later Viscount Chandos), the newly appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies after the Conservative Party under Winston Churchill came to power in Britain, when he met Lyttelton at King’s House, Kuala Lumpur, on 3 December 1951.51

120

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

The newly installed Conservative government in the UK was concerned about the security situation in Malaya, and Lyttelton was sent out urgently to Malaya in November 1951 to ascertain what should be done to improve what was seen to be the worsening situation in Malaya. Lyttelton does not refer directly to Tan’s proposals in his memoirs, and there is no indication of what transpired between the two men when they met, but he does mention meeting ‘one or two deputations’, including representatives of the Malayan Chinese Association, after his arrival at Kuala Lumpur at the beginning of December 1951.52 Lyttelton’s mission to Malaya after the death of Sir Henry Gurney included Colonel WA Muller, Johnson’s successor as Inspector-General of the Colonial Police,53 and a small personal staff consisting of his Parliamentary Private Secretary (Hugh Fraser), his Private Secretary (Angus MacKintosh), and the Under Secretary of State at the Colonial Office in charge of the Far East (John Paskin). The inclusion of the Inspector-General of the Colonial Police in his party is indicative of the importance Lyttelton attached to police matters. As Lyttelton brings out in his memoirs, he devoted much of his time in Malaya to the subject of law and order, which included the organisation of the Special Branch. As Lyttelton wrote later in his memoirs: It was evident that we were on the way to losing control of the country, and soon. The repercussions of such a loss on South-East Asia, one of the most troubled and tender parts of the world, were incalculable. Moreover, rubber and tin were amongst the most important exports and dollar earners on the Commonwealth.54

A number of important decisions had to be made. The successor to Sir Henry Gurney had not yet been found. Meanwhile, the Gray and Jenkin had both resigned, as will be related later. Lieutenant General Sir Harold Briggs, had recently retired, too, worn out by his efforts as Director of Operations, and his deputy, Lieutenant General Sir Rob Lockhart, had taken over from him.55 Muller remained behind in Malaya for some time after Lyttelton returned to London to advise on ‘what measure of police reorganisation may be necessary’.56 Muller, however, was not an intelligence specialist, and his report dated 27 February 1952 did not refer specifically to the Special Branch but concerned itself with the general training of the police force, which Muller claimed had fallen behind because of the tremendous expansion that had taken place since 1948.57 The Straits Times reported that Muller had



AGENTS OF CHANGE (1949–52)

121

held talks with the Commissioner of Police and the Director of Operations to do with the training of special constables and the need for trained police instructors, but no other information was publicly disclosed.58 On his return to London on 29 December 1951, after his whirlwind visit to Malaya including a few days spent in Hong Kong writing up his report, Lyttelton submitted his report to Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the British Cabinet. Its main thrust was to recommend that an outstanding serving or retired military officer, or ‘supremo’, as he put it, should be appointed to direct both military operations and the civil administration in the Emergency. This suggestion was not, in fact, entirely new. John Strachey, Secretary of State for War, following his visit to Malaya in November 1950, had urged the prime minister to appoint a ‘British High Commissioner for the Far East’ with ‘supreme powers in Malaya’ over both the police and the army, with the ability to oversee the ‘political, economic and democratic development of Malaya’.59 Lieutenant General Sir Rob Lockhart, who had just taken over as Director of Operations from General Briggs, had anticipated Lyttelton’s recommendations, too, in a top-secret report dated 26 November 1951 that he had sent Field Marshall Sir William Slim. Lockhart’s report envisaged the appointment of a serving or retired military leader ‘of proved capacity’ to direct the campaign in all aspects, with ‘complete executive control over all services, civil and military’.60 Lyttelton does not refer to Strachey or Lockhart’s recommendations in his report and it is not possible to say whether he was aware of them. Lyttelton’s report contained several important recommendations with direct relevance to intelligence and the Special Branch, as follows: • A Director of Intelligence with an intelligence staff (drawn as far as possible from police and army headquarters) should be appointed to the Director of Operations staff so that the Director of Operations would be able to direct, co-ordinate and distribute intelligence from the Special Branch and military intelligence sources. • Special Branch intelligence should include ‘live’ as well as ‘blown’ or ‘dead’ sources. • The collection of intelligence should come from five main sources: (a) aggressive patrolling by police and military (b) police round-ups and security checks

122

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

(c) patrolling in deep jungle by irregular army units (d) reconnaissance by air (e) interrogation by the Special Branch of persons suspected to be in contact with communist terrorists, as well as surrendered and captured communist terrorists. • Action should be taken to increase the number of police and government officers able to speak Chinese and Malay. • A Chinese Home Guard should be formed as a first step to gain increased Chinese support. Lyttelton hoped this would have a two-fold effect in leading to an increase in the flow of information from Chinese sources to the Special Branch and encouraging young Chinese men to enlist in the regular uniformed branch of the police. (Lyttelton’s recommendations in this respect are very similar to Tan Cheng Lock’s proposals but Lyttelton does not allude to them).61 The Cabinet accepted most of Lyttelton’s recommendations, and with some minor modifications they were implemented. By ‘live’ sources, Lyttelton was probably referring to HUMINT, that is, human intelligence provided by surrendered and captured communist guerrillas, as well as intelligence obtained from Special Branch agents and informers. The Special Branch was fully aware that these sources of ‘realtime’ intelligence were probably the most important sources of intelligence on which counterinsurgency operations could be mounted. By ‘blown’ or ‘dead’ sources, Lyttelton was evidently referring to intelligence derived from captured or recovered communist documents that were usually of ‘historical’ value only and bereft of operational intelligence (OPINTEL).62 In referring to ‘patrolling in deep jungle by irregular army units’, Lyttelton had in mind the ‘Malay Scouts’ or ‘Ferret Force’ (1948–50), an irregular guerrilla unit led by British officers with experience of jungle operations that had been formed early on in the Emergency at the suggestion of the General Officer Commanding, Malaya, to operate in the jungle against the communist insurgents, often remaining in the jungle for prolonged periods of time.63 It was later replaced by the SAS, the British army’s Special Air Service. The sources of intelligence enumerated by Lyttelton in his report were, of course, not unknown to the Special Branch, and they were, in fact, subsequently incorporated in The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in



AGENTS OF CHANGE (1949–52)

123

Malaya (ATOM), a revised edition of which was prepared for the security forces under the direction of General Templer when he became High Commissioner and Director of Operations in 1952. With regard to a separate reference Lyttelton made in his report about the desirability of tightening up security against infiltration by communist agents, Lyttelton may well have been influenced by a secret Special Branch report, dated March 1950, describing widespread communist activities in the Ipoh Detention Camp that had escaped detection by the camp staff until they were eventually found out and broken up by the Special Branch. During this operation, the Special Branch searched the camp and recovered a quantity of communist documents revealing the existence of communist cells in the camp. It was discovered that the communist detainees had established a ‘Central Directing’ group in each block of the camp with a fully-fledged Party member in charge. Only ‘democratic’ and ‘progressive’ elements were eligible to become members of the organisation, and a register had been kept of Party members in the camp, with details of their life history and the circumstances of their arrest, and so on, ‘to ensure that all members of the organisation are loyal to the Party’. The Central Directing Group took steps to keep in close contact with communist elements outside the camp and supplied them with information about the layout of the camp, the location of police guards, and the identity of known Special Branch agents and informers in the camp.64 Lyttelton acknowledged in his mission report that Sir William Jenkin’s reorganisation of the Special Branch had brought about a ‘firmer [intelligence] framework and [that] already military commanders reported an increased flow of information’.65 In his autobiography, Lyttelton claimed to have secured the resignation of the ‘Commissioner of Police [Colonel Gray] and the Head of the Special Branch [Sir William Jenkin]’.66 However, this does not appear to be strictly true, as both Gray and Jenkin had decided to submit their resignations long before his visit.67 Gray, in fact, had given notice several months previously and Jenkin had given three months’ notice in September 1951. When Jenkin submitted his resignation in September 1951 because of what was officially described as ‘differences of opinion about the organisation of police intelligence work’, it was in fact the second time he had done so. He had initially offered to resign on 10 November 1950 because of fundamental differences that had arisen between him and Gray over his plans to reorganise the Special Branch, but he had been persuaded

124

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

to stay on as Director of Intelligence with a new two-year contract.68 Jenkin’s second resignation in September 1951 came after the short-lived ‘Police Intelligence Bureau’, which he had established from April to October 1951 while Gray was on leave in Britain, was ordered to be disbanded after Gray’s return from leave.69 Aside from Gray’s serious disagreement with Jenkin, as Short brings out, Gray had also had a difference of opinion with General Briggs, Director of Operations, over the control and functions of the police. Moreover, the Malayan Chamber of Commerce and British rubber and tin mining interests in Malaya, which carried a considerable amount of influence with the British government, had complained to the Secretary of State for the Colonies that they had lost confidence in him and that he was not doing enough to protect their interests.70 When Gray repeated his offer to Lyttelton to resign during the latter’s visit to Kuala Lumpur, he had not expected it to be accepted, but Lyttelton did accept it, as he said, ‘to facilitate any reorganisation which [he] might feel to be necessary for a more effective prosecution of the campaign against the Communists’.71 Questions were asked in the Malayan Legislative Council about the seemingly sudden departures of Gray and Jenkin, in view of their important positions in regard to the prosecution of the Emergency. The Secretary for Defence, FB David, explained on behalf of the government that Jenkin had resigned because of a ‘disagreement about the status of his post and the extent to which [the Special Branch] should work directly under the Government’. He said that Gray had first offered to resign 14 months earlier and when he had persisted with his offer to Lyttelton in Kuala Lumpur, it had been reluctantly accepted. Jenkin left Port Swettenham by sea on 14 January 1952 and Gray departed from Kuala Lumpur by RAF transport aircraft on the same day to return to Britain.72 Fortunately, except for very few persons at the highest level in the administration and the police, no-one was aware of the differences of opinion between Jenkin and Gray, and the main cadre of Special Branch and uniformed branch police officers carried on working as usual. All these official visitors to Malaya and their recommendations brought out the seriousness of the situation to the British government, as indeed Lyttelton had emphasised in his report to the British Cabinet after his return from Malaya. Important decisions had to be made as soon as possible to appoint a ‘supremo’ to succeed the assassinated High Commissioner Sir



AGENTS OF CHANGE (1949–52)

125

Henry Gurney, and replacements for Briggs, Gray and Jenkin. All of these events had taken place at around the same time, and it was vital that their successors should be appointed without delay so that the campaign against the communists should not falter. The appointments of their successors in early 1952, that is, General Templer, who combined the duties of High Commissioner and Director of Operations, Colonel Young as Commissioner of Police, and JP Morton as Director of Intelligence, will be discussed in Chapter Eight. Before that, the next chapter will examine the work that had been put in before Lyttelton’s arrival by Sir William Jenkin, Special Branch/CID Adviser and the first Director of Intelligence; and Chapter 7 deals with the work of General Briggs, Director of Operations, whose Briggs Plan provided the blueprint for winning the war against communist insurgency.

Notes Singapore Annual Report 1949, Singapore: Government Printer, 1950, p 120. Colonel WC Johnson, CBE, held the post from 1948 to 1951. It was restyled ‘InspectorGeneral of Colonial Police Forces’ on 13 January 1950 to provide him with more authority in dealing with the various colonial police commissioners. 3 CO 537/5439, ‘Secretary of State’s Report on Recent Developments in Colonial Police Forces’, p 15. 4 CAB 158/20/JIC (55) 28, ‘Asia Official Documents 1945–65’, Top Secret. ‘Methods of Handling and Distribution of Intelligence Reports from the Colonies’, pp 8–9. 5 ibid, p 7. 6 ibid. 7 CO 537/5439, ‘Secretary of State’s Report on Recent Developments in Colonial Police Forces’, pp 13–16. 8 CAB 158/20/JIC (55) 238, Top Secret. ‘Chiefs of Staff Committee, JIC, Colonial Intelligence and Security’, 23 March 1955, pp 4–5; Anne Thurston, Records of the Colonial Office, Dominions Office, Commonwealth Relations Office and Commonwealth Office, London: HMSO, 1995, p 318. 9 DEF 7/421/10A, Secret, Despatch No 3, dated 12 January 1950, Sir Henry Gurney, High Commissioner, Federation of Malaya, to Secretary of State for the Colonies. 10 As noted in Chapter 1, the Malayan authorities finally decided on 20 May 1952 to replace the term ‘bandits’ with the term ‘communist terrorists’ (CTs), which has been used in this study. 11 The Special Branch did not receive intelligence until later, probably in 1952–53, that Chin Peng and the CPM’s Central Committee were located in deep jungle in the interior of Pahang, before they subsequently retreated into southern Thailand in 1954 (author’s notes). 12 The insurgents were armed with a motley collection of firearms, including Bren guns (British army light machines guns), .303 Lee Enfield rifles (Second World War British 1 2

126

13

14

15 16 17 18

19 20

21 22 23

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

army standard issue rifles), double-barrelled shotguns, Thompson sub-machine guns, Sten guns, Nambu (Japanese light machine guns), Japanese army rifles, and various types of revolvers and automatic pistols. A selection of these weapons is displayed in the Royal Malaysian Police Museum, Kuala Lumpur. In the early stages of the Emergency, entire Chinese squatter villages were rounded up and moved to detention camps from which the majority were repatriated to China (Gullick, op cit, p 115). The author was in charge of small police escort that was deputed to take back one of the first batches of ‘deportees’ to China on the SS Anhui, sailing from Port Swettenham on 20 May 1949. Of the 51 deportees, all of whom were male communist supporters, 3 were for Hoihow (Haikou, Hainan Island), 12 for Hong Kong (where they were taken over by the Hong Kong Special Branch for escorting to the China border and handing over to the Chinese authorities), 7 for Amoy (Xiamen) and 29 for Swatow (Shantou). The handing over of the 3 deportees at Hoihow was the first time that Malayan police officers had come into direct contact with the Chinese Army. The police had been heavily involved in 1948 and 1949 in carrying out mass arrests of communists and their supporters and in many cases the houses (usually plank and attap (palm leaf) structures) they occupied had been indiscriminately burned (see Ng Ngee Seng, op cit). As soon as Gurney became aware of this practice, he instructed the Commissioner of Police to ensure that it was stopped forthwith. O’Ballance, op cit, p 101. DEF 7/421/10A, Secret, Despatch No 3, dated 12 January 1950, op. cit. CO 537/5439, Report of the Police Advisor to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, December 1949. In September 1950, after visiting FBI headquarters and the US State Department’s Division of Security in Washington, DC, the author attended short Special Branch and MI5 courses in London, before returning to Malaya (letter, dated 1 June 1950, from Richard A Poole, American Consul, Kuala Lumpur, to Donald Nicholson, Chief, Division of Security, Department of State, Washington, DC; Federation of Malaya Police Headquarters letter CP/485, dated 7 September 1950; and Colonial Office letter 275/11/50, dated 13 September 1950). CO 537/5439, op cit, ‘Training’, extract from Report of the Police Advisor to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, December 1949. The author is indebted to David Brent, former Assistant Superintendent, Malayan Police, for this information. Brent attended the second series of Colonial Police Courses in Britain from September 1951 to April 1952. The commandant of the Hendon Police College Special Colonial Police Course in 1952 was a former superintendent of the Nigerian Police. The uniform worn by colonial police cadets attending the courses consisted of navy blue battle dress (without belt), peaked caps (fire brigade issue), with individual police force badges for Malaya, Nigeria and so on (David Brent’s letter to author, dated 2 August 1992). Author’s notes. CO 1037/106, ‘Conference of Colonial Police Commissioners—Record of Proceedings, 1951’. Sir Dick White, as he afterwards became, served in British intelligence for 35 years. He was described as ‘Britain’s most respected and experienced intelligence chief’.



24 25

26

27

28

29

30

31 32

33

AGENTS OF CHANGE (1949–52)

127

In 1952, General Templer offered him the post of Director of Intelligence, Malaya, but he declined, and Jack Morton, the head of Security Intelligence Far East (SIFE), Singapore, was appointed instead (see Bower, op cit, p 136). The Director-General of MI5 was charged in his charter ‘in consultation with the Colonial Office to assist and advise [British] colonial administrations’. MI6, on the other hand, was tasked to gather intelligence in foreign countries (see The Intelligence Services Act 1994). CO 1037/106, ‘Conference of Colonial Police Commissioners—Record of Proceedings, 1951’ pp 13–14. CO 1037/106, ‘Conference of Colonial Police Commissioner, 1954, 1957, 1960’. The main topic of discussion at the 1960 conference was ‘Special Branch Training’, but regrettably the papers addressing this topic have been removed from the relevant PRO file and replaced with a note reading ‘enclosures retained in Department under section 3 (4) of the Public Records Act 1958’. Field Marshal Sir William Slim (1891–1970), Indian Army (retired), 1st Viscount of Yarralumla, Chief of the British Imperial General Staff (1948–52), Governor-General of Australia (1953–59). CO 537/4374, No 5, ‘Notes on Tour of South-East Asia, October 1949: Report by Field Marshall Sir William Slim on the Importance of Civil Action in Counterinsurgency’. See also CO 537/3741, No 76, letter, dated 5 December 1949, from Secretary of State for the Colonies to Sir Henry Gurney, High Commissioner, Federation of Malaya, dealing with the points raised in Slim’s report. CO 537/3741, No 76, ibid. Under the Briggs Plan, drafted by General Sir Harold Briggs, an enormous resettlement program was launched to resettle Chinese squatters living on the jungle fringes into about 500 New Villages under police protection to deny the guerrillas their main source of supplies and manpower (http://home.pacific. net.sg/~alfarabi/briggs.htm). In some Malay States, as late as 1953, there was not a single British gazetted officer in the Special Branch who could speak Chinese (AJ Stockwell, ‘Policing during the Malayan Emergency, 1948–60, Communism, Communalism and Decolonisation’ in Anderson, David M and Killingray, David (eds), Policing and Decolonisation: Nationalism, Politics and the Police, 1945–1965, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992, pp 126–39). A British ‘Chinese-speaking officer’ was officially defined as an ‘officer who had sufficient knowledge of one or more Chinese dialects to be of use to him in the course of his duties’ (CO 1020/343, ‘Training of Malayan Civil Servants in Languages,’ Confidential CSO 102/34. Kuala Lumpur Executive Council Paper No. 9/4/53 dated 26 February 1953). Among the Hong Kong police officers transferred to the Malayan Special Branch were Lance Searle (at one time the author’s colleague in Johore, who was tragically killed in a night ambush on 20 May 1954 in Selangor), Alan Nicol, William Sykes, Brian Faye and William Morris (author’s notes). CO 537/4773, No 3, Secret. Despatch No 5, 30 May 1949, from Sir Henry Gurney to Secretary of State for the Colonies. Sir Richard Catling, ‘The Catling Memoirs, IV. Retrospect’, Royal Malaysia Police Former Officers’ Association of the United Kingdom, Newsletter, Issue 11, August 2001, p 5. Leong, op cit, p 64.

128

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

34 CO 1020/343, ‘Training of Malayan Civil Servants in Languages’; Singapore National Archives SCA 35/53, MEO Circular No 7 of 1952, ‘Course in Chinese at the Government Officers’ Language School’, 4 September 1952; and Arkib Negara, Kuala Lumpur, ‘Particulars of Courses Attended by Officers and Rank & File of Federation of Malaya Police During the Period January-December 1955’, mimeograph 120/84, Appendix ‘D’. 35 Federation of Malaya Annual Report 1951, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1952, pp 202–3. 36 The official view was that no officers could be spared to undertake Chinese language study in China during the Emergency. However, the documents reveal that there were in fact two in 1952. An assistant superintendent of the Singapore Police was studying Cantonese in Macau (then a Portuguese colony on the South China coast) and an MCS cadet officer had been attached to the British consulate at Tamsui in Taiwan to study Mandarin. 37 During Gray’s tenure, more than 1,000 British sergeants and police lieutenants were recruited, most of whom had served in the Palestine Police. They assisted in the raising and training of some 40,000 Special Constables and provided a small cadre of specialists in the police transport and signals sections. Some police lieutenants were employed in the Special Branch (The Federation of Malaya and its Police 1786–1952, Kuala Lumpur: 1952 (no publisher stated), p 5). 38 CO 717/178, ‘Police Mission November 1949’. 39 JM (John) Gullick’s letter to author, dated 12 April 1994. The author is grateful to John Gullick for providing his personal recollections about the Mission. Gullick served in the Malayan Civil Service (1945–57), and after leaving Malaya, followed a legal and business career in London. He has written several excellent books and a number of papers about Malaya’s culture and history. 40 Alexander Maxwell, JF Ferguson and RL Jackson, Report of the Police Mission to Malaya, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1950, pp 10–12. The official reason given for O’Connell’s resignation was his differences with Gray ‘on matters concerned with the internal organisation of the Police Force’. Duthie had had a major operation in March 1949, but the results ‘were not as good as expected’, and it was explained that he had exercised his right to retire on 4 May 1949 on reaching the optional retirement age of 50 (The Straits Times, 29 September 1949). For an account of the pre-war Malayan Police officers’ discontent with Gray, see the unpublished memoirs of a senior Malayan Civil Service officer, HP Bryson, ‘Twenty-Nine-and-a-Half Years in the MCS,’ deposited in the Cambridge University Library, South Asian and Commonwealth Studies Section, BAM 3118. 41 ibid, p 21. 42 Annual Report of the Federation of Malaya 1950, p 153. 43 The Times, London, 16 May 1950. Sir William Norman Prentice Jenkin (1899–1983), CIE, CSI, knighted (1947), joined the Indian Police Service in 1919, and had a distinguished career in the Indian Special Branch (Who Was Who, 1981–90, p 393). The Melbourne Herald (15 May 1950) reported that he had played an important part in the Indian Police Special Branch, where he had been in charge of counterintelligence, government security and vetting government personnel. 44 Annual Report of the Federation of Malaya Police Force 1951, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1952, p 209.



AGENTS OF CHANGE (1949–52)

129

45 Maxwell, Ferguson & Jackson, op cit, pp 10–12. 46 CO 1022/148, ‘The Organisation of Chinese Resistance to Communism in Malaya. Proposed by Tan Cheng Lock for Formation of a Secret Chinese Organisation to Combat Communism in Malaya’ (closed until 1983) and CO 1045/484, ‘Papers, including Communist Influence in Chinese Schools 1959’. See also CAB 129/40, CP (50) 125, dated 13 June 1950, ‘Preliminary Report on a Visit to Malaya and Singapore: Cabinet Memorandum by Mr Griffiths’; CAB 21/1681, MAL C (50) 21, dated 17 June 1950, ‘The Military Situation in Malaya: Memorandum by Mr Strachey for Cabinet Malaya Committee’; CAB 128/17, CM37 (50)1, dated 19 June 1950, ‘Malaya Cabinet Conclusions on Reports by Mr Griffith and Mr Strachey Following Their Visits to Malaya’; and CAB 21/1681, MAL C6 (50) 1, dated 19 June 1950, ‘The Civil Situation in Malaya: Cabinet Malaya Committee Minutes’. 47 Federation of Malaya Annual Report 1951, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, p 201. 48 WO 208/3934, Top Secret, Pan Malayan Review, No. 3, 29 September 1948, ‘KMT Activities’. See also CO 537/7292, Top Secret, ‘Kuomintang. The Strength and Activities of Kuomintang Members in Singapore’ (closed until 1982). With the recognition of the Chinese People’s Republic of China in January 1950, the KMT in Malaya officially ceased to exist. However, the KMT consular officials, including the KMT ConsulGeneral in Kuala Lumpur, were allowed by the British colonial authorities to remain in Malaya as private citizens. 49 Arkib Negara, Kuala Lumpur, SP13/A/15 (1948–53), Senarai Peneriman Tun Tan Cheng Lock, Tan’s letter to Hans Taussig, Editor, Eastern World, London, dated 18 December 1951. 50 Chin & Hack, op cit, pp 157–8. 51 Arkib Negara, Kuala Lumpur, SP13/E/16, ‘Notes Submitted for Consideration by Rt Hon Oliver Lyttelton, Secretary of State for the Colonies’, 2 December 1951. 52 Oliver Lyttelton, Viscount Chandos, PC, DSO, MC, LL.D., The Memoirs of Lord Chandos, London: The Bodley Head, 1962, p 370. 53 Colonel WA Muller, CMG, (1898–1970), Inspector-General of the Colonial Police 1951–57, had previously served in the Ceylon Police (1920–48) and had been Commissioner of Police, Trinidad, and Commissioner of Police, Tanganyika, before taking over as Inspector-General of the Colonial Police. He paid a second visit to Malaya in February/March 1955, and his official report on this visit is to be found in CO 1030/168, ‘Muller Report’. In his 1955 report, Muller said that he ‘would hesitate to suggest any radical changes to the organisation [of the police] which is now working smoothly’, and he expressed his satisfaction with the efficiency of the Special Branch. 54 Lyttelton, op cit, p 362, and Sin Jew Jit Poh, 30 November 1951. 55 Lieutenant General Sir Leslie Keith (Rob) Lockhart, KCB, CIE, MC, Indian Army (retired), was Director of Operations in Malaya from 3 December 1951 to 6 February 1952, on taking over from Briggs. He agreed to stay on as Deputy Director of Operations after General Sir Gerald Templer arrived at Kuala Lumpur in February 1952 to take over as High Commissioner and Director of Operations. 56 CAB 129/48, C (51) 26, Annexe II. 57 CAB 1022/165, ‘Memorandum on the Police Force, Federation of Malaya’, 27 February 1952.

130

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

58 The Straits Times, 18 December 1951. 59 PREM 8/1406/2, 11 December 1950, ‘The Malayan Situation and the Far East’, minute by Mr Strachey to Mr Attlee urging the appointment of a regional supremo. 60 National Army Museum, Chelsea, ACC 9501-165-30, Papers of General Sir Rob Lockhart, Top Secret, ‘The Situation in the Federation of Malaya from Point of View of Director of Operations’, 26 November 1951, p 15. 61 CAB 129/48 C (51) 59, Malaya: Secret. Lyttelton’s Cabinet paper re. Mission to Malaya, ‘Appendix IX, Intelligence Services and Related Counter-Measures’. See also ‘Lyttelton Stresses Govt’s Greater Trust in Chinese’ in The Singapore Standard, 12 December 1951. According to Lyttelton, Hugh Fraser, his Parliamentary Private Secretary, drafted the appendix of his report dealing with intelligence. 62 See Winn L Taplin, ‘Six General Principles of Intelligence’, Intelligence & National Security, 3(4), 1989 p 485. 63 See Caroline Merz (ed), Wise After the Event. Donald Wise: A Celebration, Norwich & Los Angeles: The Tagman Press, 2003, Chapter 2, ‘Ferret Force: 1947–50’, pp 31–41. 64 Australian Archives, Canberra, A1838/278-413/2/6/3 pt. 6, Secret, Federation of Malaya Police Operational Summary No 89, dated 23 March 1950. 65 CAB 129/48 C (51) 59, Malaya: Secret. Lyttelton’s Cabinet paper re. Mission to Malaya, ‘Appendix IX, Intelligence Services and Related Counter-Measures’. 66 Lyttelton, op cit, p 374. 67 Technically speaking, Jenkin was not ‘Head of the Special Branch’ as such, but ‘Director of Intelligence’. The Head of the Special Branch/CID serving under him was JMNA Nicholls, whose position was not affected. 68 See CO 577/5973, Secret. ‘Police Department Staff. Internal Differences’, letter from SWP Sutton, officer administering the Malayan government, to Sir Henry Gurney, and Jenkin’s letter of 10 November 1950 to the Acting Chief Secretary, Federation of Malaya. See also CO 537/7271, Weekly Situation Report South East Asia Department, Colonial Office, 21–27 September 1951, ‘Resignation of Sir William Jenkin, Director of Intelligence, Federation of Malaya Police: Difference of Opinion between Jenkin and Malayan government over organisation of police intelligence work.’ 69 Jenkin intended that the uniformed branch of the police should take over responsibility for investigating routine non-Emergency crime, and the Special Branch/CID (renamed the Police Intelligence Bureau) should concentrate on intelligence directly connected with the Emergency. Annual Report of the Federation of Malaya 1951, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1952, p 209. 70 Short, op cit, pp 306, 335. The views of the Malayan rubber and tin magnates carried considerable weight with the British government, as Malaya was an important source of US dollars which it needed to adjust Britain’s balance of payments account with the US (see also Richard J Aldrich, British Intelligence Strategy and the Cold War, London: Routledge, 1992, p 308). 71 The Straits Times, 10, 15, 31 January 1952, and Keesing’s Contemporary Archives, 26 January–2 February 1952, Column No 11982. 72 The Straits Times, 15 and 31 January 1952.

Reproduced from Malaya's Secret Police 1945-60: The Role of the Special Branch in the Malayan Emergency by Leon Comber (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2008). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available at < http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg >

chapter six The rise of the Special Branch (1950–52): Sir William Jenkin The watershed years for the reorganisation, restructuring and training of the Malayan Police and its Special Branch may well be said to have been between 1950 and 1954. The overall structure of the Special Branch that finally emerged after 1954 was, in fact, to remain unchanged, except for minor variations, until the end of the Emergency in 1960. During this time, several important figures emerged on the Malayan scene, and the recommendations they made concerning the development of the police, and the Special Branch in particular, were examined in the previous chapter. This chapter seeks to analyse the important part played by Sir William Jenkin and identify his achievements in reorganising and strengthening the Special Branch during his relatively short stay of one-and-a-half years in Malaya before he resigned. It will examine, too, the attention he paid to coastal and border security, his codification of the work of the Special Branch, and the joint police–military operational intelligence rooms that he established. Jenkin had a distinguished career in the Indian Police Special Branch and the highly regarded Indian Intelligence Bureau in Simla before coming to Malaya and he was the first trained professional intelligence officer to take over the Malayan Special Branch. He arrived in Kuala Lumpur to take up his appointment as ‘Adviser of the Special Branch/CID’ on 22 June 1950. At this stage, the Special Branch was still subsumed in to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID). At the end of the year, his appointment was redesignated as Director of Intelligence to facilitate his work in advising and assisting in the reorganisation of the Special Branch/CID. He was the first officer to hold the appointment of Director of Intelligence in Malaya.1 Jenkin quickly realised the vital importance of strengthening the Special Branch by increasing the intake of Chinese officers, a matter that had been recommended several times in the past, but with little being done about it. He proposed that an additional 215 Chinese probationary inspectors should be appointed to the Special Branch as soon as possible and argued that this was absolutely essential if the Special Branch was to carry out effectively its function as the government’s main intelligence agency and provide the 131

132

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

military with operational intelligence. He reasoned that if more Chinese personnel were employed in the Special Branch, it would be easier to obtain intelligence. To increase the intake of Chinese inspectors, he suggested that the normal recruiting requirements for inspectors should be modified to include candidates with excellent Chinese language qualifications who would otherwise have been considered ineligible because of their lack of command of English.2 He also recommended that the age requirements for such appointments should be extended so that older candidates could apply. As part of his recommended increase in the number of Chinese probationary Special Branch inspectors, he proposed that 29 places out of the proposed 215 vacancies should be reserved for serving Chinese members of the police rank-and-file, who were to be selected on merit and given accelerated promotion. While the recruitment of external candidates to fill the vacancies for Chinese probationary inspectors proceeded rather slowly, eventually154 candidates who had obtained their School Leaving Certificate (Senior Cambridge or matriculation) were selected for appointment. Jenkin proposed, too, that Chinese detectives should be recruited directly into the Special Branch without first having to join the uniformed branch of the Police and undergo police recruit training at the Police Depot.3 Meanwhile, it was noticeable that while there was still a reluctance on the part of Chinese to serve in the uniformed branch of the police, they were not adverse to serving in the Special Branch or the Criminal Investigation Department, where they could wear civilian clothes and not be subject to such strict discipline as they would be in the uniformed branch. Sir Henry Gurney, the High Commissioner, made several attempts without much success to overcome this reluctance. Eventually, it was decided in December 1950 to introduce a National Service Bill that would enable the government to draft any male between the ages of 17 and 45, including Chinese, into the police or the army. By 1951, 1,223 Chinese had been drafted under the new legislation into the uniformed branch of the police. Their numbers for the first time compared favourably with the number of Indians and Pakistanis already serving in the uniformed branch, although it was still far below the figure of 6,239 Malays who formed the vast majority of the police uniformed branch.4 Jenkin took steps, too, to increase the number of gazetted police officers who would command and direct the inspectorate and the rank-and-file in the Special Branch. In 1949, before Jenkin’s arrival, there had been only 16



THE RISE OF THE SPECIAL BRANCH (1950–52)

133

gazetted officers in the Special Branch, that is, 3 per cent of the total strength of all gazetted police officers. However, by the time he left Malaya at the end of 1951, he had succeeded in increasing the Special Branch establishment to 93 gazetted officers or 16.8 per cent of the total of 554 gazetted officers, and 192 inspectors and police lieutenants or 14.4 per cent of the combined total of 1330 inspectors and police lieutenants. Thereafter, the numbers continued to increase, and by December of the following year, for instance, the number of gazetted Special Branch officers and inspectors/ police lieutenants reached 126 and 279 respectively, making up approximately 20 per cent of all gazetted officers and 18 per cent of all inspectors/police lieutenants in the police.5 In November 1951, Jenkin pressed for a large increase in the strength of the Special Branch/CID by the further recruitment of 80 Chinese inspectors and 500 Chinese detectives. These would be in addition to the 1,500 Chinese rank-and-file that the Commissioner of Police required urgently for the uniformed branch. The government hoped to enlist the support of the Malayan Chinese Association in its recruiting campaign, as the MCA was its main ‘unofficial’ channel of contact with the Chinese community. Tan Cheng Lock, the MCA President, expressed interest in the government’s plans, as they fitted in with the general drift of his recommendations to the government regarding the greater use of Chinese in the police force (see previous chapter). However, the MCA considered that police rates of pay were unlikely to attract Chinese candidates, who could earn much more in the private sector, without having to expose themselves to what they perceived to be an arduous and dangerous life. Tan’s solution was to suggest that the Malayan Chinese Association should be allowed to subsidise the wages of Chinese recruits to bring them up to market rates. However, the MCA’s offer was not taken up. The government was reluctant to allow a part of the police force to be ‘privatised’, especially if by doing so, it would be seen by some people that the Chinese contingent of the police was controlled by the MCA. It was argued, too, it would not be acceptable for Chinese recruits to be paid more than their Malay counterparts.6 As part of his plan to develop and strengthen the Special Branch, Jenkin arranged for assistant superintendents of police (Special Branch) to be posted at police contingent (state), circle and district levels, thus ensuring that a Special Branch presence could be felt at all levels of the police force.7

134

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Jenkin brought detention camps within the purview of the Special Branch, and stressed the importance of Special Branch officers being able to interrogate detainees to obtain information of security value. He stationed an assistant superintendent of police (Special Branch) and a small team of Chinese inspectors and detectives at all detention camps for this purpose. As Jenkin wrote: It is right that Detention Camps should come within the cast of this Special Branch net. In these camps, the detenus [sic] are persons who have been arrested because they have been or have been strongly suspected of being guilty of political subversive activity of a most serious character. Such persons are the responsibility of the Special Branches [sic] who had to undertake most of the work concerned with them, except their physical guarding and general supervision of their custody. From the Special Branch point of view, the task is not an unprofitable one, for if persons have been detained on good grounds, they should have in their possession information of much value to the Special Branch and the Government. Interrogation is the procedure which brings this information to the surface.8

Aside from interrogation, the Special Branch teams were tasked to: • maintain detainee records kept under the Emergency Regulations • separate ‘hardened communists from misguided sympathisers’ • recommend the suitability of detainees for rehabilitation and release • determine whether any detainees could be ‘turned’ and employed as Special Branch informers • maintain a record of detainees’ visitors • prevent the covert passing of messages between visitors and detainees.9 In 1951, 4,745 detention orders were issued. Over 1,500 Chinese detainees (excluding dependents) were repatriated to China under Emergency Regulation 17C that empowered the government to banish Chinese detainees from Malaya if there were reasonable grounds to believe they were communist supporters. A further 245 detainees accepted voluntary repatriation. Detainees who were not likely to pose a security risk were released and some of them agreed to work as Special Branch informers.10 Special Branch interrogation units were established at all police contingent (state) headquarters to re-interrogate surrendered and captured



THE RISE OF THE SPECIAL BRANCH (1950–52)

135

guerrillas at length and on a much more thorough and detailed basis than would have been possible at the time they first fell into the hands of the security forces.11 By introducing the above measures, Jenkin ensured that the Special Branch would play a more significant part in the handling of surrendered and captured guerrillas and in deciding how best the knowledge they provided about their former comrades-in-arms could be used.12 He argued that it was largely on information obtained from surrendered and captured communist guerrillas that the Special Branch would be able to obtain operational intelligence, create an order of battle of the Malayan National Liberation Army, and a ‘Who’s Who’ of the communist leaders.13 Table 7: Reward scale (1952) Information leading to capture of CTs (M$)

Information leading to killing of CTs (M$)

CPM rank

250,000 (₤29,167/-)

125,000 (₤14,583/-)

Secretary-General

200,000 (₤23,333/-)

100,000 (₤11,667/-)

Politburo members

150,000 (₤17,500/-)

75,000 (₤8,750/-)

Members of the Central Committee, and North, Central and South Bureaux

120,000 (₤14,000/-)

60,000 (₤7,000/-)

75,000 (₤8,700/-)

35,000 (₤4,083/-)

18,000 (₤2,100/-)

14,000 (₤1,633/-)

District Committee secretaries

13,000 (₤1,517/-)

10,000 (₤1,167/-)

District Committee members

8,000 (₤933/-)

6,000 (₤700/-)

Commander and 2nd-in-command of Independent Platoons

6,500 (₤758/-)

5,000 (₤583/-)

Branch Committee secretaries

4,000 (₤467/-)

3,000 (₤350/-)

Section leaders

2,500 (₤292/-)

2,000 (₤233/-)

CPM members and members of any armed CPM organisation

State and Regional Committee secretaries State and Regional Committee members

Note: Rewards converted at 1952 prevailing rate of M$1.00 = 2s.4d. Source: Adapted from Federation of Malaya, Emergency Information Services, D.Inf.4/52/295 (EMERG), Kuala Lumpur, 10 April 1952.

136

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

In 1952, the government announced a revised reward scale for information leading to the capture, surrender or killing of CTs (see Table 7) to replace the ad hoc rewards that had been offered previously, and an earlier scale in 1950. Surrendered enemy personnel were eligible to receive rewards equal to one-half of those given to the general public, although if they were released for rehabilitation they became eligible to receive the full amount. Later in the Emergency, SEPs became eligible to receive the full reward scale.14 In his report on the progress of the Emergency for the period 1 January—31 May 1951, General Briggs described the re-organisation of the Special Branch/CID as being well-advanced and noted that intelligence obtained from the interrogation of surrendered and captured guerrillas is ‘being handled and sifted better and results are becoming more apparent’.15 Jenkin showed particular interest in the work being done at the Special Branch Holding Centre (see Chapter 4) that had been established at Jalan Gurney near the police training school on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, and gave priority to any requests for assistance that it made. Under Jenkin, the Special Branch in 1950 assumed responsibility for the surveillance and security control of Malaya’s coastal regions and the Malayan–Thai frontier.16 Even at this early stage, Jenkin was aware of the importance of the Special Branch keeping the rugged Malayan–Thai border under close surveillance, and he arranged for the Royal Air Force to make regular reconnaissance flights along the border as well as over the islands off the east coast of Malaya.17 The Malayan–Thai frontier was the funnel through which the Japanese had invaded Malaya during the Second World War, and if the communist guerrillas were to receive reinforcements or matériel overland from the north, as was considered a distinct possibility at one time, it was more than likely they would follow the same route. Police lieutenants assigned to the Special Branch took charge of security at border posts. Initially, only four police lieutenants were used, but in 1951, Jenkin obtained authority for the employment of an additional 26, making a total of 30 police lieutenants to be employed at land frontier posts, seaports and airports, in addition to the regular police units that were stationed there. The land frontier posts were situated at Pengkalan Chepa and Rantau Panjang (Kelantan), Ayer Panas (Kroh, Perak), Changlun and Kuala Perlis (Perlis), all strategic crossing points on the Malayan–Thai border, where small customs and immigration posts already existed (see Table 8). In August 1952, following instructions given by Jenkin prior to his departure from



THE RISE OF THE SPECIAL BRANCH (1950–52)

137

Malaya, a small Frontier Intelligence Bureau was established at Contingent Special Branch headquarters in Penang. This was an important development that was to lead eventually to the formation of a combined Malayan–Thai Special Branch post at Songhkla in southern Thailand, with outposts at Sadao and Betong (see Chapter 11).18 Table 8: Police lieutenants employed on Special Branch duties at Malayan–Thai border posts, seaports and airports (1952) Seaports

Passport control

Security

Penang

2

2

Port Swettenham

2

2

Malacca

2

2

Kota Bharu (Kelantan)

2

2

Penang

1

1

Kota Bharu (Kelantan)

1

1

Pengkalan Chepa (Kelantan)

2

–

Rantau Panjang (Kelantan)

2

–

Changlun (Perlis)

2

–

Kuala Perlis (Perlis)

2

–

Ayer Panas (Kroh, Perak)

2

–

Total: 30

20

10

Airports

Land frontier posts

Source: Adapted from National Army Museum, Chelsea, ACC 9501-165-1-18, Appendix C, ‘Note dated 2 November 1951 by SAC CID re. employment of P/Lts for SB duties’.

The Special Branch was tasked to give priority to the interrogation for operational purposes of surrendered and captured communists guerrillas and communist suspects as soon as possible after they were arrested or captured. However, because of the lack of Chinese-speaking British officers already alluded to, the interrogation was often carried out by Chinese Special Branch officers or by Chinese and British Special Branch officers working together. The function of the Chinese Special Branch officers was a vital one, as they were able to bring into use their superior language skills and their familiarity with local customs and culture.

138

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

An initial questionnaire was prepared for the guidance of investigating officers to ascertain whether a surrendered or captured guerrilla had useful operational information. The following headings were used: • Name, race and dialect • Length of time the SEP/CEP had been in the jungle • Rank and unit • Does the SEP/CEP know of any other guerrillas who wish to surrender? If so, is he prepared to return to the jungle and persuade them to do so? • Is the SEP/CEP prepared to return to his unit in the jungle (if his defection has not been noticed) and operate undercover as a Special Branch agent? • Can the SEP/CEP lead the security forces to any guerrilla camps? Are the camps likely to be occupied, and if so, by whom? How long will it take a foot patrol to reach them? • When does he think his absence is likely to be noticed? • Does he know of any tracks used by the communist terrorists to approach or leave their camps? • Does the SEP/CEP know of any arms dumps?19 By April 1951, Jenkin had reached the conclusion that the further development and efficiency of the Special Branch was being hampered by its being subsumed within the CID. The purposes and functions of the two departments were quite separate: the Special Branch had responsibility for political, security and operational intelligence, whereas the CID was concerned with the investigation of non-political crime. He thereupon decided to separate the Special Branch from the CID and establish a separate ‘Police Intelligence Bureau’ along the lines of the Intelligence Bureau in India with which he was familiar, and the former Malayan Security Service.20 Jenkin envisaged the Police Intelligence Bureau being independent of the police, headed by himself as Director of Intelligence, and reporting directly to the highest levels of government. However, his plans were not approved by Colonel Gray, so the Bureau was wound up in September 1951 and the Special Branch reverted to its previous status. The dissolution of the Bureau may well have contributed to Jenkin’s resigning later in the month (see previous chapter).



THE RISE OF THE SPECIAL BRANCH (1950–52)

139

Probably the best, and certainly the longest-lasting, legacy that Jenkin left the Special Branch was Directive No 9, or to give it its full name, ‘Memorandum on Intelligence with Particular Reference to the Special Branch and Joint Operations Intelligence Rooms’. It laid down detailed guidelines for the day-to-day work of the Special Branch and the establishment of joint (police–military) operations intelligence rooms. All relevant operational intelligence would be maintained in the joint operations intelligence rooms, with an up-to-date order of battle for CPM/MNLA units known to operate in the area. The Special Branch, the uniformed branch of the police and the army would provide intelligence for the use of the personnel maintaining these rooms. The Directive was issued on 22 August 1950 under Jenkin’s signature from Special Branch/CID headquarters. It was drafted by Jenkin as part of the series of Emergency directives issued under the imprimatur of General Briggs covering all aspects of the war against the communist guerrillas. Under the Directive, Jenkin re-organised Federal Special Branch headquarters into seven functional sections (see Chart 4). Up to then, there had been only five (see Chart 2). The three ethnic sections were retained, although they were given much more of a political focus than they had been previously. The additional four sections were: • Liaison and Operations • Security • Trade Unionism and Societies • Communism. The Liaison and Operations section dealt with joint counterinsurgency operations with the army; the Security section with measures taken to protect against espionage; the Trade Unionism and Societies section with detecting communist activities in the labour movement and ‘open’ societies; and the Communism section with combating the challenges posed in various forms by the CPM and its military arm, the MNLA. The Communism section was the most important. It was headed by GC (Guy) Madoc, who had by then (early 1950) returned from his undercover assignment with the British Embassy, Bangkok, to join Federal Special Branch headquarters under Jenkin. It covered a wide range of activities as shown by its division into four sub-sections as shown in Chart 4. The sub-heading ‘external communism’ included information about China and neighbouring Southeast Asian countries.21

140

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Chart 4: Federal Special Branch headquarters under Sir William Jenkin (1950–51)

Senior Asst. Commissioner SB

Liaison & Operations

Security

Indian & Misc. Political Movements

Malay Political Movements

Chinese Political Movements

Trade Unionism & Societies

Communism

Secret Registry

External Communism Banditry Underground Communism Other Manifestations of Communism

Source: Adapted from Emergency Directives Issued by Director of Operations, Federation of Malaya, Directive No. 9, ‘Intelligence, the Functions of the Special Branch and the Joint Operations Rooms’, Top Secret, Special Branch/CID Headquarters, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 21 August 1950.



THE RISE OF THE SPECIAL BRANCH (1950–52)

141

Other topics that Jenkin dealt with in his Directive No 9 included a list of files and indexed records that were to be maintained in the Special Branch secret registry, the processing of information ‘to ensure that it is given its proper weight and its right place in the general political picture’, and the importance of the Special Branch and the army maintaining the closest liaison. Jenkin appended a separate note detailing the functions of joint police–military operations intelligence rooms at police contingent (state) level and lower levels. He specified, too, the information to be covered in Daily Situation Reports, Weekly Summaries (state level), and Combined Federation Headquarters Weekly Summaries. These daily and weekly reports and summaries, in effect, chronicled items of operational intelligence, as well as details of security force operations throughout Malaya, and constituted a valuable source of information. In January 1951, Jenkin opened two Special Branch/CID training schools, one for detectives at Sentul, Selangor, and the other for gazetted officers and senior subordinate police officers in a disused police station at Salak South, a suburb on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur. This was an important development, as Special Branch personnel had been obliged previously to learn ‘on-the-job’, without recourse to formal training or lectures on the theory and practice of their craft. It was the first time postwar that systematic training in investigation, the analysis of intelligence and intelligence techniques had been provided. Both training schools served a useful purpose; during the year, 193 detectives passed through the Sentul training school and 287 gazetted Special Branch/CID officers and subordinate police officers graduated from the Salak South training school.22 In mid-July 1951, Jenkin and Briggs, working together with the MI5 Security Liaison Officer (SLO) in Kuala Lumpur, identified the Min Yuen as an important Special Branch target.23 Usually a small group of some three to five Min Yuen workers, constituting a cell, operated under the direction of a branch committee. In turn, several branch committees came under the control of a district committee. Working closely with and subordinate to the Min Yuen workers were ‘executives of the masses’, who were squatters on the jungle fringes carrying on their usual occupations.24 Jenkin instructed each Contingent Special Branch to concentrate on the Min Yuen in its own area, and create a comprehensive and detailed record of its structure, under the following headings:

142

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

• the identities of members of CPM Defence Corps, Self-Protection Corps and Armed Work Forces • the identities of members of the Working Committees of the masses organisation • the identities of executives of the masses organisations and members of their cells classified according to employment, viz, food suppliers, intelligence agents, propagandists, cells among the labour forces, cells in Chinese schools, and so on • the identities of couriers operating between (a) district committee members and branch Min Yuen executives; (b) individual branch and Min Yuen groups; and (c) district committee members, state MNLA headquarters and MNLA units in their areas.25 In his final reports of April and October 1951 before retiring, Briggs acknowledged officially the improved flow of intelligence that the increased establishment of British and Asian Special Branch officers had brought about. He commended, too, the amount and quality of intelligence provided by the Special Branch, and the speed with which operational intelligence had been passed on to the army.26 All of this must have been very gratifying to Jenkin, in view of the previous strictures passed on the Special Branch and the time and effort he had devoted to restructuring and strengthening the Special Branch. As Table 9 shows, during Jenkin’s tenure in Malaya, though the ‘shooting war’ reached a high level and the government was still concerned with winning over the ‘hearts and minds’ of the Chinese population, there were encouraging trends in the war with the communist guerrillas that augured well for the future.27 In the period from June 1950 to April 1951, the increased level of contact with the CTs had in fact provided the security forces with increased opportunities to inflict casualties on them, as demonstrated in Table 9. The increase in the surrender rate was especially gratifying, as surrendered guerrillas (SEPs) were an important source of operational intelligence for the Special Branch. To summarise, Jenkin was successful in codifying for the first time the work of the Special Branch, and by establishing joint police–military operations intelligence rooms, he ensured that the police and army worked together with the minimum of friction. He introduced training in Special Branch duties and focused attention on the security situation on the Malayan–Thai frontier, which was to become an area of increasing



THE RISE OF THE SPECIAL BRANCH (1950–52)

143

consequence as the communist insurgents began to withdraw into southern Thailand to distance themselves from the Malayan forces, as will be recounted in Chapter 11. Table 9: Communist terrorist contacts and casualties (15 June 1950–14 April 1951) 15 June– 14 November 1950

15 November– 14 April 1951

% increase

Contacts

371

778

+109.7%

CT casualties (killed, captured)

365

434

+18.9%

Surrenders

30

49

+ 63.3%

Source: Adapted from AIR20/7777. Secret. Briggs Report. ‘Progress Report on the Situation in Malaya dated 20 April 1951’, p. 58.

The work that Jenkin put in to reorganise and strengthen the Special Branch undoubtedly enabled it to play an increasingly crucial role in the Emergency and fulfil its functions as the government’s main intelligence body. It made GC (Guy) Madoc’s task much easier, too, when he was appointed Head of the Federal Special Branch in February 1952, as will be discussed later. Jenkin’s great contemporary was Briggs, whose work parallelled that of Jenkin in both time and need. While Jenkin paid close attention to restructuring the Special Branch’s on-the-ground operations in the interests of efficiency, Briggs developed an over-arching blueprint that co-ordinated the needs of the police, army and civilian administration. This will be the subject of the next chapter.

Notes 1

2 3

SWP Sutton, the officer administering the government, announced the appointment of Jenkin for ‘two years’ as Director of Intelligence on 21 November 1950, thus extending his tenure of office and upgrading his appointment (The Times, London, 22 November 1950). Sutton stated that efforts were being made to bring the Federation of Malaya’s security forces, particularly the Special Branch and CID, up to full strength and the highest standard of efficiency (see The Straits Times, 31 January 1952, p 4). Federation of Malaya Annual Report 1951, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1952, p 209. ibid, pp 200, 209.

144

4 5

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15

16

17 18 19

20 21

22

23

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Arkib Negara, Kuala Lumpur, SP/13/A/41, ‘Chinese Police Recruits’, Senerai Peneriman Tun Tan Cheng Lock. Federation of Malaya Annual Report 1953, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1954, p 232. The figures for inspectors and police lieutenants are grouped together and it not possible to provide separate figures for them. ibid. Federation of Malaya Annual Report 1950, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1951, p 156. Directive No 9, Emergency Directives issued by the Director of Operations, Federation of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur: Government Press, 1950, p 81. Federation of Malaya Annual Report 1951, op cit, p 209. Federation of Malaya Annual Report 1952, op cit, p 223. ibid. ibid, p 233. By 1957, Lieutenant General Sir Roger Bower, then Director of Operations, was able to confirm, in his annual review of the Emergency, the progress that the Special Branch had made in this respect: ‘The Police intelligence system [Special Branch] has not only charted nearly every member of the enemy army, but has brought about the great majority of contacts resulting in elimination’ (WO 106/5990. Secret, 1957 Director of Operations Review, 12 September 1957, p 27). Pye, op cit, p 118, fn 1. AIR20/777, Secret, Report on the Emergency in Malaya from April 1950 to November 1951 by General Sir Harold Briggs, KCIE, CB, CBE, DSO, Director of Operations, pp 51–2. CO 1022/205, CIS (52) (2) Final. Top Secret, ‘The Situation on the Thai/Malayan Frontier as at 15 April 1952’, p 11; Annual Report of the Federation of Malaya 1950, op cit, p 156. British Malaya, December 1948, p 147. Short, op cit, pp 373–5. See Chapter 10 infra. The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya, prepared under the direction of the Director of Operations, Malaya, Restricted, Third edition, 1958, Chapter XIV, ‘Intelligence’, Appendices A and B. Sir Percival Griffiths, To Guard my People. The History of the Indian Police, London: Ernest Benn Ltd, 1971, p 347. United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), The Federation of Malaya. National Intelligence Estimate, No. 64–58 [sic], Secret, 14 January 1958 (declassified by 058375 on 17 November 1955), Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 1958, p 12. Federation of Malaya Annual Report 1951, op cit, p 156. See also Top Secret, CO 1022/51 (extract from Cabinet Paper C (51) 59, dated 21 December 1951), ‘Intelligence Services and Related Counter-Measures. Intelligence Services’, Appendix IX, para 1A (4), dealing with the training of Special Branch/CID staff at all levels in basic intelligence methods. See Director of Operations, Malaya. Directive No. 1, Director of Operations, Malaya, 16 April 1950.



THE RISE OF THE SPECIAL BRANCH (1950–52)

145

24 CO531/7300, ‘Political Developments—Min Yuen Organisation’ and ‘Extract from Secret Abstract 1–15 July 1951’ headed ‘Min Yuen—the People’s Movement (with acknowledgements to the MI5 Security Liaison Officer, Kuala Lumpur)’. This is an important file containing a comprehensive and detailed description of the genesis and organisation of the Min Yuen. 25 ibid. 26 AIR20/777. Secret. Briggs Report. ‘Progress Report on the Situation in Malaya dated 20 April 1951’, AIR 20/777, ‘Briggs Plan. Progress of the Emergency as on 31 October 1951’. 27 The Special Branch reported, however, that many Chinese merchants in the towns were terrorised by the communist insurgents into paying protection money under threat of death, and lorry owners, bus companies, Chinese rubber estate owners and rubber dealers were regularly being forced to subscribe to the communist coffers (AIR 20/777, Secret, ‘Report on the Emergency in Malaya from April 1950 to November 1951 by General Sir Harold Briggs, KCIE, CB, CBE, DSO, Director of Operations). The author was told by Chinese contacts at the time, ‘We are between two hard rocks. If we pay protection money to the communists and are arrested for doing so, the worst that can happen to us is that we will be detained. If, on the other hand, we refuse to pay protection money to the communists, we shall be killed and our family’s livelihood placed in jeopardy’ (author’s notes).

146

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Reproduced from Malaya's Secret Police 1945-60: The Role of the Special Branch in the Malayan Emergency by Leon Comber (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2008). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available at < http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg >

chapter seven The Special Branch and the Briggs Plan

This chapter will turn the spotlight on the strategies devised by General Briggs, Director of Operations (1950–51), to defeat the communists that were incorporated in the eponymous Briggs Plan. It will also review the various directives issued by General Briggs under the Briggs Plan that affected the Special Branch. With the implementation of the Briggs Plan, or to give it its full name, the ‘Federation Plan for the Elimination of the Communist Organisation and Armed Forces in Malaya’, the scene was set to enter a new phase that marked the beginning of the end of the Emergency and the defeat of the communist uprising. The essence of the Briggs Plan was a combined offensive involving the police, the army and the civil administration, working closely together in State and Settlement War Executive Committees, to plan the measures to be taken to destroy the Communist Party of Malaya and its underground guerrilla army, the Malayan National Liberation Army. The Federal War Council in Kuala Lumpur, chaired by Briggs, provided overall policy. This chapter examines, too, Special Branch involvement in the Briggs’ resettlement plan, involving the removal of some half a million Chinese squatters into New Villages to sever their contact with the communist guerrillas. Chin Peng was to admit subsequently in his autobiography that the Briggs’ resettlement plan was the communists’ Achilles Heel, as it isolated the guerrillas from the squatters, who were their main sources of food and intelligence.1 Moreover, the sheer necessity of having to obtain food in order to survive in the jungle forced Chin Peng to give instructions for all large-scale terrorist attacks to be scaled back and for the guerrillas to break up into smaller groups in search of food.2 General Briggs regarded psychological warfare as an extension of intelligence and the functions of the Emergency Information Services (EIS) that he caused to be formed in September 1950 will be discussed.3 Lieutenant General Sir Harold Briggs, a retired regular Indian Army officer, arrived in Kuala Lumpur on 3 April 1950 to take up a new post as Director of Operations, following Sir Henry Gurney’s request for a Director 147

148

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

of Operations to be appointed to co-ordinate and direct police, army, navy and air force counterinsurgency operations.4 Up to then, Colonel Gray, the Commissioner of Police, had co-ordinated counterinsurgency operations but it was now felt that his police duties had expanded to such an extent that they warranted his full and undivided attention. Briggs was appointed in a civilian capacity, ranking equal with the Chief Secretary, and was responsible for the performance of his duties to the High Commissioner. His civilian status undoubtedly helped to emphasise that Malaya remained under civil government, that martial law had not been declared, and the armed forces were in support of the civil power. He did not ‘command’ the police and the military forces as such, but coordinated and directed operations that were carried out under their own respective commanders. General Briggs agreed to accept the appointment for one year, which was later extended by six months. Since being commissioned in 1914, he had served throughout with the Indian Army, and with his thirty-four years’ experience of warfare in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, he was extremely well-qualified for the position. His last army appointment before retiring in 1948 had been as Commander-in-Chief Burma.5 On arriving in Kuala Lumpur, Briggs carried out a rapid tour of the country to obtain as much information as he could about the situation on the ground, with which to augment the briefings he had received in London and Singapore. The plan he subsequently drafted for defeating the communists, which became known as the Briggs Plan, was subsequently approved by the High Commissioner and the British Defence Coordination Committee (Far East) for implementation on 1 June 1950.6 To execute the plan, Briggs established a supreme Federal War Council, with himself as chair. The other members were the Commissioner of Police, the Chief Secretary, the army and air force commanders, a senior naval liaison officer and the Secretary for Defence. The Council was responsible under the High Commissioner for policy and the prosecution of the war against the communist insurgents. Similar subordinate committees were established in each state or settlement (State and Settlement War Executive Committees or SWECs) and at district level (District War Executive Committees or DWECs).7 In summary, the Briggs Plan envisaged action being taken along the following lines:



The Special Branch and the Briggs Plan

149

• Overhauling and strengthening the Special Branch.8 • Clearing the country, state by state, of communist armed units, starting from Johore, the southernmost Malayan State, in a drive to the north. • Resettling some 500,000 squatters, 85 per cent of whom were Chinese, into New Villages to sever their contact with the guerrillas. There was also to be some regrouping of rubber estate and tin mine labourers. The resettlement scheme was also intended to provide the Special Branch with an opportunity to penetrate and destroy the Min Yuen organisation. • Imposing strict food control measures to prevent food reaching the guerrillas.9 • Attacking the guerrillas on the police’s and army’s own ‘killing fields’ when they emerged from the jungle in search of food. • Providing Special Constables to guard the New Villages until they were able to form their own Home Guard.10 Squatters were officially defined by the government as ‘unlawful occupants of land in jungle clearings in pockets adjacent to roads, rivers, and railway lines, old tin mining land and on the outskirts of many town and kampongs’.11 They were living mostly outside government control, without title to the land they occupied. The compulsory regrouping and resettling of squatters represented a vast upheaval of the civilian population and, as Karl Hack comments, ‘over ten per cent of Malaya’s population was uprooted including the majority of the rural Chinese population’.12 Under the plan, squatters were moved into some 400 or so (the records are not precise about the exact number) heavily guarded and protected New Villages to bring them under government control and disrupt their contact with the communist jungle army.13 With the squatters concentrated in this way, the Special Branch was able, as intended, to develop a wide network of ‘spies’ and informers among them, although it was not an easy task as many of the squatters resented being compulsorily resettled.14 In Brigg’s own words, ‘security of the population and the elimination of the communist cells must be the primary task of the Police’,15 and under the separation of duties required by the Briggs Plan, the uniformed branch of the police was allocated the task of maintaining law and order in the populated areas, including villages, and labour lines on rubber estates and tin mines. The Special Branch was tasked to concentrate on penetrating and destroying the Min Yuen.

150

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

While food could be taken into the New Villages under police escort, none could be taken out, and there were police and army checkpoints at the main gates to prevent this happening. Briggs recognised that the success of his plan largely depended on the Special Branch being able to carry out effectively the role that it had been allocated, and he hoped that a strengthened Special Branch would be able to provide precise intelligence, based on which the army could lay ambushes when the guerrillas approached the barbed wire fences of the New Villages at night to collect supplies from their contacts. Briggs’ own personal staff was small. It initially consisted of four staff officers: two army officers (Major RW Saunders, MBE, and Colonel JK Shepherd, DSO, OBE), a police officer (DA (Douglas) Weir, who was subsequently to serve as deputy head of the Federal Special Branch and Chief Police Officer, Malacca) and a Malayan Civil Service (MCS) officer (RGK (Bob) Thompson, DSO, MC, who was eventually to become Permanent Secretary for Defence, 1959–61).16 This was not the first time that resettlement had been thought of as a way of dealing with the problem of squatters in Malaya. A few years before the Briggs Plan, the government’s Squatter Committee Report 1948 had recommended that squatters who could not be policed effectively should be resettled. However, no decisive action was taken on the report at the time, although the Special Branch urged the government to take action, and it was not until the Briggs Plan was implemented that the problem was finally addressed by moving the squatters into New Villages. One of the main difficulties was that the Malay state rulers did not want Chinese squatters to be resettled on or given title to land that was reserved for Malays.17 There seems little doubt that the resettlement of Chinese squatters and the dislocation of the support—mainly food, medicines, printing materials, as well as intelligence—that they provided the guerrillas constituted one of the definitive turning points of the Emergency, as indeed Chin Peng conceded in his memoirs.18 Interestingly enough, although it has not been widely commented on in the published literature, the Briggs’ resettlement plan bears an extraordinary resemblance to the Japanese Protection Village program introduced by the Japanese when they invaded Manchuria and China in the 1930s. Although there is no evidence that the British authorities in Malaya had studied the Japanese plan, the matter is worthy of further research. According to the Japanese plan, Chinese farmers and entire village communities in



The Special Branch and the Briggs Plan

151

Chart 5: Outline of government structure under the Briggs Plan (1950–51) High Commissioner Executive Council Personal Staff General Briggs

Director of Operations

Chief of Staff

Director of Intelligence

Navy (2,000)

Police/Army

Army (35,000)

Federal War Council, Chair. Director of Ops SWEC’s (State War Executive Committees) (11) DWEC’s (District War Executive Committees) (60)

Air Force (7,000)

Director of Information

Police (45,000)

Home Guard (180,000)

Civil Govt. Departments

Finance

Information Liaison with D of Info

Chief Secretary (Defence & Police)

Legal

Public Works

Protector of Malayan Aborigines (Orang Asli)*

Source: Adapted from Riley Sunderland, Organizing Counterinsurgency in Malaya: 1947-1960, Santa Monica: The Rand Corporation, 1964, p. 34. * By the beginning of 1951, control of the Orang Asli, by disrupting their contact with CTs and resettling them, was high on the list of government priorities and M$500,000 had been budgeted for this purpose (Anthony Short, The Communist Insurrection in Malaya 1948-60, London: Frederick Muller Ltd., 1975, p. 443).

152

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Manchuria and north and central China were compulsorily regrouped into protected villages to isolate them from the Chinese communists, who were then putting up stiff resistance to the Japanese invaders. In 1942, after the Japanese occupied Malaya, they introduced a similar plan to cut off contact between Chinese squatters and the MPAJA.19 There were other similarities too. During the Japanese occupation of Malaya, all residents of Japanese Protection Villages were registered and issued with identity cards to provide the Japanese with a means of controlling and monitoring their movements. This measure resembled closely the Malayan government’s decision to issue national registration identity cards under the Emergency Regulations as a means of population control during the early part of the Emergency. Both the Japanese and the British resettlement programs were resented and disliked by the Chinese squatters. In Malaya, many Chinese, who were not necessarily communist supporters, referred to the New Villages established under the Briggs Plan as ‘concentration camps’, because the liberty of movement of the New Villagers was severely restricted and the New Villages were enclosed behind barbed wire fences that were under constant armed police guard and kept under surveillance by the Special Branch.20 During the Japanese occupation of Malaya, the Japanese designated areas that were cleared of communist influence as ‘Model Peace Zones’. This idea was very similar to what the Malayan authorities referred to as ‘White Areas’ during the Emergency, that is, zones where the security situation had improved to such an extent that restrictions imposed under the Emergency Regulations, such as curfews and food control measures, could safely be lifted.21 It was General Sir Gerald Templer who introduced the concept of White Areas in Malaya.22 Malacca was the first area to be declared ‘white’ in 1953, when the Malacca Special Branch reported that most of the guerrillas had been eliminated or driven out of the state. Guy Madoc gave credit for the improvement in the security situation in Malacca to the excellent work done by the Malacca Special Branch under William (Bill) Woolnough.23 As the security situation improved and the communist guerrillas retreated across the Malayan border to take refuge in southern Thailand, other areas were declared ‘white’ until eventually the whole country was declared free of communist influence, with the exception of the immediate vicinity of the Malayan–Thai frontier.



The Special Branch and the Briggs Plan

153

The SWECs and DWECs established under the Briggs Plan brought together for the first time representatives of the police, army and civil administration at state and district levels to co-ordinate operations against the guerrillas. The nerve centres of counterinsurgency operations at state and district levels were the joint police–military operations intelligence rooms that had been set up by Sir William Jenkin (see preceding chapter). The Special Branch, the uniformed branch of the police and the army fed the joint operations intelligence rooms with information. It was the responsibility of the Special Branch to ensure that the information, including the order of battle of local MNLA units, was kept up-to-date and ready to be made available to authorised persons. The Special Branch maintained a card index of individual communist guerrillas and members of the Min Yuen. Joint operations intelligence room staff briefed police and army operations patrols before they left on operations and debriefed them on their return.24 Between April 1950 and November 1951, Briggs issued a comprehensive series of 18 directives, ranging in security classification from ‘confidential’ to ‘top secret’, to cover the implementation of his plan. They were subsequently compiled in booklet form as Emergency Directives Issued by Director of Operations, Federation of Malaya and ‘issued to all officers responsible for implementing the policies laid down’ in the plan.25 They constituted what was virtually a master plan for fighting the war against the communist terrorists, and defined how the uniformed police, the Special Branch, military and civil service were to interact with each other, and the strategies to be followed. It was a brilliant plan that has not been accorded the importance it deserves. Directive No 9, drafted by Sir William Jenkin and dealing specifically with the functions of the Special Branch, has already been discussed in the previous chapter, but other directives issued by Briggs specifically impinging on the work and functions of the Special Branch will be examined below. Directive No 1 In Directive No 1, dated 16 April 1950, which was issued just prior to Jenkin’s arrival in Kuala Lumpur, Briggs announced the formation of a new Federal Joint Intelligence Advisory Committee.26 The task of this body was to oversee intelligence activities and ensure that Special Branch intelligence on which operations could be mounted was analysed and disseminated without delay to the army before it became ‘stale’ and overtaken by the course of events.27 Briggs’ main concern was to eliminate the delays that

154

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

had often occurred in the past in passing on operational intelligence to the army. It was an important document that was eventually to lead to the attachment of military intelligence officers to Special Branch units, with responsibility for speedily transmitting operational intelligence to the army in a form that could readily be understood in military terms. It was made clear that MIOs worked under the control and supervision of the Special Branch and were not able to act independently of the Special Branch, which remained the government’s supreme intelligence organisation throughout the Emergency. Directive No 2 Directive No 2, dated 12 May 1950, dealt inter alia with the payment of rewards from Secret Service funds. It stated that ‘rewards should be [paid] according to results, and in proportion to the real risk run [that is, to the informer]’.28 In actuality, it ratified the practice that the Special Branch was already following. Although it is difficult to ascertain from available public records the total amounts paid by the Special Branch from the Secret Service Vote for information provided by agents, informers and ‘co-operative’ surrendered guerrillas, it is clear that large sums of money were involved. In the six months from the end of 1950 to the beginning of June 1951, for instance, M$500,000 was disbursed. In 1954, M$918,455 was paid out and in the following year, M$822,062.29 An appreciable part of the reward money for 1955 was paid to surrendered guerrillas who had either persuaded their former comrades to come out of the jungle and surrender, or led security force patrols back into the jungle to locate and attack guerrilla camps. Under Directive No 2, the Special Branch was directed to develop intelligence sources in ‘resettlement areas’ or New Villages that had been established as part of the Briggs Plan. As the Emergency progressed, an increasing number of ambushes were laid based on Special Branch information obtained in this way from informers. The guerrillas were most vulnerable when they approached the barbed wire perimeter fences surrounding the New Villages, usually at night, to obtain food and other supplies that their supporters inside the New Villages had arranged to leave for their collection.30 For a picture in diagrammatic form of the interrelationship of the Special Branch, CID and uniformed branch of the police, and the interrelationship of the police with the army, see Chart 6 and its accompanying explanatory note.



The Special Branch and the Briggs Plan

155

Directive No 16 This directive, issued on 18 September 1950, deals with propaganda, a topic that hitherto had been largely neglected.31 As Komer notes, in the ‘first two years of the Emergency there was no information service or co-ordinated anti-guerrilla information campaign’, and the use of psychological or political warfare and propaganda in the fight against the communist uprising had only been given cursory attention.32 General Briggs played a significant part in arranging for the government’s information and propaganda services to become, as he termed it, an ‘auxiliary intelligence instrument’ working closely with the Special Branch throughout the Emergency. General Templer, like Briggs, rated psychological warfare ‘on a par’ with intelligence.33 In the first two years of the Emergency, information and propaganda was the responsibility of the Department of Public Relations under JN McHugh, but it was based on a pre-Emergency model and not geared to the ‘war-time’ conditions that prevailed during the Emergency. Briggs required a much more dynamic approach to be adopted and in 1950 he recommended to the High Commissioner that a new unit should be formed—the Emergency Information Services—with responsibility for psychological warfare and countering communist propaganda, and reporting directly to himself as Director of Operations. Gurney requested the Secretary of State for the Colonies to second a suitably experienced officer to head the new department, and Hugh Carleton Greene was seconded for one year from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).34 Carleton Greene, the brother of the well-known novelist Graham Greene, had been a foreign correspondent in Berlin before the Second World War and was well-versed in the use of propaganda under war conditions. He had directed BBC broadcasts to Russia during the war. He arrived in Singapore on 19 September 1950 and served as head of the EIS until September 1951.35 Prior to Greene’s appointment, little emphasis had been placed on the spoken word in disseminating information on behalf of the government, and consequently the use of broadcasting and film as a propaganda tool had been largely neglected. Liaison with the Special Branch, too, was not all that it should have been and little use had been made for propaganda purposes of surrendered guerrillas or the databank of detailed information about the communists that had been assembled so painstakingly by the Special Branch. It was said at the time that communist leaflets and posters were a more common sight than the thousands of copies of government leaflets and

156

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Chart 6: Interrelationship between the Special Branch, CID, Uniformed Branch and Army under the Briggs Plan (1951) Federal Police Headquarters Commissioner of Police Personal Asst

Private Secretary Deputy Commissioner

Comdt. Police Depot

Snr ACP Uniformed Branch ACP. Admin

Snr ACP CID . ACP ACP Special Crime Branch Branch

Supt. Operations Branch

G Branch HQ Mal. Dist. GSOII (Int) HQ Mal Dist. Brigade Commander

GSO II Bde. HQ

Chief Police Officer Deputy Police Officer (state or settlement) ASP Uniformed Branch ASP Ops. Branch

GSOII (Int) Bde. HQ

Supt. CID

Special Branch

CO of Battalion or Local Mil. Commander

Crime Branch

OSPC (police circle) ASP Branch & Staff

ASP Criminal Investigation

ASP Special Branch

Bn. Intelligence Officer

Company Cmdr. or Local Mil. Commander

OCPD (police district) Uniformed Br.

Criminal Investigation

Special Branch

Source: Adapted from Appendix ‘A’, Secret, Directive No.2, Director of Operations, Kuala Lumpur, 1951.



The Special Branch and the Briggs Plan

157

Explanatory Notes – Chart 6 1. This Chart delineates in diagrammatic form the interrelationship between (a) the Special Branch, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), and the uniformed branches of the police and (b) the interrelationship of the Special Branch with military intelligence in 1951. It shows the police line of command stretching downwards from the Commissioner of Police at Federal Police headquarters to subordinate police formations at State, circle and district levels. The linkages between Special Branch and military intelligence officers are highlighted in bold. 2. In 1951, the Special Branch was still subsumed in to the CID and it is shown as a sub-division of the CID at Federal Police headquarters. 3. Army, police, and Special Branch linkages at different levels are shown by dotted lines. 4. (a), (b), (c), and (d) below provide the linkages between military intelligence officers and their equivalent Special Branch officers at different levels. Military Intelligence

Special Branch

(a) GSO I (Int) HQ Mal. Dist. (General Staff Assistant Commissioner Special Branch Officer Grade 1 (Intelligence) Malaya District Federal Police headquarters Headquarters) (b) GSO II (Int) Bde HQ (General Staff Officer Special Branch, Contingent (State) Grade II (Intelligence) Brigade Headquarters) police headquarters (c) Bn. Intelligence Officer (Battalion Special Branch, police circle Intelligence Officer) headquarters (d) Company Cdr or Local Mil Commander Special Branch, police district (Company Commander or Local Military Commander) headquarters

posters that had been printed and distributed. Dr GED Lewis, the Pahang State Emergency Information Officer (SEIO) in 1950, relates that Greene, who had come to visit him soon after his arrival in Malaya, expressed a desire to visit Temerloh and Triang, which were considered dangerous parts of the state. On the way, Greene complimented him on the number of propaganda posters prominently fixed to rubber trees, but as soon as they were clear of the rubber estate, Lewis told him that communist guerrillas had posted up the propaganda posters he had seen.36 Under the new arrangements, the EIS moved into a new building that had been specially built for it in the federal police headquarters compound at Bluff Road, Kuala Lumpur, which allowed it to work more closely with the Special Branch. The head of the Federal Special Branch, the Director of Intelligence, the Director of Operations, and the Commissioner of Police all had their offices in the same compound, which made it easier to plan and co-ordinate activities (see Chart 5).37

158

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Finally, clear objectives were introduced and the EIS’s propaganda campaign against the communist guerrillas followed closely the objectives laid down by General Briggs in Directive No 16, that is: (a) to raise the morale of the civilian populations and encourage confidence in the government and resistance to the communists, with a view to increasing the flow of intelligence to the Special Branch (b) to attack the morale of members of the MNLA, the Min Yuen and their supporters, and drive a wedge between their leaders and the rank-and-file, with a view to encouraging defection and undermining the determination of the communists to continue the struggle (c) to create an awareness of the values of the democratic way of life which were threatened by international communism.38 After Greene took charge of the EIS, he made a special point of developing a close working relationship with the Special Branch, and he gave instructions that the extensive information the Special Branch had accumulated about the communist guerrillas and their organisation should be studied and made greater use of for propaganda purposes. The Special Branch arranged for selected surrendered communist guerrillas to assist Greene’s department in preparing material that could be adapted for use in leaflets, radio broadcasts and local newspapers. In February 1951, Greene appointed Harry CC Too (Too Chee Chew) as his senior Chinese assistant. CC Too, as he was usually called, had an excellent knowledge of English, as well as spoken and written Chinese, which stood him in good stead in his appointment. After Greene’s return to the BBC in London at the end of his contract, the top post was held briefly by two other officers until General Templer appointed EDC (Eric) Peterson to take over as Director-General of Information Services in July 1952. During the Second World War, Peterson had been Deputy Director and Controller of Black Propaganda on the headquarters staff of the British South East Asia Command in Ceylon (Sri Lanka).39 Unfortunately, Peterson and Too did not see eye-to-eye over the handling of propaganda, which led to Too resigning from government service not long afterwards. He did not return to take up an appointment with Information Services until April 1955, by which time Peterson had returned to the UK. However, by November 1956, Too had become Head of the Psychological Warfare Section, a post he held with some distinction until he finally retired from government service in January 1983.40 He worked closely throughout with the Special Branch until the end



The Special Branch and the Briggs Plan

159

of the Emergency in 1960, and soon established a reputation as a leading authority on psychological warfare and counterinsurgency.41 In August 1951, government approval was given for SEPs to work with SEIOs in some of the Malay states and settlements, and among the first batch, Lee Chou, Wong Ah Koo and Ho Kei, all surrendered guerrillas, became the special assistants of SEIOs in Selangor, Kedah and Johore respectively. Their detention orders under the Emergency Regulations were suspended for this purpose. Many of the photographs and diaries that surrendered guerrillas had brought out from the jungle with them when they surrendered provided a wealth of information that could be used and adapted for propaganda purposes by the Special Branch and EIS.42 At EIS headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, CC Too became the mentor of Lam Swee, the first top-ranking communist to defect to the Special Branch. Lam Swee was important as he had been the Vice-President of the CPM’s Pan-Malayan Federation of Trade Unions, political commissar of the 4th Regiment MNLA, and a member of the South Johore Regional Committee. As a result of a dialectical disagreement with the communist leadership and his severe criticism of the conduct of the Central Committee, he was stripped of his rank, disarmed, placed under close arrest, accused of being an internal spy and ordered to carry out self-criticism.43 However, he managed to escape and make his way out of the jungle to surrender to the Special Branch at the end of June 1950. There is little doubt that if he had not escaped he would have been executed. After his surrender, with the encouragement and assistance of CC Too and the Special Branch, he wrote a booklet entitled My Accusation, which was a striking indictment of the communist leadership.44 About 100,000 copies of this small book, which was written in Chinese, were printed by the government printing press, distributed throughout Malaya and dropped by air into the jungle in areas known to be frequented by the CTs.45 Lim Cheng Leng, a senior Special Branch officer who worked closely with Too, writes that the booklet created a furore in the CPM, which quickly issued a statement branding Lam Swee as a traitor and calling upon all local CPM committees and branches to hold meetings to denounce him.46 Hitherto, Lam Swee had only been known in the southern State of Johore, but the publication and wide distribution of his booklet and the measures taken by the CPM to discredit it served to bring his case to the attention of his comrades in the jungle throughout the country.

160

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

With Peterson’s and CC Too’s help, the ‘black’ propaganda campaign against the communist guerrilla was escalated, usually with Special Branch assistance.47 Misleading and false information was deliberately planted with the Min Yuen, in the knowledge that false information passed on to the guerrillas as genuine by the Min Yuen would have the effect of discrediting the Min Yuen as a source of reliable information. With the information the Special Branch already had on record about the public and private lives and activities of some of the leading communist guerrillas, it was not difficult to make up convincingly authentic but disreputable stories about their private lives which, if circulated by means of leaflets dropped by aircraft into the jungle, would be likely to bring the leaders into disrepute in the eyes of the communist rank-and-file.48 Suitable material for the black propaganda campaign was provided, too, by the Information Research Department (IRD) of the office of the British Commissioner-General for South East Asia in Singapore and the Singapore CIA station under Bob Jantzen.49 Although the CIA station in Singapore was not allowed to run operations in Malaya or Singapore without British approval, it nevertheless provided Washington with a window on the Emergency.50 The top secret IRD had been established in 1947 at the height of the Cold War by the British Foreign Office in London. Its main target was Russia, but its resources were also used in the British colonies against the spread of communism and nationalism where they were perceived to pose a threat to colonial rule.51 When the MNLA had streamlined its command structure down to detached companies and platoons in the jungle so that communication with regimental headquarters became increasingly difficult, the Special Branch found that small isolated guerrilla units in the jungle were often highly susceptible to disinformation of black propaganda. On a visit to Johore Bahru in 1951, General Briggs stressed to the head of the Johore Contingent Special Branch that, from the point of view of longterm political intelligence as opposed to short-term operations intelligence, the Special Branch should attach great importance to extracting as much information about the CPM/MNLA as possible from in-depth interrogations of surrendered or captured guerrillas.52 This, in fact, was demonstrated later in a detailed interrogation of a surrendered guerrilla that was carried out in 1952 at Johore Contingent Special Branch headquarters. The interrogation was carried out jointly by Jack Barlow, a senior Special Branch officer, and Feng Yeh Kim, a Chinese Special Branch inspector, and was spread over a period of some three weeks, with Feng interpreting for Barlow from Mandarin.53 Barlow has provided the following note of the interrogation,



The Special Branch and the Briggs Plan

161

which shows the thoroughness with which in-depth interrogations were conducted and the wide range of information they provided: I have always been interested in the terrorists’ total recall and have attributed it to the fact that they lived for years in a very enclosed and confined environment—especially those who had served with the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA). All those long days and nights in jungle encampments with nothing to do but talk and talk and talk about their joint experiences. They must have learned a great deal about their ‘comrades’ and about every aspect of their lives and backgrounds. I cannot remember the name of the SEP concerned, but he produced an extraordinary and lengthy account of all his experiences in the greatest detail. He mentioned well over 600 names and gave details of their history in the organisation, including their Party names. When the report was read in Kuala Lumpur no one could believe its accuracy. [But it was] proved to be fully justified when a large quantity of documents were recovered from a major terrorist HQs. These tallied almost exactly with the information provided by the SEP…I recall that we gradually built up a fairly comprehensive record of the MNLA and Min Yuen operating in Johore and on the borders of Malacca and Negri Sembilan…54

It was from details of the lives of guerrillas in the jungle obtained from interrogations of this kind that the Emergency Information Services was able to cull information that could be used for propaganda purposes. In the interrogation carried out by Barlow, the information obtained assisted the Special Branch in finalising the order-of-battle and a veritable ‘who’s who’ of the MNLA and Min Yuen operating in Johore and the Johore–Malacca–Negri Sembilan border area. Further, in the following passage, Barlow brings out clearly the painstaking and methodical way in which the Special Branch built up personal files on communist terrorists and how intelligence obtained from a variety of sources was dovetailed together to form a composite picture (see Chapter 4). In particular, it was useful to identify the many identities and aliases that the communist terrorists used. We prepared personal files on a great number [of CTs] and included in these dossiers were extracts from captured documents, from the interrogation reports of captives and defectors, and details, including photographs, from old files on the various Communist trade unions…The task of the interrogator was greatly simplified when, on identifying a CEP or SEP, he was able to produce a highly informative file of his subject. The psychological effect on the subject was considerable…We sometimes found that we had duplicated personal files or, in some case, opened files on a terrorist’s nickname. I

162

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

recall one name which appeared regularly in nominal rolls of a company’s personnel, showing that he had taken part in an ambush or attack on a plantation, etc. I cannot remember the Chinese but in translation he was shown as ‘Army, Navy and Airforce’. I later discovered that he had claimed, rightly or wrongly, that he had served in all three in China…we ‘targeted’ the MNLA leaders and built up as comprehensive record of them as possible. The file on Ho Lung was my pride and joy. After my departure from Johore, he defected and I often wonder what he made of my efforts. Every clue to his history, political background, general characters and idiosyncrasies, his family connections, close friends, etc., were all painstakingly recorded.55

The ‘file on Ho Lung’ that Barlow refers to was painstakingly built up from information obtained from the detailed interrogation of several SEPs, as well as a careful examination of captured communist documents.56 ‘Ho Lung’, which is usually spelt Hor Lung in its romanised form, surrendered to the police in Johore on 5 April 1958. He was the head of the CPM’s South Malaya Bureau, and controlled the guerrilla organisation for the whole of southern Malaya, stretching from Malacca and the Johore border with Negri Sembilan to southern Johore. After the Second World War, he became a member of the CPM’s Johore State Committee and subsequently, in March 1947, a member of the Central Committee, before taking charge of the South Malaya Bureau. He was the first member of the CPM’s Central Committee to surrender, and the Special Branch regarded him as the highest-ranking terrorist in south Malaya—a good catch.57 Hor Lung walked into a police station near Segamat in north Johore, unarmed, clad only in khaki shorts and a white singlet, and wearing rubber shoes, and surrendered to the Malay sergeant on duty.58 In view of his importance, the Special Branch was immediately informed. Hor Lung intimated that he wished to take advantage of the government’s amnesty offer (the Merdeka Amnesty) that had been announced by Tunku Abdul Rahman on 31 August 1957, which he had learnt about from a government leaflet he had picked up in the jungle.59 Under the terms of the Merdeka Amnesty, which was considered controversial at the time because of the lenient approach it took to CTs who had ‘blood on their hands’, guerrillas who wished to surrender were assured they would not be prosecuted for crimes committed under communist direction. If they recanted communism, they were given an undertaking that the Special Branch would not interrogate them, and that they would receive ‘fair treatment’, and be allowed to leave for China, if they wished.60 Both SEPs and CEPs were eligible for large government rewards for the capture or killing of their erstwhile comrades (see Table 7).



The Special Branch and the Briggs Plan

163

Chart 7: Map of Malaya (1956): locations of CT’s by state

Map©Monash Asia Institute Source: adapted from CO1030/10 DOPS. Secret Appendix ‘C’ Review of Emergency Situation 1956.

164

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

It was reported that Hor Lung received an enormous reward for the mass surrenders he brought about. The exact amount was not made public, but it was widely accepted to be the most part of M$500,000.61 The Special Branch eventually provided him with an assumed identity so that he could set himself up in business.62 Tunku Abdul Rahman, Prime Minister of the Federation of Malaya, defended the payment of the large reward to Hor Lung, although it caused some resentment among the police rank-and-file, who compared their own low rates of pay with the huge tax-free amount Hor Lung had received. The Tunku argued that the money was well-spent, especially as Hor Lung was able to induce most of the CTs under his command in southern Malaya to surrender, thus bringing about the effective collapse of the entire communist movement in southern Malaya, without any loss of life on the part of the security forces. As the Tunku said, ‘On principle, Hor Lung should be hanged but we cannot stick strongly to principles. If money can buy the end [of the Emergency] then we must use it’.63 According to The Straits Times of 26 August 1958, one of the main reasons for Hor Lung’s surrendering had been the ‘inability of his men to obtain supplies generally, money in particular’. While this is correct, it oversimplifies the situation. The Special Branch was of the view that there were several factors that influenced Hor Lung: the enormous financial reward he could obtain under the Merdeka amnesty for persuading the guerrillas under his command to give themselves up; the intensive Special Branch activities in the area in which he operated; the strict food control measures introduced under the Briggs Plan; and the accompanying psychological warfare campaign that stressed the flagging morale of the guerrillas and the hopelessness of their cause. The news of Hor Lung’s defection was not released straight away as the Special Branch planned to exploit his surrender by using him to persuade as many CTs as possible under his command to give up the struggle. A few weeks earlier, the Special Branch had engineered a similar coup in south Perak when 118 communist terrorists led by Tan Hong had surrendered, but Hor Lung’s defection and the mass surrenders that followed were considered a greater success on account of Hor Lung’s senior position in the communist hierarchy and the larger number of CTs that he brought in from the jungle. Altogether, in the four months following his surrender, Hor Lung succeeded in persuading 160 CTs under his command to surrender, 42 more than the mass surrenders under Tan Hong in south Perak.64 Hor



The Special Branch and the Briggs Plan

165

Lung brought about the surrenders by convening meetings in the jungle with his CTs in the name of the Central Committee and falsely stating that the Central Committee had instructed them to cease fighting and come out of the jungle, as Malaya had already achieved independence.65 Twenty-eight of Hor Lung’s group were on Special Branch record in Johore as ‘hard core’ guerrillas, including a Regional Committee Secretary and eight Regional Committee members.66 The others were on Special Branch record in Malacca and Negri Sembilan. According to Chin Peng, the mass surrenders that occurred in Johore and south Perak dealt the CPM a mortal blow and marked the beginning of the disintegration of the entire guerrilla army as a fighting force, and he blamed Hor Lung for the effective collapse of the insurgency in Johore. Although the communists who were brought out of the jungle by Hor Lung were officially designated as ‘surrenders’, the Special Branch classified them for its own internal purposes as ‘induced surrenders’, a term used by the Special Branch to indicate surrenders that had been brought about by a surrendered ranking communist who had agreed to use whatever means possible to induce his CTs to give up the struggle and come out of the jungle. In many instances, the CTs who surrendered would not have agreed to do so if they had not been tricked or misled by their leader. At each of the meetings arranged by Hor Lung, he was accompanied by Chinese Special Branch officers disguised as communist terrorists and a small group of SEPs who had agreed to co-operate with the Special Branch. These operations were referred to by the Special Branch as ‘Q’ Operations. The Special Branch officers who participated in them wore the same type of clothing or uniform as those worn by the CTs and were armed with similar weapons so that they would be indistinguishable from genuine CTs. Before entering the jungle, Special Branch ‘Q’ teams were carefully checked to ensure that there was nothing about their appearance that was likely to arouse suspicion.67 Many details of Special Branch ‘Q’ operations remain embargoed. However, the following account well illustrates the dangerous situations with which Special Branch officers on ‘Q’ operations were faced. In this instance, FT Bedingham, a Johore Special Branch officer, in the follow-up to Hor Lung’s surrender, headed a small Special Branch team to bring about the surrender of Sun Lai Foong, Assistant Secretary of the South Johore Regional Committee, which came under Hor Lung’s overall control, and the group of CTs operating under Sun’s command. Bedingham’s party

166

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

consisted of a small group of eleven persons, including Hor Lung, some army personnel, a few surrendered guerrillas and Special Branch personnel masquerading as guerrillas. The operation was expected to last a week. It involved a difficult journey into dense jungle from Mersing on the northeast coast of Johore, up the Endau River by shallow-draft boat, to arrive at a rendezvous that had been agreed with the CTs. To quote from Bedingham’s account: I was only armed with a short-barrelled .38 revolver and I now had this tucked away in my pocket with the lanyard out of sight…I saw a group on the far side in the camp, and I walked over to them. Hor Lung said, ‘Mr Bedingham, this is Sun Lai Foong.’ Then, turning to a man beside him, ‘Sun Lai Foong, this is Mr Bedingham. He is a member of the Special Branch and is representing government.’…We sat down in a large circle and I explained the government’s amnesty terms. I told them that if they would lay down their arms now and leave the jungle, they would after a short period, be allowed to pursue a normal life and they would not be prosecuted for any crimes that they might have committed during the Emergency.68

Bedingham described Sun as a ‘41-year-old notorious CT leader known among his comrades as the “lion of the jungle” because of his outstanding courage and physical strength’. He listened to what Hor Lung and Bedingham said and asked several questions. Finally, he said that he himself had long come to the conclusion that the struggle could not be won in the jungle and he agreed to accept the terms of the Merdeka amnesty, cease operations and bring his group out of the jungle. On 31 December 1958, just eight months or so after Hor Lung’s surrender, the State of Johore was declared a White Area, free of communist terrorists.69 The Johore and Perak mass surrenders undoubtedly had a serious effect on guerrilla morale throughout the whole country. By the end of 1958, a total of 500 guerrillas had surrendered and major guerrilla incidents had been reduced to an average of one a month. The situation had changed dramatically in favour of the government forces. As Chin Peng admits candidly in his autobiography, the main force of the guerrilla army had been reduced by what he referred to as Special Branch ‘subversion’ and security force operations to not more than a few hundred hard-core guerrillas deep in the jungle in north Perak, Kedah and Perlis, close to the Thai frontier, and a handful of survivors in Pahang and Penang.70 The dramatic and violent opening of the clash between the British colonial power and the Communist Party of Malaya had ended, and the initial unco-ordinated government offensive against the communist guerrillas had passed.



The Special Branch and the Briggs Plan

167

The introduction and implementation of the Briggs Plan, as examined in this chapter, had severed the contact between the insurgents and their supporters among the Chinese squatters, and the strict food denial measures that Briggs had introduced had brought the guerrillas in many parts of the country to the verge of starvation. By the time he retired in 1951 to Cyprus, in ill health and worn out by his efforts,71 the Special Branch, the armed forces and the civil administration were already working together smoothly under the direction of War Executive Committees that had been established under the Briggs Plan from federal down to district levels. The Briggs Plan and the series of Emergency directives issued by General Briggs were undoubtedly inspired, pragmatic and brilliantly conceived. They provided the Special Branch and the uniformed branch of the police, the civil administration and the fighting forces with a set of directives that laid down clearly the path they should follow, sometimes in detail, to defeat the communist insurgency. Briggs’ strategic plan and his marshalling together of the various elements of the forces at the government’s disposal to defeat the communists had a large part to play, too, in the continued improvement in the security situation that took place during General Sir Gerald Templer’s time as High Commissioner and Director of Operations (1952–54). The next chapter will be concerned with the contributions made by General Templer and Colonel Arthur Young, the newly appointed Commissioner of Police who arrived in Kuala Lumpur at around the same time as Templer, and address in particular their relationship with the Special Branch.

Notes 1

2 3

4

5

Chin Peng, op cit, p 270. See also Chin Peng’s interview with the The Observer (London), 17 June 1998; The Star (Kuala Lumpur), 17 June 1998, p 8; and Lianhe Zaobao (Singapore), 17 June 1998, all confirming the same point. Chin Peng, op cit, pp 208, 270. Kumar Ramakrishna, ‘Telling the Simple People the Truth: The Role of Strategic Propaganda in the Malayan Emergency’, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 75(1), 2002, p 54. According to General Michael Carver (op cit, p 20), in 1950 there was pressure, too, from Malcolm MacDonald, British Commissioner General for South East Asia, and General Sir John Harding, Commander-in-Chief Far East Land Forces (1949–51) for a Director of Operations to be appointed. Lieutenant General Sir Harold Briggs, KCIE, KBE, CB, DSO, Indian Army (retired) (1894–1952). Briggs was recalled from retirement in Cyprus to take up the appointment. He had had a distinguished career in the Indian Army. After being commissioned in 1914, he served in the First World War in France, Mesopotamia and Palestine. In the Second World War, he commanded the 7th Indian Infantry Brigade in Eritrea and the Western Desert, 1940, and the 5th Indian Division in the Western Desert, Iraq and

168

6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13

14

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Burma, 1942–44. He became Commander-in-Chief Burma, 1946–48, and Director of Operations, Malaya, 1950–51 (see Who Was Who, London: A & C Black (Publishers) Ltd, 1996). AIR 20/777, Secret. ‘The Briggs Plan’. See also Chin Peng, op cit, pp 268–9; Chin & Hack, op cit, p 15; Stubbs, op cit, pp 98–9. AIR 20/777, Secret. ‘Report on the Emergency in Malaya from April 1950 to November 1951 by Lieutenant General Sir Harold Briggs, Director of Operations’, p 3. See also Carver, op cit, p 20. Carver, op cit, p 20. Directive No 14, dated 23 May 1951, declared a number of items, such as rice, cooking oil, sugar, salt, tinned foods, cooked foods, paper, printing materials, drugs and medical supplies, as restricted articles and their sale was restricted to a limited number of shops authorised by District War Executive Committees. When the Special Branch received reliable information that labourers and villagers were being forced by Min Yuen agents ‘to take out at least one cigarette tin each of food daily and one day’s pay per month’, the restrictions were further tightened by placing certain roads under curfew and increasing the number of check points controlling the movement of labourers and New Villagers (see Secret, Director of Operations, Directive No 14, Pt III, ‘Further Instructions as to the Implementation of the Regulations’). AIR 20/777, Secret, op cit. CO 717/201 52849/41 (1950), ‘The Squatter Problem in the Federation of Malaya 1950’, Federal Legislative Council Paper No 14 of 1950. Chin & Hack, op cit, p 15. There seems to be no agreed figure as to the actual number of squatters resettled, but Briggs’ official report on the Emergency, mentions ‘some 500,000’ (see AIR 20/777, ‘Briggs Report on the Emergency in Malaya from April 1950 to November 1951’, p 1). This figure has been followed in Chin & Hack, op cit, p 15. It is interesting to note that the French colonial forces in Algeria carried out a similar but larger resettlement plan in 1959. Under the French plan, two million villagers, one-fifth of the population of Algeria, were resettled in new locations ‘under military watch’ (see VG Kiernan, Colonial Empires and Armies 1815–1960, Phoenix Hill: Sutton Publishing Ltd, 1998, p 219). Park, op cit, p 135. The Briggs Plan provided the model for British counterinsurgency strategy in Kenya, where local Kikuyu tribesmen were resettled in compact villages, provided with basic amenities and defended from Mau Mau terrorism (See MW Dow, ‘Counterinsurgency and Nation Building’, PhD dissertation in Geography, Graduate School of Syracuse University, 1965, p 36). There are several excellent studies of resettlement and the New Villages in Malaya (see Bibliography). A good first-hand account, written by a missionary, of what it was like to live in a New Village in close proximity with the New Villagers (which has been seldom referred to) is Amy McIntosh’s Journey into Malaya, London: China Inland Mission, 1956. For an interesting account of squatter resettlement from the Special Branch point of view, see WD Horne, Confidential, ‘Notes on Outlook of the Overseas Chinese for passing on to Commissioner of Police’, 10 December 1949, Mss Ind Ocn, 128, Rhodes House Library, Oxford. Horne was a pre-war officer of the Chinese Protectorate and had a good knowledge of Mandarin. He was brought out of retirement in Scotland and employed on contract as a Special Branch officer (1949–51). Another little known but valuable study of the problem of Chinese squatters is given in the Australian Commissioner of Malaya’s Department Despatch



15 16

17

18 19

The Special Branch and the Briggs Plan

169

No 2/49, dated 12 January 1949, to the Department of External Affairs, Canberra (see National Archives of Australia, ACT Regional Office, Series A1828/278, Item 413/2/6/3, Pt 3). The Australian Commissioner comes to the heart of the matter when he states: ‘ It is known that, in certain areas, not only do the inhabitants [Chinese squatters] act as spies and sentries for the bandits, besides furnishing them with supplies, but that some of the squatters themselves are part-time bandits’. Emergency Directives Issued by the Director of Operations, Federation of Malaya. Secret. Directive No 1, 16 April 1950, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1951, pp 2–3. RGK (Bob) (later Sir Robert) Thompson, KCMG, DSO, MC, JMN, 1916–92, was a Cantonese-speaking Malayan Civil Service officer in the Chinese Affairs and Labour Department. He held the following appointments during the Emergency: Staff Officer (Civil) to Director of Operations (1950); Coordinating Officer, Security (1955); Deputy Secretary for Defence, Malaya (1957); and Permanent Secretary for Defence (1959–61). He afterwards headed the secret British Advisory Mission to Vietnam (1961–65). However, in Vietnam, his Strategic Hamlet Plan, which resembled the Briggs Plan for New Villages in Malaya, was not successful because of the fundamental differences between the administrative and intelligence systems of the two countries (see Chapter 1). He was Secretary of Chinese Affairs in Johore in 1952 when the author was in the Johore State Special Branch headquarters. See also Blair, op cit, pp 31–2. The question of Malay reservations is discussed in the author’s 13 May 1969. A Historical Survey of Sino-Malay Relations, op cit, pp 22–3. Under arrangements made with the Malay states, Malay reservations were designated to safeguard the special rights of the Malays as cultivators. Chin Peng, op cit, p 403. Park, op cit, pp 127–8, citing a Japanese Department of Defense document, Manchukoku Gunsei-bu, ‘Study of Japanese Resettlement Plan’. Chin Peng was obviously aware of what the Japanese had done. In an interview with The Observer (London, 14 June 1998), Chin Peng said that in 1949 a ‘close colleague’ had asked him if the British might not adopt the fortified village strategy that the Japanese had successfully used in Manchuria in the 1930s, but he had dismissed the idea. ‘Even if they did’, he said, ‘we could live off the fruits of the jungle’. He must have revised his view, as in his autobiography he admitted quite frankly that resettlement and the establishment of New Villages had seriously affected the guerrillas’ food supplies.

20 See Han Suyin, …and the Rain My Drink, London: Jonathan Cape Ltd, 1956, for an unflattering, non-establishment view of the situation in Johore from a Chinese point of view. Han Suyin (Mrs Elizabeth Comber) was a doctor in the Casualty Department of the Johore General Hospital in the early 1950s, and had first-hand knowledge of conditions in some of the Johore detention camps and resettlement villages at the time through her husband, the author, who was a Special Branch officer in Johore. 21 Short, op cit, pp 378–9. See also Ray Cole Hillam, ‘Insurgent Communism: The Problem of Counter-Measures in Malaya, Vietnam and the Philippines’, PhD thesis, American University, Washington, DC, 1964. 22 The concept of ‘white’ and ‘black’ areas was widely employed by the Japanese army in China and Manchuria during their anti-guerrilla operations there in the 1930s, although it is not known whether Templer was aware of this (see Park, op cit, p 118). 23 Undated letter (circa March 1955) from GC (Guy) Madoc to author.

170

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

24 Craig, op cit, p 8. 25 This ‘note’ appears on the outside cover of the booklet Emergency Directives Issued by the Director of Operations. 26 Secret, Directive No 1, Director of Operations, Malaya, Kuala Lumpur: Government Press, 1951. 27 Emergency Directives Issued by the Director of Operations, Federation of Malaya, Directive No 1. Secret. 16 April 1950, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1951, p 2. 28 Emergency Directives Issued by the Director of Operations, Federation of Malaya, Directive No 2. Secret. 12 May 1950, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1951. 29 CO 1030/10. Secret. ‘Director of Operations Malaya—Review of the Emergency Situation in Malaya at End of 1956’. 30 See Lieutenant Colonel J Margeson, A Short History of the Royal Regiment of Wales, Cardiff: 1977, p 67. Colonel Margeson states that most of the guerrillas killed were caught in skilfully laid ambushes based on Special Branch information. 31 ‘Propaganda’ in this context was defined officially as ‘any information, ideas, doctrines or special appeals disseminated to influence the opinion, emotions, attitudes or behaviour of any specified group to benefit the sponsor either directly or indirectly’. (See ‘NATO, Glossary of Military Terms’ quoted in M Tugwell, ‘Terrorism and Propaganda Problems and Response’ in Paul Wilkinson and Alasdair M Stewart (eds), Contemporary Research on Terrorism, Aberdeen University Press, 1987, p 409). 32 Komer, op cit, p 70. 33 Riley Sunderland, Organising Counterinsurgency in Malaya 1947–1960, Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, 1964, p 11. 34 Hugh (later Sir Hugh) Carleton Greene, KCMG, OBE, 1910–87, had a distinguished career as a foreign correspondent and broadcaster. He joined the Berlin staff of the Daily Telegraph in 1934, and after the outbreak of the Second World War reported events from Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Belgium and France. He joined the BBC as head of the German Service in 1940, and became Head of Emergency Information Services, Malaya (1950–51), and Director-General of the BBC (1960–69). (Who Was Who, op cit). 35 CO 537/7255, ‘Strengthening of Information Services. Report on Emergency Information Services by Mr H Carlton Greene, OBE’. See also The Straits Times, 19 September 1950. 36 GED Lewis, Out East in the Malay Peninsula, Kuala Lumpur: Penerbit Fajar Bakti Sdn Bhd, 1991, p 174. Author’s conversation with Dr Lewis in London on 20 May 1998. 37 AIR 20/777, ‘Briggs Report. The Progress of the Emergency as at 31 October 1951’, p 55; CO 537/7255, ‘Strengthening of Information Services. Report on Emergency Information Services by Mr H Carlton Greene, OBE’, op cit; ‘Weekly Situation Reports Prepared in SE Asia Department, Colonial Office, 9–15 February 1951’, pp 3–4; and Michael Tracy, A Variety of Lives. A Biography of Sir Hugh Greene, London: The Bodley Head, 1983, p 127. 38 Director of Operations, Secret, Directive No 16, ‘Propaganda Policy and Organisation’. 39 HS 1/228, Far East India General 144, SOE Operations in the Far East, ‘Work of PW Division with SOE 1945 (Psychological Warfare)’. See also Federation of Malaya Annual Report 1952, op cit, p 7. Peterson was headmaster of Adams Grammar School in



40

41 42

43 44 45 46 47

48 49 50 51

52 53

54 55

The Special Branch and the Briggs Plan

171

Shropshire when he was approached and asked to go out to Malaya to assess the scope for covert propaganda work (Cloake, op cit, p 236). Peter Lim, ‘Tan Sri Dr Too Chee Chew a Distinguished Alumnus’, The Alumni, No 1, September 1992, pp 44–5; Lim Cheng Leng, op cit, passim; Kumar Ramakrishna, ‘CC Too. Malayan Propagandist’, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 73(1), 2000, pp 67–90. Lim Cheng Leng 2000, op cit, pp 11, 87. ibid; Chin & Hack, op cit, p 168, fn 5. The Special Branch attempted to trace where the photographs had been developed and printed, but in the majority of cases the surrendered guerrillas themselves were unable to provide any help as they had handed over the film to their Min Yuen contacts for processing. Short, op cit, pp 309–12. Lam Swee, My Accusation, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1951. Lim Cheng Leng, 2000, op cit, p 135. ibid; Chin & Hack, op cit. ‘Black’ propaganda was the term used for propaganda emanating from a source other than a true one that was designed to undermine morale or create tensions that could seriously destabilise the CPM/MNLA. Some of the stories used for black propaganda describing the alleged private lives of communist leaders in the jungle were scandalous. CO 1022/51. Top Secret, ‘Intelligence Services and Related Counter-Measures’, op cit, pp 4–7. See Joseph Burkholder Smith, Portrait of a Cold Warrior, New York: GP Putnam’s Sons, 1976, pp 146, 155, 165–6. Smith was Jantzen’s deputy. Aldrich, 2002, op cit, pp 514–5. Richard J Aldrich, 1992, op cit. Labour Foreign Secretary David Owen finally disbanded the IRD in 1977 (Paul Todd & Jonathan Block, Global Intelligence. The World’s Intelligence Services Today, London: ZED Books Ltd, 2003, p 110). Author’s notes. Jack Barlow, MBE, BEM, CPM (1919–2002), a former senior Malayan Special Branch officer and a colleague of the author in the Johore Contingent Special Branch headquarters (1952–54), provided the comment to the author in a letter dated 29 July 1999. It was extracted from an autobiography (unfinished) he was writing at the time. After leaving Malaya, Barlow became Deputy Director of the Cyprus Special Branch (1956–59) and subsequently was appointed to the little-known British Police Mission to South Vietnam (1964–67) as Police Adviser to the South Vietnamese Police Force. The mission arrived in Saigon in October 1964, not long after the departure of the BRIAM Mission under Robert Thompson. The Police Mission consisted of Barlow and two other ex-Malayan Police officers, Fred Fenner (the younger brother of Sir Claude Fenner referred to earlier) and Bob Burns, as well as one or two other former British colonial police officers. Members of the Mission were attached to USAID as police advisers to the South Vietnamese government, where they worked with a similar small group of American police officers. As far as it is known, the activities of the Mission have not been written up and little information exists about it. Letter to author from Jack Barlow, 29 July 1999. ibid.

172

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

56 Hor Lung’s real name was Kwan Yu Hai and his Party name was Hor Lung. He was born in 1916 in Ipoh, Perak, where he attended a Chinese middle school. His father was known to live in Malacca and his wife had been resettled in a New Village in Malacca (letter to author, dated 29 July 1999, from Jack Barlow). 57 See Chin Peng, op cit, pp 401–2. 58 The Straits Times, 26 and 27 August 1958. See also Short, op cit, p 491. His surrender was not publicly disclosed until mid-July 1958, when Tunku Abdul Rahman called a press conference to announce that Hor Lung was in the hands of the Special Branch. Hor Lung stayed under cover in Johore Bahru at the house of Feng Yeh Kim, the Chinese Special Branch inspector assisting Barlow in his interrogation. Barlow formed a high opinion of Feng as an intelligence officer and when Barlow was with the secret British Police Mission to South Vietnam, he asked Feng to join him but Feng declined as he did not wish to leave Malaya (author’s notes). 59 The Merdeka Amnesty, which was due to expire at the end of 1957, was extended and did not eventually close until 31 July 1958 (Short, op cit, p 492). In 1955, the RAF dropped an average of 15 million leaflets per month over the jungle explaining an earlier amnesty offer (O’Ballance, op cit, p 151). 60 Ramakrishna, 2000, op cit, p 78. 61 Approximately £58,333/- at the prevailing rate of M$1 = 2s.4d. 62 Chin Peng, op cit, p 401; Miller, op cit, p. 189. 63 The Straits Times, (editorial), 27 August 1958; Keeting’s Contemporary Archives, 6–13 September 1958, Column No 16386. 64 Chin & Hack, op cit, pp 208–9; Short, op cit, pp 490–1. 65 Chin & Hack, op cit, pp 208–9. 66 See Hatton, op cit, p 233; Chin & Hack, op cit, pp 209–10; Short, op cit, pp 491–2. 67 Although no official explanation was given for the term, it would appear that it was derived from the name ‘Q boats’ used for camouflaged British armed merchant ships that were successfully employed against German ‘U’ boats in the Second World War. According to Short (op cit, pp 490–1), ‘Q’ operational teams were made up of ‘mixed parties of surrendered guerrillas and Special Branch officers disguised as guerrillas who used jungle letter-boxers and couriers to locate other groups who were then talked into surrender, ordered to lay down their weapons, or, in one case, killed’. However, Short does not emphasise the important part played by Chinese Special Branch officers in these operations. 68 F Bedingham, ‘Smashing the CT in Johore’, in Brian Stewart (ed), Operation Sharp End Smashing Terrorism in Malaya 1948–58. Memories of the Malayan Police, Newark: Acorn Publications, 2003, pp 181–2. Bedingham was awarded a Johore state decoration for bravery. 69 ibid, p 182. 70 Chin Peng, op cit, p 403. 71 General Briggs died in Limmasol, Cyprus, on 27 October 1952, the year following his departure from Malaya.

Reproduced from Malaya's Secret Police 1945-60: The Role of the Special Branch in the Malayan Emergency by Leon Comber (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2008). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available at < http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg >

chapter eight General Templer, Colonel Young and the Special Branch: the implementation of the Briggs Plan The appointments in early 1952 of General Sir Gerald Templer1 as High Commissioner/Director of Operations and Colonel Arthur Young as Commissioner of Police after General Briggs left Malaya represented a distinct pivotal point in the twelve-year long campaign against the CPM/ MNLA. This chapter assesses the restructuring of the police and the further development and refinement of the Special Branch and intelligence that took place during Templer’s and Young’s time. The secondment of JP (Jack) Morton, a senior MI5 officer who was head of Security Intelligence Far East, Singapore, as the Malayan Director of Intelligence, will also be considered. This was a critical period for the Special Branch as the Briggs Plan was implemented; thus the results of the Plan will be examined too. General Templer arrived in Kuala Lumpur on 7 February 1952, accompanied by the newly appointed Deputy High Commissioner, Donald (later Sir Donald) Charles MacGillvray, who was transferred from the West Indies where he had been Colonial Secretary.2 It was the first time that a Deputy High Commissioner had been appointed and it was announced that MacGillvray would handle the ‘routine’ administration of the country, leaving General Templer to concentrate on major policy matters and ‘the personal direction of measures to defeat the Communist bandits [sic]’.3 Referring to General Templer, Oliver Lyttelton, Secretary of State for the Colonies, emphasised that his wide knowledge and experience of intelligence would be of great use in his assuming the appointment. Following Lyttelton’s visit to Malaya a few months earlier, he had already come to the conclusion that the success of the campaign against armed communism would depend more than anything else on the appointment of a ‘supremo’ and the improvement of intelligence provided by the Special Branch.4 Colonel Young arrived some ten days after Templer, accompanied by Chief Superintendent AE (Frank) Wilson of the London Metropolitan Police, whom Young had known and formed a high opinion of in London, where Young had been Commissioner of the City of London Police.5 173

174

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Young wanted Wilson to assist in the training of the uniformed branch of the police.6 In announcing Young’s appointment, Lyttelton said that Young would undertake a ‘very considerable’ reorganisation of the police.7 Though Templer and Young undoubtedly initiated important changes that were to have a direct bearing on Special Branch intelligence, it is often overlooked that many of the changes attributed to them were the outcome of plans that had been laid by their predecessors, particularly General Briggs, Sir William Jenkin and Colonel Gray. Nevertheless, the London Daily Telegraph did report at the time of General Templer’s appointment that his initial plans for dealing with the Communist problem were unlikely to change materially the organisational and operational structure that had already been put in place by General Briggs.8 Many years later, after Templer had returned to Britain, he generously acknowledged his indebtedness to Briggs and gave him credit for what he had done. ‘The credit for the idea of the new villages must be given almost entirely to him [Briggs],’ he wrote. ‘All I did was to make it [the Briggs Plan] work, which it did in due course to the tune of some 560,000 people in about 500 new villages. And it happened under my administration because I had the powers and the unfortunate General Briggs had not.’9 Templer took a personal interest in intelligence and he encouraged the pace of expansion and development of the Special Branch that had been started by Sir William Jenkin, as well as the measures that had been introduced by General Briggs, and ensured that the Special Branch was given top priority in funds and recruitment.10 In taking over as Commissioner of Police, Young concentrated largely on the modernisation and training of the police force, which fitted in with what Lyttelton had said at the time of his appointment.11 At the same time, it soon became apparent that he intended to follow another agenda that had not been publicly announced of remoulding the police along the lines of the British police, to make it less of a ‘paramilitary’ and more of a ‘civilian’ organisation. He argued that the Malayan Police, like the police in Britain, was a ‘service’ organisation that should demonstrate a friendly public face and project the image of a typical London ‘bobby’.12 Although he was no doubt well-intentioned and there were many arguments that could be advanced in favour of his view, it would seem in hindsight that he did not give sufficient weight to the widely differing historical, political, social, linguistic and cultural backgrounds of the two countries and their police forces. From its early beginnings in Malaya, the Malayan Police had been



General Templer, Colonel Young and the Special Branch

175

organised as a disciplined armed force with military characteristics that were deemed appropriate for maintaining law and order in a colonial society and, in any event, the problems of policing and maintaining law and order in a multi-ethnic nation raised issues that were quite different in many respects from what they were in Britain. In announcing General Templer’s appointment, Oliver Lyttelton, British Secretary of State for the Colonies, made a special point of emphasising Templer’s wide knowledge and experience of intelligence matters. The Times (London) took the same view in reporting Templer’s appointment.13 It was clear from what Lyttelton said that the British government wished to stress the great importance of Special Branch intelligence in the campaign against the communists in Malaya. The records indicate that General Templer was not, in fact, the first choice for the appointment and that consideration had initially been given to Field Marshal Sir William Slim, Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, Field Marshall Sir Bernard Montgomery and General Sir Brian Robertson.14 In his autobiography, Lyttelton wrote that the last-named was his first choice for the appointment, but Robertson had declined the offer, as he had spent 28 of the last 31 years outside Britain and, as he said, he wanted to enjoy some settled family life.15 In the end, Lyttelton selected Templer from a short list of candidates drawn up for him by the Secretary of State for War from the senior ranks of the army.16 The Special Branch welcomed the announcement of Templer’s and Young’s appointments to fill the gaps left by the assassination of Sir Henry Gurney (October 1951) and the resignation of Colonel Gray (January 1952). However, there were reservations on the part of some senior Special Branch officers that neither Templer nor Young had served previously in the Far East, and the view was expressed privately that the appointments should have been filled by serving officers who were familiar with the country and its people.17 Malcolm MacDonald, British Commissioner General for South East Asia, made it clear, too, in a memorandum to the Colonial Office that he would have preferred a civilian rather than a serving army officer to fill the appointment. Several Unofficial Members of the Malayan Legislative Council protested against Templer’s appointment on the grounds that an officer with local experience who was familiar with the country and its people should have been appointed.18 However, both the police and army were in agreement that it was absolutely vital for counterinsurgency operations to continue to be maintained without

176

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

remission after Gurney’s assassination and the departures of Gray, Jenkin and Briggs. Nevertheless, there was still some disquiet that Templer’s wellknown abrasive and brusque manner that had been remarked on earlier in the press would not fit in well in the Malayan setting, where a much more subtle ‘Asian’ approach was required to deal with problems.19 However, while indeed instances of his irascibility did come to notice in Malaya, the strong line that he took at times with the public and the civil service was generally accepted as being necessary. As Miller records, Templer ‘scorned civil service channels…he demanded action and was explosive when he did not get it…[but] the country at that time required a tough man’.20 In the political arena, it was fortunate, too, that while Templer did not always see eye-to-eye with the most prominent Malay politician in the country, Tunku Abdul Rahman, then chief minister and leader of the United Malays National Organisation, or Dato Sir Cheng Lock Tan, leader of the Malayan Chinese Association,21 the most prominent Malayan–Chinese leader, any disagreements he had with them were not aired openly, and Malaya’s move toward self-government was allowed to proceed on course.22 Perhaps part of the answer to what has often been referred to as Templer’s abrasiveness may be found in the pressure under which he worked. His Military Assistant, Major (later Major General) David Lloyd Owen, referred to this in a secret and personal letter, dated 9 June 1952, to Lieutenant General Sir Nevil Brownjohn, a few months after Templer assumed office.23 It was also adverted to by RV Jones, who was present when Templer returned to London in 1953 to brief the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) on the situation in Malaya. He wrote: The problems of the Malayan Emergency were clearly telling on him [Templer], for I have never before or since seen a man under such manifest strain. He chain-smoked cigarettes incessantly with trembling hands the whole time he was speaking to us, and I wonder how long he could last.24

What actually did Lyttelton have in mind when he emphasised Templer’s experience of intelligence? An examination of Templer’s army career does, in fact, confirm that for a good part of his service he had been concerned with intelligence, albeit military intelligence, and there is no doubt that he had more to offer in this respect than any other Malayan governor had had before him. A summary of his experience and qualifications in the field of intelligence is impressive:



General Templer, Colonel Young and the Special Branch

177

• In 1936, his services as a military intelligence officer during the British army’s campaign against Arab insurgents in Palestine were recognised by the award of the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) with Bar, and a Mention in Despatches. • At the outbreak of the Second World War, while holding a military intelligence staff appointment at the War Office, he was commended for re-forming and bringing up to strength the British army’s Intelligence Corps.25 • In France in 1940, while serving as a senior intelligence officer (GSO1 MI 1(b)) (General Staff Officer Grade One, Military Intelligence, Section 1(b)) on the staff of General Gort, Commander-in-Chief, British Expeditionary Force, he had worked closely with Special Operations Executive (SOE), a secret intelligence organisation responsible for guerrilla warfare and assisting prisoners-of-war to escape.26 • While recovering from wounds suffered during the Italian campaign, he headed Section X (Germany), SOE, in London, from November 1944 to March 1945. • As Director of Military Intelligence (DMI) at the War Office, from April 1946 for two years, he was ex-officio member of the Joint Intelligence Committee, the leading intelligence body in the UK, which brought him into frequent contact with senior members of the British intelligence community. It was probably during this time that he first met Jack Morton, whom he later appointed Director of Intelligence in Malaya. • While he was Vice-Chief of the British General Staff (VCGIS) in 1950, he successfully negotiated with the CIA the resumption of regular exchanges of intelligence between the CIA and British Commonwealth countries that had been discontinued by the Americans because of alleged breaches of security in Australia.27 These arrangements were subsequently formalised in the Templer–Burns Agreement.28 On taking up his appointment in Malaya, the British government provided Templer with a directive covering his appointment that included both military and political tasks. He was directed not only to carry out the normal functions of High Commissioner but also, as Director of Operations, to assume complete operational command over all armed forces in Malaya to bring about the defeat of the communist insurgents. Further, he was required to use his best endeavours to assist Malaya ‘in becoming a fully self-governing nation’, in accordance with British government policy.29

178

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

In an announcement made by Lyttelton before Templer’s departure for Malaya, he underlined that it was Britain’s aim to bring about a united, selfgoverning Malaya as soon as it was practical, especially as the communists were endeavouring to prevent political advance.30 Templer’s appointment combining the positions of High Commissioner and Director of Operations closely resembled that of General de Lattre de Tassigny’s in French Indo-China, where French forces were similarly engaged in fighting a colonial war against the Vietminh led by Ho Chi Minh, although there is no evidence to suggest that the French model had influenced the British government.31 While on his way to see Prime Minister Winston Churchill on 1 February 1952, four days before his departure for Malaya, Templer told his Military Assistant, Major Lloyd Owen, what he considered would be his first priorities in Malaya. They were: (a) to co-ordinate intelligence under one person (b) to reorganise and retrain the police (c) to ensure that the government information services told the people what the government was doing.32 While he was successful in achieving the first two aims, concerning the third, it is a moot point whether he succeeded in dispelling the scepticism with which the public continued to receive many of the official statements issued by the government. The problem, which was never completely dispelled even after the Department of Information Services had been tightened up and reorganised under Carleton Greene (see previous chapter), was that the public had still not been completely won over to the government’s side and had become accustomed to regarding the Department as the official mouthpiece of the British colonial government. Templer, though a professional soldier, had no problem in accepting that the Special Branch should be regarded as the supreme government intelligence agency in Malaya. Soon after his arrival at Kuala Lumpur, he made it clear that he realised that the Special Branch would have to play an important role in the Emergency when he told Harry Miller, a senior reporter of The Straits Times, who was granted access at high level to government and police sources and was later to write several books on the Malayan Emergency, that ‘the Emergency will be won by our intelligence service, and there are going to be many inside stories which will never be told’.33



General Templer, Colonel Young and the Special Branch

179

His familiarity with intelligence was clearly brought out in a top-secret memo he wrote eight days after his arrival to the Acting Commissioner of Police, the Deputy High Commissioner, the Deputy Director of Operations, the General-Officer-Commanding Malaya and the Secretary for Defence, in which he announced his intention to appoint a Director of Intelligence as soon as possible: It is obvious that the first priority in the solving of the problem is the collection, collation, evaluation and presentation of intelligence…I have already told the Secretary of State [Lyttelton] that I must have a Director of Intelligence as quickly as possible…All the important parts of the various intelligence agencies must be grouped together physically not only for ease of working but for physical security.34

Thus, shortly after his arrival, he sent for JP (Jack) Morton, a senior MI5 officer and head of the joint MI5/MI6 Security Intelligence Far East office in Singapore, to offer him the appointment of Director of Intelligence to fill the vacancy left by Jenkin’s departure.35 It is probable that Templer first met Morton in London while Templer was Director of Military Intelligence at the War Office. As Templer wrote later to Major General Gow, at the War office: I know something about the organisation of intelligence…[The man I had in mind] would have to head up the whole caboodle [sic]. This wasn’t easy and it took time. The man who did the trick was Jack Morton, who had vast experience in the U.K., and quite a bit in the Far East itself.36

Morton asked for time to think over the offer, but Templer, who was impatient to fill the post as soon as possible, told him quite plainly that he would not take ‘no’ for an answer. Morton accepted the appointment and Templer allowed him to take home leave in Britain, for which he was long overdue, before assuming the appointment on 1 April 1952.37 During his absence, Eric Leighton, the MI5 Security Liaison Officer in Kuala Lumpur, deputised for him. While Leighton was acting for Morton, Arthur Martin,38 of MI5’s E3 Division in London, the MI5 branch responsible for the Far East, temporarily took over Leighton’s functions as SLO.39 Dick (subsequently Sir Dick) White, Director-General of MI5, had posted Martin to Malaya to strengthen MI5’s presence in the area during the Emergency, but Martin kept out of the public eye and very few Malayan Special Branch officers can remember meeting him. Before his arrival at Malaya, he had already established a formidable reputation in MI5 for his skilful handling of the investigation and interrogation of Kim Philby as a suspected Soviet agent.

180

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

The following comment by Guy Madoc, who became Director of the Malayan Special Branch in 1952 and the last Director of Intelligence (1954–7), illustrates the close ties MI5 maintained with the Special Branch, although there was no formal link. Eric Leighton [MI5’s Security Liaison Officer (SLO), Kuala Lumpur] acted as D of I [Director of Intelligence] for a few months before Morton arrived. I was on home-leave throughout Eric’s ‘act’. He had been in KL for at least 2 years as MI5 representative. Until I became head of the Communist Section [April 1950, after Madoc relinquished his undercover appointment in the British Embassy, Bangkok, and returned to Federal Special Branch headquarters, Kuala Lumpur], Eric and his assistant helped by writing a monthly sitrep [situation report]. Kind of them, but I preferred to do the job myself. In his retirement, Eric came to live in Ramsey [Isle of Man], and I used to meet him socially. He died some years ago.40

The support provided by MI5 not only applied to Malaya but to all British colonial territories as part of the policy approved by the Joint Intelligence Committee.41 Meanwhile, though Morton was well-acquainted with Special Branch work from his service in the Indian Police Special Branch before joining MI5, Templer told him on taking up the appointment that, while he was expected to work closely with the Special Branch, his responsibilities did not extend to exercising operational control over it, and his mission would be limited to co-ordinating intelligence activities in Malaya.42 At the time Templer arrived in Kuala Lumpur, the mass surrenders described in the previous chapter that brought about the disintegration of the communist army had not taken place, and the communist uprising still gave cause for concern. However, it was encouraging that communistoriginated acts of terrorism, such as attacks on security forces, murders, slashing of rubber trees and attacks on tin mines, were already showing a downward trend. The drastic food control measures imposed by the Briggs Plan undoubtedly had a part to play in this, though there is evidence, too, that the slackening of the communists’ offensive owed much to a change of policy on the part of the CPM itself, following the promulgation in October 1951 of its ‘October Resolutions’ or ‘Directives’, instructing the MNLA to avoid offensive action and concentrate on food cultivation and ‘United Front’ work. Thus, there was a dramatic fall-off in communist-inspired incidents,43 and security force contacts with the guerrillas dropped from around 6,000 in 1951 to 3,500 in 1952 and lower still to 1,000 in 1954.44



General Templer, Colonel Young and the Special Branch

181

One of the early challenges that Young addressed was how to develop an esprit de corps among the officer cadre of the police after the divisive forces that had come to the forefront during Gray’s time. Part of the answer, as he saw it, lay in emphasising discipline and loyalty to the force. Shortly after his arrival at Kuala Lumpur, he visited each state and settlement to introduce himself and say something about his plans. The following account by a Special Branch officer, which is not entirely uncritical, describes a meeting that Young convened in Johore Bharu soon after his arrival in Malaya in 1952: Young was tall and burly and there was something about his style and his manner that reminded us of a typical London ‘bobby’. He had only recently arrived from London and was dressed in a khaki drill short-sleeved police bush shirt worn in jacket form, starched shorts, khaki drill coloured stockings with dark blue tops, and dark blue shoulder epaulettes with the silver insignia of commissioner of police. He carried a swagger stick under his arm. The main gist of what he said was that he wanted to bring about a change in the outlook of the police and that the police should present themselves as ‘friends of the people’ as the same way as the police did in Britain. Many of us thought that while this might be suitable for London and we would have a go [sic] to support him, the situation we faced in Malaya was quite different from Britain’s. For starters [sic], we were very much in the front line of the ‘shooting war’ against communist guerrillas and most of the crime we were dealing with was ‘politically motivated’. Young stayed for about fifteen minutes, and left without inviting any questions. The overall impression he gave us was that he intended to attach importance to restoring police discipline, place more emphasis on conventional police work and change the public image of the police from that of a ‘force’ to a ‘service’.45

Tim Hatton, a senior Special Branch officer, has provided a similar account of a meeting he attended at Kuala Lipis, Pahang. He writes that Young ‘amazed everyone by saying that the police service was overstaffed in comparison with police forces in other colonies, and would have to be run down to half its size immediately’.46 During his first few months in Malaya, Young was kept busy with his plans for reorganising the police. Firstly, he revised the Police Ordinance that provided the basis for the organisation and structure of the police force.47 Then, in December 1952, he introduced Operation Service,48 with the purpose of encouraging closer relations between the police and the public and establishing a ‘bond of confidence that must exist between the public and enlightened Police Forces in every community’. Operation Service was not entirely successful as, although it did bring about a greater public

182

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

awareness of the work of the police, it made little progress in bridging the gap between the Chinese section of the populace and the predominantly Malay uniformed police.49 From the Special Branch point of view, the most significant step taken by Young was to issue instructions in March 1952 that the Special Branch should be separated from the CID and established as a separate department of the police.50 It was part of a major reorganisation of federal police headquarters that Young put in train to regroup police headquarters into five departments, each commanded by a Senior Assistant Commissioner of Police, reporting to him through a Deputy Commissioner of Police. Young recognised (as indeed Sir Henry Gurney had done earlier) that the large expansion of the Malayan Police that had taken place during Gray’s time had inevitably placed a great strain on its training program and the provision of supplies. The uniformed branch of the police had increased seven-fold since 1948. Because of Jenkin’s efforts, the Special Branch had expanded and grown in strength too.51 The number of gazetted officers (then mainly expatriates) in the police had increased more than three-fold, from 150 to 550. The inspectorate had expanded from 200 to 500. Many of the problems that Gray faced had undoubtedly stemmed from the unprecedented expansion of the police force in a relatively short time. It had outrun its training program, tremendous pressure had been placed on its commissariat, and the relatively small number of officers employed on staff duties at federal police headquarters were grossly overworked. The five new departments formed by Young at federal police headquarters were: 52 • ‘A’ Department—Administration • ‘B’ Department—Operations, police jungle companies, Auxiliary and Special Constables • ‘C’ Department—Finance, stores and buildings, Marine Police and technical units • ‘D’ Department—Criminal Investigation Department (CID) • ‘E’ Department—Special Branch To relieve the pressure on the supplies organisation and training programs at federal police headquarters, Young arranged for trained army staff officers to be seconded from Far East Land Forces headquarters in Singapore. Initially, ten army officers were appointed to carry out staff duties connected



General Templer, Colonel Young and the Special Branch

183

with supplies, finance and training.53 Overall, the changes introduced by Young were effective and they also lightened his own management span by devolving responsibility on to the heads of the new departments.54 In reorganising federal police headquarters, it is not clear whether Young was aware that General Lockhart, who had taken over as Director of Operations before Templer’s arrival and was afterwards to become Deputy Director of Operations under Templer, had made similar proposals in an urgent, secret and personal letter, dated 4 February 1952, to Field Marshall Sir William Slim, Chief of the Imperial General Staff. Lockhart had evidently discussed his proposals with Colonel Gray. Lockhart proposed that police headquarters should be reorganised on the lines of an Army Corps headquarters, with separate sections under senior police staff officers for operations, intelligence, training, administration and supplies, which was very similar to what Young had done. Lockhart added that their implementation must ‘now await the arrival of the new Commissioner of Police [Young]’.55 The establishment of the Special Branch as a separate branch of the police was a significant development in the intelligence war. It provided the Special Branch with an enhanced status, enabled it to develop professionally along its own lines, and removed the perception that it was somehow an appendage of the Criminal Investigation Department. In any case, the functions of the two departments were quite different. The Special Branch was responsible for political, security and operational intelligence and the CID for the routine investigation of non-political crime. Ironically, the new arrangements were similar in many ways to what Jenkin had proposed some months earlier, except that the Special Branch was not constituted as an independent intelligence organisation and removed from the police. Though the Special Branch was separated from the CID, its functions were still not formally defined in a ‘protocol’ or ‘mission statement’. The Police Ordinance 1952 that had been revised by Colonel Young, which might have been expected to indicate the powers and duties of the Special Branch, is silent on this point, although paragraph 33 (3) specifies in some detail the duties of a police officer in preserving the public peace.56 There was no Malayan equivalent of the British Security Service Act or the Intelligence Services Act that set out the responsibilities and functions of the British intelligence organisations. It was generally accepted, however, that the Special Branch had overriding responsibility for political, security and operational intelligence, with functions that were crucial for the protection of the state.57

184

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Young appointed Guy Madoc to head the new ‘E’ Department or Special Branch at Federal Special Branch headquarters.58 The appointment was fitting, as apart from his being the most senior officer at Federal Special Branch headquarters, he was well-qualified for the job. He had been engaged on police intelligence duties since pre-war on the Kedah–Thai border and had undergone a four-month course in intelligence with MI5 in London before taking up an undercover appointment as First Secretary (Malayan Affairs) at the British Embassy, Bangkok. He spoke Malay and Thai. While in Bangkok, he had been responsible for liaising with the Thai Special Branch and other Thai intelligence agencies, and his main area of concern was south Thailand, where it was known that the Malayan communists were building up their strength. When he rejoined the Special Branch in 1950, Jenkin initially appointed him to head the Malay Section, but he subsequently took over the Communist Section with the rank of Assistant Commissioner of Police when Claude Fenner and Ian Wylie were transferred to the uniformed branch after a long stay in the Special Branch.59 One of Madoc’s first duties was to attend to the separation of the Special Branch from the Criminal Investigation Department before he left on leave to Britain in June 1952. During his absence, WLR (Bill) Carbonell acted for him until he returned in November.60 Carbonell was another experienced Special Branch office who is worthy of note. He had been head of the Johore State Special Branch in 1951. He then became Chief Police Officer, Kelantan, for the first six months of 1952 before acting as Senior Assistant Commissioner (SAC) ‘E’ Department. He was obviously marked for accelerated promotion. Subsequently, during Young’s absence on leave, he acted as Deputy Commissioner of Police and finally took over from Young as Commissioner of Police on 1 May 1953 when the latter returned to the City of London Police.61 In doing so, he was promoted over the heads of several more senior officers on the police establishment list. Between 1952 and 1954, during Madoc’s tenure of office as SAC ‘E’, the Special Branch consisted of 93 gazetted officers (assistant superintendents and above) and 195 inspectors and police lieutenants (no breakdown is available for these two ranks). The number of Special Branch detectives and other ranks is not available. The gazetted officers in the Special Branch represented between 18 and 20 per cent of the total strength of gazetted officers in the police.62 By 1955, there were 101 gazetted officers in the Special Branch or 18 per cent of the total of 566 gazetted police officers, with ranks ranging from senior assistant commissioner (SAC ‘E’) (1) to assistant commissioners (7), superintendents (17), deputy superintendents



General Templer, Colonel Young and the Special Branch

185

(27) and assistant superintendents (49).63 Gazetted Special Branch officers were posted at contingent, circle and district levels. The Special Branch had clearly made great advances from the days of its progenitor, the Malayan Security Service, which had to make do with 13 gazetted officers and 44 inspectors to cover the whole of peninsular Malaya and Singapore. Meanwhile, as Director of Intelligence, Morton maintained a close working relationship with Templer and used to visit him regularly in the evenings at King’s House, the High Commissioner’s residence, for an informal chat over drinks and to brief him about the progress of the intelligence war. It is believed that the decision to separate the Special Branch from the CID, which Young had ordered to be carried out, was arrived at between Templer and Morton on one of these occasions. During his long-overdue leave in Britain, Morton had several meetings with senior Colonial Office officials such as JD Higham, PP Paskin and Anthony Gann to discuss his plans for the organisation of intelligence in Malaya. One of the most important topics discussed was the establishment of a Federal Intelligence Committee (FIC) in Kuala Lumpur, which was to become the leading intelligence committee in Malaya.64 At the same time, the Malayan Borneo Defence Council discussed on 19 May 1952 an earlier paper Morton had drafted while he was head of SIFE on the subject of ‘Pan-Malayan Security Cooperation’.65 Morton argued in this paper that there should be a regular exchange of intelligence between the Malayan and Singapore Special Branches and closer integration of the two police forces. Although Morton was well aware that executive control over the two police forces could not be vested in a single authority because they were governed by different legislatures, he proposed that as both Malaya and Singapore were facing militant communism, there was a strong case for the two Special Branches working closely together. Morton’s proposals may be summarised as follows: • The Special Branches of both territories should formulate a joint plan for the penetration of the CPM. • Liaison or co-ordinating officers should be attached to the offices of the two Commissioners of Police and Heads of the two Special Branches. • A combined Malayan/Singapore ‘register of political suspects and criminals’ requiring physical surveillance should be maintained.

186

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

• There should be co-ordination of immigration and travel control between the two territories. • Malayan and Singapore police officers, including Special Branch officers, should attend combined training courses. There was much to commend Morton’s proposals, except the first, and the two Commissioners of Police and the heads of their Special Branches were instructed to look into the matter. The first recommendation was not adopted because it was considered inappropriate to prepare a joint Malayan/ Singapore plan for the penetration of the CPM; the counter-intelligence strategies for fighting militant terrorism in the Malayan jungle and urban communism in Singapore were not identical, though it was agreed that the two Special Branches should consult each other informally and formally over their respective intelligence operations.66 Templer accepted Morton’s proposals for the establishment of the FIC (a similar committee was formed in Singapore), and he issued instructions for it to come into existence in March 1952, with Morton as chair. The following members, who would be able to contribute to intelligence matters related to their respective spheres of interest, were appointed: • Senior Assistant Commissioner, Special Branch • Head of the Communist Section of the Federal Special Branch • Head of the Emergency Information Services (in his capacity as Director of Psychological Warfare) • MI5 Security Liaison Officer • Royal Navy Liaison Officer • Senior RAF intelligence officer • one representative each of the Commissioner of Police, the Secretary for Chinese Affairs, the Commissioner for Labour, the Secretary for Defence, and the General Officer Commanding Malaya. Based on Morton’s recommendations, the following terms of reference of the FIC were adopted: • To consider Emergency intelligence matters and make recommendations to the Director of Operations Committee [chaired by Templer] through the Deputy Director of Operations [General Lockhart].



General Templer, Colonel Young and the Special Branch

187

• To consider matters of intelligence policy within the Federation of Malaya and make recommendations about them, as appropriate, to the Director of Operations Committee. • To prepare papers on intelligence matters as required by the Director of Operations, as well as a monthly political intelligence appreciations for the information of the British High Commissioner in Kuala Lumpur and the Colonial Secretary in London. • To consider and comment on all papers that had intelligence aspects before they were submitted to the Director of Operations Committee.67 Templer made it clear that the FIC was a co-ordinating body and did not exercise executive functions. Once again, he took the opportunity to emphasise that the civilian Special Branch was the government’s main intelligence agency. He said that it was solely responsible for the collection, analysis and distribution of intelligence, which included providing tactical intelligence to the army through military intelligence officers attached to the Special Branch. In an apt phrase, as Templer put it, the Special Branch was ‘the trunk of the intelligence tree’.68 With regard to co-operation between Malaya and Singapore in the intelligence war, Templer further directed ‘there should be close liaison between the respective Malayan and Singapore Intelligence Committees. This will be achieved by the attendance on a reciprocal basis of a representative, who will normally be an officer of the Special Branch, when any subject of mutual interest is discussed by either Committee’.69 The Malayan and Singapore Special Branches, in fact, always had maintained close relations, though the new arrangements undoubtedly formalised the relationship. Early on in the Emergency, for instance, two officers of the Indian Section of the Singapore Special Branch, Assistant Superintendent Richard Corridon and Inspector Ahmed Khan, were seconded to Federal Special Branch headquarters in Kuala Lumpur for several months to assist in the investigation and interrogation of Indian communist terrorists and their supporters.70 One of the most prominent Indian communists they interrogated was Roger Balan, a Chinese- and English-speaking Tamil, who had been arrested under the Emergency Regulations by the Malayan Special Branch at the outbreak of the Emergency before he had had time to escape into the jungle and join the MNLA. Balan was probably the most important Indian member of the CPM. As a dedicated communist, he had gone into the jungle with the MPAJA during the Second World War to edit

188

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

a communist underground Tamil news sheet, and he remained in the jungle with the MPAJA until the end of the war. He had been delegated by the CPM to attend the London Empire Conference of Communist Parties soon after the end of the war and, on his return, was elected to the CPM’s Central Committee. The Malayan Special Branch hoped that it would be possible to ‘turn’ him so that he could be used as an agent, but he stood by his principles and preferred to remain in gaol rather than renege on his comrades.71 He was not forgotten, however, by the CPM and in 1955, while still in detention, Chin Peng appointed him Vice-Chairman of the Party.72 The Director of Intelligence employed a small staff, consisting of the Secretary of the FIC, an army staff officer from army headquarters Malaya, and a Special Branch officer.73 Templer had a hand in the selection of the FIC Secretary, and it was through his connections in the international intelligence community that ROD (Richard) Noone was appointed. Richard Noone, an ASIO officer, was then heading ‘B1’ Section of the ASIO office in Canberra that was responsible for domestic subversion. Its main target was the Communist Party of Australia.74 In 1954, when Morton returned to MI5 in London at the expiry of his secondment as Director of Intelligence, Templer transferred Noone from his position as Secretary of the FIC to take over as Protector of Aborigines. Noone had read anthropology at Cambridge, so he was well-qualified for the job. Templer wanted Noone to develop a strategy to win over the support of the Malayan aborigines (orang asli), the indigenous inhabitants of the deep jungle of Malaya, and encourage them to play a greater role on the government’s side in the war against the communist guerrillas. It was not an easy task. As inhabitants of the deep jungle, many of them were in contact with the MNLA and either voluntarily or involuntarily helped them by providing food and intelligence about security force movements, and acted as guides or trackers. Many of the orang asli had remained on good terms with the communist guerrillas since the Japanese war, and the Special Branch from early on in the Emergency had always found it difficult to obtain information from them about their former wartime comrades. In 1953, the Special Branch estimated that the guerrillas ‘controlled’ some 30,000 orang asli, from Negri Sembilan and south Pahang up to the Thai border.75 Templer considered that Noone, with his background in intelligence and pre-war experience working with the orang asli in the Malayan–Thai border area, was the best person to administer them and win over their allegiance.



General Templer, Colonel Young and the Special Branch

189

In 1956, Templer instructed Noone to form and command a fighting force of aborigines that became known as the Senoi Pra’aq (literally ‘fighting aborigines’). It was trained by the British army’s 22 Special Air Service (SAS) Regiment and administered by the Department of Aborigines. Throughout his involvement with the orang asli, Noone worked closely with the Special Branch and passed on to them any intelligence he collected.76 By the end of 1953, eleven jungle forts, commanded by police lieutenants, had been built in deep jungle in various parts of Malaya to collect intelligence and bring the orang asli under government protection. The forts were ‘outposts’ set down in isolated and inaccessible parts of the jungle where there were known to be concentrations of orang asli. They were garrisoned by the Police Field Force and the Police Aboriginal Guard, and had to rely on air supplies because of their remoteness.77 All intelligence obtained was transmitted by radio to the nearest Special Branch headquarters or sent out by light aircraft that landed, sometimes very precariously, on airstrips hacked out of the jungle alongside the forts.78 To sum up, the Briggs blueprint was applied in this period (1951–54) with significant success. The impact of the Briggs Plan became evident to the communists as early as October 1951 when the CPM decided to focus its activities on survival strategies that involved securing simple things like the food supply for jungle-based insurgents. Physical confrontation with the security forces was to be avoided in this struggle. The long-term result of this, as stressed in this chapter, was that the number of clashes fell to 1,000 in 1954, compared to six times that number a mere four years earlier.79 Clearly, the Briggs Plan was working. This chapter has assessed the influence of General Templer and Colonel Young on these developments and demonstrated how the intelligence war against the communist insurgents now depended on collaboration between the police, army, civilian administration and the Special Branch. It has also explained how the long-term objective of separating the Special Branch from the CID was finally accomplished, and examined the role of JP (Jack) Morton as Director of Intelligence, possibly the only officer who was in a position to assess the intelligence gathered by the Special Branch and match it with other sources of intelligence from the High Commissioner, military intelligence, the Chinese Secretariat, MI5, and many others. Oddly enough, he achieved all of this without having operational control over the Special Branch.

190

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

The next chapter will discuss the appointment of Guy Madoc as SAC ‘E’ in charge of the Federal Special Branch headquarters, which was now permanently separated from the CID, although still a department of the Malayan Police. ‘The coming of age’ of the Special Branch, as described in the following chapter would not have been possible without its unshackling from the CID.

Notes 1

2 3 4

5

General (later Field Marshall) Sir Gerald Templer, KG, GCB, CB, GCMG, KBE, DSO (1898–1979), had a traditional military education at Wellington College and the Royal Military College (RMC), Sandhurst. He was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Irish Fusiliers on 16 August 1916 and served in France in the First World War. Templer’s training at the RMC (Sandhurst) in 1916 lasted only six months (probably due to the pressing need for second lieutenants on the Western Front in the First World War) and not the usual 18 months to 2 years required in peacetime. This was, in fact, not much longer than the training given to candidates selected for war-time commissions in the British army in the Second World War. But the theoretical basis of his knowledge of the ‘art of war’ undoubtedly came from his attending the British Army’s staff college from January 1928 to December 1929. In between the First and Second World Wars, he served in Azerbaijan, Persia, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Palestine. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he was a staff officer holding the rank of acting lieutenant colonel at the War Office, London. He later served in France, the Middle East and Italy and attained the rank of major general. He was promoted to substantive general on 4 June 1950. At the time of his appointment to Malaya in 1952, he was Commander-in-Chief, Eastern Command (1950–52) in England. He became High Commissioner and Director of Operations, Malaya (February 1952–May 1954). On returning to the UK, he became Chief of the Imperial General Staff (1955–58). He was promoted Field Marshal on 27 November 1956. (See Who Was Who, op cit; Brian Kennedy, ‘Templer in Malaya. The Architect of Independence’, BA (Hons) thesis, Faculty of Social Sciences, Flinders University of South Australia, 1998, p 18 fn 6, pp 86–9; Lloyd Foster Sammons, Captain US Army Reserve, Field Marshall Sir Gerald Walter Robert Templer. The General who Tamed the Communist Threat to Malaya, Quantico: Marine Corps Development & Education Command, Command and Staff College, Marine Corps University Archives, 25 March 1986). The Times (London), 4 and 5 February 1952. ibid. Keesing’s Contemporary Archives, 26 January–2 February 1952, Column 11982; The Times (London), 15 January 1952 and 8 February 1952. See also Jack Haswell, British Military Intelligence, London: Widenfeld & Nicholson, 1973, pp 178, 216. The Times (London), 19 January 1952. Young’s use of the rank of colonel derives from his appointment during the Second World War as police adviser on the staff of the military Allied Control Commissioner for Italy (Public Safety), 1943–45. He was born in 1907 and joined the Portsmouth City Police as a cadet clerk in 1924, and rose rapidly through the police ranks. He was appointed Chief Constable of Leamington in 1938, Senior Assistant Chief Constable of Birmingham in 1941 and, after demobilisation



6 7 8 9

10 11

12 13

14 15

16

17 18 19

20 21

General Templer, Colonel Young and the Special Branch

191

from army service in the Second World War, became Assistant Commissioner, London Metropolitan Police in 1947. He was appointed Commissioner, City of London Police, 1950–51, Commissioner of Police, Malaya, 1952–53, and Kenya, 1954, and Chief Constable Royal Ulster Constabulary, 1969–70. He was knighted in 1965, and retired as Colonel Sir Arthur Young, KBE Kt, CMG, CVO, KPM. He died in 1979. (See Georgina Sinclair, ‘Sir Arthur Young. The Quintessential English Policeman’, Proceedings of the Royal Ulster Constabulary Historical Society, Winter 1999, pp v–viii). During his long police career, Young was awarded an extraordinary number of orders, decorations and medals, and no fewer than 45 were offered for auction after his demise (see the James Adam Fine Art, Auctioneers and Valuers (Dublin), 17 September 2000). The Times (London), 19 January 1952. ibid, 16 January 1952. Daily Telegraph (London), 16 January 1952. National Army Museum, Chelsea, ACC 8011-132-2, ‘Documents Relating to General Templer’s Period as High Commissioner, Malaya, 1952–4’, letter dated 5 January 1977 to Major General JM Gow, Ministry of Defence. Templer acknowledged, too, in this correspondence, the important role the Special Branch had played and said that during his time in Malaya, ‘everything—as usual—depended on intelligence’. See Miller, op cit, p 92. Hatton, op cit, pp 148, 152. Tim Hatton, OBE, CPM, had a distinguished career in the Malaya Police, mainly in the Special Branch, and retired in 1967 as acting Director of the Malaysian Special Branch. Short, op cit, pp 356–7. The Times (London), 15 January and 8 February 1952. See also Keesing’s Contemporary Archives, 26 January–2 February 1952, Column 11982; January 1952 and 8 February 1952; Haswell, op cit, pp 178, 216. See Lyttelton, op cit, pp 378–80; Malcolm Muggeridge, Chronicles of Wasted Time: 2: The Infernal Grove, London: Wm Collins Sons & Co Ltd, 1973, pp 113–14. Lyttelton, op cit, pp 380–1; Short, op cit, p 326; Lewis James Hawkins, ‘British Administration of Malaya during the Emergency, 1948–1957’, MA History thesis, University of Delaware, June 1970, p 43. Lyttelton, op cit, pp 381–2. In his autobiography, Lyttelton records that he was at ‘somewhat of a loss to find the right man’, and he had asked Anthony Head, Secretary of State for War, to draw up a short list for him from the senior ranks of the army. Author’s notes; Lyttelton, op cit, pp 373–4; Short, op cit, p 337. Author’s notes; Short, op cit, p 337; Lyttelton, op cit, pp 373–4. At the end of the Second World War, when Templer was Director of Military Government in the British Zone of Germany, he had had a much publicised disagreement with Dr Konrad Adenaur, then Burgomaster of Cologne, which resulted in his dismissing Adenaur for ‘general idleness and inefficiency’. Adenaur later became Chancellor of the German Federal Republic (The Straits Times, 27 February 1954; Short, op cit, pp 336–7). See also V Osipov, ‘Templer Loses his Temper’, Soviet Press Translations, 8(3), 1953. Miller, op cit p. 84. See Kennedy, op cit, p 64, fn 3, and p 74.

192

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

22 See PREM 11/113, Personal and Confidential letter, dated 12 March 1952, from Templer to the Secretary of State for the Colonies; Kennedy, op cit, pp 71, 76 and 80. Anthony Short, op cit, pp 379–87, in a section entitled ‘Criticism of Templer’ discusses Templer’s alleged faults of character. 23 National Army Museum, Chelsea, ACC:8301-6, ‘Correspondence of Major DL Lloyd Owen as Military Assistant to High Commissioner Malaya (General Sir Gerald Templer), March 1952–September 1953, Secret and Personal Letter to Lieutenant General Sir Nevil Brownjohn, KBE, CB, CMG, CBE, dated 9 June 1952. Lloyd Owen had been Templer’s Military Assistant when Templer was Vice-Chief of the Imperial General Staff in 1949–50 under Field Marshall Montgomery, and had been selected by Templer to accompany him to Malaya. 24 RV Jones, Reflections on Intelligence, London: Mandarin Paperbacks, 1990, p 23. 25 King George VI officially reconstituted the Intelligence Corps on 15 July 1940 (Army Order No 112, dated 19 July 1940). (See Haswell, op cit, p 172; Christopher Andrew, Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The Making of the British Intelligence Community, New York: Viking Penguin Inc, 1986, pp 444–6, 456, 490–1). Templer retained an interest in intelligence throughout his army career. In 1970, he was invited to open the British Army’s Intelligence Corps Museum, and a barracks at the Intelligence Corps Depot was named after him (Haswell, op cit, pp 178, 216). 26 See Kennedy, op cit, pp 86–9; Stephen Dorril, MI6. Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty’s Secret Service, London: The Free Press, 2000, p 394. 27 The matter was complicated by the disclosure of further weaknesses in the British intelligence system emerging from the Klaus Fuch’s atomic bomb spy case. 28 Cloake, op cit, p 180; Kennedy, op cit, pp 86–9. Cloake had worked in 1948 for the Foreign Office’s Secret Information Research Department (see previous chapter). He subsequently became British Ambassador to Bulgaria. After Templer returned to the UK from Malaya in 1954, he was delegated by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to head a ministerial committee ‘to consider security and intelligence services in Malaya during the Emergency and the pre-Emergency period’ (See CO 1030/16, ‘Committee of Ministers to Consider Security and Intelligence Services in Malaya During the Emergency and the Pre-Emergency Period’). Unfortunately, the committee’s report has been removed from the file and it has not been possible to consult it. 29 For details of the British government’s directive, see CO 1022/103, ‘Directive to Sir Gerald Templer on Appointment as High Commissioner for Federation of Malaya, 1952’; The Times (London), 8 February 1952; ‘A Message to the people of the Federation of Malaya from His Excellency General Sir Gerald Templer, KCB, KBE, CMG, DSO, the High Commissioner for the Federation of Malaya’, Kuala Lumpur: Department of Information, 1952. 30 The Times (London), 16 January 1952. 31 ibid, 14 and 16 January 1952. 32 National Army Museum, Chelsea, ACC: 8011-132-3, Major General Lloyd Owen’s letter, dated 30 June 1976, to Major General JM Gow, Director Army Training, Ministry of Defence. 33 Cloake, op cit, p 207.



34

35

36 37 38

39

40 41 42

43 44 45 46

General Templer, Colonel Young and the Special Branch

193

National Army Museum, Chelsea, ACC 9501-165-58, ‘Papers of General Sir Rob Lockhart’. Top Secret memo from General Templer to Acting Commissioner of Police et al., dated 13 February 1952. Cloake, op cit, pp 228–30. According to Tom Bower (op cit, p 136), Templer had first offered the appointment of Director of Intelligence to Dick White, head of MI5 in London, but he turned it down. John Percival Morton, CMG, OBE, Indian Police Medal for Gallantry (1911–85), had a distinguished career in the Indian Police Special Branch before being transferred at India’s independence in 1947 to London as ‘Principal, War Office’, a cover name for MI5. He was seconded as Counsellor to the Office of the Commissioner-General for South East Asia, Singapore (Head SIFE), 1949–52. On returning to Britain from Malaya, he became Assistant Secretary, War Office (1954–9) and then Colonial Office Adviser for Security Intelligence in 1961. His last official appointment was with the Ministry of Defence in Northern Ireland in 1973. (Who’s Who, London: Adam & Black, 1960; Jonathan Block & Patrick Fitzgerald, British Intelligence and Covert Action, London: Junction Books Ltd, 1983, pp 269–70). National Army Museum, Chelsea, ACC: 8011-132-2, General Templer’s letter to Major General JM Gow dated 5 January 1977. Federation of Malaya Annual Report 1952, op cit, p 6. Arthur Martin, CBE, served in MI5 and MI6 during a long career in intelligence. On returning to the UK from his Malayan assignment, he became head of MI5’s Soviet section (see Peter Wright, Spy Catcher. The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer, Melbourne: Wm Heinemann Australia, 1987, p 122; Bower, op cit, pp. 91–2, 136. See also Arthur Martin’s obituary in The Times (London), 27 January 1996). The author is indebted to Professor Desmond Ball, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, and Brigadier WMT Magan, former head of MI5’s ‘E’ Branch, for information about Martin provided in their letters, dated 19 April 1994 and 5 July 1996 respectively. See Nigel West, The Circus, MI5 Operations 1945–1972, New York: Stein & Day Publishers, 1983, p 198. ‘Nigel West’, the pseudonym of Rupert Allason, Conservative MP for Torbay, and European Editor of the Intelligence Quarterly since 1985, has written prolifically on intelligence matters. Undated letter (probably March 1995) from Guy C Madoc to author. CAB 158/30, JIC (57) 115, ‘Intelligence Organisation in the Colonial Territories’, 8 November 1957. The Federation of Malay Annual Report 1952 (p 6) describes Morton’s functions as ‘co-ordinating [the] activities of various intelligence agencies of armed forces, police and other departments’. Karl Hack, ‘Communist Policy and Support: 1948–57’ in Chin & Hack, op cit, p 295. See Chin & Hack, op cit, Figure 1, p 16. Author’s notes. Hatton, op cit, p 197. Steve Hurst, who has carried out research on the Malayan Police (see Bibliography), thought that Young was ‘ambitious’ and a ‘shrewd career officer’ beneath his ‘sociable, man-of-the-people exterior’ (Hurst’s email to author, dated 15 February 2005).

194

47

48

49

50

51 52 53

54

55 56 57

58

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

The Police Ordinance with Rules. The Police Regulations 1952, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1952. The ordinance was published as a Supplement to the Federation of Malaya Government Gazette, 26 April 1952, V(11), Notification Federal No 1467. Federation of Malaya Annual Report 1953, op cit, p. 226. Young’s notes about Operation Service, and the police public relations program he introduced, are contained in his papers deposited in the Rhodes House Library, Oxford (see Young Papers, ‘An Appreciation of the Basic Situation by the Commissioner’, MSS British Empire S486/2/1, Malaya 1952). As the author Han Suyin wrote in 1954, ‘Efforts have been made over the six-odd years of the Emergency to humanise the police force, to give it ideals of courtesy and service, and to render it popular…Though the force has improved, it still cannot be said to be “popular” in the sense in which the London “bobby” is popular’ (Han Suyin, ‘Malaya: The “Emergency” in its Seventh Year’, The Reporter, XI, 16 December 1954, p 23). According to Miller, the decision to separate the Special Branch from the CID was made ‘behind the scenes’ by Jack Morton, Director of Intelligence (Miller, op cit, p 92). WO 106/5990, Secret, Director of Operations Review, 1957, p 13. Federation of Malaya Annual Report 1952, op. cit, p 208–9. Federation of Malaya Annual Report 1952, op. cit, pp 224–5. The number of army officers seconded was reduced over the next two years, as soon as police officers were trained to take over from them. National Army Museum, Chelsea, ACC 9501-165-15, Urgent-Secret and Personal letter, dated 4 March 1952, from Colonel AE Young, Commissioner of Police, to Malayan Secretary of Defence. National Army Museum, Chelsea, ACC 950-165-49, ‘Lockhart Papers’, letter, dated 4 March 1952, to Field Marshall Sir William Slim, Chief of the Imperial General Staff. The Police Ordinance with Rules, op cit. Undated letter (probably March 1995) from Guy C Madoc to author. See also Mohd Reduan Aslie & Mohd Radzuan Ibrahim, op cit, Kuala Lumpur: Kumpulan Karangkraf Sdn Bhd, 1987 (second edition), pp 311–15; Patrick Morah, ‘The History of the Malayan Police’, Journal of the Malayan Branch Royal Asiatic Society, XXXVI, Pt 2 (No 202), Kuala Lumpur, 1963, pp 146–51, 162–3. GC (Guy) Madoc, CBE, CPM, KPM (1911–99) joined the Federated Malay States Police as a police probationer in 1920. He was captured at the fall of Singapore and became a POW in Changi. During his incarceration, he studied Thai. He was promoted Superintendent of Police in 1948 and posted for special duties as First Secretary (Malayan Affairs) at the British Embassy, Bangkok. On returning to Kuala Lumpur, he was promoted Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP), and in 1952 he became head of the Federal Special Branch with the rank of Senior Assistant Commissioner (SAC ‘E’). In 1954, he was appointed Director of Intelligence. With the abolition of the post of Director of Intelligence at Malayan independence in 1957, he became Deputy Secretary (Security & Intelligence), Defence Department. He retired to the Isle of Man in 1959, where he was a Member of the Police Authority of the Isle of Man (1963–88). (Colonial Office List, London: HMSO, 1957; undated letter (probably March 1995) from Guy C Madoc to author.)



General Templer, Colonel Young and the Special Branch

195

59 Undated letter (probably March 1995) from Guy C Madoc to author. 60 ibid. 61 WLR Carbonell, CMG, KPM, PMN (1912–93), was educated at St Catherine’s College, Cambridge, and gained his blue for rowing. He joined the Malayan Police in 1935 and served pre-war in Selangor, Perak, Pahang and Johore. He was interned in Singapore during the Japanese occupation. The author was his deputy when he served as head of the Johore State Special Branch in 1951. He was SAC ‘E’ of the Federal Special Branch from July—December 1952, and was appointed Commissioner of Police, 1953–58. He was succeeded as Commissioner of Police by CH (subsequently Tan Sri Sir Claude) Fenner (The Times (London), 19 December 1952; Who Was Who, 1996). 62 Federation of Malaya Annual Report 1952, op cit, p 239; Federation of Malaya Annual Report 1953, op cit, p 232. 63 FCO Library, JC 1521, Malayan Establishment Staff List 1955, ‘Malayan Police Service’. 64 CO 1022/51, Secret. ‘The Organisation and Function of the Intelligence Service in Malaya. Charter for the Federation Intelligence Committee and Combined Intelligence Staff’. 65 CO 1022/165, Secret. ‘Intelligence Paper by Head Security Intelligence Far East on Subject of Pan-Malayan Security Cooperation’ and letter, dated 13 March 1952 (ref 4210/4/52G), from William Addis, Office of Commissioner General for the UK in South East Asia to HE General Sir Gerald Templer. 66 CO 1022/165, Secret. ‘Reorganisation of Police’. Extract from Minutes of 11th Meeting of the Malayan Borneo Defence Council, 19 May 1952, item 4. 67 CO 1022/51, Secret. ‘The Organisation and Function of the Intelligence Service in Malaya’. 68 ibid. 69 CO 1022/51, Secret. CSY 473/51, ‘Charter for the Federation Intelligence Committee and Combined Intelligence Staff’. 70 Author’s notes and Singapore Oral History Unit Tape, Restricted, Richard Corridon, 000044/15/1-4, 6-11, 05, 12-15. ‘Political Developments in Singapore 1945–1965’. See Chapter 2 for mention of Corridon as a MSS officer in 1945/6. 71 Cheah Boon Kheng, The Masked Comrades: A Study of the Communist United Front in Malaya 1945–48, Singapore: Times Books International, 1979, pp 57, 63–5, 67, 72, 129. 72 Chin & Hack, op cit, p 259, fn 1; O’Ballance, op cit, p 153; Short, op cit, pp 44, 60, 66, 91, 462–3. 73 CO 1022/51, Secret. CSY 473/51, ‘Charter for the Federation Intelligence Committee and Combined Intelligence Staff’. 74 ROD (Richard) Noone, OBE, was born in India, and had read anthropology at Cambridge. He had lived in Malaya pre-war with his elder brother, Pat Noone, a Malayan government anthropologist. In January 1941, they were both engaged in running frontier patrols on the Malayan–Thai border. Unlike his elder brother, who had married a Temiar woman and stayed behind in the Malayan jungle with his wife’s tribe when the Japanese overran the country, Richard Noone was commissioned in the British army. He escaped from Singapore just before it fell to the Japanese and

196

75 76

77 78 79

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

joined in Java a small party headed by Captain EK Fisk (subsequently, post-war, a professorial fellow in economics at the Australian National University) that succeeded in reaching Western Australia. He served as a major in Force 136 with ‘Z Experimental Station’, a clandestine Australian army unit located at Cairns, Queensland, with the specific purpose of raiding Japanese-occupied territories in Southeast Asia. At the end of the Malayan Emergency, Noone served with the Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO) in Bangkok as Rural Border Security Adviser (1960–65). He accompanied the British Advisory Mission to South Vietnam, leading an MI6 team of Malays, Bornean tribesmen and ethnically similar Montagnard tribesmen to take part in operations against the Vietcong. During the Indonesian Konfrontasi, he commanded the Sabah Border Scouts and was Tribal Adviser to the Director of Operations (Borneo) (1965–67). After Konfrontasi, he returned to Bangkok to resume his appointment as SEATO Regional Border Security Adviser. He died in Bangkok in 1973 (Roy David Linville Jumper, Death Waits in the Dark. The Senoi Praaq, Malaysia’s Killer Elite, Westport, Connecticut & London: Greenwood Press, 2001, p 153, fn 32; David McKnight, Australia’s Spies and their Secrets, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd, 1994, pp 46–7; EK Fisk, Hardly Ever a Dull Moment, Canberra: National Centre for Development Studies, Australian National University, 1995, p 89; and letter and email, dated 10 January 1998 and 10 May 2001 respectively, to author from Major Mike Jones, formerly 22 SAS and a military intelligence officer attached to the Special Branch). Short, op cit, p 441. See John Leary, The Importance of the Orang Asli in the Malayan Emergency1948–1960, Working Paper No 56, Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, 1989, passim. Miller, op cit, p 134. See also Short, op cit, pp 440–56. GC Madoc, ‘Jungle Forts’, The Straits Times Annual 1961, Singapore, Straits Times Press, 1961. See Chin & Hack, op cit, Figure 1, p 16.

Reproduced from Malaya's Secret Police 1945-60: The Role of the Special Branch in the Malayan Emergency by Leon Comber (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2008). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available at < http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg >

chapter nine The Special Branch comes of age (1952–56) As discussed in the previous chapter, GC (Guy) Madoc was appointed in February 1952 as the first SAC ‘E’ (Senior Assistant Commissioner) at Federal Special Branch headquarters when the Special Branch was separated from the CID. This chapter examines how Madoc impressed his own ‘stamp’ on the shape of the Special Branch at federal police headquarters, though the overall operational structure of the Special Branch remained unchanged until the end of the Emergency. It also reviews Directive No 21, entitled ‘Special Branch Intelligence Targets’, an important operational directive issued by General Templer in his capacity as Director of Operations, which prioritised Special Branch targets and defined the functions of Military Intelligence Officers attached to the Special Branch. The establishment in Kuala Lumpur of a new Special Branch Training School to replace the two training schools set up by Sir William Jenkin (Chapter 6) is discussed, as well as the continuing effect of the strict food control measures that had been introduced under the Briggs Plan to block the leakages of supplies to the guerrillas.1 Under Madoc, Federal Special Branch headquarters was divided into seven basic sections (see Chart 7), the same number as there had been under Jenkin (see Chart 4), but there were some functional differences. The Malay, Chinese and Indian ethnic sections and the Communism section remained unchanged, but Madoc brought the new Special Branch Training School and the Holding Centre directly under the umbrella of Federal Special Branch headquarters. He added, too, a Case Officers section. The Trade Unionism & Societies, Liaison & Operations, and Security sections, however, were no longer shown as separate sections. Madoc reasoned that a separate Trade Unionism & Societies section was unnecessary, as the labour movement was quiescent and the main concern of the communists at this stage of the Emergency was to conserve their strength by retiring deep into the jungle, to avoid contact with the security forces wherever possible, and to concentrate on food cultivation to stay alive.2

197

198

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Chart 8: Federal Special Branch headquarters under GC Madoc (1952–54) GC (Guy) Madoc, SAC ‘E’

DA Weir, AC ’E’ Asst. Com. SB

Admin. Officer

Indian & Misc. Political Movements

Malay Political Movements

Chinese Political Movements

Communism

External Communism Underground Communism Banditry Other Manifestations of Communism MNLA Order-of-Battle

Holding Centre

Special Branch School

Establishment for 2/3 Case Officers

Source: GC Madoc’s undated letter (probably March 1995) to author and author’s discussion with DA Weir, London, 3 August 1996.



The Special Branch comes of age (1952–56)

199

Madoc delegated his deputy, DA (Douglas) Weir, Assistant Commissioner ‘E’, to take over the functions of the former Liaison & Operations section and assume responsibility for liaising with the armed forces on counterinsurgency matters.3 It was clear, nevertheless, that the Communism section remained, as it always had been, the most important section. Madoc was well-acquainted with its functions as he had headed the section before taking over as SAC ‘E’. Its principal targets were the CPM and its jungle army, the MNLA. It was divided into subsections, as it had been in Jenkin’s time, but Madoc strengthened it by the addition of two or three officers and the creation of a new sub-section specifically focused on keeping up-to-date the MNLA’s order-of-battle. Madoc planned to establish a Case Officer section that he envisaged being run by two or three experienced MI5 officers on secondment from London. Its function would be to handle selected case studies that he considered required special attention, and follow them through from beginning to end. However, because of administrative problems, this had to wait until HTB (Harvey) Ryves took over from him as Director of the Federal Special Branch in October 1955. Madoc considered the Holding Centre ‘in a sense’ a Case Officer establishment, since it had the means and expertise to carry out detailed interrogations of important surrendered and captured guerrillas, analyse captured documents, and develop and follow-up any particular projects of Special Branch importance. Madoc’s own account of what he planned to do (in which he acknowledged his indebtedness to Jenkin) is given below: What I aimed to produce at Federal headquarters was a head man (myself) with the title within the Police Force of Senior Assistant Commissioner ‘E’ Department (usually rendered as ‘SAC/E’); an administrative officer; small political intelligence departments for Malay, Indian and Chinese affairs; a head of the Communist Section, with two or three subordinates responsible for various subjects. I planned to have two or three ‘Case Officers’ available to concentrate on investigating particularly hopeful ‘leads’. Actually, I never got my Case Officers in my time as SAC/E Harvey Ryves (my successor) [1955–60] successfully negotiated the loan of officers from MI5 or MI6. Then there was the Holding Centre, in a sense also a ‘Case Officer’ establishment, dealing with individual communists including captured CTs and detainees. Also responsible for technical developments. And finally, the

200

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

SB School with its Director and a small staff of lecturers—mostly Asian officers. For remember!—we were almost entirely dependent on trained Asian officers in the field [emphasis in original] for handling secret agents…I did bless Jenkin’s influence on the Government. Not long before he departed, he produced a blueprint for the efficient and adequate staffing of SB at all levels. I did not accept all of his blue-print, but I was able to use Jenkin’s demands in order to get a rapid increase in SB strength.4

Miller, in his study of the Emergency, states that Madoc and Ryves were the only two substantive heads of the Special Branch in the second half of the Emergency from 1952 to 1960.5 However, it is worth noting that Claude Fenner was pro tempore SAC ‘E’ for several months, from 1954 until Ryves took over in October 1955,6 and Tan Sri Mohd Hussain succeeded Ryves as SAC ‘E’ in April 1960, three months before the end of the Emergency. It is noteworthy that Hussain, or ‘Huss’ as he was called, was the first local Malaysian to hold the appointment.7 A significant development in indigenous capacity. Madoc did not continue with the combined Special Branch/CID training schools established by Jenkin at Sentul and Salak South, as he considered they were more geared to providing training in routine criminal investigation rather than intelligence work and he replaced them in April 1952 with a new Special Branch Training School with CH (Claude) Fenner as its first Commandant.8 The new Special Branch Training School was situated in a rambling, rather dilapidated, old Chinese mansion, well-concealed from public gaze at Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman, Kuala Lumpur. The well-known Loke family owned it, one of the oldest, leading Malayan–Chinese families.9 JB Morton arranged for Fenner to be given intensive training in the latest intelligence methods at SIFE in Singapore before taking up his appointment as the first Commandant of the School. Regular courses at the Special Branch Training School, lasting one month each, commenced in August 1952, but from April onwards Madoc arranged, with Morton’s help, for some MI5 officers to assist in providing short background courses on intelligence for senior Special Branch officers.10 The short courses lasted two weeks each. The syllabus of the two-week courses covered four main topics: General Aspects of Intelligence, Tradecraft, Protective Security, and Communism, whereas the one-month courses starting in August were broader in scope. Each State and Settlement Special Branch nominated one or two officers to attend the one-month courses. Both local and expatriate officers attended. General



The Special Branch comes of age (1952–56)

201

Templer took a personal interest in the Special Branch Training School and wherever possible gave a short opening address for each course.11 As Templer correctly stressed, it was Asian officers and not their British counterparts who were in the best position to deal with informers and agents, if only for their better command of local languages and their familiarity with the mind-set of the people they were dealing with. According to Miller: Templer himself addressed every new course of students, and he invariably opened with the dramatic declaration as he swept a hand around his audience, ‘I’m putting my money on you chaps to end the Emergency. It’s your work in the field that’s going to bring peace to this country.’ In addition, he always underlined to Asian officers that they, and not their European officers, were the real spearhead of the Special Branch, for only they could deal direct with informers and agents in the communist ranks.12

The titles of the lectures (L1–L35) of the regular one-month courses, as listed below, provide details of the scope of the training. General • L.1 The Principles and Duties of a Counter-Intelligence Organisation • L.2 Sources of Counter-Intelligence (Pt 1) • L.3 Sources of Counter-Intelligence. Technical Aids (Pt 2) • L.4 Counter-Intelligence Methods • L.5 Assessment, Collation and Distribution of Intelligence • L.6 Secret Registry Procedure • L.7 Security Liaison Duties in a Diplomatic Mission Tradecraft • L.8 Interrogation • L.9 Personal and Body Searches • L.10 Search of Premises • L.11 Surveillance • L.12 Descriptions • L.13 ‘Cover’ Stories • L.14 Alibis

202

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

• L.15 Communications (clandestine meetings, ‘dead’ letter boxes, accommodation addresses) • L.16 The Problem of Agents • L.17 Report Writing • L.18 The Use of Photography in Counter-Intelligence Work Protective Security • L.19 Personal Security • L.20 Office Security • L.21 Security of Premises • L.22 Travel Control and Registration and Investigation of Aliens • L.23 Arrest Lists • L.24 Counter Sabotage (Pt 1) • L.25 Counter Sabotage (Pt 2) Communism • L.26 Marxism/Leninism/Stalinism (Pt 1) • L.27 Marxism/Leninism/Stalinism (Pt 2) • L.28 The Chinese Communist Party • L.29 Communism in Southeast Asia • L.30 World Front Organizations • L.31 Penetration of a Communist Party • L.32 The Answer to Communism Foreign Intelligence Services • L.33 Foreign Intelligence Services • L.34 Defectors Bibliography • L.35 Counter-Intelligence Bibliography.13



The Special Branch comes of age (1952–56)

203

The more prominent lecturers on the courses included CH Fenner (Commandant, Special Branch Training School), Guy Madoc (SAC ‘E’), Cyril Kemp (a retired Indian Police Special Branch officer re-employed on contract by the Malayan Police Special Branch), Eric Leighton (MI5, Security Liaison Officer, Kuala Lumpur), JH Brimmel (MI5), D Sutcliffe (MI5, ex-Indian Police Special Branch) and Maurice Oldfield (MI5). Oldfield was then attached to SIFE, Singapore. He subsequently had a distinguished career in British intelligence and became Director-General of MI6. With hindsight, it would appear that the earlier courses did not provide information about such topics as (a) the organisation of military intelligence, especially as MIOs were attached to and worked under the Special Branch; (b) the organisation and functions of other British colonial Special Branches in Asia, such as India and Hong Kong; (c) the role and functions of the Director of Intelligence in Malaya; and (d) the connection or linkages between the Malayan Special Branch and MI5 and MI6. But these omissions were largely remedied in later courses. Neither MI5 nor MI6 were themselves running intelligence in Malaya, but since pre-war days, MI5 had traditionally posted from London a Local Security Officer in both Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, to liaise with the local Special Branch.14 MI6, responsible for Britain’s foreign intelligence activities, was not in the same category and did not post liaison officers to the colonies. The SIFE office in Singapore, however, as described earlier, was staffed jointly by MI5 and MI6 officers. The MI6 officers worked closely with the CIA station in Singapore and used Singapore as a hub for their intelligence operations in Southeast Asia. The majority of Special Branch officers attending the regular one-month courses were District Special Branch Officers or Special Branch officers from Contingent (state) or Settlement Special Branches.15 The duties of a DSBO on the ground were multifarious, as summarised below: • the development and analysis of intelligence data relating to the Min Yuen and local units of the MNLA • the collection of operational intelligence for counterinsurgency operations • the development, deployment and control of agents and informers

204

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

• the maintenance and use of secret service funds • the interrogation of SEPs and CEPs • the preparation of intelligence reports • liaison with District Special Branch Officers of adjacent police districts • establishment of Special Branch ‘safe houses’ • liaison with the Head, Special Branch, at police contingent headquarters.16 Meanwhile, the Special Branch Training School soon earned for itself the reputation of being the outstanding training centre in the region for intelligence and, in the course of time, it became recognised as the leading regional training centre. Police, military and other intelligence officers from Hong Kong, North Borneo, Sarawak, Singapore, Australia and neighbouring Colombo Plan countries regularly attended courses. 17 In March 1955, the Malayan Deputy High Commissioner, DC MacGillivray, wrote to RG Casey, the Australian Minister for External Affairs, to arrange places at the school for Australian Special Branch and military intelligence officers.18 MacGillivray’s approach was followed up in May 1955 by Arthur Martin, then Acting Director of Intelligence, Malaya, writing to confirm arrangements for ASIO officers to attend courses.19 ASIO officers attending courses at the Malayan Special Branch School were accommodated at the Malayan Police Officers Mess, Venning Road, Kuala Lumpur. On completion of the course, they were attached for a week’s or ten days’ practical training at Federal Special Branch headquarters and subsequently spent another two or three days at a Contingent (state) or Settlement Special Branch headquarters.20 In 1956 and 1957, as a member of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO), Britain’s ‘main contribution to the work of the SEATO Committee to combat communist subversion’ was to arrange for a ‘considerable number of places’ to be made available at the Special Branch Training School for candidates from ‘SEATO countries, Indo-China States, and other countries in Southeast Asia’.21 It is worth noting, too, that after Malayan independence in 1957 and not long after the formation of Malaysia in 1963, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, Australia’s external intelligence service, opened a station in Kuala Lumpur on 14 February 1964, which soon established



The Special Branch comes of age (1952–56)

205

close links with the Malaysian Special Branch.22 It was later to credit the Malaysian Special Branch as being ‘the most efficient internal security service in Asia’.23 In April 1952, shortly after General Sir Gerald Templer assumed office as High Commissioner and Director of Operations, he issued Director of Operations Directive No 21, re-prioritising Special Branch targets. The significance of this top-secret directive is that it delineated some of the main tasks of the Special Branch that were to occupy the attention of the Special Branch until the end of the Emergency in 1960. It may therefore be appropriate to quote verbatim the opening paragraph, which stressed the importance inter alia of the Special Branch putting in place an underground network of agents to remain on the qui vive in the event of the CPM reverting from open terrorism to covert activities: The Main Task The creation of an intelligence network which will remain ‘alive’ whatever the MCP plans to do is vital. At the moment, we rely exclusively on information supplied by captured documents and SEP and CEP who, after their initial operational exploitation, become ‘blown’ or ‘dead’ as a source of information. It follows that if the MCP were to disband the [MNLA], conceal all but a few weapons and revert to a policy of secret selective killing and the fomentation of labour unrest, Government, deprived of its existing sources of information, would find itself impotent to cope with the situation except in its most open manifestations. Hence, the vital need for the Special Branch, not only to build up a network of ‘live’ agents in, or in contact with all levels of MCP organizations, but also to ensure that the identity of these agents are [sic] not compromised either by indiscreet or premature action, particularly for low level bandit kills and quick rewards.24

Templer’s words were timely and perspicacious. As it happened, in 1961, after the official ending of the Emergency in 1960 and the withdrawal of the remnants of the communist guerrillas into southern Thailand, the Special Branch did indeed receive information from its agents in Perak that the CPM’s Northern Bureau had inserted a ‘stay behind’ party in the Kuala Kurau area. It was part of the CPM’s long-term plan to prepare for the resumption of the armed struggle at a more propitious date. The leader of the group was on Special Branch record as the one-time former commander of the 8th Regiment MNLA and a member of the CPM’s Central Committee. He commanded a ‘stay-behind’ party consisting of 13 rank-and-file CTs, who obtained employment locally and unobtrusively blended in with the

206

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

local scene. The Special Branch soon identified the group and kept it under surveillance. Finally, on instructions from the Perak Contingent Special Branch that controlled the operation, the members of the group were arrested. When their leader resisted arrest and opened fire on the Special Branch officers attempting to arrest him, he was shot dead.25 Directive No 21 enjoined the Special Branch to seek out and penetrate CPM/MNLA ‘top priority inner-ring’ and ‘other priority’ targets.26 ‘Top priority inner- ring targets’ were defined as the CPM’s Central Committee/ Politburo, State Committees, Party/MNLA headquarter commands, and the Central Propaganda Department. ‘Other priority targets’ were armed Min Yuen units controlled by Branch and District Committees, including detachments of the MNLA that were usually located on the fringes of the jungle bordering populated areas and rubber estates. The directive confirmed the Special Branch’s assessment that party leadership within the inner circle dictated both political policy and military strategy. The Special Branch, in fact, had already penetrated and attacked with some success the armed Min Yuen units on the outer ring of the communist organisation. Madoc reasoned that, logically, the next priority targets for the Special Branch should be the CPM Branch and District Committees that were further up in the communist hierarchical chain, and he ordered research teams to be formed at each Contingent Special Branch headquarters to identify the most vulnerable targets. Madoc advanced several reasons for targeting the CPM Branch and District organisations. As the next formations in the communist hierarchical chain above the Min Yuen, they were, in a sense, ‘immobile’ targets, that is, unable to move out of the areas in which they operated. Madoc’s plans were confirmed at a week-long meeting of Heads of Contingent Special Branches that he convened in early 1953 at Fraser’s Hill, a pleasantly cool small hill resort about 100 kilometres from Kuala Lumpur. Madoc invited Templer to attend the final session of the conference, but according to Madoc, Templer ‘was very superstitious about journeying to the Hill [Fraser’s Hill]—he thought he might suffer the same fate as Gurney [who had been killed in a chance ambush by communist guerrillas on his way up to Fraser’s Hill in 1951]. He sent his Deputy’. Madoc said that Templer adopted his plan with ‘enthusiasm’.27 At Federal Special Branch level, Madoc created a Federal Special Branch Planning Committee to co-ordinate the central planning and control of intelligence operations throughout the country and assemble selected intelligence tasks in order of priority.28 The Planning Committee met once



The Special Branch comes of age (1952–56)

207

a fortnight, usually at Fraser’s Hill.29 Morton, the Director of Intelligence, attended most meetings, together with the Heads of the Contingent/ Settlement Special Branches in whose territories operations were taking place. Under Directive No 21, Templer authorised the seconding of 20 to 30 MIOs from the British army to the Special Branch ‘to assist in the collation and presentation of information in conformity with military needs’. According to the directive, MIOs worked under the supervision and direction of the senior Special Branch officer to whom they were attached, usually at Contingent/Settlement Special Branch headquarters and police circle headquarters. The thoroughness with which the Special Branch worked under Directive No 21 is well-illustrated in a Special Branch operation carried out in 1953 in Pahang against the CPM’s Bentong District Committee, that was planned and executed by Tim Hatton. A propos his plan, Hatton wrote: I prepared a paper for the Pahang State War Executive Committee outlining the need for a complete change of strategy and then proposed, firstly, that a Communist District organisation should be the next State target and that it should be of great strategic importance to the Communist Party; secondly, it should be in the area of our [Special Branch] choice where we were confident of success; and thirdly, the smashing of the target should provide the likelihood of good operational leads into an adjoining District or Communist military formation. We concluded by recommending that the Communist District organisation in Bentong, which until recently had supported the Central Committee in the hilly jungle nearby, fulfilled these requirements admirably.30

The Bentong District Committee was of strategic importance to the CPM’s Central Committee, as it was the ‘centre of both jungle and outside courier links extending throughout Malaya into China’.31 Under Hatton’s instructions, the local MIO attached to the Special Branch researched and brought up-to-date the communist order-of-battle at Branch and District levels. A Special Branch section prepared dossiers on every communist terrorist known to have operated in Pahang since the beginning of the Emergency. Another section prepared detailed charts of the Min Yuen, the communist cell system, and various communist-controlled subversive organisations in Pahang. Most important of all was the preparation of a detailed dossier on how the CTs were able to live, work and survive in the jungle. Such a thorough and meticulous analysis had not been carried out

208

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

before. Lists were prepared of all shops and premises where there were ‘printing presses’, stencils and office duplicators, printing inks, typewriters, and other materials essential for communist communications. Enquiries were carried out to identify communist investments in pawnshops and jewellery shops. Pharmacies known to be supplying medicines to CTs in the jungle, especially penicillin, M & B tablets and Scott’s Emulsion, were kept under surveillance. Watch repairers and dentists who were suspected of providing services to the terrorists were identified, as well as sundrygoods shops supplying small, battery-operated radio sets of the type used by the guerrillas. Following the completion of a comprehensive dossier covering the above information, the Special Branch used the powers available to it under the Emergency Regulations to close down all but a few of the identified supply lines into the jungle. The few that were allowed to remain open operated under Special Branch control. The Special Branch ‘turned’ two communist supporters whose loyalty to the communist cause was reported to be wavering and inserted them into different communist branch organisations on the jungle fringes. They maintained contact with their Special Branch controlling officers through messages left in ‘dead-letter boxes’ and later by physical contact on the jungle fringes. With the help of these two agents, the Special Branch was able to locate and penetrate the local communists’ jungle communication system, and by intercepting and reading messages that were left in the dead-letter boxes, monitor plans throughout the following year. Finally, at a time chosen by Hatton, around 100 suspected communist supporters were arrested under the Emergency Regulations. Of these, 66 were released within a few days, including the Special Branch’s own agents who had been arrested to avoid their coming under suspicion as informers. The remainder were detained under the Emergency Regulations. Hatton records that the communist organisation controlled by the Bentong District Committee was rendered ineffective by being reduced in strength from 70 CTs to 22. It was unable to recoup or recruit replacements from the local population. By early 1955, the CPM abandoned the district altogether and Bentong was declared a White Area, free of communist activity.32 By 1956, the Special Branch became aware that the CPM was intensifying its activities to spread communist ideology in Chinese primary and middle schools as part of a ‘United Front’ strategy. Short courses were organised at the Special Branch Training School to alert officers of the Education Department to the threat.33 Chinese schools, in fact, had always presented a special problem to the Malayan authorities, as they had retained their



The Special Branch comes of age (1952–56)

209

own cultural identity and had been allowed to exist outside the mainstream educational system. Many of the textbooks they used were sinocentric and not conducive to inculcating Malayan values. Chinese education was not integrated into the mainstream Malayan educational system, and many Chinese teachers were known to be sympathetic to the communist cause. Meanwhile, the Special Branch obtained reliable information that Chinese school students in Selangor had been secretly organised into small study groups to propagate communism, under such names as the ‘Selangor National Independence League’, ‘Patriotic Youth Corps’, ‘Malayan National Independence League’ and ‘Youths Study Society’.34 Hatton, who was then acting Head of the Selangor Contingent Special Branch, commented in an account he wrote later that it was difficult for the Special Branch to take action against them as their leaders kept in the background and were very security conscious.35 However, the addresses known to be used by seven of its eight leaders were kept under observation and eventually raided. A large number of suspects found on the premises were arrested for further enquiries and a quantity of documents seized. Sixty-eight of the persons arrested were later released as there was insufficient information to justify their detention under the Emergency Regulations, but the documents seized confirmed that the study groups were operating under the direction of communist guerrillas in the Selangor jungle and that close contact was maintained with communist cells in Singapore Chinese middle schools.36 In October 1958, further raids were carried out on premises known to be used by Chinese middle school students, and the Special Branch seized 169 proscribed communist documents and ten bundles of miscellaneous communist propaganda. Most of the documents contained articles that had been copied from Russian sources and translated into Chinese or from communist publications emanating from mainland China. The Special Branch also seized documents that revealed the existence of several ‘secret communist presses’ in the Kuala Lumpur area. Though the term ‘communist presses’ has an impressive ring about it, it was a grandiose term used by the communists for portable, hand-operated, office duplicators used to run off multiple copies of documents from stencils. Much of the material used was copied from communist current affairs publications from mainland China or transcribed from Radio Peking broadcasts.37 At the expiry of Morton’s contract as Director of Intelligence in June 1954, Madoc relinquished the post of SAC ‘E’ and was appointed Director of Intelligence to replace him. Morton returned to MI5 in London, although it

210

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

was announced publicly that he was returning to the ‘War Office’. As related earlier, CH (Claude) Fenner then acted as SAC ‘E’ for a short while before handing over to HTB (Harvey) Ryves, who remained in post until a few months before the end of the Emergency.38 By 1960, Ryves had reorganised Federal Special Branch headquarters into eight Sections, each headed by an assistant commissioner, or in one case, an army lieutenant colonel seconded to the Special Branch (see Chart 8). They were: • E1—Communism • E2—Political Parties • E3—Technical/Logistic Support • E4—External Communism • E5—Security and Vetting • E6—Administration • E7—Communist Terrorist Organisation • E8—Special Branch Training School. It is difficult to say whether the reorganisation of the Federal Special Branch headquarters carried out by Ryves represented an improvement over the ‘Jenkin’ and ‘Madoc’ models, as the communists by then were no longer on the offensive and had withdrawn their main forces into southern Thailand. Nevertheless, it is evident that the functions of Federal Special Branch headquarters had been streamlined and the titles had a more professional ring about them. The three ethnic sections were no longer featured separately but subsumed into the E2—Political Parties section, and the former Communism section had been expanded into three sections: E1 Communism, E4 External Communism and E7 Communist Terrorist Organisation. This reflected the importance attached to the CPM and its army, the MNLA. Under the reorganisation, Ryves assumed the title of Director, Special Branch, and his deputy, RJW (Dick) Craig, became SAC ‘E’. Meanwhile, on taking over as Director of Intelligence, Madoc employed a small headquarters staff consisting of Special Branch, army, air force and civil service officers. They were principally engaged in drafting research papers on subjects of intelligence interest for the Director of Operations (General Templer), but they also assisted the Director of Operations’ staff in preparing half-yearly reports dealing with ‘Intelligence Operations’ and ‘Armed Forces Operations’.39 As Director of Intelligence, Madoc became



The Special Branch comes of age (1952–56)

Chart 9: The end of the Emergency: Federal Special Branch headquarters (1960)

Director SB (HTB Ryves)

SAC ‘E’ (RJW Craig)

Communism (SGA Scott, MI5) Asst.Com. E1 & 2 Case Officers

Political Parties Extremism (TB Mooney) Asst. Com. E2

External Communism (Hamid bin Abdul Latiff) Asst. Com. E4

Security & Vetting (RJ Perch) Asst. Com. E5

Special Branch Registry (AG Prince, Civilian Archivist) Special Branch Training School Asst. Com. E8

Technical/Logistic (Holding Centre) (D Palmer) Asst. Com. E3

Administration (Tan Ghim Khong) Asst. Com. E6

Communist Terrorist Organisation (Lt-Col. Ball) interim Asst. Com E7

Source: Dato’ Seri Yuen Yuet Leng, Kuala Lumpur, email dated 20 November 1995 & Leong Chee Woh (former Dy. Director (Operations), Federal Special Branch HQ) email dated 20 September 2001.

211

212

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

an ex-officio member of the most important body directing Emergency operations, the Director of Operations Committee, chaired by Templer. The other members of the Committee were the Commissioner of Police (often assisted by the Head of the Federal Special Branch), the Secretary for Defence, the GOC Malaya, the Air Officer Commanding Malaya and a senior Royal Navy officer representing the Flag Officer Malayan Area. Madoc held regular bi-annual meetings with the head of the Federal Special Branch, assisted by the head of the Communism section, and ad hoc meetings with the heads of Contingent/Settlement Special Branches for those states and settlements where major Special Branch operations were taking place.40 At the expiry of his term of office in mid-1954, General Templer returned to Britain. He became Chief of the Imperial General Staff (Designate) in April 1955, and in September of the same year assumed the appointment of CIGS. His deputy, MacGillivray, succeeded him as British High Commissioner in Malaya. Changes were then made at the highest level in the conduct of counterinsurgency operations, as MacGillivray, a professional colonial civil servant, did not wish to combine the governorship with that of Director of Operations as Templer had done. General Bourne, GOC Malaya, took over as Director of Operations in addition to his substantive army duties. On Templer’s departure, an Emergency Operations Council replaced the Director of Operations Committee formed by Templer in February 1956. But it was more than a change in name, as under the new arrangements the Committee was chaired for the first time by a Malayan, Tunku Abdul Rahman, the Chief Minister and Minister for Internal Defence and Security, who was to become Malaya’s first Prime Minister after independence in 1957. On Malaya becoming independent in 1957, the post of Director of Intelligence was abolished. However, Madoc remained close to the centre of power as, on relinquishing the post of Director of Intelligence, he was appointed Deputy Secretary (Security and Intelligence) in the Prime Minister’s Department until he finally left Malaya on retirement in September 1959.41 In reviewing the position of the Special Branch after independence, the Emergency Operations Council recommended that ‘Special Branch staff should be kept up to strength [including British officers] with men of the



The Special Branch comes of age (1952–56)

213

highest calibre’. It stressed, too, that ‘the Special Branch should be given over-riding Federal Priority for money and manpower as their efforts on the future of the Federation [of Malaya] will be out of all proportion to their cost. The inability of the Special Branch to meet the demands made upon it will directly affect the speed with which the Emergency can be brought to an end’.42 Although the ‘Malayanisation’ program introduced by the independent government encouraged the replacement of expatriate officers with suitably qualified local officers, many British officers, especially Special Branch officers, were allowed to remain in employment for several years after independence, as there were simply not enough qualified Asian officers to take over at that stage from their expatriate colleagues. Nevertheless, Table 10 (Chapter 12) shows the marked increase in percentage terms of Asian gazetted officers vis-à-vis expatriate gazetted officers in 1956, the year leading up to independence in 1957. In July 1956, a series of Federal Priority Operations were mounted in selected operational areas to tighten further the strict food control regulations that were in force as part of the Briggs Plan to prevent the guerrillas obtaining food. They involved the closest co-operation between the Special Branch, the army, the government’s food control organisation and the Psychological Warfare Section of the Department of Information Services. In referring to Federal Priority Operations in 1956, the Director of Operations commented that ‘our experience of the enemy has proved beyond doubt that only the joint concentration of Security Forces in coordination with the equivalent Special Branch effort will provide results’.43 The Special Branch was involved in the first stage of Federal Priority Operations by identifying the communist supporters who were supplying food to the guerrillas. The second stage was the clamping down of strict controls over the supply of food to force the guerrillas out of the jungle to contact their suppliers. During this phase of the operation, government propaganda was intensified to emphasise the futility of continuing the struggle in the jungle without food. During the final phase of the operation, the security forces would ambush the guerrillas as they approached the barbed wire fences surrounding the New Villages to collect whatever food they could from their supporters. The ambushes were usually at night and were based on operational information provided by the Special Branch from their informers in the New Villages.

214

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

In his review of the Emergency in 1956, Lieutenant-General RH Bower, the Director of Operations, singled out the Special Branch for praise by saying: ‘a high proportion of the casualties inflicted on the terrorists stem from action taken by the security forces on information received from intelligence [Special Branch] sources’.44 It was a welcome change from

the strictures that had been passed on the Special Branch in the past.

To place the above into perspective, the Special Branch had come a long way since its early days. The brilliantly conceived Briggs Plan and the directives issued by General Briggs had laid down the overall strategy for defeating the communist terrorists and driving their scattered remnants into southern Thailand, where they nursed their wounds and tried to revive their flagging morale. Briggs had recognised the importance of the Special Branch and had defined clearly in his directives what he required it to do to support his objectives. Sir William Jenkin, who had a good working relationship with Briggs, strengthened and reorganised the Special Branch, provided professional training for its officers, and drafted an operational plan for it to follow. It was important, too, that General Templer, as High Commissioner and Director of Operations, gave the Special Branch his full support. All-in-all, the Special Branch gained enormously in stature and confidence during this period, especially after it was separated from the CID, and placed under the command of GC Madoc. Madoc acknowledged the valuable work done by Jenkin and, following on from what Jenkin had achieved, further refined the Special Branch’s organisation at federal level, and concentrated the efforts of the Special Branch on destroying the CPM’s and MNLA’s District and Branch Committees. The next chapter presents a case study of a Special Branch operation involving the arrest of Lee Meng, a dedicated female communist and head of a courier network between Ipoh, Singapore and the CPM’s Central Committee in southern Thailand, which was given wide publicity in the international press.45 The case study of Lee Meng refers to the early part of the communist insurgency, when the threat to British Malaya was palpable and extensive. As such, it provides an insight into a number of factors, in particular the extent and resilience of the communist challenge at that time.



The Special Branch comes of age (1952–56)

215

Notes 1

2 3 4 5 6

7 8 9

10 11

12 13

14

In an appreciation of the situation, dated October 1953, the General Officer Commanding Malaya, described both Special Branch intelligence and food control measures as decisive weapons in counterinsurgency operations (Short, op cit, p 375). GC Madoc’s undated letter (probably March 1995) to author. ibid, and author’s conversation with DA Weir on 3 August 1996 at the National Army Museum, Chelsea, London. Undated letter (probably March 1995) from GC Madoc to author Miller, op cit, p 97. See Malayan Police Magazine, June 1954, p 84. CH (Claude) Fenner was Chief Police Officer (CPO), Johore, (October 1955–July 1957) before becoming Deputy Secretary (Security and Intelligence), Prime Minister’s Department. He became Commissioner of Police in September 1958, Director Police Affairs in 1962, and Inspector General of the Royal Malaysian Police 1963–66. Hatton, op cit, p 246. GC Madoc’s letter to author dated 10 March 1995. See also Aslie & Ibrahim, op cit, p 544. The Loke Yew Mansion, as it was known, with its spacious 4.4 hectares of grounds, had been in its day one of the finest private residences in Kuala Lumpur. It was the first brick house built in Kuala Lumpur and the first to have electricity (see Shukor Rahman, ‘Police School in Loke Yew Mansions’, New Straits Times, 11 August 1997, and Miller, op cit, p 93). In 1970, the Loke Yew Mansion became the Samat Art Gallery until the trustees terminated the lease in 1985. In 1991, Datuk Lim Kok Wing leased the mansion and converted it into the ‘Artiquarium’, a unique art and antiques gallery. See Hack 1999, op cit, p 151, fn 57. The author attended a two-week course starting on 28 April 1952. Madoc described it as a ‘pep talk and not a lecture’ (undated letter (probably March 1995) from GC Madoc to author). See also PREM 11/113, ‘Extracts of letter from General Templer to the Secretary of State’, 7 May 1952. In Templer’s words, ‘A lot of training of Special Branch personnel is going on, and yesterday I attended the current course [a short two-week course] and talked to them’. Miller, op cit, p 94. Author’s notes. See also National Archives of Australia, Canberra, A5954/40-2356/1, Secret. Department of Defence, ‘Training of Australian Officers in the Federation Special Branch School’. GC Madoc’s undated letter (probably March 1995) to author. Concerning MI5’s position in Malaya, Madoc confirmed that it was ‘never operational’ or running intelligence in Malaya, which was always understood and accepted to be the responsibility of the Special Branch. The LSO’s function was to liaise with MI5 headquarters in London, keep it informed of intelligence matters in Malaya, and offer assistance to the local Special Branch, as and when required. Madoc added ‘it [MI5] did provide a few good officers [in Malaya] to serve as back-room boys’ [sic].

216

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

15 As Miller states, as the Emergency progressed, uniformed and CID branch officers, as well as army officers were given short courses at the school on dealing with the Communist Party of Malaya and its organisation. In 1956, short courses were held for members of the Education Department on dealing with the recrudescence of communism in Chinese schools (Miller, op cit, p 94). 16 Author’s notes. The author is grateful for information provided by David L Brent, a former senior Malayan police officer (‘Brief Record of Experience and Responsibilities, Military–Police 1949–1958’) in his letter dated 12 August 1998. 17 CO 1037/90, ‘Establishment of Regional Police Training College—Far East’. 18 The National Archives of Australia, Canberra, A5954/40-2356/1, Secret. Department of Defence, ‘Training of Australian Officers in the Federation Special Branch School’, MacGillivray’s letter reference DEF.TS.13/A/50 dated 22 March 1955 to The Rt Hon RG Casey, CH, DSO, MC, Australian Minister for External Affairs. The first Australian Army intelligence officer to attend a course at the Malayan Special Branch Training School was Captain KH Roney, Directorate, Military Intelligence, Army Headquarters, Melbourne (see Secret, Australian Department of External Affairs Cablegram No 13985, dated 16 November 1955, to Australian Commission, Singapore). 19 ASIO was founded in 1949 with responsibility for Australia’s internal security. It maintained from its earliest days a fraternal relationship with the Malayan Special Branch (Hall, op cit, p vi). 20 The National Archives of Australia, Canberra, A5954/40-2356/1, Secret, Australian Commissioner, Singapore’s letter reference 825 (25/38/200), dated 14 May 1955, to Department External Affairs, Canberra. 21 The National Archives of Australia, Canberra, Secret, Australian Department External Affairs Savingram 0.2355, dated 20 February 1956, to Australian Commission, Singapore. Australia, New Zealand, the UK, France, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand and the USA were members of the SEATO alliance (1954) under the SE Asia Collective Defense Treaty to oppose further Communist gains in Southeast Asia. It was disbanded in 1977. 22 The Federation of Malaysia (1963) was made up of Malaya, Sarawak, Sabah and Singapore. Singapore seceded from Malaysia in 1965. 23 Brian Toohey and William Pinwell, Oyster. The Story of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, Melbourne: William Heinemann Australia, 1989, p 108. 24 CO1022/5. Top Secret. Director of Operations Directive No. 21, Government Printer, Kuala Lumpur, 24 April 1952. 25 Leong, op cit, p 97–103. Leong Chee Woh, then an assistant superintendent of police in the Communist Section of the Perak Contingent Special Branch commanded the Special Branch team. Leong did not disclose the name of the group’s leader in his book. 26 CO1022/5. Top Secret, ‘SB Intelligence Targets’, Director of Operations, Malaya, Directive No 21, 24 April 1952. 27 GC Madoc’s undated letter (probably March 1995) to author. By ‘Deputy’ Madoc probably refers to General Sir Rob Lockhart, who was Templer’s Deputy Director of Operations. 28 Miller, op cit, p 97. 29 ibid, p 98.



The Special Branch comes of age (1952–56)

217

30 Hatton, op cit, p 198. 31 ibid. 32 ibid, pp. 198–201. 33 The Communist Threat to the Federation of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1959, pp 22–7; Miller, op cit, p 94 and Hatton, op cit, pp 234–9. 34 The Communist Threat, op cit, pp 22–7. 35 Hatton, op cit, pp 238–9. 36 ibid. 37 The Communist Threat, op cit, p 26. 38 Malayan Police Magazine, June 1954, p 84. HTB (Harvey) Ryves, a pre-war Malayan Police officer, joined the Malayan Police in 1938. He was captured at the fall of Singapore and interned in Changi during the Japanese occupation. After the war, he became a MSS officer (see Chapter 2) and joined the Special Branch after the winding up of the MSS. Most of his post-war career was in intelligence. In 1954, he was Head of the Johore State Special Branch, and became Director of the Federal Special Branch from October 1955 to April 1960, when he handed over to Tan Sri Mohd Hussain, the first local Director of the Federal Special Branch (author’s notes. See also Hatton, op cit, p 246). 39 Undated letter (probably March 1995) from Guy Madoc to author. 40 ibid. 41 Guy Madoc’s undated letter (probably March 1995) to author. Madoc departed on leave in September 1959, prior to retirement, and settled in the Isle of Man in the following year. 42 Yuen Yuet Leng, Operation Ginger, Kuala Lumpur: Vinpress Press Sdn Bhd, 1998, p 97. 43 ibid. 44 ibid, Appendix ‘I’. 45 Chin Peng 2003, op cit, p 348.

218

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Reproduced from Malaya's Secret Police 1945-60: The Role of the Special Branch in the Malayan Emergency by Leon Comber (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2008). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available at < http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg >

chapter ten ‘The weather has been horrible’—the Special Branch and communist communications: a case study1 It has been said that the Achilles heel of the Communist Party of Malaya was its communications.2 This chapter deals with the Special Branch’s analysis of the CPM’s communications system and the use of couriers during the Emergency period. It presents, too, a case study of a Special Branch operation leading to the arrest in 1952 of Lee Ten (Tian) Tai, alias Lee Meng (usually referred to by her alias), the leader of the notorious Kepayang Gang operating in the Ipoh area, and a leading communist operating under the direction of the CPM’s Central Committee, who headed the communications system connecting Ipoh with Singapore and the CPM’s Central Committee in southern Thailand. The case study of Lee Meng refers to the early part of the communist insurgency, when the threat to British Malaya was still serious because the new intelligence system introduced by Jenkin and the Briggs Plan was yet to be thoroughly tested. In some senses, the arrest of Lee Meng provided evidence of the expanded capacities of the new intelligence system, the growing confidence of Special Branch and the effectiveness of the co-operation between the Malayan and Singapore Special Branches. The chapter analyses, too, the breakdown of law and order and the proliferation of communist terrorism in the Ipoh area between 1949 and 1951 with which Lee Meng was closely involved. Lee Meng’s arrest and subsequent trial for being in possession of a hand grenade, a capital offence under the Emergency Regulations, received considerable publicity in the British and Malayan press. It presented several unusual features that will be discussed in this chapter, leading to the involvement of the British, Hungarian and Malayan governments, the British Commissioner-General for South East Asia, the Malayan High Commissioner and the Sultan of Perak, Sir Yussuf ‘Izzuddin Shah. Lee Meng played a part in all of the above topics and is the connecting link that draws them together. In his autobiography, Chin Peng, the CPM’s Secretary-General, identified Lee Meng as a ‘head courier’ operating under the direction of the CPM’s Central Committee.3 However, apart from controlling a high219

220

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

level communist courier network radiating out of Ipoh, she was on Special Branch record as being a member of the CPM’s Perak State Committee, and held several important positions in the communist organisation in Perak, including the leadership of the notorious Kepayang Gang in the Ipoh district that was responsible for much of the violence in the Ipoh area.4 For a short period at the beginning of the Emergency, she was Secretary of the CPM’s District Committee, responsible for the main Chemor–Kuala Kangsar Road area in Perak, before moving to Ipoh as Secretary of the CPM’s Ipoh Town Committee.5 As one of the top twenty communists in Malaya, a reward of M$120,000 had been placed on her head.6

The CPM’s communications system At the time of writing this study, little information existed about the CPM’s communications system, though the subject is worthy of further research, and it is therefore worth analysing the limited amount of information that is available. Chin Peng refers in his autobiography to the CPM’s purchasing ten sets of portable military wireless equipment on the Singapore ‘black market’ a few weeks prior to the Emergency. The equipment was to be moved across the Straits of Johore for use by the guerrillas in the Malayan jungle. According to what Chin Peng told the author in Canberra in February 1999 before the publication of his autobiography, the CPM’s Singapore Town Committee purchased the sets ‘from a supplier somewhere near the Singapore racecourse’.7 As they were items of standard British army equipment, it seems most likely that they were purchased on the ‘black market’ from a local British army ordinance depot. However, the communists found that their plans to smuggle the sets into Malaya were frustrated by an intensification of Special Branch activities in Singapore at the time and the tightening up of police checks on the movement of goods across the Strait of Johore from Singapore to Johore Bahru that were likely to be of use to the guerrillas operating in the Malayan jungle. According to the author’s recollection of subsequent lowgrade uncorroborated Special Branch information, the sets were eventually abandoned and buried somewhere near the Singapore racecourse.8 Based on Chin Peng’s own account, the MNLA had been successful towards the end of the Second World War in recovering and hiding in the jungle three heavy B-11 wireless receiver/transmitters that had been parachuted into the jungle by British long-range aircraft assigned to the British clandestine Force 136 operating from Ceylon (Sri Lanka). In 1943,



‘The weather has been horrible’

221

some small parties of Force 136, led by British officers, had been infiltrated into Malaya by submarine to make contact with the CPM’s Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army, which was offering resistance to the Japanese in Malaya. Two of the wireless sets were hidden in the jungle in Negri Sembilan and the third in Johore, and they were never handed over to Force 136. Chin Peng told the author that they were extremely cumbersome and difficult to manhandle through the jungle, as each set with its generator constituted a two-man load.9 Meanwhile, before the end of hostilities, Force 136 personnel operating with the MPAJA had provided basic training in wireless operating skills to three members of the MPAJA, which according to Chin Peng was limited to ‘reception/transmission theory, Morse code and equipment maintenance’. The only wireless operator of the three to survive the war was a woman named Lee Jhen [sic], and in mid-1949, Chin Peng appointed her to provide training in wireless operating skills to some Malayan National Liberation Army personnel. It was planned to move the three B-11 sets to the Bentong area in central Pahang for this purpose.10 However, before this could take place, Lee Jhen was killed in a night engagement with a Gurkha patrol. Although it not clear what happened to the three B-11 sets, it is possible that a ‘generator’ for a wireless transmitter that was later recovered in the 1950s in an abandoned hut in wild mountainous country on the north Perak and Kelantan border was connected with them. The equipment was found by a British 22 Special Air Service Regiment patrol acting on Special Branch information. However, no trace was discovered of the wireless transmitters and the SEP informer who provided the information to the Special Branch could not say what had happened to them, although he asserted that no wireless transmissions had ever been made from the location where the generator had been found.11 In 1952, Chin Peng came to hear of Thai smugglers in southern Thailand operating an illegal wireless network to communicate with their contacts in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Chin Peng followed up this information and was eventually able to purchase eight similar units on the local market. In his autobiography, he describes them as being about the size of a shoebox, with each unit having its own power pack and transformer. They were capable of receiving and transmitting in Morse code only.12 Chin Peng did not indicate how and where they were to be used, but presumably they were required either to establish contact with the CPM personnel that were then based in

222

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Beijing or eventually to establish a network of wireless transmitters among the guerilla units along the Thai–Malayan border.13 Chin Peng informed the author in Canberra in February 1999 that in 1954–55 the guerrillas had found the wreckage of a crashed RAF fighter aircraft in dense jungle just inside the Malayan side of the Thai border. The guerrillas stripped the aircraft of anything likely to be of use, including a wireless transmitter and a machine gun. However, the machine gun was soon discarded when it was found to be too heavy to be used in the jungle and, in any case, there was very little ammunition for it. The wireless transmitter, too, turned out to be of little use as it was discovered that it could only transmit emergency SOS signals. Chin Peng said that while his men were experimenting with the wireless, it was possible that a signal emanating from it had been picked up by a British army wireless interception station in Penang, as not long afterwards there was a noticeable increase in security force activity in the area.14 It is worth noting that in March 1962, after the end of the Emergency, Chin Peng arranged for three MNLA personnel to be sent to Beijing to be given three months’ training in wireless telegraphy by the People’s Liberation Army. The course included the use of codes and ciphers. On completion of the course, they returned to the Malayan–Thai border area and were attached to the 8th Regiment MNLA headquarters.15 Their main task was to maintain wireless contact with Chin Peng, who by that time had already moved from southern Thailand and established himself in Beijing.16 Meanwhile, as Chin Peng struggled to deal with the problems connected with the use of wireless telegraphy, he still had to rely heavily on couriers to enable the Central Committee to keep in touch with guerrilla formations in the jungle. As he related in his autobiography, the ‘Central Committee was unable to function without regular incoming reports and outgoing courier traffic’.17 The communists continued to use the courier network they had established throughout the country, which stretched some 800 kilometres from their headquarters in the Betong salient area of southern Thailand to Johore and Singapore in the south. In his autobiography, Chin Peng wrote apropos the CPM’s communications system: Months before Britain imposed the Emergency regulations, the CPM’s senior leadership was well aware of the difficulties entailed in establishing secure and reliable communication networks. We also required skilled operators



‘The weather has been horrible’

223

and relevant codes. Should these be unavailable, we would be forced to rely on improvisation and the further development of our couriers.18

When he was consolidating his Ipoh-based courier operation, Chin Peng asked the CPM’s Perak State Committee Secretary to find a suitable head courier, and Lee Meng was selected.19 The Special Branch was aware from early on in the Emergency that the CPM’s Central Committee considered southern Thailand as the hub of its communications system. The local Chinese population was more sympathetic to their Chinese ‘blood brothers’ in the Communist Party of Malaya than they were to the Thai authorities whom they considered to be pursuing an anti-Chinese policy. The Malayan–Thai frontier area was criss-crossed with courier and smuggling tracks that were well known to the guerrillas and their orang asli supporters, which made it easier for the communist couriers to escape detection. Moreover, the Thai police and army did not heavily garrison the Malayan–Thai border region, and consequently the guerrillas were able to cross the frontier into Thailand and move around in southern Thailand with impunity. Indeed, it often seemed to the Special Branch as though they had arrived at a modus vivendi with the Thai authorities, by which the two sides had tacitly agreed not to take offensive action against each other, except in self-defence. By 1953, the Special Branch had assembled a considerable amount of information about the CPM’s external courier links through southern Thailand with the Communist Parties of Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and China. 20 CPM/MNLA personnel could travel, with the help of the Communist Party of Thailand, by train from Yala in southern Thailand to Bangkok, whence they left for China by sea, often using, if necessary, false travel documents. There was an overland route, too, for which the Communist Party of Thailand provided guides and an escort from Bangkok to the Laotian border where the Communist Party of Laos took over and provided similar assistance to the borders of Vietnam. From Hanoi, there was a service by Soviet or Chinese military aircraft to Beijing. Chin Peng followed this route when he returned to China in 1961.21 A good example of the delays imposed by the courier communication system is provided in the distribution of the CPM’s important October 1951 resolution (Chapter 8) and its accompanying directives, which were drafted by Chin Peng and his colleagues Lee An Tung, Siao Chan and Ah Chung at a Politburo meeting in Bentong, Pahang.22 The resolution and its accompanying directives were important documents, as they presaged a

224

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

major change in communist tactics that brought about a marked decrease in terrorist activity. The CPM resolution, ‘Fight for Greater Victory in the War’23 exhorted major CPM and MNLA units to (a) avoid offensive action and contact with the security forces not of military importance; (b) withdraw into deep jungle to cultivate food, retrain, reorganise and intensify party indoctrination; and (c) give priority to political and United Front work.24 But copies of these important documents did not reach all CPM district committees until nearly a year after they were dispatched, even though communist committees at state level had received them by April 1952. Ironically, the Special Branch obtained a copy of the documents from its own sources at around the same time that the CPM District Committees received theirs.25 Nevertheless, as CC Too comments, ‘in spite of its [the CPM’s] drastic new instructions and methods, the 1951 October directive of the CPM’s Central Committee failed to save the revolution, which resulted in the CPM and its MNLA making their own ‘long march’ to find refuge in southern Thailand’.26 Several writers have suggested that much of the credit for the withdrawal of the CPM and MNLA units to southern Thailand and the improvement in the security situation in Malaya should be given to General Templer. There is no gainsaying that after his arrival in 1952, he revitalised the struggle against the CPM/MNLA by his sheer determination and single-mindedness. However, as Louis Herren, the Singapore correspondent of The Times (London) pointed out, the improvement in the security situation was not due entirely to Templer’s efforts and had largely come about because of the CPM’s new policy contained in its October 1951 resolution and directives that had been promulgated before Templer’s arrival at Malaya.27 The communists’ communication system was classified by the Special Branch into four main categories: • ‘open’ courier • ‘closed’ courier • ‘dead-letter’ boxes • ‘live-letter’ boxes. ‘Open’ couriers was the term used to refer to communist couriers who traveled by road, rail, bicycle, on foot and sometimes even by internal air service. Wherever possible they tried to avoid checkpoints.28 The CPM



‘The weather has been horrible’

225

preferred to use women as open couriers as it was considered they would be less likely to be subjected to a thorough search if they were stopped at police or army checkpoints. To avoid detection, female couriers often concealed messages on their person or hid them in innocuous-looking items they were carrying.29 In deep jungle, the guerrillas used friendly orang asli as couriers, especially those who had assisted the MPAJA during the war and had proved their loyalty to the communist cause.30 ‘Closed’ couriers referred to ‘inanimate’ objects, such as motor cars, buses, lorries and taxis, that is, vehicles in which messages could be secreted and carried for extraction when the vehicle reached its destination. ‘Dead-letter’ boxes were prearranged hidden locations used for the secret exchange of packages and messages, where items could be deposited or hidden for subsequent pick up, such as public telephone kiosks, under bridges, hollow tree trunks and even inside toilet cisterns. A niche in a tree trunk most frequently served this purpose in the jungle. Communist supporters living in villages and towns, to whom mail could be addressed without suspicion through the normal postal service, were used as ‘live-letter’ boxes. It was not unknown for government postmen to deliver letters unwittingly to seemingly innocuous accommodation addresses in villages or towns from where they could be collected.31 The courier system used by the communists was well-developed. Over long distances, several couriers were involved, each carrying a message over their own sector of what could be a long chain. Couriers rarely met and messages were left in dead-letter boxes in the jungle to be retrieved by the next courier in the communication chain.32 Messages could be sent, too, by post or telephone, but the communists were wary of doing this, as they were aware that the Special Branch had interception units working in the post office. Nevertheless, a simple code was sometimes used to disguise the identity of persons and places. For example, phrases such as ‘the weather over here for the past two months has been horrible’ could mean that the guerrilla unit concerned had been harried by the security forces, and ‘your brother Fuk Lam has not been well’ could mean that ‘Fuk Lam’ had been wounded in an engagement with the security forces, and so on. Low-grade invisible ‘inks’, such as rice water, lemon juice, aspirin dissolved in water, and urine, were sometimes used for writing messages. Messages written in this way could easily be made to re-appear by applying heat.

226

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

The security situation in the Ipoh area In early 1949, the Special Branch had noticed a marked increase in communist terrorism in central Perak, which probably resulted from a decision made by the CPM to place the Min Yuen and special mobile squads on a more militant footing and assign ‘traitor assassination’ duties to them. The deteriorating law-and-order situation in the Ipoh area was of considerable concern to the authorities. The communists were determined to create a reign of terror. There was consistent evidence that Lee Meng was responsible for much of the violence as she controlled several armed Min Yuen units in the Ipoh area, including the notorious Kepayang Gang, as well as some ‘special mobile killer squads’ that were reported to be behind many of the terrorist attacks that were carried out between 1949 and 1951.33 Though the Special Branch could not prove that Lee Meng herself participated in any of the terrorist incidents, as a central figure at the time of the CPM’s Ipoh Town Committee, she was considered to bear ultimate responsibility for the attacks the gangs under her control carried out. Communist units frequently attacked isolated police posts, slashed rubber trees and attacked managers’ bungalows and offices. Suspected police informers were murdered and hand grenades were thrown into crowded public places without regard to casualties caused to innocent bystanders. The first grenade attack in Ipoh town occurred on 1 October 1949, when two special mobile squad members of the Kepayang Gang, Ah Chi and Ah Sin, lobbed hand grenades into the offices of the Kin Kwok Daily News, a local pro-Kuomintang and anti-communist Chinese newspaper. A reporter was killed and others wounded.34 A more vicious attack took place when a hand grenade was thrown into the audience during a performance in Kampar of the Sheum Circus, a well-known travelling Chinese circus troupe. Five civilians were killed and forty-two wounded. At the Rex Cinema at Telok Anson, a grenade was thrown into the audience, killing two civilians and wounding six others. Three members of a police jungle squad attending the show were also wounded by grenade fragments. Following this, a number of similar grenade attacks were carried out in 1949 in Tanjong Tuallang, Taiping and Teluk Anson.35 On 25 March 1949, two British police sergeants, leading a combined police and army attack against a communist hideout reported to be occupied by the Kepayang Gang in the Tanjong Rangkong area of Tasek on the outskirts of Ipoh, were killed when a communist terrorist hiding in a tree threw a hand grenade at them.36 Another CT who threw two more hand



‘The weather has been horrible’

227

grenades at the police was wounded and captured. On 24 April, the security forces killed a CT in the same area. The next day, a security force follow-up operation in the Tasek area shot dead five members of the Kepayang Gang, including two women.37 The Malayan Chinese Association was a prime target of the CPM, as it was perceived by the CPM to be supporting the British colonial government and representing reactionary KMT Chinese interests.38 On 10 April 1949, Tan Cheng Lock, the President of the MCA and the leader of the Malayan–Chinese community,39 who was visiting Ipoh from Malacca, suffered shrapnel wounds from a hand grenade that was thrown at him during a meeting of the Perak branch of the MCA at Hale Street, Ipoh. He was addressing 200 members of the branch at the time. Wong Kim Long, the secretary of the branch, who was translating Tan Cheng Lock’s speech into Chinese from English, and several other senior Chinese leaders, including Cheong Chee, President of the Perak Mining Association, were wounded in the attack. Lau Pak Khuan, Chairman of the Perak Chinese Chamber of Commerce, who was presiding over the meeting, escaped unscathed by throwing himself to the ground as he saw ‘a black object’ land on the table in front of him.40 The grenade was thrown by a Chinese man who rode up on a bicycle to the entrance of the building, dismounted from his bicycle and threw the grenade into the hall of the building. He dropped another grenade he was carrying, but it failed to explode. Khaw Kai Boh, an assistant superintendent of police in the Ipoh Special Branch, who was at a petrol service station about 100 yards away, on hearing the explosion, immediately ran toward the scene.41 He was just in time to see the Chinese man making his escape on a bicycle. Although Khaw fired four shots at him with his pistol, the man was unscathed and made good his escape.42 At the end of 1949, another attempt was made by communist terrorists to intimidate members of the Malayan Chinese Association by throwing a hand grenade at a gathering of mourners attending the funeral of Cheong Chee’s mother at the 3rd Milestone Gopeng Road Chinese cemetery. Four persons lost their lives as a result of this attack, and twenty-three were wounded.43 Cheong Chee himself was not injured, but Lau Pak Khuan, who had been fortunate to escape injury previously when Tan Cheng Lock was wounded, was hit in the right arm by a grenade splinter. Other prominent local Chinese were wounded, including Leong Yew Koh, secretary of the

228

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Perak Branch MCA and a future minister in the Malayan government, who was hit by grenade fragments in his legs, hands and body.44 There were six more grenade attacks in Ipoh in 1950–51, and several other grenade attacks in other towns and built-up areas in Perak. At the same time, special mobile killer squads launched a campaign of kidnapping for ransom and assassinating selected Chinese, who were either working for the government or suspected of being police agents. It is not proposed to list each and every one of these incidents, but the above brief account will demonstrate the seriousness of the situation and the CPM’s utter disregard for law and order in the Ipoh area. 45

Lee Meng: a case study In the early years of the Emergency, Lee Meng’s exact whereabouts were not known and she was variously reported to have gone ‘underground’ and be living with a local Min Yuen unit on the jungle fringes or to be hiding out in an inaccessible area of limestone cliffs and caves some few miles outside Ipoh.46 In view of the difficulties encountered in mounting an operation against her and her important position in the CPM hierarchy, the Lee Meng file was handed over to the Holding Centre (DS (Desmond) Palmer) as a special case study.47 After reviewing the case, Palmer decided to try to establish her whereabouts by penetrating the courier link she was heading. As it happened, a breakthrough occurred not long afterwards from communist documents recovered in a raid on a guerrilla camp in Selangor that revealed the identity of a Chinese woman operating as a courier out of Singapore into Johore, who was believed to be the Singapore link of Lee Meng’s courier network. She was already on Singapore Special Branch record as having communist connections.48 Palmer liaised with John Fairbairn, his counterpart in the Singapore Special Branch, and a joint operation was planned to arrest the woman courier in Singapore.49 Palmer selected Inspector Irene Lee, who was on his staff at the Holding Centre, to take charge of the Malayan side of the operation. Inspector Lee was the widow of a Chinese detective who had been killed by the communists early on in the Emergency. She was highly regarded by her peers as a competent and experienced Special Branch officer. In Singapore, Lee worked closely with the Singapore Special Branch, and as a result of enquiries made, the woman courier was located and kept



‘The weather has been horrible’

229

under surveillance. She was identified from Singapore Special Branch records as Ah Shu or Ah Soo, a Chinese schoolteacher,50 the wife of Wong Fook Kwang (alias Tit Fung or ‘Iron Spearhead’), the notorious leader of the communist-controlled Workers Protection Corps, who had been arrested earlier by the Singapore Special Branch. 51 During the three weeks that Ah Shu’s movements were kept under surveillance, she was seen to shop frequently at Robinson’s, a well-known department store at Raffles Place, where she usually met another Chinese woman. It was observed at their meetings that they unobtrusively exchanged identical-looking shopping bags that were believed to contain communist literature and messages. It was decided to intervene and arrest the two women the next time they met. Arrangements were made for an unmarked Special Branch car with its engine running to be waiting outside the store. When Ah Shu emerged from the store, Irene Lee tailed her, with the Special Branch car following at a discreet distance. Meanwhile, the other woman had been arrested very quietly in the store without arousing attention. As Ah Shu walked along Stamford Road towards the YMCA building, Irene Lee gave a signal for the car to draw abreast and stop alongside. Irene Lee identified herself as a police officer and ordered Ah Shu to get into the car. The car was immediately driven off to a Special Branch ‘safe house’ in the suburbs of Singapore. On arrival, a woman police constable searched Ah Shu and eventually a small slip of paper bearing a communist message was found concealed in a tin of Johnson’s Baby Powder she was carrying in her shopping bag. The bottom of the tin had been skillfully removed to allow the message to be inserted. After the message had been extracted and photographed, it was reinserted and the bottom of the tin resealed. It then remained for Irene Lee to convince Ah Shu that it was in her best interests to co-operate with the Special Branch. Irene Lee showed her a photograph that had been taken in the safe house of her sitting between two Malay uniformed policemen, and told her that if she were unco-operative, the photograph would be published in the Chinese press in Singapore and multiple copies of it dropped by air in the jungle where her contacts were known to operate.52 Ah Shu finally agreed to co-operate and carry the message across the Singapore–Johore Causeway into Johore to pass it on to the next link in the courier chain. From information supplied by Ah Shu, the trail led Irene Lee to Yong Peng in Johore, where another woman courier in the communication chain was living. Posing as a CPM courier, Irene Lee established contact with her and invited her out for a meal to ‘celebrate’ the recent killing of a policeman

230

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

by the guerrillas in an ambush not far from Yong Peng. After the meal, a taxi ‘happened’ to be passing by (driven by a Special Branch detective) and Irene Lee pushed the woman into it. Several hours later Inspector Lee and a very frightened woman courier arrived at the Holding Centre in Kuala Lumpur. During the journey, Irene Lee managed to convince the woman, using information on record with the Special Branch, that the only way she could extricate herself from a very difficult situation would be to co-operate with the police and become a Special Branch double agent.53 From Yong Peng, the trail led northwards to a rubber estate near Jerantut in Pahang, where contact was made with another link in the long communist communication chain linking the CPM’s Central Committee in southern Thailand through Ipoh to Singapore. Irene Lee was led from one courier post to another—from a rubber estate near Jerantut to a bookshop used as a CPM accommodation address at Batu Road, Kuala Lumpur. Finally, the trail ended at a small Chinese house two blocks away from the FMS Bar in Ipoh, which turned out to be the undercover communication post co-ordinating the secret courier network reporting to the CPM’s Central Committee. The Special Branch kept the house under observation and it was raided on 24 July 1952. Lee Meng and her friend, Chow Yin, were found on the premises. Lee Meng claimed to be a Chinese schoolteacher but as both her and Chow Yin’s accounts of themselves were unsatisfactory, they were detained for further questioning.54 During Lee Meng’s interrogation, the Special Branch detectives did not produce the information they had on record about her, but limited their questioning to her family background, where she had worked, who her friends and contacts were, how long she had been living in Ipoh, and so on. In the meantime, a thorough search of her room revealed a batch of communist documents awaiting dispatch by courier. Lee Meng was then held on a charge of being in possession of communist documents, and remanded in Taiping Gaol for trial.55 Lee Meng’s arrest marked the culmination of months of painstaking and persistent work by the Special Branch, in which Irene Lee played an important part.56 But no-one was to know at the time that her arrest would become a cause célèbre that would make headline news around the world and lead to questions being asked in the Malayan Legislative Council and the British Parliament.57



‘The weather has been horrible’

231

When Lee Meng was produced before the Ipoh Magistrate’s Court on 6 August, she was formally arraigned on three counts under the Emergency Regulations, all of which carried the death penalty. Firstly, that she was armed with a pistol between August 1948 and September 1951 in the Kepayang area of Ipoh; secondly, that she had carried a hand grenade at the same time; and thirdly, that she had consorted with persons who were carrying firearms and acting in a manner prejudicial to the maintenance of good order. Her activities as a courier were not referred to in court to avoid compromising ongoing Special Branch operations. It was hoped, too, that when the news of her arrest reached Chin Peng, it would not be apparent that her courier activities had come to light. When Lee Meng appeared in the Perak Assize Court on 29 August, she was arraigned on a fourth charge of carrying a Browning automatic pistol during the two-month period prior to her arrest. However, the prosecuting officer announced that he only intended to proceed against her on the second charge of possessing a hand grenade at five different places in the Ipoh area between 15 July 1949 and September 1951, a capital offence under Regulation 4(1) B of the Emergency Regulations 1948. The trial then proceeded under Mr Justice J Thompson, assisted by two assessors: a Chinese and an Indian. The charge was unusual in that no hand grenade was found in Lee Meng’s possession when she was arrested and the prosecution case would have to depend entirely on evidence given by a group of surrendered CTs whose depositions under cross-examination by the defence might well be considered tainted. With hindsight, it seems remarkable that the Deputy Public Prosecutor did not wish to charge her under the Emergency Regulations for possessing communist documents and operating a high-level CPM courier network, as this would have been much easier to prove. But perhaps the answer may be that a conviction for this lesser offence would not attract the mandatory death sentence that possessing a hand grenade did. At her trial, the Deputy Public Prosecutor admitted that she had not actually been carrying a hand grenade at the time of her arrest and informed the judge that the prosecution case depended mainly on the evidence of nine surrendered CTs—eight Chinese and one Tamil—who at the relevant time when she had been carrying a hand grenade had been with her in the jungle. One of the CTs stated that he was required to report to her regularly when he was a CPM District Committee Member. The Special Branch produced another prosecution witness, a Chinese woman who had been seized by

232

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

the guerrillas and held for several days in their camp, who stated that she had seen Lee Meng in the camp armed with a hand grenade. A Chinese Special Branch inspector who had participated in the attack on the camp identified Lee Meng at a police identification parade as being present in the camp when it was attacked. As supporting evidence, the police presented photographs of Lee Meng wearing CT uniform and carrying a rifle and a hand grenade. Lee Meng denied the charge and said she was not the person in the photographs. The case against her appeared strong. However, the two local Indian barristers representing her in court argued that the evidence given by SEPs was unreliable and could not be relied upon to convict her. They crossexamined the SEPs and suggested they were committing perjury in the hope of receiving a free pardon.58 Lee Meng did not call any witnesses for the defence and declined to give evidence on oath. Her defence was that she was in Singapore from 1948 to 1950 and ‘not present at the material time’. She stated that ‘one witness who could have corroborated her evidence had died or committed suicide while in police custody’.59 She was referring to her friend Chow Yin, who had been arrested with her. The Special Branch had sent Chow Yin to the Holding Centre in Kuala Lumpur for interrogation, but she had committed suicide while in custody. Lee Meng further claimed that while she was in Ipoh, she stayed at home most of the time looking after two young children, a boy and girl aged three and four respectively, whom she said were her nephew and niece. The Special Branch believed they were either the children of CPM’s Central Committee member Kah Sin, who had been killed in December 1949 by the security forces in the Chemor area of Perak, or of CPM’s Central Committee member Yong Chan Meng (alias Ah Loo), who was then in charge of the CPM’s North Malaya Bureau.60 To the dismay of the prosecution, after Mr Justice Thomson had summed up the case, the two Asian assessors assisting him found her not guilty. However, the judge disagreed with them and used his prerogative to order a retrial.61 The system used in Malaya at the time of being tried by a judge assisted by two assessors was, in fact, a compromise between trial by a judge alone and trial by jury. In the view of the British colonial authorities, Malaya was ‘not yet ready for the introduction of a jury system owing to the shortage of suitable jurors with a sufficient knowledge of English and a sufficient degree of public responsibility’.62 While assessors did not have the same powers



‘The weather has been horrible’

233

as a jury, their function was not simply advisory, and the judge had to be in agreement with at least one of them in order to give a verdict. Under the assessor system, Europeans had the right of trial by two assessors of their own race, but the same right was not extended to Asian defendants, who could be tried by European assessors. If, however, a judge disagreed with both assessors as to the guilt or innocence of the accused, as had happened at Lee Meng’s trial, a new trial was required to be held before a different judge.63 At the conclusion of the trial, Mr Justice Thomson addressed Lee Meng as follows: ‘Both assessors are of opinion that you are not guilty. How, as reasonable men, they can come to that opinion, I have no means of knowing. I disagree with their opinion and order a retrial’.64 At the retrial before Mr Justice Pretheroe and one Chinese and one European assessor on 10 September 1952, the two assessors were divided. The Chinese assessor found her not guilty, but Mr Justice Pretheroe agreed with the European assessor in finding her guilty, and passed the mandatory death sentence on her.65 This was, in fact, the first time on record that a European had been selected from the panel of assessors to serve on the trial of an Asian in the Perak High Court for offences against the Emergency Regulations. Lee Meng, speaking in Cantonese, objected to the European assessor, but when her remarks were translated, Mr Justice Pretheroe informed her that her objection was overruled and advised her to stop talking, as she would only prejudice her case.66 On 14 November 1952, the Malayan Court of Appeal in Kuala Lumpur dismissed her appeal against the sentence. The three judges making up the Court of Appeal handed down a two-to-one verdict against her. The Chief Justice of the Federation of Malaya, Mr Justice Mathew, and Mr Justice Whitton dismissed the appeal, but the Chief Justice of Singapore, Mr Justice Murray-Aynsley, stated he would allow it on the grounds that the charge was defective in law.67 Lee Meng then attempted to lodge an appeal with the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, but an in forma pauperis application made on her behalf by two well-known barristers, Mr Dingle Foot and Mrs PG Lee, for special leave to appeal against the death sentence was rejected. The Judicial Committee consisting of Lord Porter, Lord Tucker and Lord Asquith refused permission for the case to be reopened.68

234

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Almost immediately, a petition for clemency signed, among others, by fifty British MPs was addressed to the Sultan of Perak.69 Ironically, Dato Sir Cheng Lock Tan, too, who had himself been wounded in a communist attack in Ipoh, entered a plea on her behalf.70 Tan argued in his petition to the Sultan that racial prejudice had been shown at her trial in that, while Europeans had the right of trial by two assessors of their own community, the same right was denied to Asian defendants. The unusual features of her trial attracted widespread local and international interest.71 Then, suddenly, on 2 March 1953, there was a dramatic twist to the case. The Hungarian government contacted the British minister in Budapest, Robert Hankey, and offered to release a British businessman, Edgar Sanders, who was serving 13 years’ imprisonment for alleged espionage, in exchange for her.72 There was a mixed reception to the offer and some resentment was expressed in Malaya against what was referred to as ‘outside interference and cynical opportunism’ by the Hungarian government. Even Lee Meng’s solicitors doubted if the offer was being made on ‘humanitarian’ grounds and said it must be regarded as propaganda. They opined it was a pity if it interfered with the ‘sincere petitions’ for clemency that had been sent to the Sultan of Perak.73 In any event, the Sultan of Perak, at the weekly meeting of the Perak Executive Council on 9 March 1953, on the advice of the Perak State Executive Council, commuted her sentence to penal servitude for life.74 It seemed then that the way would be open for the exchange proposed earlier by the Hungarian government, but in London on 17 March, the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, stated that he had decided against it.75 The British Cabinet discussed the matter further, and arguments were advanced for and against the proposed exchange. In the meantime, the Malayan High Commissioner, General Templer, and the British Commissioner-General for South East Asia, Malcolm MacDonald, raised serious political objections to the exchange, along the following lines: • Lee Meng’s release would be exploited by communist propaganda as indicative of communist power and its world influence. • The Communist Party of Malaya could claim that an exchange of the two prisoners demonstrated the power and influence it wielded in the Soviet bloc. • The Hungarian offer had already provided considerable encouragement to the communist terrorists in Malaya and their sympathisers.



‘The weather has been horrible’

235

• The two cases of Lee Meng and Sanders were not on par and if the exchange went ahead, it would be assumed that both persons had been unjustly convicted. • Public opinion in Malaya would resent any interference with a judicial sentence on political grounds. • The reputation of British justice would suffer.76 General Templer referred to a letter he had received from Yap Mau Tatt, Secretary-General of the MCA, predicting a grave upsurge in terrorism in Malaya if the exchange took place.77 The arguments in support of the exchange took the line that: • Sanders had already served three years of the 13-year sentence imposed on him and was not in good health. • Britain could argue that the trade ban imposed on Hungary on account of the imprisonment of Sanders had so hurt the Hungarians that they ‘had to obtain permission from Moscow to find a way out’. • The way would be open for Britain to resume trade with Hungary.78 Meanwhile, the British minister at Budapest enquired of the Hungarian Minister for Foreign Affairs what would be the attitude of the Hungarian government towards affecting the exchange if Lee Meng were banished to China rather than to Hungary as originally proposed. He obtained the impression there would be no objection to this. In the meantime, while discussions were going on at high level in London, Lee Meng’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. The Special Branch then requested government permission to transfer her to the Holding Centre for three months to interrogate her at length concerning her knowledge of communist courier routes and other matters.79 The Special Branch was aware, for instance, that while she was in Taiping Gaol, she had attempted to pass a message to Chin Voon, the CPM’s Branch Secretary in the Gunong Rapat area of Ipoh, asking him to endeavour to recover on her behalf a substantial amount of party funds she had invested with a relative of a senior Perak State Committee member who was in the real estate business.80 It was also proposed to interrogate her further regarding the arrangements she had been making for the confinement of pregnant wives of high-ranking CTs in Perak in the houses of their relatives. One such person was Wong Pik Lin, the wife of CPM Perak State Committee member Chong Chor, who had been accommodated with a relative at Gopeng.

236

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

However, the Special Branch’s request was not acceded to. It has not been possible to ascertain the reason for this from the records that have so far been released into the public domain. On 5 August, Mrs Sanders was granted an interview with Mr Imre Horvath, the Hungarian Minister in London. After she had seen him, the Minister said that when he left for Hungary on 11 August he would take a letter from her to the President of the Hungarian People’s Republic pleading for her husband’s release. Events moved fast after that. On 17 August, Wireless Budapest announced that the Hungarian Government had pardoned Mr Edgar Sanders and that he had been expelled from the country. The Hungarian Foreign Ministry stated that the Praesidium, which in people’s democracies fulfils the functions of a president, had granted Mrs Sanders’ petition asking for clemency for her husband after taking into account ‘her grave health condition and their children’.81 Although Sanders was released, Lee Meng remained in prison for another eleven years, until the Malaysian government quietly announced in 1964 that she was being deported to China. In his autobiography, Chin Peng writes that she contacted her lawyer before her departure to request him to purchase a sewing machine, two bicycles and some clothes on her behalf.82 On her arrival in China, she was reunited with her mother, whom she had not seen since her mother had been banished from Malaya in 1950. According to Special Branch sources, Lee Meng remained in China, where she later married Chin Tian, a prominent member of the CPM’s Central Committee, who had earlier moved back to China from the Malayan–Thai border area.83 As a postscript to the Lee Meng saga, Chin Peng writes in his autobiography that Lee Meng and her husband intended to move to southern Thailand after the Emergency had finished to stay in one of the guerrilla camps there. After the signing in 1989 of the peace accords with the Malaysian and Thai governments, the Thai authorities allowed Chin Peng and his former comrades-in-arms to settle in south Thailand in what were officially designated Peace Villages Nos 9, 10, 11 and 12, under the patronage of Princess Chulaporn of the Thai royal family.84 However, by that time, Chin Tian had died and Lee Meng was left to care for her ageing mother, who had gone blind. Chin Peng set aside a house for her in one of the Peace Villages, but Lee Meng did not avail herself of the offer. She finally moved into a ‘government middle-cadre residence’ that the Chinese authorities had made available for her in China.85



‘The weather has been horrible’

237

Although by arresting Lee Meng, the Special Branch felt that it had succeeded, at least for the time being, in disrupting one of the main communist communication links in Malaya, and the Special Branch operation leading to her arrest was adjudged a success, it was under no illusion that in due course the communication links would be restored, such was the tenacity and resilience of the CPM. Even as early as 1953, one year after Lee Meng’s arrest, the Special Branch received information that the brother of a communist guerrilla operating with the 26th Platoon MNLA, who was living in Sungei Buloh New Village in Sungei Siput, Perak, had already restored courier links between Perak and Kedah. Some relatives of SEP Chin Voon, formerly a CPM Branch Committee Secretary before he surrendered, were also known to be acting as couriers.86 The problem was that Ipoh, the state capital of Perak, was an important CPM centre, and many high-ranking CTs, including Secretary-General Chin Peng himself, Central Committee member Chin Tian and State Committee member Ng Thin Ong, who throughout the Emergency were operating with Chin Peng, had family ties and close friends living there. It was clear that the communist hold over the Ipoh area was deep-rooted, widespread and difficult to eradicate completely.87 As a result, it took another six years for the Emergency to be lifted and the communists to be fully routed. A persistent problem that needed to be addressed was that of cross-border terrorist activity, the subject of the case study in the next chapter.

Notes 1 2

3 4 5 6

An earlier version of this chapter appeared as ‘The Weather has Been Horrible: Malayan Communist Communications during the Emergency (1948–60)’, Asian Studies Review 19(2), 1995. Maurice Oldfield (later Sir Maurice) (1915–81) made the remark at a lecture he gave on the ‘Penetration of the Communist Party of Malaya’ at the Malayan Special Branch Training School in April 1952 that the author attended. Oldfield was then deputy head of SIFE under James Fulton (MI6) in Singapore. Oldfield served during the Second World War as a lieutenant colonel in the British Army Intelligence Corps, mainly in the Middle East. He was Director of MI6 from 1973 to 1978, and was knighted by the British government. The last official post he held was Co-ordinator of Security Intelligence in Northern Ireland in 1979. He died in 1981 (see West 1983, op cit, p 178). Chin Peng, 2003, op cit p 348. The Times (London), 10 March 1953, p 7. ibid, 18 February 1953, p 11; 2 March 1953, p 7, 8; 10 March 1953, p 7; 12 March 1953, p 5; 19 March 1953, p 6; Yuen, op cit; Short, op cit, pp 383–5. Yuen, op cit, p 57, The Times (London), 10 March 1953, p 7; 13 March 1953, p 3. In his account of Lee Meng in The War of the Running Dogs. The Malayan Emergency,

238

7 8 9

10 11 12

13

14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

1948–1960, London: Fontana Books, 1973 (3rd impression), Noel Barber describes her as ‘the virtual boss of the Communist courier network’. According to Special Branch records, her mother had been arrested early on in the Emergency for communist activities, and had been banished to China in 1950 (The Times (London), 10 March 1953, p 7). Author’s discussion with Chin Peng, Ruby Restaurant, Dickson, Canberra, 19 February 1999. Author’s notes. Author’s discussion with Chin Peng, Ruby Restaurant, Dickson, Canberra, 19 February 1999, and Chin Peng 2003, op cit, p 335. A good description of the difficulties encountered in operating wireless telegraph communication in the Malayan jungle is given by Fisk, op cit, 35–7. Fisk was a signals officer with the Australian army in Malaya during the Second World War (1941–42). Chin Peng, 2003, op cit, p 335. Author’s notes. See also Miller, op cit, pp 58–9. Chin Peng, 2003, op cit, p 336, and author’s conversation with Chin Peng, Ruby Restaurant, Dickson, Canberra, 19 February 1999. Chin Peng gave the date to the author as 1953. Aloysius Chin, The Communist Party of Malaya. The Inside Story, Kuala Lumpur: Vinpress Sdn Bhd, 1995, p 64. It is not clear whether the wireless transmitters mentioned above were used to establish wireless contact between Betong and Beijing in December 1955 as mentioned by Chin Peng in his autobiography (Chin Peng, 2003, op cit, p 370). Aloysius Chin retired from the Royal Malaysian Police in January 1985 as Deputy Director Special Branch (Operations), after 38 years’ service, of which 30 years were spent in the Special Branch. During the Emergency, he was a Special Branch officer at district, circle and contingent levels and subsequently served at Federal Special Branch headquarters. As head of the Kedah and Perlis Contingent Special Branch from January 1970 to December 1971, he worked closely with the Thai intelligence services. As he explained to the author, he obtained much of the information in his book from the interrogation of senior CTs such as Musa Ahmad, the Chairman of the CPM, since late 1956, who became disillusioned with communism and returned to Malaya from China in November 1981. Author’s conversation with Chin Peng, Ruby Restaurant, Dickson, Canberra, 19 February 1999. Chin, 1995, op cit, p137. Chin Peng moved from southern Thailand to Beijing in 1961. On his arrival in Beijing, the Chinese Communist Party arranged for him to stay in accommodation they provided in the innocuous-sounding ‘International Liaison Department’ compound, where the leaders of several other Southeast Asian communist parties were staying. Chin Peng, 2003, op cit, p 336. ibid, p 335. ibid, p 336. The Times (London), 23 March 1953; Chin, 1995, op cit, pp 42, 60, 65, 71, 90–1, 137. Chin Peng, 2003, op cit, pp 413–26.



‘The weather has been horrible’

239

22 The terminology adopted, ‘resolution’ and its accompanying ‘directives’, follows Chin Peng’s own usage (see Chin Peng, 2003, op cit, p 280. See also Hack, 1999, op cit, p 131). 23 At the 2nd Conference of the Communist World Peace Council held in Vienna from 1 to 7 November 1951, in the month following the issue of the CPM’s resolution and directives, it was agreed that the war in Malaya was an integral part of the Communists’ general world struggle for peace, and the conference resolved inter alia that ‘the method of peace negotiations should be used to solve the war in Indo-China, Burma, Malaya and the Philippines’ (see CC Too’s papers, University of Malaya Library, ‘Notes on History of the Communist Party of Malaya’, pp 116–20). 24 See AS Barham, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Operational Information Branch, Federal Police headquarters, A Short History of the Emergency, Kuala Lumpur, 21 October 1951, p 62. The CPM’s volte-face was most likely caused by the military setbacks it had received in the course of the armed struggle, exacerbated by serious food shortages resulting from the implementation of the Briggs Plan. It cannot be discounted, too, that it was affected by the change of policy on the part of the international communist movement to eschew war in favour of negotiations for world peace (see fn 23 supra). 25 See Chin Peng, 2003, op cit, p 316; Hack, 1999, op cit, p 137. 26 CC Too, ‘Armed Struggle That was Doomed to Fail’, New Straits Times, 3 December 1989. 27 The Times (London), 1 December 1952. It is possible that Herren may have been shown a copy of the CPM’s 1 October 1951 Resolution that Templer had wanted kept under strict security wraps, or he may have seen Barham’s Short History of the Emergency, in which Barham had attributed the reduction in overt terrorism to the CPM’s new policy. On a visit to London in 1952, Templer complained to the Colonial Office about what he considered to be Herren’s biased reporting about the Emergency. However, The Times (London) editor, Sir William Haley, refused to censure or transfer Herren as Templer had suggested (see Chin Peng, 2003, op cit, p 316; Hack, 1999, op cit, p 144; Adrian Threlfall, ‘The Malayan Emergency. An Historiographic Analysis’, honours thesis, School of Social Sciences, Victoria University, 2003, p 35). At the same meeting, Templer complained, too, about the perceived anti-British bias of Han Suyin’s novel, And the Rain My Drink, which he alleged provided a misleading picture of the hardships suffered by Chinese squatters in Johore in the Emergency, but he was not successful in having it withdrawn, though a senior Colonial Office official promised to see what could be done to send out Vernon Barlett of the London News Chronicle to Malaya to provide a more favourable account of the situation. 28 It is worth noting that Cecil H Sharpley, a former Australian Communist Party leader, stated in his autobiography that pro-communist air hostesses on Australian airlines carried confidential messages throughout Australia for the Australian Communist Party when the regular courier system operated by seamen was deemed too slow (Cecil H Sharpley, The Great Delusion. The Autobiography of an Ex-Communist Leader, London, William Heinemann Ltd, 1952, p 91). 29 During a police screening operation in the Lahat area of Perak on 12 March 1950, a Chinese woman, who was later identified as a guerrilla camp cook, appeared before the screening vehicle carrying a month-old baby that she claimed was her own. The baby was found to have communist documents concealed in its clothing. Subsequent Special Branch enquiries revealed that the baby had been ‘loaned’ to her so that she

240

30 31 32 33

34 35 36

37 38

39

40 41

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

would not be subjected to a close search. On other occasions, communist documents were found hidden in the hollow handlebars of bicycles and under bicycle bell tops. In the Selama area of Perak, a Chinese man was apprehended carrying communist documents concealed in a hollowed pineapple (see Secret, Federation of Malaya Operational Intelligence Summary, No 88, 16 March 1950, pp 8, 11). See Leary, op cit, p 3. Miller, op cit, p 59. Author’s notes. Yuen, op cit, pp 7–9; Short, op cit, pp 384–5; The Times (London), 18 February 1953, p 11; 2 March 1953, pp 7, 8; 10 March 1953, p 7; 12 March 1953, p 5; 19 March 1953, p 6. It was not unusual for District Committee members to control, for instance, special mobile killer squads, district presses, independent platoons, and so on. Special mobile killer squads were assembled for specific operations and then dispersed after their work had been carried out. The Straits Echo and Times of Malaya, 11 April 1949. Yuen, op cit, p 10. The Straits Times, 26 March 1949; R Thambipillay, Commemorative Book on the 50th Anniversary of the Malayan Emergency (1948–1960), Ipoh, Perak Planters’ Association, 1998, p 66. The sergeants were Philip Humble and Wilfred Wills. Yuen, op cit, pp 7, 8. The MCA was formed in February 1949 with Tan Cheng Lock as President. In general, MCA policy was conciliatory toward the Malays and co-operative with the British authorities (see Comber, 1983, op cit, p 40). Yuen, op cit, p 8. Tun Dato Tan Cheng Lock, afterwards Tun Dato Sir Cheng Lock Tan, was a baba Chinese, born in Malacca on 5 April 1883. He was educated at Malacca High School and Raffles Institution, Singapore. His family had been settled in Malacca for many generations, and while he had an impressive command of English and spoke fluent baba Malay, he was not Chinese-educated and did not speak, read or write Chinese. As President of the MCA, he was the spokesperson for the Chinese community in Malaya. He was subsequently knighted by both the British and Malayan governments (see Leon Comber, ‘Tun Dato Sir Cheng Lock Tan’s Role in Shaping Malayan Chinese Attitudes Towards the Malays and the Creation of a Malayan Nation’ in Chinese Studies of the Malay World (Ding Choo Ming & Ooi Kee Bang, eds), Singapore, Eastern Universities Press by Marshall Cavendish, 2003, pp 190–204). The Straits Echo and Times of Malaya, 11 April 1949. Khaw Kai Boh served in both the Malayan and Singapore Special Branches. In 1948–49, he was briefly the author’s colleague at Federal Special Branch headquarters, Kuala Lumpur, before leaving to read law on a British Council scholarship in London. After qualifying as a barrister, he returned in 1957 to join the Singapore Special Branch. When the People’s Action Party came to power in Singapore, he left for Kuala Lumpur, as he was declared persona non grata by the PAP leaders for his political views (he was believed to be a staunch KMT supporter), and his alleged connection with corrupt business dealings. He resigned from the police soon afterwards and entered politics. With MCA support, he was appointed a junior minister without portfolio in the Malayan Alliance government (1963). He subsequently became Minister for Local Government and Housing and legal adviser to the MCA (Richard B Corridon, 000044/15/1-4,



42 43 44 45 46

47

48

49

‘The weather has been horrible’

241

6-11, 000044/15/05, 0000344/15/12-15, Oral History Branch, National Archives of Singapore; J Victor Morais (ed), Who’s Who in Malaysia, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, 1965, p xxxii). The Straits Echo and Times of Malaya, 11 April 1949. Arkib Negara, File Misc 16, ‘Communist banditry in Malaya’, June 1948–June 1951 (27 December 1949). CO 717/182, Review of Chinese Affairs, December 1948, p 13. Yuen, op cit, pp 11, 12. CO 717/169. The limestone cliffs and caves were referred to as a communist hideout in a confidential telegram number 393, dated 30 March 1949, from the British Colonial Secretary to the Malayan High Commissioner, citing information contained in a letter received from Tronoh Mines Ltd, Ipoh, expressing concern about the security of its staff and property. The caves were approximately 3½ miles southeast of Ipoh town (see also Yuen, op cit, p 2). Yuen states that Min Yuen armed units had operated from these features for many years. Evidently, they were protected from shelling or bombing by the security forces because of their proximity to the main trunk road and nearby kampongs, rubber estates and the Tronoh Mines. In their paper, ‘Gua Tempurong’ (Journal of the Malayan Branch Royal Asiatic Society, 68, 1955), David Gebauer and Liz Price mention that the general area of Gua Tempurong, one of the ‘best known and largest caves in peninsular Malaysia’, was used by Lee Meng as a hideout. At the time, DS Palmer was an Assistant Commissioner of Police (Special Branch). He had joined the Malayan Police in 1937 as a cadet assistant superintendent. In 1938, he was Officer-in-Charge, Jelebu, Negri Sembilan (see Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) Library reference JF1521,’Malayan Establishment Staff List as at 1 July 1941’, and The Blue Lamp. Newsletter of the Retired Senior Police Officers Association of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, 7, 1993–35, p 4). He retired from the Royal Malaysian Police Force in 1960 as Senior Assistant Commissioner, Special Branch, and joined the British Advisory Mission to Vietnam under Sir Robert Thompson (1961–64) (interview with Brigadier (retired) FP Serong, Melbourne, 25 July 1995). Barber, op cit, p 150. In 1953, Alan Blades, then Director of the Singapore Special Branch, discussed at length the Special Branch operation with the author, who was then in the Johore Contingent Special Branch, and the author is grateful to him for providing much of the information for this account. John E Fairbairn, an assistant superintendent in the Singapore Special Branch, was junior to Palmer. He had joined the Singapore Police on 15 November 1947, and was first employed in the Malayan Security Service in 1948 (see Chapter 2 supra) before joining the Singapore Special Branch. Before the Second World War, his father, William Fairbairn, had been in charge of the Shanghai anti-riot police, and during the war had been employed as an instructor at MI6’s training camp, ‘Camp X’ or ST 103, in Canada, where he introduced ‘the martial arts of the East into the Western Special Forces training’. Several postwar senior CIA officers were graduates of the course (see Aldrich, 2000, op cit, p 101). After the war, William Fairbairn became adviser to the Singapore police anti-riot unit while his son was employed in the Singapore Special Branch (Yoong Siew Wah’s letters to the author, 10 August 1994 and 12 October 1994). Yoong was a senior Singapore Special Branch officer in the 1950s and became Director of the Singapore Anti-Corruption Agency in 1963. In 1971, he returned to intelligence duties and was appointed Director of Singapore’s Internal Security Department, the

242

50 51

52 53

54 55 56

57 58

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

successor of the Singapore Special Branch. After Singapore’s independence in 1965, the Singapore Special Branch was renamed the Internal Security Department (ISD) on 17 February 1966. Drysdale, op cit, pp 69–70. Yoong Siew Wah’s letter to author dated 7 July 1994, and ‘Reminiscences’, op cit, pp 2, 3. Little is known about Tit Fung except that he was born in China, but the Special Branch believed that he had served with the MPAJA in Malaya in the Second World War. The Singapore Special Branch detained Tit Fung under the Emergency Regulations (the investigating officer was John Fairburn). Although there was insufficient evidence to charge him in open court, he was known to have been involved in several murders and attempted murders that had been carried out in Singapore. As he was suffering from tuberculosis, he was sent for treatment at the Singapore General Hospital, from where he managed to escape, although he was kept under police guard, during a heavy rainstorm on the night of 4 March 1953. He was re-arrested on 9 July 1954 hiding in a small shelter he had made in secondary jungle in the Jurong area of Singapore. At the time of his arrest, he was unarmed, but he was found to be in possession of illegal drugs and a number of proscribed communist publications, such as Freedom News, Rules and Regulations of the Malayan Communist Party, Basic Problems of the Malayan Revolution and Political Party of the Proletariat. He was charged and tried in court for escaping from police custody, and possessing communist literature and illegal drugs, and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. He was subsequently banished to the People’s Republic of China (see Clague, op cit). Clague was Police Secretary of the Singapore Police Force at the time the events took place and had access to the official police documents relating to the case. See also Dennis Bloodworth, The Tiger and the Trojan Horse, Times Books International, Singapore, 1986, pp109–13. Yoong, op cit, pp 2, 3; letter to the author, dated 7 July 1994; Barber, op cit, p 150. As Clutterbuck has pointed out, not all CTs who were ‘turned’ or surrendered to the security forces were ‘traitors’ in the accepted sense of the word, and often their reasons for surrendering were varied and complicated. For instance, towards the latter part of the Emergency, when it was apparent that the CPM was losing the ‘shooting war’, many CTs surrendered and were prepared to co-operate with the security forces and persuade their comrades to do likewise, often at great risk to their own lives. This did not necessarily mean that that they had ‘betrayed the cause’, but merely that they wished to ‘live to fight another day’ (see Richard Clutterbuck, Conflict and Violence in Singapore and Malaysia 1945–1984, Singapore, Graham Brash (Pte) Ltd, 1984, pp 179, 183, 223). Barber, op cit, p 156. See also Chin Peng, 2003, op cit, p 338. Barber, op cit, p 157. Irene Lee was promoted to Assistant Superintendent of Police for her outstanding work on the case. She had the distinction of being the first woman promoted to this rank in the Malayan Police. However, she later resigned from the police as a result of a disagreement with the Malayan authorities and obtained employment with a commercial firm in Singapore. She died in 1994 (author’s notes). CO 1022/146, File SEA 75/02, Secret, draft letter by DE Thomas, MP, for the Secretary of State’s signature (see also The Times (London), 18 February 1953, p 11). Two lawyer brothers, DR Seenivasagam and SP Seenivasagam, who were prominent members of the Peoples’ Progressive Party (PPP) in Ipoh, represented her. The PPP



59 60 61

62 63 64 65

66 67 68

69

70 71 72

‘The weather has been horrible’

243

obtained its support mainly from the Chinese and Indian communities in Ipoh, and was in opposition to the Alliance government, which it regarded as ‘being too pro-Malay’ (see Barbara Watson Andaya and Leonard Y Andaya, A History of Malaysia, Macmillan Press Ltd, London, 1982, p 280). The Times (London), 18 February 1953, p 11. Yuen, op cit, p 57. CO 1022/3, ‘Representations Against Sentence of Death Passed on Lee Ten Tai (Lee Meng) in Federation of Malaya’ (see also The Straits Times, 19 February 1953; Barber, op cit, p 158). CO 1022/146, File No SEA 75/02, op cit, p 18. The Times (London), 2 March 1953, p 7. Chin Peng, 2003, op cit, p 342; Barber, op cit, p 158. CO 1022/3, ‘Representations Against Sentence of Death Passed on Lee Ten Tai (Lee Meng) in Federation of Malaya’ (see also The Straits Times, 19 February 1953 and The Statesman, 20 February 1953). Chin Peng, 2003, op cit, p 342. The Times (London), 15 November 1952, p 5. CO 1022/3, ‘Representations Against Sentence of Death Passed on Lee Ten Tai (Lee Meng) in Federation of Malaya’; The Times (London), 18 February 1953, p 11; Short, op cit, pp 383–5; Barber, op cit, pp 158–9; Yuen, op cit, pp 57, 58. CO 1022/3, ‘Representatives Against Death sentence Passed on Lee Ten Tai (Lee Meng) in Federation of Malaya’. According to an unsigned note in this file, part of the minutes and enclosures had been transferred on 20 February 1953 to a ‘Top Secret Annex’, and were not available for consultation. See also a letter by Leslie Plummer, Labour MP, in The Statesman, dated 20 February 1953, discussing the case. Further details of the case are provided in CO 1022/4, 1022/5 and 1022/6. The Sultan of Perak was Sultan Sir Yussuf ‘Izzuddin Shah. Under the Federation of Malaya Agreement of 1948 (Clause 15), the prerogative or pardon for offences committed in a Malay State resides with the ruler, and is exercised by the Ruler in Council with advice from the Attorney-General of the Federation of Malaya, who considers each case personally. The Times (London), 2 March 1953, p 7. ibid. CO 1022/6 Top Secret ‘Representations Against Sentence of Death Passed on Lee Tan Tai (Lee Meng) in Federation of Malaya’. See also The Times (London), 2 March 1953, p 8. Mrs Winifred Sanders intended to visit the Foreign Office to ask the government to accept the offer from the Hungarian authorities. The case of Edgar Sanders had aroused great interest when he was arrested in November 1949. The facts briefly are as follows. Sanders, who was then 43 years old, had come to Britain from Leningrad when he was 11. He was the cousin of George Sanders, the film star, and had served as a captain in the British army in the Second World War. He was employed in Hungary by the American-owned International Telegraph and Telephone Company. He had been arrested on espionage charges with Robert Volger, an American national, and Imre Geiger, a Hungarian. The British government was denied access to him after his arrest, and he was refused the assistance of a counsel at his trial (Volger’s counsel was refused a visa) and was not allowed to communicate with his family in England.

244

73 74

75

76

77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

All the defendants were found guilty at their trial. Sanders was sentenced to 13 years of imprisonment, Volger 15 years, and Geiger was sentenced to death and executed. Meanwhile, the Labour government in Britain broke off trade negotiations with the Hungarian government. The Times (London), 2 March 1953, p 7; 10 March 1953, p 7. The Times (London), 10 March 1953, p 7. According to The Times, Lee Meng was the seventh woman communist to have appealed successfully against the death sentence; five women communists had been executed. Since the beginning of the Emergency, 63 condemned CTs had been reprieved. Keesing’s Contemporary Archives, April 25–26 May 1953, p 12888; The Times (London), 18 March 1953, p 8. Mr Churchill stated that, after earnest consideration, the British government had decided that they could not entertain the Hungarian proposal. However, when the matter was again raised on 14 April, the British Foreign UnderSecretary gave an assurance that Sanders was ‘not a forgotten man’. CAB 129/59, Secret, ‘Sanders–Lee Exchange. Memorandum by the Minister of State’, 11 March 1953, and ‘Sanders–Lee Meng Exchange. Memorandum by the Secretary of State for the Colonies’, 13 March 1953. ibid. Telegram dated 13 March 1953 from High Commissioner for the Federation of Malaya to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. ibid. See Short, op cit, p 385, fn51. Yuen, op cit, p 58. CPM cadres of state rank and above were allowed to conduct business on behalf of the Party. The Times (London), 18 August 1953, p 6. Chin Peng, 2003, op cit, p 350. ibid; Yuen, op cit, pp 57–8. See Chin Peng, 2003, op cit, p 507; Leon Comber, review of Alias Chin Peng. My Side of History, in Intelligence and National Security, 19(1), 2004. Chin Peng, 2003, op cit, p 502. Chin Voon was the CPM’s Branch Secretary for the Gunung Rapat area of Ipoh, whom Lee Meng had tried to contact while she was in Taiping Gaol. Yuen, op cit, p 57.

Reproduced from Malaya's Secret Police 1945-60: The Role of the Special Branch in the Malayan Emergency by Leon Comber (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2008). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available at < http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg >

chapter eleven The Special Branch on the Malayan– Thai frontier (1948–60): a case study This chapter provides a second case study of a threat posed by the Malayan communists during the Emergency and the response by the Special Branch. Cross-border terrorism is not new, despite the emphasis on this since the attacks of 11 September 2001 in the US on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, DC. This chapter focuses on the early Malayan–Thai cross-border communist terrorist movements that formed an integral part of the Malayan Emergency in the period 1948–60. In particular, it analyses the efforts made by the Malayan Special Branch to obtain intelligence about the CPM/MNLA in southern Thailand and bring about a closer co-operation between the Malayan and Thai security forces and their Special Branches. The measures taken by the Malayan and Thai governments to mount joint counterinsurgency operations against the CPM/MNLA on the Malayan–Thai frontier and in southern Thailand will also be discussed. It is worth noting that today the same border region also poses a security problem as it has become the centre of a militant Islamic movement in southern Thailand. This case study is also important as it represents the first time that the Malayan Special Branch operated outside the borders of Malaya and, similarly, the first time that it had established, as will be described, a joint regional Malayan–Thai Special Branch office in Songkhla, southern Thailand. It was essential for the successful prosecution of the war against the Malayan communists for the Malayan security forces to harass and attack them in the bases they were endeavouring to set up in southern Thailand just across the frontier from Malaya, where they intended to reorganise, consolidate their strength, and await a more favourable opportunity to resume operations in Malaya.1 The borderlands between northern Malaya and southern Thailand throughout history have been notoriously difficult to control unless the region was itself the locus of government, as happened during the 12th century AD under the ancient Malay–Muslim state of Patani. However, when Thai administrators from Bangkok replaced the old Malay Muslim sultanate 245

246

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

in the early 20th century and applied what the Malay–Muslims perceived to be repressive policies in order to incorporate them more closely into the Thai nation, an irredentist movement developed among the Malay–Muslims in the southern provinces of Yala, Satun, Patani and Narathiwat. These provinces have the largest non-Buddhist minority in Thailand and the great majority of their population is of Malay origin, following the Islamic faith, which makes it a unique enclave in the Theravada Buddhist kingdom of Thailand. The irredentist movement in southern Thailand has been a perennial cause of concern to the Thai authorities, but during the Emergency the overall security situation in the region was greatly exacerbated by the presence of what were termed by the Thai authorities ‘bandit’ gangs, a code name used for Malayan and Thai communist insurgents, especially in and around the area of the Betong Salient.2 Thus, at the outbreak of the Emergency in 1948, the political and security situation in southern Thailand was unsettled and extraordinarily difficult to deal with. The jungle-covered terrain along the Malayan–Thai border presented a barrier beyond which Malayan security forces were not allowed to operate, and it was not until later that the Thai authorities allowed Malayan patrols to cross for a limited distance into Thai territory in hot pursuit of Malayan terrorists. The border was in places ill-defined and porous and favoured the guerrillas who, with their intimate knowledge of jungle paths criss-crossing the frontier, were able to move backwards and forwards without having to observe the same restrictions that were imposed on the Malayan forces. The civil administration of the Malayan–Thai border region in the far south also presented problems for the Thai central administration, as the border provinces were situated some 800 kilometres from Bangkok, the capital, and so were not popular postings for Thai government officials, who preferred to serve in more congenial surroundings closer to the centre of power. The situation was not made any easier by the Thai police and army not maintaining large garrisons in the Malayan–Thai border region. It often seemed to the Special Branch that the CPM/MNLA had come to a tacit understanding with the Thai security forces by which the two sides had agreed to maintain an armed neutrality. Chin Peng was quite frank about the situation in his memoirs: ‘As long as we stayed in the hinterland and caused no trouble, the Siamese [sic] police and troops left us alone’.3

The Special Branch on the Malayan–Thai frontier (1948–60)

247

In the small triangle between Padang Besar, Sadao and Bukit Kayu Hitam (see Chart 9), it was evident that the guerrillas had the support of the majority of the local Chinese community. The Special Branch had received reliable information that local Chinese were paying around M$40,000 subscriptions or ‘taxes’ every month to the communists. Where persuasion did not produce results, intimidation did. However, in most cases, intimidation was not necessary and payments were made voluntarily. In cases where contributions were not forthcoming, the communists were quite ruthless in dealing with recalcitrants. On 23 March 1952, for instance, the Special Correspondent of The Times (London) reported that the bodies of twenty-two men who had failed to co-operate with the communists had been found in eleven graves in the Sadao area. In another incident, the father of two Chinese schoolteachers who had refused to co-operate with the communists and disseminate communist literature in their schools was murdered.4 In the months following the declaration of a state of Emergency in Malaya, the security situation on the Malayan–Thai frontier had deteriorated to such an extent that the British Secretary of State for the Colonies submitted a report on the situation to the British Prime Minister, and the British Commissioner-General for South East Asia, Malcolm MacDonald, paid an official visit to Bangkok between 27 November and 4 December 1948, to discuss the situation with the Thai Prime Minister, Field Marshal Phibun Songkhran.5 On his return to Singapore, MacDonald provided an account of his discussions to the British Defence Co-ordination Committee (Far East). According to MacDonald, three main topics were discussed: • the situation on the Malayan–Thai border • jungle training for Thai troops • foreign policy matters.6 He emphasised that the main purpose of his visit was to gain Phibun’s support for Britain’s policy of ‘opposition to communism in Southeast Asia’. However, though he considered that Phibun was co-operative, he was not sanguine about the Thai authorities being able to resist the inroads of communism entirely from their own resources.7

248

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Chart 10: Map of the Malayan–Thai frontier (1948–60) Songkhla

S.THAILAND

Haadyai

MALAYA

Pattani

Padang Besar Sadao

Yala

Kota Bahru

PERLIS Alor Setar KEDAH

Weng Betong

Baling

MALAYA

Gerik

Pasir Mas KELANTAN

Source: Adapted from Asian Defence Journal, Kuala Lumpur, No.1, 1978, p 60.

To follow up MacDonald’s visit, a joint British–Thai government conference was held at Songhkla in January 1949 to discuss counterinsurgency measures to be taken against cross-border terrorism and the communist guerrillas. The British government team included Malayan Special Branch and Uniformed Branch police officers, and the US military attachés from Bangkok and Singapore were invited to attend as observers. The British ambassador in Bangkok reported that the Thais considered the conference a success. The principal points of agreement reached were as follows: • Anti-bandit [sic] forces of each country, working within their respective borders, should co-operate and take ‘vigorous action’ to suppress ‘bands of insurgents’ [sic]. • The two sides should exchange intelligence by wireless and special couriers. Special couriers would be authorised to make ‘unscheduled crossings’ of the frontier. • RAF aircraft should be authorised to take aerial photographs of the border area. • Malayan and Thai customs officers should meet to co-ordinate antismuggling measures.

The Special Branch on the Malayan–Thai frontier (1948–60)

249

• Malayan journalists should be invited to visit southern Thailand to help dispel misunderstandings between the local Muslim population and the Thai authorities.8 However, nothing was said about Malayan forces operating inside Thai territory. As the Emergency progressed, the Special Branch gave increased importance to the Malayan–Thai frontier and the situation in southern Thailand. It continued to receive reliable reports from its informers that the CPM and MNLA were making increasing use of sanctuaries in southern Thailand, especially in the area of the Betong Salient, where they had driven out a group of KMT guerrillas who had been terrorising the local population. Although very little attention has been given in the literature to KMT guerrilla groups in the area, they operated against the Japanese in Malaya during the war, often in the same areas as the communist MPAJA. Their status was not clearly defined. Although Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek, the KMT leader in China, was an ally of the allied powers, the KMT anti-Japanese guerrillas in Malaya during the Japanese occupation did not operate under the wing of the British-led Force 136 as the MPAJA guerrillas did, and to all intents and purposes remained separate. They were known locally in Malay as bintang puteh (‘white star’), a name derived from the KMT cap badge, whereas the MPAJA were known as bintang merah (‘red star’), designating the Communist Party, or bintang tiga (‘three stars’), representing the three main ethnic groups of Malaya: the Malays, Chinese and Indians. The MPAJA was numerically stronger than the KMT and although during the Second World War they attempted in some areas to co-operate with the KMT guerrillas, it was difficult for the two groups to come together, especially as the KMT and Chinese Communist Party were engaged in an internecine war in China for the control of the country. Chin Peng refers to the KMT guerrillas in his autobiography as ‘Kuomintang bandits’ and obviously did not hold them in high esteem.9 The largest group of KMT guerrillas, some 300 strong, was in Kelantan. Elements of this group often operated across the international frontier separating Kelantan from southern Thailand and they were most likely the group that the CPM/MNLA drove out of the Betong Salient. Eventually, they moved to north Thailand to join up with the remnants of the 93rd KMT Division that had retreated from south China into the ‘Golden Triangle’ area, where the borders of Thailand, Burma and Laos converge, following the Chinese Communist Party’s defeat of the KMT forces in China in 1949.10

250

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Aside from the war against the communist insurgents, the British government also had a strategic interest in the security situation in southern Thailand, as the British Chiefs-of-Staff were concerned that in the event of war breaking out in the region and hostile communist forces advancing from the north toward Malaya, as the Japanese army had done in the Second World War, the CPM/MNLA elements in southern Thailand would constitute a fifth column that would oppose reinforcements reaching Thailand from Malaya.11 In accordance with a decision taken by the CPM’s Central Committee in June 1949, southern Thailand was considered one of the CPM’s three main bases. The other two were the Gua Musang area in Ulu Kelantan and the Tesak Bera swamp area of Pahang. Geographically, the latter two areas were remote, sparsely populated and largely undeveloped, and not likely to provide a hospitable environment in which the CPM could thrive. Strategically, they were not found to be as suitable for bases as the CPM had first envisaged. In any event, the CPM failed to establish bases in them because of pressure exerted by the Malayan security forces. In southern Thailand, the situation was quite different as there was a railway traversing the region and well-defined footpaths across the rugged Malayan–Thai frontier with which the communists were familiar. As previously mentioned, the local Chinese population was also supportive, and in the area of southern Thailand to the north of Kelantan, there was a restive Malay population that could be counted on to be friendly and disposed to the Rejimen Ke-10 (10th Regiment MNLA, a predominantly Malay unit) if it moved into the area.12 In this largely inaccessible area in southern Thailand, the communist guerrillas felt confident they would be immune from attack by the Malayan and Thai security forces. In the meantime, the CPM had obtained clearance from the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT) to withdraw its main body into southern Thailand. There was an understanding that the CPM/MNLA’s activities would be restricted to the general areas of Sadao, the Betong Salient and Narathiwat, and that they would not attempt to recruit Thai nationals into their ranks.13 On its side, the CPT undertook to withdraw its underground cadres to Yala, Haadyai and areas further north (see Chart 9) to avoid any clash of interests.14 Meanwhile, the British colonial authorities were becoming increasingly concerned that the Thai authorities did not permit Malayan patrols to cross the international border into south Thailand in pursuit of communist

The Special Branch on the Malayan–Thai frontier (1948–60)

251

terrorists. Colonel Gray, the Malayan Commissioner of Police, paid several visits to Songkhla and Bangkok to discuss the matter with General Phao Sriyanondh, the Director-General of the Thai Police, and other senior Thai police and army officers, and a joint Malayan–Thai Border Agreement was eventually signed in Bangkok in September 1949. In essence, the revised agreement allowed police patrols of either country to cross the international frontier in ‘hot pursuit’ of terrorists up to a depth of five miles (later increased to 20 miles), providing that a police officer or officers of the other country accompanied them.15 The terms of the agreement were extended in February 1952 to allow RAF and Royal Thai Air Force aircraft to use airstrips on both sides of the international border.16 One of the clauses in the 1949 agreement that had important ramifications for the Malayan Special Branch provided for the attachment of a Malayan Special Branch officer undercover as Vice-Consul at the British Consulate at Songhkla. As a reciprocal gesture, the Thai police were allowed to attach a liaison officer at Contingent Special Branch headquarters at Alor Star in Kedah, and twelve Thai police officers were made available for attachment on an ‘as-required basis’ to Malayan police patrols operating inside southern Thailand.17 A Malayan Special Branch officer, RWE Harper, who had been posted to Songkhla as British Vice-Consul in 1952, stated in a broadcast over Radio Malaya on 20 April 1952 that the Malayan communist terrorists were not only ‘refitting and retraining’ in southern Thailand, but were active in smuggling arms across the frontier into Malaya.18 By early1951, the Special Branch had already become aware from agents’ reports that a strategic withdrawal of MNLA units was taking place into southern Thailand from north Malaya.19 In the early part of 1952, the Special Branch received information that the CTs had established a number of base camps in the Thai jungle just north of Perlis (see Chart 9), where some of their seasoned men, who were resting after operations in Malaya, were engaged in training new recruits. There was reported to be a ‘rest and training camp’ inside southern Thailand, just a few miles from the frontier. On 24 August 1952, a Malayan police jungle squad with an attached Thai police detachment operating from Kroh in upper Perak attacked the camp and made contact with a gang of some thirty-five men and women communist guerrillas. Terrorist sentries apparently detected the approach of the police patrol and sounded the alarm, but the police attacked and overran the camp. The occupants escaped, but they abandoned large quantities of

252

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

food, clothing, documents and a duplicator. Three Thai policemen were wounded in the attack.20 The CPM’s Central Committee, with Secretary-General Chin Peng and the 12th Regiment MNLA, moved in 1952 from Pahang and Perak respectively to establish a new base in the Betong Salient of southern Thailand, which dominated the main Betong–Kroh Road. In March 1952, the CPM’s Kedah/Perlis State Committee, the 8th Regiment MNLA headquarters and 200 CTs moved from Kedah to Sadao, just across the frontier from Perlis, leaving behind an estimated 450 CTs in the northern Malay State of Kedah.21 The Sadao group dominated the railway line and the main Sadao–Alor Star Road (see Chart 9). It was well-organised and supported by ‘food cultivation squads’ and ‘food purchasing units’, and was reported to be connected with arms smuggling gangs operating out of Bangkok.22 In 1954, the 10th Regiment MNLA, which by then had been converted into a Department of Malay Work, withdrew from Pahang to the general area of Patani, Yala and Weng, north of Kelantan. Its main task was to propagate communist propaganda among the Malay populace.23 A reconnaissance carried out on the ground at the time by a Malayan Police Special Branch officer and a Thai police liaison officer confirmed that it was carrying out propaganda in the Weng area of southern Thailand, north of the Kelantan border.24 By 1952, the Thai government had banned the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT) as a subversive organisation, and in November 1952, a state of emergency was declared throughout the frontier area, including the predominantly Malay provinces of southern Thailand.25 Meanwhile, a small force of 50 Thai police officers that had been stationed along the frontier opposite Perlis and Kedah, was strengthened by the arrival of some 400 Thai police reinforcements. The entire frontier area was brought under the jurisdiction of the 9th Police Division of the Thai Police.26 In January 1955, Denis Warner, the Sydney Herald’s Special Correspondent in Southeast Asia, provided an interesting account of his foray into the Betong Salient and the extent to which the guerrillas were established there. It is not clear whether he knew at the time that the CPM’s Central Committee had moved into the Salient. He crossed the frontier in a Malayan taxi and was driven, at great risk to himself, into Betong, a town with an estimated population of 3,000, 85% of whom were ethnic Chinese, 10% Malay and 5% Thai. He reported that there were between 170 and 250 men of the ‘3rd Independent Company, MNLA [sic]’ controlling

The Special Branch on the Malayan–Thai frontier (1948–60)

253

the road and railway line leading into the area from Kedah. Warner noted large communist camps with ‘sports fields and parade grounds’ big enough for 300 men. He was informed that the CPM was providing free medical treatment to nearby villages. According to Warner, medical supplies, food and other provisions brought in from Bangkok were plentiful. While little rice was grown in Betong itself, it was freely available from Patani, about 100 miles to the north. Warner discussed the local situation with a Thai police officer, who said, ‘What can my police do when the communists come into the villages dressed as civilians?’ Only ten of the police officers under his command spoke Chinese, and he thought it best to adopt a ‘liveand-let-live’ policy. He was aware of the Malaya–Thailand agreement permitting Malayan police to operate in southern Thailand up to twenty miles inside the international frontier, and he hoped that a forthcoming visit from Bangkok by ‘General Phao, the head of the Thai police’ would result in an improvement in the situation.27 By the end of 1958, the withdrawal of the 8th, 10th and 12th MNLA Regiments to southern Thailand had been largely completed. By then, the CPM regarded virtually the whole of the Betong Salient as a ‘liberated’ area.28 At the same time as the CPM’s Central Committee moved in to the Betong Salient, the CPM’s structure was simplified for operational purposes into a North Malaya Bureau and a South Malaya Bureau. The latter, which was located in Johore, was authorised to make its own decisions without reference to the CPM’s Central Committee. Communist forces on both sides of the Malay–Thai border were brought under the command of the CPM’s North Malaya Bureau in Penang, led by Kwok Lau, a Central Committee member, assisted by Lau Hong and Ah Kuk.29 As adverted to in the previous chapter, the Malayan guerrillas maintained an overland courier route stretching from southern Thailand to Bangkok and beyond. The Special Branch had received information that the CPM maintained a ‘safe house’ for the use of Malayan cadres in Bangkok. It was a double-storey wooden bungalow that was looked after by an elderly Thai woman of Chinese origin who had close contacts with the Communist Party of Thailand.30 As both the CPM and the CPT maintained regular contact with the Communist Party of China, the house was also used as a ‘staging post’ for personnel passing through in transit to China.31 In December 1960, the CPM’s Central Committee decided that it was too dangerous for Chin Peng to remain in the Betong Salient because of

254

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

increased security force activity in the area, and it was agreed that he should leave for China. It was reasoned that he would be able to direct the CPM’s political struggle from Beijing and, at the same time, maintain close links with the CPM’s mentor, the Communist Party of China. An acting Secretary-General would remain in southern Thailand. When Chin Peng started out on the last day of 1960 on the long journey that was to take him to Beijing, he was not to know that he would stay in China for the next twenty-eight years.32 When Chin Peng and the small party accompanying him reached Hanoi, a small CPM group headed by Siu Cheong, a CPM Politburo-cumCentral Committee member, who had moved there a few years previously, looked after him. From Hanoi, on the last leg of his long journey, he was flown to Beijing in a Chinese military transport aircraft. Huang Wei, the CPC’s liaison officer and Musa Ahmad, the CPM’s Malay Chairman, who had moved to Beijing some five years earlier, greeted him on arrival.33 Meanwhile, Chin Peng’s departure from the Malayan–Thai border to China was kept a closely guarded secret and was known only to a few persons in his immediate circle. Since 1950, the Chinese Communist Party had made accommodation available in Beijing for a few CPM members who had been allowed to leave Malaya to go to China. Most of them were middle-level or senior CPM personnel who had moved to China for medical treatment, but there were some CPM Central Committee members there too, including Musa Ahmad.34 They were accommodated in the compound of the CCP’s innocuoussounding International Liaison Department (ILD) (Guoji Lianxi Bu), which at one time came under Kang Sheng, head of the Chinese secret service. Huang Wei, a leading communist cadre, had been appointed the CPM’s group liaison officer in 1956. Some senior members of other Southeast Asian communist parties were also living in the spacious ILD compound. By the end of 1954, co-operation between the Thai and Malayan forces had noticeably improved, although neither the Thais nor the Malayans were completely satisfied with the arrangements. The British harboured reservations about Thai co-operation, especially as some senior Thai army and police officers had been heard to remark that the more serious danger to Thailand came from the north rather than the south. By the north, they were referring to communist-controlled Laos and the Free Thai Movement in Yunnan. For their part, the Thais considered that they were not receiving full co-operation from the British colonial government in their efforts to

The Special Branch on the Malayan–Thai frontier (1948–60)

255

suppress the Malay–Muslim irredentist movement in southern Thailand, which had close connections with Kelantan. However, the British colonial authorities were somewhat reassured when in mid-1954 General Phao Sriyanondh, the charismatic and powerful Thai Director-General of Police and Director-General of Intelligence in Bangkok, announced that he favoured greater co-operation between Thai and Malayan security forces in the southern border region.35 One of the first Malayan Special Branch officers to be stationed in the British Consulate at Songkhla under the 1949 Border Agreement was PE (Peter) Machin-Cooke. He afterwards became Officer Superintending Police Circle (OSPC) Perlis, and subsequently head of the Penang Contingent Special Branch.36 During his time at Songkhla, Machin-Cooke ‘theoretically’ reported to the British Consul, George Evans, but in actual fact he usually reported directly by special courier to the Penang Contingent Special Branch, and through it to Federal Special Branch headquarters in Kuala Lumpur. Evans sometimes allowed him to transmit messages through his British wireless operator. Machin-Cooke’s successor as Vice-Consul was RWE (Bob) Harper, a senior pre-war Malayan Police officer, who has been referred to earlier. In 1962, when Evans was transferred to Gdansk in Poland he was replaced by CC (John) Whitaker as British Consul.37 Senior Malayan and Thai military, police and civil officers frequently met in Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok to discuss joint counterinsurgency operations on the Malayan–Thai frontier, which was a great improvement over the lack of close communication between the two sides in the past. When Lieutenant General Sir Geoffrey Bourne, Director of Operations, visited Bangkok at the end of 1954 to return a visit by General Phao, he was reassured that the Thai authorities would extend full co-operation to the Malayan security forces operating against the CTs in the Malayan–Thai border region.38 As a result of these visits, a whole series of agreements were entered into by the Malayan and Thai governments detailing the procedures to be followed by both sides in carrying out joint trans-border operations against the communist terrorists. However, the substance of the understandings arrived at by the Malayan and Thai governments in the first 1949 agreement, authorising the police forces of both countries to cross the border on counterinsurgency operations and operate under certain restrictions up to a defined line, remained virtually unchanged throughout the Emergency. Before he left Malaya at the beginning of 1952, Sir William Jenkin, while Director of Intelligence, had ordered the creation of a small Frontier

256

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Intelligence Bureau at Contingent Special Branch headquarters in Penang. as recounted earlier.39 In 1953, the Bureau was transmogrified into the ‘Malayan–Thai Border Section’ at Federal Special Branch headquarters in Kuala Lumpur ‘for close liaison with military and police units connected with border operations’. Its branch office in Penang was known as the Penang Special Branch Border Section.40 In the early part of 1952, Frontier Intelligence Officers were despatched to man three intelligence posts established along the Malayan–Thai frontier. They were S (Tim) Hardy at Padang Besar, Alan Glass at Changloon, and another Special Branch officer (name unknown) at Kroh. Before departing to take up their appointments, they attended an intensive two-week seminar on their duties presented by Guy Madoc, who was then heading the Communism Section of Federal Special Branch headquarters in Kuala Lumpur.41 The Frontier Intelligence Officers reported to their respective Contingent Special Branch headquarters at Alor Star in Kedah and Ipoh in Perak and copies of their intelligence reports were provided to the Malayan Special Branch officers stationed at Songkhla. Meanwhile, the Special Branch had secretly recruited a senior Thai police officer in Sadao as an agent. He was paid a monthly retainer of M$500 from the Malayan Special Branch secret service vote for supplying the Special Branch with copies of his regular monthly intelligence reports to his superior in Bangkok. The arrangement was subsequently discontinued when the intelligence he provided was not found to add very much to what the Special Branch already knew from its own sources.42 Derek Langston was appointed head of the newly formed Penang Special Branch Border Section for a short while in August 1952. He was succeeded by W (Jock) Elphinstone,43 formerly Chief Police Officer Kedah/Perlis, who only occupied the post pro tempore before returning to the UK on retirement. After Elphinstone’s departure, the post was filled by ETJ (Bunny) Bunnens44 for a short while prior to his replacement in 1953 by S (Tim) Hardy. Hardy had served for his first tour of duty with the Malayan Police from 1951–53 at Padang Besar and Pasir Mas in the Malayan–Thai border area and was well-informed about the background of the region.45 Before his departure from Malaya, Sir William Jenkin had arranged for a MI6 officer be seconded for duty with the Penang Special Branch Border Section. The first MI6 officer to be seconded was Gordon Scott, who was familiar with Special Branch work as he had served in the Burma Police Special Branch before joining MI6. When Scott was transferred to federal

The Special Branch on the Malayan–Thai frontier (1948–60)

257

Special Branch headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, Eric Pope, another MI6 officer, succeeded him.46 While there was no ‘formal’ charter as such for the Border Section, it was ‘understood’ that the attached MI6 officer would act in an advisory capacity only and did not exercise a command function. The Border Section reported directly to Federal Special Branch headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, but, at the same time, the head of the Penang Contingent Special Branch was provided with copies of its reports. Hardy had four Asian Special Branch inspectors working for him, three of whom were Chinese and one Malay: Aloysius Chin (who after Malayan independence in 1957 attained high rank in the Special Branch), Charles Ng, Foo Eng Chuan and Zainal Ariffin. Ariffin’s main task was to deal with Malay extremism in the Patani area. Two civilians, Maung Boon Khan and his brother Maung Boon Mee, were employed as Thai interpreters/translators. The section’s clerical staff was locally appointed, but the MI6 officer had a British female secretary who was sent out by MI6 from London. She also helped run the section’s secret registry.47 The 9th Thai Police Division that was responsible for the frontier area was located at Songkhla, together with an embryonic Thai Special Branch unit.48 In order to strengthen relations with the Thai Special Branch, the Malayan Special Branch arranged in 1953, after obtaining the agreement of the Thai authorities, to reorganise the Special Branch’s ‘vice-consular’ arrangements at Songkhla and establish in their place a joint Malayan–Thai Special Branch office, with outlying detachments at Sadao, Betong and Tanjong Mas.49 Thus, in this low-key way, the first Malayan Special Branch office was established outside Malaya. RG (Bob) Smith50 was the first senior Malayan Special Branch officer to be appointed to the joint Special Branch office.51 He obviously enjoyed his three-year posting there from 1953 to 1956 as, in a letter to the author many years afterwards, he described Songkhla as a ‘delightful Thai provincial city’. He continued to visit it long after he had retired from the Malayan Police to live in Penang.52 The southern Thai port of Songkhla is about fifty miles from the nearest point on the Malayan–Thai frontier. The joint Malayan–Thai Special Branch office was located in a large double-storey house on the ‘shores of the inland sea…just inside the harbour’.53 Smith described his duties as being similar to those of a District Special Branch officer in Malaya (see Chapter 9). He was assisted by another Malayan Special Branch officer, Gerry Parr, and two Malayan Special

258

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Branch inspectors, and had ‘bodyguards and drivers’ allocated to his unit. Smith brought with him overland from Malaya two armoured land rovers with light machine guns mounted on them, as well as his own private car. The members of the Malayan Special Branch team did not wear Malayan Police uniform, although they were allowed by the Thai police to carry side arms. Police Major Boonlert, assisted by his second-in-command, Police Captain Chalong, headed the Thai section of the joint office. In addition to Major Boonlert and Captain Chalong, the Thai team consisted of a Thai police captain, two Thai police lieutenants and several other ranks.54 A contemporaneous report that Smith wrote to CC Whitaker, the British Consul, Songkhla, is indicative of the type of information that Smith provided. It referred, in this instance, to Thai police counterinsurgency operations and an offer of co-operation by the Malayan police. Whitaker incorporated Smith’s report in a confidential letter, dated 14 January 1954, that he sent to Sir Geoffrey Wallinger, British Ambassador, Bangkok: Songkhla Province In two recent operations, 13 communist camps have been found but with one exception, they were old and abandoned. Four contacts with CTs were made and one of the CTs was killed. At the conclusion of Thai police patrols in Songkhla Province when the police had a gruelling time in very bad weather, the Chief Police Officer, Kedah, offered to help by sending a Malayan police patrol to the area where contact with the guerrillas had been made but the Thai authorities politely declined this. Aside from Kedah, no other Malayan police contingent sharing a common frontier with Thailand had offered to help although Smith understood that the Chief Police Officer, Perak, intended to do so.

Yala Province Thai police reinforcements were despatched to Yala as soon as the Emergency was declared but so far the Thai police have not mounted any major counterinsurgency operations although they have taken action to arrest some communist sympathisers. However, contact was made with a group of armed communist terrorists in early December 1953 on information obtained from a surrendered ‘Chinese Muslim’ terrorist, and in the ensuing gun fight, four terrorists were killed.55

Although Smith did not feel that the action taken so far by the Thai police amounted to ‘very much’, he was nevertheless encouraged that it represented a departure from their previous ‘passive live-and-let-live’ acceptance of

The Special Branch on the Malayan–Thai frontier (1948–60)

259

the presence of armed Malayan communists in the Songkhla area. He was later able to report that the situation was showing signs of improvement, as some intelligence had been received from Thai sources that would be of use to the Malayan security forces operating in the Malayan–Thai border area. Smith commented, however, that the local Thai police suffered from a lack of Chinese-speaking officers.56 Over time, the British colonial authorities became more appreciative of the co-operation and assistance they received from the Thai police, though they felt that they lacked training in counterinsurgency operations.57 An offer the Malayan government subsequently made to assist in training was accepted and a number of places were reserved for Thai police officers on courses at the Special Branch Training School, the Malayan Police Depot and the Sik Jungle Training School. The 9th Thai Police Division was supplied with various items of equipment in short supply, such as Bren guns (light machine guns), revolvers and wireless sets.58 During this period, 19 Malayan Police Federal Jungle Companies were formed for paramilitary jungle operations against the MNLA, mainly in the Malayan–Thai frontier area. After Colonel Young became Commissioner of Police in 1952, they were reorganised into seven Police Field Forces, making up 69 platoons, located in seven base camps.59 The formation of these police jungle forces strengthened considerably the counterinsurgency operations that were carried out in the Malayan–Thai frontier area. CH (subsequently Sir Claude) Fenner, then acting head of the Special Branch at Federal Police headquarters, and Sir Berkeley Gage, British Ambassador to Thailand, visited the joint Malayan–Thai Special Branch office at Songkhla on 8–10 July 1954. They discussed with Smith and his Thai counterpart the security situation on the Malayan–Thai frontier and Smith showed them round the joint Malayan–Thai operations room that had maps charting the locations, estimated strengths and movements of Malayan CTs on both sides of the Malayan–Thai frontier. It was agreed that Fenner would send an archivist from Federal Special Branch headquarters in Kuala Lumpur on a temporary assignment for a week to supervise the establishment of the Songkhla office’s secret registry filing system and establish systems for the indexing, cross-referencing and retrieval of information. In his subsequent report to the British Foreign Office, Gage commented that, in his view, co-operation between Thai and Malayan police in the border area ‘seemed satisfactory and better than he had hoped for’. He noted, too,

260

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

the ‘well-disciplined bearing and behaviour’ of the Thai police he had met when travelling from Bangkok to Songkhla.60 In 1955, three Special Branch officers (with the rank of assistant superintendent of police) were instructed to establish branches of the Songhkla office at Sadao, Betong and Tanjong Mas.61 Although Smith was glad of their help, he noted in his personal diary that their usefulness was ‘limited as they were not able to speak Thai and were not assisted by any subordinate staff that could’. The Special Branch officer posted to Betong was Stanley S Bedlington, who had recently attended a short Chinese-language course at the Malayan government’s Chinese Language School in the Cameron Highlands. He was later to have a distinguished career in the CIA and the US State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research.62 During Smith’s stay at Songkhla, the British Consul arranged for him to transmit messages to the Special Branch Border Section in Penang, then under Bunnens, through his British wireless operator. As well as sending regular reports to the Penang Special Branch Border Section, Smith provided monthly intelligence reports to federal Special Branch headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, using an air courier service operated by DC3, de Havilland Dover and Miles Magister aircraft that flew regularly between Songkhla, Penang and Kuala Lumpur.63 In 1954, a Malayan Police patrol recovered some Chinese hand-written documents in a communist camp in Perak, not far from the Thai border, that provided the Penang Special Branch Border Section with what turned out to be important information. From a translation of these documents, it was clear that the CPM was using a small Chinese shop in Betong as a ‘dead-letter’ drop for correspondence between Chin Peng, the CPM Secretary-General, then in the jungle in the Betong Salient, and the CPM’s Central Committee member, Soh Chee Tham (alias Liew Kwong), who was in charge of the CPM’s underground organisation in Bangkok.64 The Special Branch made considerable efforts to locate the shop, which used the Chinese style ‘Wo Hup’ (和合). It was finally tracked down to a ramshackle, long-disused Chinese shop house situated behind Betong’s main street, where messages from Bangkok were left to be picked up for onward transmission to Chin Peng in the jungle and vice versa. The Special Branch planned to allow the ‘dead-letter’ address to continue to be used so that it could then intercept any messages left there before they were collected, and exploit whatever information was contained in them. It was hoped, too, that over time some

The Special Branch on the Malayan–Thai frontier (1948–60)

261

information could be gleaned from them about two businesses: an import/ export trading company and a motor vehicle repair garage that the Special Branch had long suspected had been started by the CPM in Bangkok.65 Meanwhile, the Border Section requested the help of the Thai Special Branch in Bangkok to make enquiries to ascertain Soh Chee Tham’s whereabouts in Bangkok so that he could be kept under surveillance.66 In reply, however, the Thai Special Branch advised that they had in fact already raided Soh’s Bangkok address which, of course, effectively neutralised any possibility the Border Section may have had of exploiting the situation.67 In spite of this setback, the Malayan Special Branch was generally satisfied with the joint intelligence operations it was running for the first time with the Thai Special Branch. Although it was not perfect, the joint Malayan–Thai Special Branch office that had been formed at Songhkla did provide from time-to-time valuable operational intelligence on which counterinsurgency operations could be mounted. In an interview given on 22 August 1956 to Robert Udick, United Press correspondent in Kuala Lumpur, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaya’s Chief Minister, described it as a unique example of co-operation between Malaya and Thailand and expressed his satisfaction at the co-operation the Malayan government had received from the Thai government. He congratulated the Thai police, too, on a successful operation it had carried out on 1 August 1956 a few miles north of Betong when it had engaged five communist terrorists, killing three of them in the ensuing gun battle and capturing their firearms and ammunition.68 After Malayan independence in 1957, the Malayan Cabinet set up a subcommittee to study proposals for expanding joint Malayan–Thai military operations against the CPM/MNLA on the Malayan–Thai frontier, and in February 1958, the Malayan Deputy Prime Minister, Dato Abdul Razak, flew to Bangkok, accompanied by Special Branch and military officers, for discussions.69 This led to a further meeting on 31 June 1959 between Razak, who had by then become Malaya’s prime minister, and the then Thailand Prime Minister, Field Marshall Saris Thanarat, at which the Thai government agreed to deploy for the first time the Thai army as well as the police against the CPM/MNLA on the Thai side of the frontier. It was a decision of some consequence as it strengthened the counterinsurgency operations against the Malayan communists, even though it came at a late stage in the Emergency when the MNLA in Malaya had already suffered severe losses and was everywhere on the retreat. The two sides agreed to hold conferences to discuss counterinsurgency operations at regular intervals.70

262

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

In August 1958, Lieutenant General Sir James Cassells, Director of Operations, reported that by the end of the year almost all of Malaya could be declared free of terrorists, aside from areas in north Perak and Kedah adjoining the Malayan–Thai frontier.71 By April 1959, only 290 CTs remained in peninsular Malaya, and it was possible to declare the States of Johore, Selangor, Negri Sembilan and Malacca, comprising the whole of south and central Malaya, free of communist terrorists.72 It was clear that the tide had turned in the Emergency and the main centre of counterinsurgency operations had shifted to the border area. Meanwhile, the direction of operations against the remaining guerrillas was taken over by a Border Security Council with a Border War Executive Committee at Alor Star in Kedah. The border remained quiet apart from small parties of CTs sometimes crossing back into Malaya on brief forays to collect food and other supplies from their orang asli supporters. When the security situation in peninsular Malaya had improved sufficiently for the Malayan government to declare the Emergency at an end on 31 July 1960, all Emergency restrictions, such as curfews and the movement of foodstuffs, were lifted except in the immediate area of the Malayan–Thai frontier. The Special Branch estimated there were not more than 67 CTs left on the Malayan side of the border. It was very different from the estimated 10,500 under arms in Malaya at the beginning of the Emergency in June 1948.73 The main bulk of the communist forces, perhaps making up some 500 CTs, were concentrated in southern Thailand. At this stage, Chin Peng ‘demobilised’ certain elements of them and they were allowed to leave the jungle, though their remnants continued to pose a threat until the communists agreed to sign a Peace Agreement in December 1989 with the Thai and Malaysian governments to cease hostilities.74 Controlling cross-border terrorism is arguably one of the most difficult aspects of fighting any insurgency movement, and this was certainly true of the communist insurgency in Malaya. It is a sign of the maturity and competence of the Malayan Special Branch that by the time of the transfer of sovereignty to an independent Malayan government in 1957, the movement of communist terrorists between Malaya and Thailand could no longer be depended upon to save the ‘revolution’. After many years of negotiation, and much resistance on the part of the Thai authorities, cross-border control and collaboration eventually emerged as a major weapon for containing the insurgency. Indeed, it could be suggested that during the late 1950s and early 1960s cross-border collaboration between Thailand and Malaya had reached a high point. Today, the difficulty of achieving such collaboration

The Special Branch on the Malayan–Thai frontier (1948–60)

263

has again come to the fore in policy debates about containing Al Qaeda and Jema’ah Islamiah in Southeast Asia. The aim of the next, concluding chapter will be to analyse the experiences of the Special Branch in the last phase of the Emergency as Britain prepared for the transfer of power to an independent Malayan government in 1957. It examines, too, the part played by the Special Branch in Operation Ginger, which was launched in central Perak in February 1958 and lasted until April 1959, with the purpose of eliminating the remaining stronghold of the CTs in the state. Operation Ginger was the last major counterinsurgency operation of the Emergency in which the Special Branch played a prominent part. The final section of the last chapter reflects on the key conclusions to emerge from this study of the evolution of the Special Branch and the role of intelligence in the First Malayan Emergency.

Notes 1 2

3

4 5 6

7

National Archives of Australia (1955), A7133/1-6, ‘Australian Secret Service Records on Singapore and Malaya’. See SP Harish, ‘Insurgency in Southern Thailand: Ethnic or Religious Conflict?’, Singapore, Institute of Defence & Strategic Studies, Nanyang Technological University, 14 April 2005; Norman Vasu, ‘Thailand’s Restive South. Time to Acknowledge the Multiplicity of Thai-ness’, Singapore, Institute of Defence & Strategic Studies, Nanyang Technological University, 22 June 2005; and Tamara Loos, ‘Siam’s subjects: Muslims, law and colonialism in Southern Thailand’, SEAP Bulletin Winter–Spring 2004–2005. Chin Peng, 2003, op cit, p 327. See also CO 1022/205 CIS (52) (7), Final, Top Secret, ‘Review of Security Situation in Malaya as at 30 September 1952, prepared by the Combined Intelligence Staff on Instructions of Director of Intelligence, Malaya’. The Times (London), 24 March 1953. CAB 129/28, ‘The Situation in Malaya’, Cabinet memo, Secretary of State for the Colonies to the Prime Minister, 1 July 1948. National Archives of Australia, Canberra, File 412/15/1/1/, Australian Commissioner for Malaya, Secret Despatch No 77/48, dated 7 December 1948. The Australian Commissioner expressed his scepticism of Field Marshal Phibun’s co-operation, doubted whether any military supplies provided by the British to Thailand would be used for the purpose intended, and felt they would be used to keep Phibun in power. He went on to say, ‘experience shows that Siamese co-operation in suppressing bandits [sic] in south Siam will not take a very practical form’. In 1949, the British government presented some weapons and matériel to the Thai police, and the commander of the 9th Thai Police Division requested the following additional supplies: ‘practice ammunition, tinned jungle rations, 500 pairs of jungle boots, and 4 new lorries’ (Short, op cit, p 375, fn37).

264

8 9

10

11 12

13 14 15

16

17

18

19

20 21

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

National Archives of Australia, Canberra, ‘British Commissioner-General for South East Asia, Secret, Extract from Political Summary, 14 February 1949’. Chin Peng, 2003, op cit, pp 108–11. When the author was Commissioner of Police (subsequently redesignated Chief Police Officer), Kelantan, during the post-war British Military Administration (1945–46), he was in contact with the Kelantan KMT group that later moved across the frontier into southern Thailand. This was probably the same group that the CPM/MNLA later drove out from the Betong Salient. In 1948, a detachment of the Kelantan KMT group was based in Perak and the author participated in a police action against them on 9 April 1948 in the dense jungle area of Kati in Upper Perak in which a British police officer (GC Samson, MC) was killed. CO1022/205 CIS (53) (7), Final, Top Secret, ‘Review of Security Situation in Malaya as at 30 September 1952 Prepared by the Combined Intelligence Staff on Instructions of Director of Intelligence, Malaya’. CO1022/205 CIS (53) (7), Top Secret, paper by Combined Intelligence Staff, ‘Review of Emergency Situation on the Thai/Malaya Frontier’, 19 August 1953, p 5. For an account of the 10th Regiment MNLA, see Eng Min Ching (alias Suraini Abdullah), Rejimen Ke-10 dan Kemerdekaan [The 10th Regiment and Independence], Hong Kong, Nan Dao Publishers, 1998. This book is banned by the Malaysian government and it is not available in Malaysia. Suraini is the wife of Abdullah Che Dat (CD Abdullah), the former Malay Chairman of the CPM. Chin, 1995, op cit, p 44. ibid. Nik Anuar Nik Mahmud, ‘The Malayan–Thai Police Border Agreement, 1949. The Practicalities of the Malayan–Thai Border Cooperation’, p 449, in Proceedings of the 4th International Conference of Thai Studies, 11–13 May 1990, Volume II, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Kunming, China. See also Aldrich, 1992, op cit, pp 310–11; Short, op cit, pp 374–5. CO 1022/205 CIS (52) (2), Final, Top Secret. ‘The Situation on the Thai/Malayan Frontier as at 15 April 1952’, pp 11, 12; CO 1030/12, Confidential Paper by GA Boon, British Consul, Songhkla, ‘The South Siam Frontier and Malayan Emergency, August 1954’; Nik Anuar Nik Mahmud, op. cit., passim. However, there were no serviceable airstrips on the Thai side of the frontier and only three serviceable airfields in the whole country (Short, op cit, p 375, fn36). Federation of Malaya Annual Report 1954, Kuala Lumpur, Government Printer, 1955, p 411; ‘The Malayan–Thai Police Border Agreement, 1949’, op cit, p 455; and CO 1022/205 CIS (52) (2), Final, Top Secret, ‘The Situation on the Thai/Malayan Frontier as at 15 April 1952’, p 12. Barber, op cit, p 146. RWE Harper is shown in The Colonial Office List, Federation of Malaya 1951 as a Superintendent of Police. By 1955, he had been promoted Assistant Commissioner of Police and appointed Chief Police Officer, Trengganu (The Colonial Office List, Federation of Malaya 1955). The Special Branch enlisted travellers and executives passing through the frontier area, as well as herdsmen, as informers (see CO 1022/205 CIS (52) (2), Final, Top Secret, ‘The Situation on the Thai/Malayan Frontier as at 15 April 1952’, p 3). The Times (London), 25 August 1952. The Times (London), 23 March 1952.

The Special Branch on the Malayan–Thai frontier (1948–60)

265

22 ibid; Chin, 1995, op cit, pp 42, 60, 65, 71, 90–91, 137. 23 CO1022/205 CIS (52) (2), Final, Top Secret. ‘The Situation on the Thai/Malayan Frontier as at 15 April 1952’, p 2. 24 ibid. 25 CO1022/205, CIS (52) (2), Final, Top Secret, ‘The Situation on the Thai/Malayan Frontier as at 15 April 1952’, p 2; Omar Farouk, ‘The Historical and Transnational Dimensions of Malay–Muslim Separatism in Southeast Asia’, in Lim Joo Hock and S Vani (eds), Armed Separatism in Southeast Asia, Singapore, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1984, p 246. 26 CO1030/12. Confidential letter, dated 14 January 1954, from CC Whitaker, British Consulate, Songkhla, to Sir Geoffrey Wallinger, KCMG, Her Majesty’s Ambassador, Bangkok. 27 National Archives of Australia, Canberra, A7133/1-6, ‘Australian Secret Service Records on Singapore and Malaya’, quoting the Sydney Herald, 24 January 1955. 28 Chin, 1995, op cit, pp 38, 41–3, 55–8; MGG Pillai, ‘Taking on the Malay Reds’, Asiaweek, Hong Kong, 22 July 1977, pp 31–2; Short, op cit, pp 351, 373–5, 493–4; Miller, op cit, pp 14, 147, 200–8. 29 CO1022/205 CIS (53) (7), Top Secret, Paper by Combined Intelligence Staff, ‘Review of Emergency Situation on the Thai/Malayan Frontier, 19 August 1952’, p 2. 30 Chin, 1995, op cit, pp 42, 60, 65, 71, 90–1, 137. 31 According to Tun Mohd Hanif bin Omar, former Inspector General of the Royal Malaysian Police, the CPC provided moral support to the CPM until about 1976, when its support was gradually withdrawn ‘for strategic and diplomatic reasons’ following the establishment of diplomatic relations between the People’s Republic of China and Malaysia (see Hanif’s foreword to Chin, 1995, op cit, p 15). 32 See Chin Peng, 2003, op cit, pp 409–10, 413–26, for a detailed account of his journey from southern Thailand via Laos and Vietnam to Beijing, including his meeting with Ho Chi Minh, the Vietnamese leader in Hanoi. When the author met Chin Peng in Canberra in February 1999, he asked him about his stay in China and his meetings with the Chinese leaders, such as Deng Xiaoping and Chairman Mao Zedong, but Chin Peng said that out of deference to his Chinese hosts he did not wish to discuss the matter. He said that he and other CPM leaders based in Beijing had met Chairman Mao Zedong during the early stages of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. In his autobiography, Chin Peng says that in 1967, Mao had asked him about the progress of the party-to-party talks between the CPM and the CPC and ‘wanted to talk to us about the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution’ but he provided no further details (Chin Peng, 2003, op cit, p 447). 33 At a meeting held at Betong in October 1953, the CPM’s Central Committee decided to send Musa Ahmad to Beijing ‘for further studies’ for three years. He did not leave immediately but remained in the border area until he left by the overland route to Bangkok, assisted by CPT cadres, whence he left for China by sea. He was appointed Chairman of the CPM in the early part of 1956. Musa Ahmad finally arrived at Beijing with his wife and infant daughter in August 1956. They were accommodated at the Institute of Marx and Lenin in Beijing (see Chin, 1995, op cit, pp 59–62, 90–1). Chin Peng was not to know when he met Musa Ahmad then that, in October 1980, Musa would quit the Party and return to Malaysia (under secret arrangements made by the Malayan Special Branch). He was actually an anti-British Malay nationalist in post-war

266

34 35

36

37

38 39

40 41 42 43

44

45

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Malaya, rather than a communist, who had joined the CPM prior to the Emergency. He later went on to denounce communism, the CPM and the armed struggle. Aloysius Chin told the author in Kuala Lumpur, on 3 November 1995, that he obtained much of the information for his book from Musa Ahmad. See Chin Peng, 2003, op cit, p 444. CO1030/12, ‘Cooperation with the Siamese Police and Frontier Incidents due to Malayan Emergency, 27 January 1955’ (file marked ‘Confidential–closed until 1994’). In a secret report, dated 21 July 1954, to the British Foreign Office, the British Ambassador to Thailand, Sir Berkeley Gage, referred to General Phao’s help in enabling the UK to be awarded contracts for the supply of electric generators to Thailand (CO1030/12, ‘Secret Report from British Ambassador, Bangkok, dated 21 July 1954, to Rt Hon Anthony Eden, MC, MP, Foreign Office). General Phao and Field Marshal Phibul Songkram were ousted in September 1957 when a Thai military faction led by Field Marshal Sarit Thananarat seized power. Phibul fled via Cambodia to Japan where he died in 1964. General Phao escaped to Switzerland where he remained until he died a few years later. Machin-Cooke is shown in the British Colonial Office Staff List as an assistant superintendent of police in 1951 (The Colonial Office List, Federation of Malaya 1951). On retiring from the Malayan Police in 1957 at the time of Malaya’s independence, he returned to England to study law, but died soon afterwards. According to a Special Branch officer who knew him, Whitaker was a ‘scholarly type’ who later resigned from the British Foreign Service to become headmaster of a leading public school in England. CO1030/12, House of Lords, Extract from the Official Report of 2nd February 1955, Proceedings of the Debate on the Motion ‘Future of Colonial Territories’. CO1022/205 CIS(52) (2), (Final), Top Secret, ‘The Situation on the Thai/Malayan Frontier as at 15 April 1952’, p 14, and ‘Review of Emergency Situation on the Thai/ Malaya Frontier dated 10 August 1953’. Federation of Malaya Annual Report 1954, Government Printer, Kuala Lumpur, 1955, p 411. ibid. Information provided to the author by a former senior Malayan Police Special Branch officer who wishes to remain anonymous. W (Jock) Elphinstone was a pre-war Malayan Police officer who had been Assistant Superintendent Police Special Branch, Singapore, in 1941 (The Colonial Office Staff List, Federation of Malaya 1941). By the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941, he had been promoted Superintendent (Malayan Establishment Staff List 1941). In 1948, he was a Local Security Officer, Malayan Security Service (MSS), in Johore (Malayan Establishment Staff List 1948). In the Malayan Establishment Staff List 1941, Bunnens is shown as an inspector, Special Branch, Singapore. By the early 1950s, he had been promoted to gazetted rank as Superintendent. Tim Hardy joined the Malayan Police after Second World War service with the army, and served mainly in the Special Branch. While he was in the Penang Frontier Intelligence Bureau in the 1950s, he studied Thai and passed the Foreign Office Higher Standard Thai Language examinations (written and spoken). As far as is known, there were two

The Special Branch on the Malayan–Thai frontier (1948–60)

46 47 48 49 50

51

52 53

54 55

56

57 58 59 60

61 62

267

other British officers in the Special Branch who were proficient in Thai: SC (Guy) Madoc and DJ Farnbank. Letter to author, March 1995, from Guy Madoc. Interview with Aloysius Chin, 3 March 1995. CO1022/205 CIS (52) (2), (Final), Top Secret, ‘The Situation on the Thai/Malayan Frontier as at 15 April 1952’, p 4. Federation of Malaya Annual Report 1954, op cit, p 411; Federation of Malaya Police Annual Report 1955, Government Printer, Kuala Lumpur, 1956, p 13. RG Smith, OBE, KPM, PBS, joined the Malayan Police in 1948 after serving as a captain in the Royal Engineers. He is listed in The Colonial Office List Federation of Malaya 1951 as an Assistant Superintendent of Police. He was promoted Deputy Superintendent in 1953. After retiring from the Malayan Police, he settled in Penang. The Manchester Guardian (11 February 1954) reported the establishment of the Joint Malayan–Thai Special Branch headquarters at Songkhla, and added that ‘British military authorities’ announced on 10 February 1954 that a number of Thai Special Branch officers had been given training in Malaya. RG Smith’s letters to author, dated 21 July, 1 August and circa September1994. Songkhla, or Singgora as it was formerly called, is the capital of Songhkla Province. It is a major trade and resort centre situated at the outlet of Thale Luang, a large lake on Thailand’s east coast, and is connected to its surrounding area by all-weather roads and lake boats. Letters, dated 21 July, 1 August and circa September 1994, to author from RG Smith. CO 1030/12, Confidential letter, dated 14 January 1954, from CC Whitaker, British Consulate, Songkhla, to Sir Geoffrey Wallinger, KCMG, Her Majesty’s Ambassador, Bangkok (some sections of the despatch have been masked out under Section 3(4) of the Public Records Act 1958). Letters to author, dated 21 July, 1 August 1994 and circa September 1994, from RG Smith; Federation of Malaya Annual Report 1952, Government Printer, Kuala Lumpur, 1953, p 227. CO1022/205 CIS (52) (2), (Final), Top Secret, ‘The Situation on the Thai/Malayan Frontier as at 15 April 1952’, p ii. Federation of Malaya Annual Report 1952, Kuala Lumpur, Government Printer, 1953, p 227. ibid. CO 1030/12, ‘Secret Report from British Ambassador, Bangkok dated 21 July 1954, to British Foreign Secretary,’ op cit. In his report to the British Foreign Secretary, Gage mentioned meeting two Americans in ‘police parachute uniform’ with Thai police parachute trainees at Hua Hin. One of them told Gage that he had come to Thailand under the auspices of the ‘Sea Supply Company’ and had been ‘loaned to the Thai government by the US government’ as a parachute training instructor. According to Gage, they had already been working with the Thai police for three years. Federation of Malaya Police Staff List, 1955 and Short, op cit, p 375. Bedlington joined the Malayan Police on 1 December 1949 after serving in the Palestine Police and is shown in the Colonial Office List for 1951 as an assistant superintendent

268

63 64

65

66 67 68 69 70 71 72

73

74

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

of police (The Colonial Office List, Federation of Malaya, 1951). After leaving Malaya in 1957, he became a superintendent in the North Borneo (Sabah) Police Force. He later graduated from the University of California with a BA in Oriental Languages and obtained a Master’s and PhD in Government from Cornell University. He served for 17 years with the CIA and filled a number of senior appointments. The last appointment he held before retiring in 1994 was Senior Analyst and Chief of Foreign Liaison at the Counterterrorist Center (source: website of the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies (CI Centre), accessed 30 September 2003). Letters, dated 21 July, 1 April and circa September 1994, to author from RG Smith. Letter to author, circa September 1994, from RG Smith. Aloysius Chin (1995 op cit, p 90) describes Soh Chee Tham as the ‘Central Committee member of the CPM in charge of the CPM underground organisation in Bangkok’. Letter to author, circa September 1994, from RG Smith. Chin Peng provided some details of the two businesses in his autobiography. The CPM intended that the two businesses would provide a regular income for the party as well as acting as a cover for clandestine communist activities. According to Chin Peng, the Chinese Communist Party made available some four million Thai baht to ‘seed’ the companies. They operated at a profit for almost six years before being raided by the Thai police and closed down (Chin Peng, 2003, op cit, p 411). Letter to author, circa September1994, from RG Smith. ibid. CO1030/12, letter, dated 23 August 1956, from Tunku Abdul Rahman to Sir Berkeley Gage, British Ambassador to Thailand. The Straits Times, 13 February 1958, p 7. The Straits Times, 1 July 1959. Miller, op cit, p 195. The figures were provided at a briefing given on 28 August 1959 in Kuala Lumpur by Lieutenant General Dato FH Brooke to the visiting Australian Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Territories and the New Zealand High Commissioner in Malaya (National Archives of Australia, Canberra, A7133, Secret, ‘Record of Briefing by GOC Federation of Malaya and Director of Operations, Lt-Gen Dato Brooke’, TK Critchley, Australian High Commissioner to Department of External Affairs, Canberra, 28 August 1959). Brooke had succeeded Lieutenant General Sir James Cassell as Director of Emergency Operations and Chief of Staff Federation of Malaya’s armed forces on 6 January 1959 (Keesing’s Contemporary Archives, 14–21 March 1959, Column 16706). National Archives of Australia, Canberra, A7133, Secret, ‘Record of Briefing by GOC Federation of Malaya and Director of Operations, Lt Gen Dato Brooke’, 28 August 1959. The figure of 10,500 was given in General Brooke’s presentation. However, as a note of caution, it should be borne in mind that different figures are given by different authorities about the MNLA’s military strength at various stages of the Emergency. Perhaps the last word rests with Chin Peng, who said quite candidly in his autobiography ‘We were never able to maintain accurate statistics of our military strength’ (Chin Peng, 2003, op cit, p 398). Miller, op cit, p 198; Chin & Hack, op cit, pp 3, 45.

Reproduced from Malaya's Secret Police 1945-60: The Role of the Special Branch in the Malayan Emergency by Leon Comber (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2008). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available at < http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg >

chapter twelve Conclusion: the end of the Emergency (1957–60) This concluding chapter falls into two distinct parts. The first section analyses the experiences of the Special Branch as Britain prepared for the transfer of power to an independent Malayan government in 1957. Special attention was paid to the role the Special Branch was to play in an independent Malaya. As independence approached, and with it the concomitant improvement in the security situation, the Malayanisation of the public service, including the Special Branch, became one of the main platforms of the Malayan National Alliance, the party in power, consisting of the United Malays National Organisation, the Malayan Chinese Association, and the Malayan Indian Congress.1 In preparation for the envisaged changes, the recruitment of expatriates was wound down and questions about the long-term functions of the Special Branch as a regional training hub were raised.2 Throughout this period (1956–58), both the British and the independent government continued to put down the remaining insurgents, although by now they constituted remnants rather than a major challenge. This chapter also looks at the last major counterinsurgency operation of the Emergency in which the Special Branch played a significant part, code-named Operation Ginger, that was launched in central Perak in February 1958 and lasted until April 1959. The second part of this conclusion reflects on the key factors that characterised the evolution of the Special Branch and its successful response to the Malayan Emergency. It is interesting to note that as the current situation in Iraq’s internal affairs increasingly spins out of control, a growing number of references have been made to the failed American intervention in Vietnam and the successful British and Malayan interventions during the First Malayan Insurgency. The most recent reference at the time of completing this study was made by the Governor-General of Australia, Major General Michael Jeffery, who commented that the difficulties in countering ‘the predictable insurgency’ that followed the fall of Baghdad in March 2003 ‘should encourage us all to revisit the appropriate lessons from the Malayan and Vietnam campaigns’. In his address to a Chief of Army conference dinner in Canberra on 22 September 2005, General 269

270

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Jeffery said that HUMINT and large-numbers of well-trained troops and police were essential ingredients for success in fighting an insurgency. He went on to say that ‘there is one inescapable indicator as to how effective a counterinsurgency strategy is, and that is the volume and accuracy of human intelligence that is forthcoming’.3 Major General Jeffery’s observations, although made at the time this study was being completed, cover precisely the argument that has been followed throughout this book. Although there has been no scope in the present account to engage in this wider comparison between Malaya and Iraq or Vietnam, it is cited here as a way of pressing on the reader the significance of the thesis topic addressed in the previous eleven chapters; today, these are subjects going well beyond their intrinsic, historical interest.

Part 1: the end of the Emergency and the transfer of power The MNLA had been badly damaged by the mass surrenders that had taken place in Perak and Johore in 1957 and 1958. By the beginning of 1959, the strength of the guerrilla army in Malaya had dwindled to not more than a few hundred men, mainly in Perak and Kedah adjacent to the Malayan–Thai border, with a few isolated stragglers in Pahang and Penang, where the army and police were engaged in hunting them down.4 The security situation in Malaya had changed out of all recognition. It was no longer considered dangerous for the public to use the main roads and the railway. Major guerrilla incidents had ceased and public confidence in the ability of the government to defeat the CPM had greatly increased. Among the last guerrillas ordered by Chin Peng to leave Malaya was a small group of guerrillas hiding in the thick jungle around Penang Hill on Penang Island. Some escaped by sea to Sumatra, a short distance from Penang across the Strait of Malacca, others merged into the civilian population in peninsula Malaya, and a few dispersed southwards to Singapore, where they were looked after by friends and relatives.5 In 1959, a further 115 guerrillas were killed, captured or surrendered for the loss of only 10 army and police casualties (see Table 1). The ‘shooting’ war was now almost over. It was a time for reflection and ideological reeducation. The CPM issued a new policy statement, ‘Furling the Flags and Muffling the Drums’, to respond to the situation. Although the Party did not swerve from its belief that history was still on its side, it acknowledged the major setbacks it had suffered and permitted those guerrillas who had

Conclusion

271

grown old in the struggle and were too infirm to carry on, to stand down from active duty and live in the camps the CPM had established in southern Thailand.6 The position of the Special Branch had been discussed at constitutional talks held at Lancaster House, London, in 1956 between the British Colonial Secretary and a delegation led by Tunku Abdul Rahman representing the Malayan National Alliance.7 It was agreed that after independence, the portfolio of internal defence and security (including intelligence) should be transferred to the Malayan Minister for Internal Security and Defence. Tunku Abdul Rahman indicated that he intended to assume this portfolio in addition to his duties as chief minister. On 31 August 1957, Malaya became independent, and the Tunku took over the portfolio.8 An Emergency Operations Council, chaired by the Tunku, was established in Kuala Lumpur to co-ordinate the campaign against the communist terrorists. Thus, the Tunku and his locally elected government became responsible for the conduct of counterinsurgency operations, although the Director of Operations, who was a British officer answerable to the locally appointed Minister of Defence, retained operational control of the security forces.9 As Stockwell observed: ‘ministerial power was, of course, far from absolute: a Police Service Commission was to be established, the High Commissioner [Sir Donald MacGillivray, General Templer’s deputy, who had by then taken over from him] continued to have full access to intelligence and Special Branch machinery, and Europeans still occupied senior positions in the Force. For the sake of future stability, the British hoped there would not be a general exodus of expatriate officers, particularly from the Special Branch’.10 In 1957, a Public Service Commission was established that gave assurance to expatriate officers of their continued employment until a compensation scheme had been set in place.11 Meanwhile, although the police (and the Special Branch) were regarded as part of the establishment of the independent government, it was agreed to exempt the police from the Malayanisation schedule since there was a shortage of experienced local officers to take over all the senior posts that would become vacant within the next four years.12 Although independence was assured, and after August 1957 the public service would become part of the local government, not all Special Branch files were handed over to the independent Malayan government at the end of British rule. Some Special Branch files, especially those dealing with contemporary Malayan personalities and ‘open’ political parties that the

272

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

British considered ‘sensitive’ were transferred from the Special Branch’s secret registry to a ‘central bureau in the British High Commissioner’s office in Kuala Lumpur’.13 They were removed to prevent their being read by ‘Malayan eyes’ when, for the first time, an elected Malayan Minister for Home Affairs took over responsibility from the British colonial authorities for the police and the Special Branch.14 From as early in 1953, in anticipation of political developments, the Colonial Office ceased to recruit expatriate gazetted police officers on permanent and pensionable terms, and promotion for British gazetted police officers on contract was stopped. During 1956, British gazetted police officers who were surplus to the Malayan establishment were offered transfers to other colonial territories, and British gazetted police officers holding tenured appointments who opted to take early retirement became eligible for enhanced pension terms. The immediate effect of these changes is shown in Table 10. The percentage of Asian gazetted officers in the police force increased from 33.6 per cent to 50.8 per cent in one year. Table 10: Relative strengths of expatriate and Asian gazetted police officers (1955 and 1956) 1955

1956

Expatriate gazetted police officers

425

376

Asian gazetted police officers

143

191

Source: CO 1030/10. DOPS.S.25/2, Secret, Director of Operations Review, dated 12 February 1957, Appendix ‘T’, p 2.

However, the Special Branch was placed in a special category and, in 1957, the Federal Operations Council issued instructions that it was to be afforded top priority for staffing and the allocation of funds. In doing so, it recognised the vital importance of what the Special Branch was doing. It acknowledged, too, that the speed with which the Emergency could be brought to an end would very much depend on the Special Branch being able to continue to satisfy the demands for operational intelligence that were made upon it.15 Many expatriate Special Branch officers stayed on for several years after 1957 to serve under the independent Malayan government, which says much for the good relations that continued to exist between the Malayan government under Tunku Abdul Rahman and the British government. TE

Conclusion

273

(Tim) Hatton, for instance, who during the last two years of his service with the Special Branch held some of the highest appointments in the Branch and acted as its Director on two occasions, did not retire to England until April 1967, some ten years after Merdeka (independence), when he was finally replaced by a local Malayan officer.16 In spite of the official Malayanisation program, as an exceptional measure, 43 police lieutenant were recruited from Australia in 1955 on three-year contracts for para-military duties, including ‘deep jungle penetration operations’ and ‘stationing in jungle forts’.17 Although they were termed ‘police lieutenants’, it was made clear that they were not gazetted or commissioned officers, as the army rank ‘lieutenant’ would imply; rather they ranked between probationary inspectors and inspectors. They were mainly ex-servicemen who had held non-commissioned rank in the armed forces. Even though the rank was sui generis and outside the regular police establishment so as not to affect the promotion of Malayans, some local politicians asked questions about the appointments, which they considered ran contrary to the official Malayanisation policy. However, the Commissioner of Police (WLR Carbonnell) overcame these objections by explaining that the police lieutenants were needed to staff isolated jungle forts in the deep jungle and serve with the Police Field Force in an infantry rather than a regular police role.18 In response to a Colonial Office enquiry in early 1957, High Commissioner Sir Donald MacGillivray reported that 65 gazetted officers and inspectors from British colonial territories such as Singapore, Hong Kong, North Borneo and Fiji, as well as a great number of police officers from other countries under the auspices of the Colombo Plan, had been trained at the Special Branch Training School during the preceding three years. When the British government raised the question of the future of the school after independence and what role it would play, given the importance it had acquired both locally and regionally, Tunku Abdul Rahman replied that there would be no change and it would continue to provide training in the foreseeable future for the Malayan Special Branch as well as regional intelligence organisations. For a short period in 1958, however, no places could be made available at the school for officers from outside Malaya as the Malayan government wished to reserve all available places for its own officers to fill the continuing need after independence for trained Special Branch officers.19 In regard to an earlier proposal made by General Templer to establish a ‘Regional Police Training School for the Far East’ modelled on the Malayan Police Training College, the Tunku explained that although

274

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

his government was interested in the idea, it would not be able to take up the proposal or to ‘provide additional facilities not required by his own police officers’ unless the costs could be shared between the participating countries.20 Meanwhile, the Colonial Office felt that ‘as long as the Kuala Lumpur Special Branch Training School had sufficient expatriate staff it will be able to provide good professional training’ and ‘there is little danger at present of controversial political issues being raised in the course of training’. Thus, it reassured British colonial governments in the Far East that they would be able to continue to send their Special Branch officers to Kuala Lumpur for training ‘at a moderate cost’. 21 At the same time, it confirmed that the ‘regular Special Branch [and security intelligence] training courses’ provided by Scotland Yard’s Special Branch and MI5 in London would continue to be made available for selected senior Special Branch officers.22 A Chinese officer of the Malayan Special Branch who was selected to attend an ‘Advanced Intelligence Course’ held by MI5 at its Grosvenor Square offices in London after Malayan independence has provided a brief note that the subjects taught on the course served to confirm the knowledge he had acquired from practical experience on the ground in Malaya and southern Thailand during the Emergency. According to his account, 25 Special Branch officers attended the course: two each from Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong, and one from Gibraltar, with the remainder from Africa. The students were divided into five syndicates of five students each. He described the procedure in dealing with the ‘writing, processing and disseminating [of] information’ as being identical to that followed in Malaya.23 The Director of Operations Malaya provided briefings on the final two years of the Emergency to the Australian and New Zealand High Commissioners in Kuala Lumpur. They were largely based on Special Branch information, and provided a good overview of the greatly improved security situation. As the Australian and New Zealand governments had provided army, navy and air force units in support of the campaign being waged against the insurgents by the British and Malayan forces, they were of particular interest to the two High Commissioners. Brigadier LC Rumsey, Principal Staff Officer, Director of Operations, gave the first briefing on 24 June 1958, to DJ Horne, Acting High Commissioner of the Australian High Commission in Malaya. Rumsey was ebullient about the progress of the campaign against the CPM/MNLA,

Conclusion

275

and said that the successes achieved by the security forces in May that year were the best on record for any month since 1954. Out of the total of 110 CTs who had been ‘eliminated’ (killed, captured or surrendered), 91 had surrendered. In total, from Malayan independence on 31 August 1957 to 16 June 1958, 532 communist terrorists had been ‘eliminated’, most of whom had surrendered. The rate of elimination for the period was double the rate envisaged by the Director of Operations’ staff in mid-1957.24 On 22 April 1959, Lieutenant General Dato FH Brooke, who had taken over earlier that year as GOC Federation of Malaya Army and Director of Operations in Malaya, provided another briefing for the visiting Australian Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Territories.25 Brooke’s views were similar to Rumsey’s and he was sanguine about the situation and the progress the security forces were continuing to make. He provided a breakdown of the 290 guerrillas remaining in peninsular Malaya, excluding those who were in the Malayan–Thai border region, some of whom were still ‘technically’ in Malayan territory (see Table 11). Table 11: Breakdown of communist terrorists in Peninsular Malaya (22 April 1959) State

CTs

Perak

161

Kelantan

8

Near the Perak border

Trengganu

8

Near the Pahang border

Pahang

28

Johore

1

Penang

29

Kedah

55

Selangor

0

Negri Sembilan

0

Malacca

0

Total

Four of whom had been recently eliminated Brooke commented that it may be assumed this last remaining guerrilla had been killed by security forces The Special Branch considered that 4 may have returned to China

290

Source: National Archives of Australia, Canberra, A 7133, Secret, ‘The Emergency. Briefing by Lt Gen. Brooke’, TK Critchley, Australian High Commissioner to Department of External Affairs, Canberra, 7 May 1959.

276

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

The insurgents had already been driven out of the states of Selangor, Negri Sembilan and Malacca which had been declared ‘White Areas’, free of communist activity. General Brooke considered that the state of Johore, which had been a hotbed of communist terrorism since the early 1950s, would soon join the same category. He said that in April 1959, according to Special Branch estimates, there were about 343 guerrillas across the border in southern Thailand: 144 north of Kedah, 129 north of Perak and 70 north of Kelantan.26 General Brooke gave a further briefing on the Emergency to TK Critchley and C Bennett, the New Zealand High Commissioner, on 28 August 1959. He reported a further improvement in the situation during the intervening four months, and provided details of guerrilla strengths as at the end of August 1959 and eliminations since the beginning of the Emergency in June 1948 (see Table 12). Table 12 shows how effectively the Special Branch had crushed the insurgents. Between 90 and 100 per cent of the total guerrilla force had been eliminated by August 1959 and half of the Malayan states were quiet and free of terrorist activities. According to General Brooke, there were three army brigades in Malaya engaged on counterinsurgency operations: a Federation of Malaya Army Brigade in Kedah, a Gurkha Brigade in Johore, and a Commonwealth Brigade (including Australian and New Zealand troops) in Perak. The police elements taking part consisted of the Special Branch, regular police (amounting to nearly 30,000, more than half of whom were engaged in fighting the communists, but excluding Special Constables who were employed on police duties ‘patrolling’ and ‘discouraging Communist incursions’ into New Villages), and the Federal Police Field Force (operating as a paramilitary force).27 The large number of security forces required to take the field against the guerrillas demonstrates how small forces of guerrillas can tie down much larger bodies of government forces.28 General Brooke said that the Federal Emergency Operations Council accepted that Perak had the largest concentration of guerrillas remaining in it. It was an economically important state because of its rich tin deposits, and it was also significant militarily because of its proximity to the CPM/ MNLA headquarters under Chin Peng in southern Thailand. He said that the Special Branch was currently playing a leading part in two Federal Priority Operations in Perak, Operation Ginger and Operation Bintang, both of which were going well.29

Conclusion

277

Table 12: Breakdown of communist terrorists as at 28 August 1959 and eliminations (killed, surrendered and captured) since June 1948 State

Guerrilla strength at 28 August 1959

Eliminations since June 1948

Total

Percentage eliminated

Perak

155

2,336

2,491

94%

Kelantan

0

117

117

100%

Trengannu

8

209

217

96%

Pahang

20

2,137

2,157

99%

Johore

0

2,732

2,732

100%

Penang

4

131

135

97%

Kedah

53

504

557

90%

Selangor

0

1,303

1,303

100%

Negri Sembilan

0

893

893

100%

Malacca

0

199

199

100%

All Malaya

240

10,561

10,801

98%

Note: It seems likely that the figures presented under the heading ‘Eliminations’ included armed Min Yuen as well as MNLA. Source: National Archives of Australia, Canberra, A 7133, Secret, ‘Record of Briefing by GOC Federation of Malaya and Director of Operations, Lt Gen. Dato Brooke’, TK Critchley, Australian High Commissioner to Department of External Affairs, Canberra, 28 August 1959.

Meanwhile, according to General Brooke, the Special Branch had requested that, for ongoing security reasons, the full story of Operation Bintang should not yet be publicly released. This was not to say, however, that it had not been a great success; the ‘Planner’, the code name given by the Special Branch to the leader of five guerrillas who had surrendered, had co-operated fully with the Special Branch and had persuaded 90 of his comrades to surrender. Operation Bintang had been mounted on a crash basis in southeast Perak and operations had begun less than a month after they had been conceived; ordinarily operations on this scale required four to five months’ preparation. Only 18 guerrillas remained in the operational area south of Ipoh. Indeed, Brooke noted that the Special Branch had a problem in dealing with the large number of surrenders, 160 in Johore and 120 in Perak, that had been announced on 26 August 1958 by Tunku Abdul Rahman. The logistics

278

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

of interrogating such a large number of CTs was daunting. Brooke added that ‘in most cases, the terrorists themselves had not given up Communism but had merely been persuaded to give up the military struggle’, and although they had been classified as surrenders, the Special Branch was more inclined to regard them as ‘induced surrenders’.30 Brooke did not elaborate on what he meant by this, but he was clearly referring to what the Special Branch called ‘induced surrenders’ brought about by the Special Branch’s ‘turning’ surrendered guerrillas and persuading them to re-enter the jungle on ‘Q’ operations supported by small Special Branch parties disguised as CTs to induce their erstwhile comrades to surrender, as related in previous chapters. It undoubtedly helped, too, that under the terms of the government’s latest amnesty terms, SEPs were not prosecuted for any atrocities they may have committed.31 Operation Ginger, referred to by General Brooke, was the last major counterinsurgency operation in which the Special Branch played a crucial role.32 It was launched in central Perak in February 1958 with the aim of eliminating the guerrillas in the Ipoh, Sungei Siput North (which included the area where the murder of three British planters in June 1948 had touched off the Emergency), and Kuala Kangsar districts. It covered a vast area spanning approximately 1,200 square miles, with an estimated population of 125,000. By the time the operation was concluded in April 1959, the whole of central Perak had been declared free of communist terrorists. In Operation Ginger, the Special Branch was responsible for providing operational intelligence to the security forces taking part, namely, the 28th Commonwealth Infantry Brigade (including Australian and New Zealand infantry units), supported by the Police Field Force, and elements of the 2nd Malayan Infantry Brigade. The main intelligence input was provided by the District Special Branch Officers for Ipoh and Sungei Siput South. A combined police–military operations room was set up in Ipoh. Operational briefings were held every morning, at which an account was given of the preceding day’s operations, after which a Special Branch officer drew attention to the operational relevance of any new intelligence to hand. Some idea of the thoroughness of the intelligence assembled for the operation may be obtained from the list of files (see below) that were maintained in the joint operations room. They were compiled from intelligence provided by the Special Branch, uniformed police and army

Conclusion

279

patrols. Additionally, daily situational reports (sitreps) and periodical summaries of information were prepared and issued based on up-to-date intelligence. Files maintained in the joint operations room included: • details of current ongoing operations (all security force units) • details of current major and minor incidents • historical information (intelligence and incidents) • MNLA and Min Yuen operational areas and details of known CTs • local topographical information • details of food ‘controlled’ areas and food restricted areas • locations of New Villages and regrouped labour lines • locations of police and military units and civil administration • ordinance survey maps • locations of food cultivation areas, timber extraction areas and jungle areas that were likely sources of food supply for the CTs (vegetables, fruit, fish and animals) • locations of aboriginal (orang asli) settlements and clearings • details of CT eliminations (killed, captured and surrendered) • leaflet airdrop areas.33 This list demonstrates the high level of competence of the Special Branch and brings out in particular how crucial the co-ordinated efforts of the police, security forces and the civil administration were to the successful outcome of the operation. Leong Chee Woh, a Special Branch officer who played a prominent part in Operation Ginger, commented that: • Operation Ginger kept everyone fully occupied ‘by day and night due to the frequent movement and sighting of CTs within the operational area’ • the Special Branch was constantly busy debriefing agents, preparing reports and liaising with the army

280

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

• throughout Operation Ginger, there was an exceptionally good rapport between the Special Branch and the battalion headquarters of 1 New Zealand Regiment (NZR), which occupied the same complex.34 Leong’s account is corroborated by Lieutenant Wallace, 1NZR’s intelligence officer, who refers to the close contact he maintained with several Chinese Special Branch officers in the Ipoh Special Branch, including Leong: I quite deliberately went about cultivating them [the Special Branch] because they were the doers [sic]. I had them in my house, I used to eat breakfast with them…And in the end one of the Special Branch inspectors and I would go ambushing on our own.35

An outstanding feature of Operation Ginger was the number of ‘Q’ operations carried out by the Special Branch that brought about an extraordinarily large number of surrenders, as shown in Table 13. The culmination of Operation Ginger was the elimination of the CPM’s State Secretary for Perak, Siu Mah, the highest-ranking terrorist killed in Perak throughout the Emergency. He was not only a top-ranking communist, with a M$150,000 reward on his head, but the commander of the guerrilla ambush party that had killed High Commissioner Sir Henry Gurney in a chance ambush in 1951. General Brooke had marked him out as a target, and the security forces had long hunted him. Table 13: Communist terrorists eliminated during Operation Ginger (February 1958–April 1959) CTs killed in action

46

Captured

6

Surrenders (including ‘induced’ surrenders)

100*

Other CT deaths

5

Hostile orang asli killed

5

Total

162

*Fifty-one of the 100 SEPs were actually ‘captured’ by the Special Branch on ‘Q’ operations, but were classified as ‘induced surrenders’.36 Source: Yuen Yuet Leng, op cit, pp. 241–2.

Siu Mah had emerged from the jungle with his bodyguard on 6 March 1959 in search of food after being harassed continuously by the security

Conclusion

281

forces to the point of exhaustion. The small group had temporarily taken refuge in a limestone cave on top of a hill, Gunong Lang, about four miles north of Ipoh (probably in the same complex of caves that Lee Meng, the ‘Grenade Girl’, had frequented, as described previously). Siu Mah had sent two of his three bodyguards down the hill to contact the local Min Yuen to try to obtain food. Instead, they decided to surrender to the Special Branch and claim the government reward for killing their leader. The other member of the bodyguard who had stayed behind with Siu Mah was privy to the plan. They had arranged with him that when they returned, they would give a signal from the foot of the hill by ringing twice on a bicycle bell, which would mean they had contacted the Special Branch, and he was then to shoot Siu Mah. Leong Chee Woh, the Special Branch officer referred to earlier, took the place of the Min Yuen the two bodyguards were supposed to have contacted, and returned with them, pushing a bicycle along the path leading up to the hill. On reaching the foot of the hill, the agreed signal was given by ringing the bicycle bell. Six shots rang out, and when they reached the top of the hill, they found that Siu Mah had been shot dead by the bodyguard who had remained with him.37 At the conclusion of Operation Ginger on 20 April 1959, there were only four guerrillas left in the Ipoh area, and they, too, eventually surrendered to the Special Branch at Gunung Rapat New Village on 31 December.38 By then, communist guerrilla activity in peninsular Malaya had virtually ceased, aside from minor brushes, and most of the surviving guerrillas had been pushed across the frontier into southern Thailand. Overall, the security situation had improved to such an extent that Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman felt it would be possible to declare the Emergency at an end. On 19 April 1960, the King and Ruler of the Federation of Malaya (Yang di-Pertuan Agong), His Highness Sir Hisamuddin Alam Shah, officially announced in Parliament the Malayan government’s decision to bring the Emergency to an formal end on 31 July 1960. In his speech to Parliament, the Malayan King said that ‘although victory over the communist terrorists had not been easy’, Malaya could claim the distinction of being the only country that had defeated ‘these forces of evil’ and the past years would remain ‘a glittering period in our history’. But at the same time, he sounded an ominous note of warning against ‘subversive elements which still seek to set up a Communist regime in our country’.39

282

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

With the Malayan government’s declaration to end the Emergency on 31 July 1960, military operations came to an end in the Malayan peninsula, though the army and police remained on the qui vive and security forces were still engaged in minor skirmishes on the Malayan–Thai frontier. The occasion was marked with a great victory parade in Kuala Lumpur on 1 August 1960, which was declared a public holiday. Nearly 6,000 Malayan and British Commonwealth troops marched past the saluting dais with their bands playing and flags flying. It was an occasion marked with pomp and ceremony. The King took the salute. The dais was shared with high-ranking government, military and police officers. Seventy aircraft flew overhead in ‘V’ formations. The government issued an official press release to explain that the object of the review was to have representatives present from as many different units as possible of the security forces and civilian organisations that had taken part in the Emergency. The three-mile long parade formed up, and starting from the minaret-domed Kuala Lumpur Railway Station, took an hour to pass the saluting dais in front of the main government buildings.40

Part 2: the role of the Special Branch and the containment of the Emergency The First Malayan Emergency that had started twelve years previously in June 1948 came to an end in 1960. During those tumultuous years, following so soon after the end of the Japanese war, the whole country had once more been turned upside down, and the lives of the people changed. The war against insurgency, involving the whole population in one way or another, had been won, but it was not a conventional war, it was a subaltern’s war. There had been no major head-on battles between large military formations, but rather numerous incidents, ambuscades and bloody jungle clashes, in which the Special Branch had played a crucial role by building up knowledge of the enemy, providing operational intelligence, sometimes taking part in jungle operations with the army and police jungle squads, and guarding the security of the country.41 It is important to note that from the beginning of the Emergency until the end, the military acted in support of the civil power; the civil government controlled the counterinsurgency forces and did not give way to short-term military ‘fixes’. The Special Branch remained throughout the government’s supreme intelligence agency. Thus, it was possible to eschew the ‘rifle and bayonet’ approach—relying on the use of force alone to fight the

Conclusion

283

communist terrorists and control the local population—and defer to the Special Branch’s more subtle methods of fighting the war by the use of human intelligence, which required time and patience, and empathising with the local population.42 It was perhaps inevitable that the views of the Malayan–Chinese communist insurgents and the British and Malayan authorities fighting them should remain widely apart. In staking his claim to a place in Malayan history, Chin Peng attempted to retrieve some credit from the ashes of defeat. In his closing remarks at the ‘Chin Peng Workshop’ at the Australian National University, Canberra, on 23 February 1999, he said: Whether we were defeated or not, depends on how you define it…Without our struggle, the British would not have granted independence so quickly to Malaya…We achieved something although we failed to set up a People’s Democratic Republic of Malaya.43

But in the final analysis, the uprising had failed, and the communist insurgents did not succeed in their determined attempt to drive out the British or set a timetable for their departure.44 When General Templer arrived in Malaya in February 1952, his instructions from the British government clearly stated that it was his duty to prepare Malaya for self-government and independence without prejudice to the campaign against the terrorists, and the British government never wavered in its determination to bring this about.45 Though the communist forces continued to fight after Malaya was granted independence in 1957, once again they were defeated. They had lost what they called the ‘Anti-British National Liberation War’. This study has analysed the strategies used by the British colonial government and later the independent Malayan Government’s Special Branch to put down for the first time a communist insurgency movement that attempted to establish a revolutionary state in Southeast Asia. To recapitulate, this book has not attempted to present a wider history of the Emergency, but its parameters extend to the decisive part played by the Special Branch in defeating the communist uprising. It is focused on the leadership, organisational structure, development, training and modus operandi of the Special Branch. All the issues examined previously deal with the central question of the role of human intelligence in putting down the Emergency—the first in Malaysia and indeed, the first in Southeast Asia. The available official records are British-centric but, of course, the war was not won by the British alone, although they were in charge of Malaya until it became independent in 1957. The crucial help provided by

284

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Asian officers of the Special Branch, especially the Chinese, but including Malays and Indians, has often been largely overlooked. Yet the British Special Branch officers, although they had a good understanding of the local languages, culture and history, and were capable, would be the first to admit that they could not rival the knowledge and expertise on the ground of their Asian colleagues, on whom they had to rely in so many ways for the efficient carrying out of their duties. Wherever possible, the author has tried in this respect to give due credit to the work of the Asian officers, either in the text or footnotes of this book, although much more remains to be written on the subject. It is correct, too, that the winds of political change were blowing in other parts of Asia and Africa at this time and Malaya was not immune from this current. As related, when General Templer came out to Kuala Lumpur in 1952, he was instructed by the British government not only to defeat the communist insurgents but also to initiate steps to lead Malaya towards the path of independence. This gave the Malayan people something to fight for, especially the Malays, but the Chinese and Indians were heartened, too, when the UMNO Alliance, made up of Chinese and Indian representatives as well as Malays, was swept to power in the first ever federal elections held in July 1955.46 This undoubtedly strengthened considerably the hand of Malaya’s first popularly elected Chief Minister (and later Prime Minister), Tunku Abdul Rahman, when he, Dato Sir Cheng Lock Tan, the Malayan–Chinese leader, and David Marshall, Singapore’s Chief Minister, met Chin Peng and two other senior CPM representatives at Baling in northern Kedah, not far from the Thai frontier on 28 and 29 December 1955 to see if there was a way the fighting could be brought to an end. The talks ended in failure, as Chin Peng was unable to accept the conditions laid down by the Tunku, which he considered amounted to surrender.47 But the fact that the Tunku, who made it clear to Chin Peng that he was an elected national leader who commanded popular support throughout the country and was on the verge of leaving for London to get independence and control of both internal security and the local armed forces, was able to take such a firm stand with the communists and reject any compromise offered by them gave a tremendous boost to public confidence. The stand taken by the Tunku gave heart, too, to the security forces to continue the fight to the end against the communists, and allayed the concern of the Special Branch that the Tunku might be swayed by the urging of some mainly left-wing opposition parties to come to terms with the communists to end the Emergency at almost any price.48

Conclusion

285

The most obvious reasons for the success of the Special Branch may be summarised thus: • providing professional training • having a familiarity with and knowledge of the main local languages and an understanding of local cultures • establishing an empathy with the local population that enabled it to organise an efficient human intelligence network • identifying the CPM’s and MNLA’s leaders and preparing a Wanted List and an MNLA order-of-battle • introducing a reward system for the arrest or elimination of communist terrorists • skilfully using ‘turning’ operations (‘using CTs to fight CTs’) by persuading surrendered (and sometimes captured) communist terrorists to lead security force patrols straight back into the jungle to attack their erstwhile comrades • adopting ‘Q’ operations, whereby senior-ranking surrendered and captured communists were induced to re-enter the jungle, escorted by small Special Branch teams, usually consisting of Chinese Special Branch officers disguised as communist terrorists, with a few ‘cooperative’ SEPs, to persuade entire communist units to cease operations and surrender under the government’s Merdeka amnesty terms. The intelligence operations of Special Branch were also aided by related policies that have been discussed in this study, in particular the relocation of Chinese squatters out of the jungle into New Villages, where they could be placed under surveillance more readily. But going beyond all of these reasons was perhaps the most fundamental factor of all: the internal organisation of the Special Branch in a manner that gave top priority to obtaining human and operational intelligence, based on which the army could mount successful operations against the communist insurgents. The army itself was prohibited from running its own agents or informers or interfering in the intelligence war, and it never questioned that the Special Branch was in charge of intelligence. Malaya was never placed under military law and the civil government remained paramount throughout the Emergency, with the army operating in support of the civil power. As Miller points out, the entire military force that was arraigned against the communist insurgents, consisting of infantry, artillery, air force and navy,

286

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

with troops coming from Britain, Malaya, Australia, New Zealand, Africa and Fiji, could not have prevailed over the communist insurgents without the operational intelligence provided by the Special Branch.49 The army, unlike the Special Branch, simply did not possess the local knowledge of the country and its people, or an understanding of local history, culture and languages, to enable it to come to grips with the complexity of the problems facing the government. Moreover, the army was not a ‘permanent’ local institution as the Malayan police or Special Branch were, and army units and personnel were regularly transferred out of Malaya once their tour of duty had finished, to be replaced by new units, which had to start all over again to gain experience of counterinsurgency operations and familiarise themselves with local conditions. This brief description of the significance of Special Branch, when read against the current ‘War on Terror’ in Iraq, throws up sharp contrasts between the success of the counterinsurgency during the Malayan Emergency and the current military approach of the US in Iraq. The success of the Special Branch is even more remarkable when it is considered that on taking over from the Malayan Security Service in August 1948, there were only two gazetted officers in Federal Special Branch headquarters at Kuala Lumpur, with a few others on the ground in state capitals. The strength and expertise of the Special Branch had to be built up over time.50 The first few years of the Emergency were perhaps the most critical. The Special Branch was vastly under-strength and ill-equipped to carry out its task as the government’s main intelligence agency. At this time, there was little information on record about the organisational structure of the CPM and the MNLA. The first task of the Special Branch was to identify its enemy by constructing ab initio the communist insurgents’ order-of-battle, as well as personal files on the communist leaders. It then painstakingly developed an intelligence network to penetrate the insurgent forces and destroy them. If the government security forces, army and police, limited as they were, had not stood fast and withstood the communist onslaught during the first two years, it is possible that the insurgents would have prevailed. But in August 1950, Sir William Jenkin, the Special Branch/CID Advisor (subsequently redesignated Director of Intelligence) provided the Special Branch with an organisational structure and an operational plan under his Directive No 9, issued under the over-riding authority of General Briggs, Director of Operations, that enabled the Special Branch to out-manoeuvre the communists and deal them a lethal blow. Jenkin’s restructuring of the

Conclusion

287

Special Branch and the cutting edge that it provided was used with minor modifications by the succeeding Heads of the Special Branch, GC Madoc and HTB Ryves, to continue to win the intelligence war against the CTs after Jenkin’s departure. In the final analysis, the Special Branch outwitted the communist insurgents. The separation of the Special Branch from the Criminal Investigation Department, which had been attempted by Jenkin and was finally brought about under the instructions of the Commissioner of Police, Colonel Young, in 1952 (but said to be at the suggestion of Jack Morton, the then Director of Intelligence), was another significant development in the intelligence war. It provided the Special Branch with an enhanced status, enabled it to develop professionally along its own lines, and cast off the perception that it was somehow an appendage of the CID. This separation of roles and functions was essential, as it gave the Special Branch a strong organisational identity so that its staff increasingly took pride in its work. And, of course, the separation was also significant in distinguishing responsibility for political and security intelligence (Special Branch) from the routine investigation of non-political crime (the CID). In other emergencies, where such a separation has not occurred, the risk of incarcerating ‘innocent’ victims is much higher and, to the extent that that happens, the groundswell of popular support for counterinsurgency rises. But it should be remembered that the reorganisation of the Special Branch, while important in itself, only provided the Special Branch with the means to become fully effective under the overarching strategy that Briggs had laid down for victory, that is, the Briggs Plan, supplemented by the operational and administrative directives that General Briggs issued from time-to-time. Though the Briggs Plan was monitored, reviewed and sometimes reformed, it continued to be implemented by General Templer when he became High Commissioner and Director of Operations in February 1952. Perhaps General Templer’s most significant direct contribution to the intelligence war, which did not alter General Briggs’ overall strategy, was contained in his Director of Operations Directive No 21, promulgated in April 1952 in his capacity as High Commissioner and Director of Operations. Its main purpose was to redefine the main targets for penetration by the Special Branch, and formalise the attachment of military intelligence officers alongside the Special Branch to process and present intelligence obtained by the Special Branch in a form that could be readily understood and acted upon

288

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

by the army. Templer was careful to re-emphasise in his directive that the army was acting in aid of the civil power, and that the military intelligence officers would work under the supervision and direction of the Special Branch. In the last paragraph of this directive, Templer once again made it clear that the Special Branch was the supreme intelligence agency and controlled the collection, assessment and use of intelligence. Nevertheless, as has been described in this study, it was Briggs’ overall policy of starving out the insurgents, depriving them of necessities to survive in the jungle, and applying at the same time continuous security force pressure, that helped destroy the morale of the insurgents, and provided the Special Branch with opportunities to mount and fully exploit intelligence operations against them, which led to their defeat. Simply asserting the priority of Special Branch’s control over human intelligence was not, however, sufficient. Briggs saw that the competing priorities of the police, army and civil administration would have to be integrated and synchronised. To do this, he set up State and District War Executive Committees consisting of police, army and civil government representatives to wage war against the communist insurgents, thus avoiding destructive competition between the government forces. The police and the army worked in the closest co-operation, at ground level had their headquarters together in a single location, and used combined joint operations and intelligence rooms wherever practicable. The Special Branch formed a vital part of the closely integrated and co-ordinated teams that worked as one body under the direction of the War Executive Committees so that the best possible use could be made of operational intelligence provided by the Special Branch to defeat the communist uprising and bring the Emergency to a successful conclusion. The factors internal to the organisation of Special Branch were so important that they consumed a large percentage of the chapters written in this book. This can be readily justified, for it is impossible to imagine the maturation of the Special Branch without the brilliantly conceived Briggs Plan and the developments involving the Special Branch that arose from it. Hence, earlier chapters focus on the developments leading up to the Briggs Plan and later chapters on subsequent innovations in the counterinsurgency strategies. Information about intelligence operations and terrorist movements and the way in which counterinsurgency operations are conducted has a wider relevance after ‘9/11’. As Karl Hack and CC Chin have commented:

Conclusion

289

They remind rulers that whoever the ‘enemy’ is, whether MCP guerrillas in 1948 or Jemaah Islamiah (JI) militants in present-day Southeast Asia, the dictum that you should know your enemy, and be able to talk their language remains true.51

While this is correct, the Malayan Special Branch succeeded not only because it ‘knew its enemy’ and was able to speak and understand the ‘political language’ of the Communist Party of Malaya, but also because its members spoke the actual languages of the different races of Malaya, and employed a set of skills that included familiarity with Malayan history, culture, religion, society and politics. The paramount importance of a knowledge of the Chinese language was realised early on, especially as the communist insurgents were predominantly Chinese, with relatively few Malay and Indian members. Hence, every effort was made to strengthen the Chinese component of the Special Branch and increase the number of British officers who had at least a working knowledge of either Cantonese or Hokkien, the two most widely spoken Chinese dialects in Malaya. As Harper has observed, the role the Malayan Special Branch played in the struggle against the communist guerrillas still resonates and reverberates in the police intelligence organisation of contemporary Malaysia: It embodied a powerful rationale of anti-subversion in the official mind and carved out restraints on political contest…It bequeathed a police force possessed of a unique combination of paramilitary force, security intelligence apparatus [Special Branch], and prosecuting power. 52

While this undoubtedly has positive and negative consequences, when Malaya became independent in 1957, it inherited, as this account has postulated, a Special Branch that was one of the most effective and widely recognised police intelligence agencies in Southeast Asia. As this study has argued, without the political and operational intelligence provided by the Special Branch it is not likely that the first Malayan Emergency (1948–60) could have been brought so decisively to an end, the communist insurgents defeated, and their remnants driven into southern Thailand. The role of the Special Branch was of the greatest importance in defeating the communist uprising and enabling the Malayan government to declare the Emergency at an end in 1960. A second Emergency, of smaller scale and significance, emerged in Malaysia in 1968, but this remains a subject to be examined by future scholars.

290

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Notes 1 2

3

4 5 6

7 8

9

10 11 12 13

14

CO 1030/230, ‘Malayanisation of the Public Service in the Federation of Malaya’, July 1955. The Malayan government had considered the Malayanisation of the public service well before independence in 1957, and a Committee on the Malayanisation of the Government Service was constituted as early as July 1953. See CO 1030/230, No 11, ‘Malayanisation of the Public Service in the Federation of Malaya’, July 1955, and CO1030/230, No 22, ‘Letter from Sir D Watherston to JB Johnston on the discussions of the Malayanisation Committee, 1 June 1956’. See The Australian, 23 September 2005, p 3. In 2006, the US Department of Defense asked Chatham House, London, to provide a historical analysis of different models of Special Branches with a view to developing a similar function in Iraq and elsewhere (email dated 30 October 2006, from Philip Wilkinson, Chatham House, to author). Mr Wilkinson spent six years in Northern Ireland with the Royal Ulster Constabulary Special Branch. Chin Peng, 2003, op cit, p 403. Chin & Hack, op cit, pp 213, 216. See Chin, 2004, op cit, pp 365–6; Yuen, op cit, pp 258, 260. It later transpired that the CCP did not agree with the ‘Furling the Flags and Muffling the Drums’ policy. It was perceived to run counter to Chairman Mao’s ‘Theory of Revolutionary Armed Struggle’, which advocated a never-ending guerrilla struggle until the achievement of final victory. In November 1962, the CPM’s Central Committee issued a statement declaring the Party was determined to continue fighting (Chin, 1995, op cit, pp 51–5, 90). The UMNO, MCA and MIC formed the National Alliance that emerged as the dominant party from the federal Malayan elections on 27 July 1955. Malayan independence was part of Britain’s overall policy to bring its colonies to independence. In Asia, India was granted independence (and partitioned) in 1947, Burma and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1948 and Malaya in 1957. Hong Kong reverted to China in 1997. After General Templer returned to the UK in June 1954, Lieutenant General Sir Geoffrey Bourne, General Officer Commanding Malaya, became Director of Operations, reporting to Sir David MacGillivray who had succeeded Templer as High Commissioner. However, when Malaya became independent in 1957, the functions of GOC Malaya and Director of Operations were separated. Lieutenant General Sir James Cassell became Director of Operations and Major General Frank H Brooke became General Officer Commanding Malaya, reporting directly in the first place to the locally appointed Minister of Defence. Stockwell, 1992, op cit, p 121. CO 1030/230, No. 22, op cit. ibid. See also Stockwell, 1992, op cit, p 121. CO 1030/73. Top Secret. ‘Government Responsibility for Internal Security. Note on Transfer of Authority for Internal Security to the Portfolio of an Elected Minister’, WLR Carbonnell, Commissioner of Police, 5 December 1955. ibid.

Conclusion

291

15 Yuen, op cit, p 97. 16 Hatton, op cit, p 301. 17 In a despatch, dated 26 January 1955, to the Colonial Secretary, Sir Donald MacGillivray explained that jungle forts were established in the deep jungle to win over the allegiance of ‘thousands of aborigines [sic] who in the past had aided the communist terrorists’. Out of a total number of between 50,000 to 60,000 orang asli, some 29,000 normally inhabited the deep jungle. It was proposed that the jungle forts would offer them not only protection from the guerrillas, but also medical aid and elementary education, and they would serve as ‘trading posts’ at which they could sell jungle produce and buy their simple needs (see CO 1030/174, No 10, op cit). 18 National Archives of Australia, A 5954/1, 1454/5, Confidential, letter, dated 11 November 1955, from Australian Commissioner’s Office, Singapore, to Department of External Affairs, Canberra; and A 1209-123, 57/5301, letter, dated 23 November 1955, from British High Commissioner, Canberra, to Prime Minister’s Department, Canberra. The Malayan High Commissioner, Sir Donald MacGillivray, expressed his appreciation to the Australian Prime Minister for his help. IS (Ian) Wylie, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Deputy Superintendent DA Goldsbury and Police Lieutenant R Wells visited Australia to recruit the police lieutenants, although the Malayan Government had been unsuccessful in trying to recruit suitably qualified officers from Australia for appointment as gazetted officers to the Malayan Special Branch in 1950–51. 19 CO 1030/90, ‘Establishment of a Regional Police Training College, Far East’. 20 CO 1037/90. ‘Establishment of a Regional Police Training College, Far East’, minute, dated 21 August 1957, from PAP Robertson to Mr Carstairs. The idea of establishing a regional police training college had been discussed at the 1957 Conference of Colonial Police Commissioners at the Police College, Rynton-on-Dunsmore, when it was agreed that in future the ‘Ryton and Hendon courses [training courses provided in the UK for colonial police officers] could only meet a proportion of demand from colonial police forces for the advanced training of senior officers’ and there was urgent need for the establishment of Regional Police Training Colleges (CO 1037/106, ‘Conference of Colonial Police Commissioners 1957, Record of Proceedings’). 21 ibid. 22 ibid. See minute, dated 19 June 1957, from JW Deegan to PAP Robertson. 23 Telephone conversation author and Leong Chee Woh, 6 July 2004. See also Leong, op cit, pp 131–5. 24 National Archives of Australia, Canberra, A 7133, Secret, ‘Record of Conversation with Brigadier LC Rumsey’, DJ Horne, Acting Australian High Commissioner, to Department of External Affairs, Canberra, 26 June 1958. 25 Lieutenant General Brooke succeeded Lieutenant General Sir James Cassell as Director of Emergency Operations and Chief of Staff, Federation of Malaya’s armed forces on 6 January 1959 (Keesing’s Contemporary Archives, 14 March–21 March 1959, Column 16706). The fact that it was now possible to amalgamate these two posts was in itself a measure of the improved security situation. 26 National Archives of Australia, Canberra, A 7133, Secret, ‘The Emergency’ and ‘Record of Briefing by GOC Federation of Malaya and Director of Operations, Lt Gen Dato Brooke’, TK Critchley, Australian High Commissioner to Department of External Affairs, Canberra, 7 May 1959 and 28 August 1959 respectively.

292

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

27 ibid. 28 In dealing with insurgency in Algeria in the late 1950s, the French employed an army of occupation of about 400,000 to face an estimated insurgent force of 40,000 (Kiernan, op cit, p 218). 29 National Archives of Australia, Canberra, A 7133, Secret, ‘Record of Briefing by GOC Federation of Malaya and Director of Operations, Lt Gen Dato Brooke’, TK Critchley, Australian High Commissioner to Department of External Affairs, Canberra, 28 August 1959. 30 ibid. 31 Many guerrillas who ‘surrendered’ as a result of ‘Q’ operations said that they had been ‘tricked’ into coming out of the jungle, otherwise they would have fought on (see Short, op cit, p 491; Miller, op cit, p 186). The ‘turned’ communist leaders who were co-operating with the Special Branch often misleadingly informed their erstwhile comrades that they had been ordered by the CPM’s Central Committee to cease fighting and surrender. Dato’ Seri Yuen Yuet Leng told the author in Kuala Lumpur on 17 November 1995 that prior to participating in a ‘Q’ operation, he had asked his wife to make up a completely authentic-looking CT uniform for him to wear. He never told her it was required for a ‘Q’ operation in which he was to take part, and she assumed that it would be included in an exhibition of CT uniforms to be displayed in the Police Museum. 32 Dato’ Yuen was the DSBO, Sungei Siput, responsible for preparing the intelligence base for Operation Ginger before it was launched. 33 Directive No 9. Memorandum on Intelligence with Particular Reference to the Special Branch and Joint Operations Intelligence Rooms, Confidential, Director of Operations, Malaya, Government Printer, Kuala Lumpur, 1951. See also Chin, 1995, op cit, pp 97–8. 34 Leong, op cit, p 83. 35 Christopher Pugsley, From Emergency to Confrontation. The New Zealand Armed Forces in Malaya and Borneo 1949–65, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 2003, p 138. 36 Yuen, op cit, pp 241–2. 37 Leong, op cit, p 9; Keesing’s Contemporary Archives, 14–21 March 1959, Column 16706. 38 Yuen, op cit, p 243. 39 The Straits Times, 1 August 1960. The Malayan King’s note of warning about the CPM’s intentions was prescient. After an interval of several years, the CPM re-launched a guerrilla war from southern Thailand against independent Malaya, which from the mid-1960s was called Malaysia. An account of what is referred to in the literature as the Second Emergency (1968–78) falls outside the framework of this study, but following the death of Mao Zedong in China and the counter-revolutionary coup in China in 1976, the level of armed combat against the Malaysian security forces petered out. In 1989, the CPM leadership made a formal decision to end the armed struggle altogether, culminating with the signing of a peace agreement, brokered by the Thai government, to end hostilities with the Malaysian government (see R Thambipillay, The Malayan Police Force in the Emergency 1948–1960, Ipoh, privately published, 2003, p

Conclusion

40 41 42 43 44

45

46 47

48

49 50 51 52

293

60; General Dato’ Kitti Ratanachaya, The Communist Party of Malaya, Malaysia and Thailand, Bangkok, Duangkaew Publishing House, 1996, passim). The Straits Times, 19, 30 July and 1, 2 August 1960. See Keesing’s Contemporary Archives, 21–28 May 1960, Column 17431. See Aldrich, 2002, op cit, p 511. Author’s notes, Chin Peng workshop, the Australian National University, Canberra, 23 February 1999. In fact, the CPM had not only failed to obtain the support of the Malay and Indian populace, but as early as the end of 1947, it had lost the political leadership of the Chinese populace, which had been assumed by several Chinese groups and associations, including the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and the KMT. By the beginning of the Emergency in 1948, it had also lost control of the trade union movement, which had feared the growing strength of the Special Branch (see Zainon Ahmad, ‘Telling the Full Story of Merdeka’, Sun Weekend (Penang), 10–11 September 2005, p 5). Department of Information Services, Federation of Malaya, No 1062, Kuala Lumpur, 7 February 1952, ‘A Message to the People of the Federation of Malaya from His Excellency Sir Gerald Templer, the High Commissioner for the Federation of Malaya’. The Alliance Government remained in power from 1954 to 1974. For an account of the Baling talks, see Chin Peng, 2003, op cit, pp 367–96; Chin & Hack, op cit, pp 171–85; Short, op cit, pp 459–71; Wan Hamzah Awang, Detik Sejarah Rundingan Baling, Utusan Publications, Kuala Lumpur, 1985; Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra al-Haj, Looking Back, Pustaka Antara, Kuala Lumpur, 1977, pp 5–16. The Tunku said that his meeting with Chin Peng at Baling was ‘to give the lie to the MCP and Chin Peng’s assertion that it was he who was trying to liberate Malaya [from the British]’ (p 6). Author’s notes. The British government was initially reluctant for the Tunku to meet Chin Peng face-to-face, and the mass media, both local and overseas, had expressed misgivings about the Tunku’s intention to do so, and thought there was a real danger that he would be out-manoeuvred (see Tunku Abdul Rahman, ibid, p 9–10). See Miller, op cit, p 25. ibid, pp 78, 91. Chin & Hack, op cit, p 21. TN Harper, The end of empire and the making of Malaya, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999, p 378 et seq.

294

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Reproduced from Malaya's Secret Police 1945-60: The Role of the Special Branch in the Malayan Emergency by Leon Comber (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2008). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available at < http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg >

Abbreviations, acronyms and glossary

ACP ANZAM

Assistant Commissioner of Police Australia, New Zealand and Malaya

ASIO

Australian Security Intelligence Organisation

ASIS

Australian Secret Intelligence Service

ASP ATOM Bde

Assistant Superintendent of Police The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya Brigade

BBC

British Broadcasting Corporation

BMA

British Military Administration

BRIAM

British Advisory Mission (to Vietnam)

CCP

Chinese Communist Party

CEC

Central Executive Committee (or Central Committee of CPM)

CEP

Captured Enemy Personnel

CIA

US Central Intelligence Agency

CID

Criminal Investigation Department

CIGS CO Comdt CP

Chief of the British Imperial General Staff Commanding Officer Commandant Commissioner of Police

CPM

Communist Party of Malaya

CPO

Chief Police Officer

CPT

Communist Party of Thailand

CT DCM DMI

Communist Terrorist District Committee Member CPM Director of Military Intelligence 295

296

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

DSBO DWEC Dy

District Special Branch Officer District War Executive Committee Deputy

EIS

Emergency Information Services

ER

Emergency Regulations

FBI

Federal Bureau of Investigation

FCO FIC GCHQ GOC Malaya GRU GSO II (Int) HUMINT ILD Incident

Foreign and Commonwealth Office Federal Intelligence Committee Government Communications Headquarters General Officer Commanding, Malaya USSR Chief Directorate for Intelligence, Russian Army Staff General Staff Officer II (Intelligence) Human intelligence—intelligence collected by means of agents or informers. International Liaison Department An encounter with the CTs, often resulting in loss of life, serious injury or considerable damage to property.

IRD

Information Research Department

ISLD

Inter-Service Liaison Department

JIC kempeitei

Joint Intelligence Committee Japanese secret police

KGB

USSR Committee for State Security

KMT

Kuomintang (or Guomindang)

LSO mata-mata

Local Security Officer Malay police constable

MCA

Malayan Chinese Association

MCP

Malayan Communist Party (see CPM)

MCS

Malayan Civil Service

MI5

Security Service (internal arm of British Secret Service)

MI6

Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) (foreign section of British Secret Service)

MIC

Malayan Indian Congress

MIO

Military intelligence officer



Min Yuen MDU MNLA MNP

glossary

People’s Movement. It covers all activities by the Masses in support of the CPM Malayan Democratic Union Malayan National Liberation Army Malay Nationalist Party

MPABA

Malayan People’s Anti-British Army

MPAJA

Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army

MRLA

Malayan Races Liberation Army (alternative name for the MNLA)

MSS

Malayan Security Service

NZR

New Zealand Regiment

OCCID OCPD OPINTEL OSPC PAP PETA PF PLA PMFTU

Officer-in-Charge CID Officer-in-Charge Police District Operational intelligence used in the planning of counterinsurgency operations Officer Superintending Police Circle People’s Action Party Ikatan Pemuda Tanah Ayer Personal file People’s Liberation Army Pan-Malayan Federation of Trade Unions

PPP

Peoples’ Progressive Party

PRC

People’s Republic of China

PRO

Public Records Office

Psyops RAF RAAF RAN RMAF

Psychological Warfare Section Royal Air Force Royal Australian Air Force Royal Australian Navy Royal Malayan Air Force

RMC

Royal Military College

RMN

Royal Malayan Navy

RN RNZAF

297

Royal Navy Royal New Zealand Air Force

298

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

RNZN SAC ‘E’ SAS

Royal New Zealand Navy Senior Assistant Commissioner (Special Branch) Special Air Service (British Army)

SB

Special Branch

SC

Special Constable

SEAC SEATO SEIO SEP SF SFTU SIFE SIS sitrep

Southeast Asia Command Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation State Emergency Information Officer Surrendered enemy personnel Security forces Singapore Federation of Trade Unions Security Intelligence Far East, Singapore Secret Intelligence Service Situation report

SLO

MI5 Security Liaison Officer

SOE

Special Operations Executive

SOVF Supt

Special Operations Volunteer Force Superintendent of Police

SWEC

State and Settlement War Executive Committee

UMNO

United Malays National Organisation

VCGIS

Vice-Chief of the (British) General Imperial Staff

WFTU

World Federation of Trade Unions

WL

Wanted list

Note on transliteration The Romanisation of Chinese proper names and terms perennially presents problems, especially in the Malayan context where nine southern Chinese dialects are spoken as well as Mandarin (putonghua). In this study, the original Romanised spelling as presented in the documents has been preserved, as modern scientific transliteration can obscure well-known names and places. In recent times, the spelling of some Malay names and terms has been changed in accordance with the new ejaan baru system, but to avoid confusion the spelling used in the 1940s–1960s has been followed.

Reproduced from Malaya's Secret Police 1945-60: The Role of the Special Branch in the Malayan Emergency by Leon Comber (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2008). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available at < http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg >

Bibliography The following official records were consulted: Public Records Office, Kew (London) Colonial Office Series (CO), Foreign Office Series (FO), Prime Minister’s Office Papers (PREM), Cabinet Office (CAB), War Office Series (WO) and the Royal Air Force Series (AIR), National Archives of Singapore, Arkib Negara Malaysia (National Archives of Malaysia), Kuala Lumpur, The National Archives of Australia, Canberra and Melbourne. Research was also carried out into primary sources at: Rhodes House Library, Oxford, National Army Museum, Chelsea, London, Perpustakaan Universiti Malaya (University of Malaya Library), Kuala Lumpur, The Royal Malaysian Police Museum, Kuala Lumpur, National Library of Australia, Canberra, Australian War Museum Research Centre, Canberra, Royal Commonwealth Library, Cambridge University. The following bibliography contains all references cited in the text. For a larger bibliography of sources consulted, see the author’s PhD thesis (Monash University, 2005).

Archival sources Arkib Negara, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (AN) File SP 127, CC Too Papers, Secret, ‘Notes on the Malayan Communist Party, May 1956’. File SP 127, CC Too Papers, Appendix ‘B’, Secret, Précis of Talk given on 8 March 1956. File Misc. 16, ‘Communist Banditry in Malaya, June 1948–June 1951; Emergency Statistics’, 1948–60. File Misc.16 Info. 7.60 (Emergency), Appendixes ‘B’, ‘D’ Emergency Statistics for Federation of Malaya since 1948. File P/PDM2, Senarai Peneriman, Malayan Police Annual Report 1949. Mimeograph 120/84, Appendix ‘D’, ‘Particulars of Courses attended by Officers and Rank and File of Malayan Police, January–December 1955. Mimeograph, Royal Federation of Malaya Police Annual Report 1958, ‘Racial Composition’. SP/13/A/15, Senarai Peneriman Tan Cheng Lock, ‘Correspondence with Hans Taussig, Eastern World, London, December 1951. SP/13/A/41, ‘Chinese Police Recruits’, Senerai Peneriman Tun Tan Cheng Lock. 299

300

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

SP/13/E/16, Tan Cheng Lock. ‘Notes submitted for consideration by Rt. Hon. Oliver Lyttelton, December 1951. Cambridge University Library, United Kingdom, South Asian and Commonwealth Studies Section (CUL) BAM 3118 HP Bryson, ‘Twenty-Nine-and-a-Half Years in the MCS’. National Archives of Australia (NAA) A1209/123, 57/5301, letter, dated 23 November 1955, from British High Commissioner, Canberra, to Prime Minister’s Department, Canberra. A1828/278, Item 413/2/6/3, Pt 3 Australian Commissioner of Malaya’s Department Despatch No 2/49, dated 12 January 1949, to the Department of External Affairs, Canberra. A1838/1, ‘British Commissioner-General for South East Asia, Secret, Extract from Political Summary, 14 February 1949’. A1838/278/413/2/6/3, Pt. 6 Secret, Federation of Malaya Police Operational Summary No. 87, 23 March 1950. A5954/1, 1454/5, Confidential, letter, dated 11 November 1955, from Australian Commissioner’s Office, Singapore, to Department of External Affairs, Canberra. A5954/40 2356/1, Secret, Training Australian Officers at Malayan Special Branch Training School. A7133, Secret, ‘Record of Conversation with Brigadier LC Rumsey’, DJ Horne, Acting Australian High Commissioner, to Department of External Affairs, Canberra, 26 June 1958. A7133, Secret, ‘Record of Briefing by GOC Federation of Malaya and Director of Operations, Lt-Gen Dato Brooke’, TK Critchley, Australian High Commissioner to Department of External Affairs, Canberra, 28 August 1959. A7133/1–6, ‘Australian Secret Service Records on Singapore/Malaya, 1955’. A7133/3, Australian Commissioner’s Office, Singapore, Top Secret memo No 1746 (25/5/2/1), dated 4 December 1954, to Department of External Affairs, Canberra. A7133/3 Pt 2, Item No. 13, Australian Secret Service Records on Singapore/Malaya. Top Secret, ‘Soviet Imperialism. The Malayan Communist Party. An Analysis of Subversive Tactics’, April 1956. A7133/3–13, Secret, Australian Department External Affairs Savingram 0.2355, dated 20 February 1956, to Australian Commission, Singapore. File 412/15/1/1, Secret, Australian Commissioner for Malaya, Despatch No. 7, re. Field Marshall Phibun and Thai Cooperation. National Archives of Singapore (NAS) BMA HQ Singapore Division 1945–6, Box 5, Ministry of Social Affairs, Secret 54/1949, ‘Singapore Town Committee of the Malayan Communist Party’.

bibliography

301

Oral History Project, George E Bogaars (B000032/030). Oral History Project, Richard B Corridon (000044/15/1–4, 6–11; 000044/15/05; 000044/15/12–15). SCA 35/58, MEO Circular No.7 of 1952, ‘Courses in Chinese at the Government Officers’ Language School’, 4 September 1959. National Army Museum, Chelsea, London, United Kingdom (NAM) ACC 8011–132–2, General Templer’s letter 5 January 1977 to General Gower, Director General, Army Training. ACC 8011–132–3, Correspondence Major-General Lloyd-Owen with General Gower, Director General, Army Training, re. his earlier service as General Templer’s military assistant. ACC 8301–6, Correspondence of Major DL Lloyd Owen as Military Assistant to High Commissioner Malaya (General Sir Gerald Templer), March 1952–September 1953, Secret and Personal Letter to Lieutenant General Sir Nevil Brownjohn, KBE, CB, CMG, CBE, dated 9 June 1952. ACC 9501–165–15, Urgent & Secret, Colonel A.E. Young to Secy. for Defence, Reorganisation Federal Police HQ & Creation of 5 Departments under Snr. Asst. Commissioners, etc, 4 March 1952. ACC 9501–165–11, Colonel W.A. Muller, Colonial Police Adviser, Colonial Office, ‘Memo on the Police Force, Federation of Malaya’ handed over to General Lockhart, December 1951. ACC 9501–165–30, General Sir Rob Lockhart Papers—‘The Situation in Federation of Malaya from Viewpoint of Director of Operations, 26 November 1951’. ACC 9501–165–49, Secret, Letter from General Lockhart to Field Marshall Sir Wm Slim, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, recommending reorganisation Federal Malayan Police HQ along similar lines as Army Corps HQ, etc., January 1952. Public Records Office, Kew, United Kingdom (PRO) AIR 20/777, Briggs Plan. CAB 21/1681 MAL C6 (50) 1, Malaya Committee of Cabinet Minutes on Situation in Malaya. CAB 128/13 CM 52 (48) 5, Proscription of Communist Party of Malaya. CAB 128/17 CM37 (50) 1, Cabinet Conclusions on Reports on Malaya by Mr Griffith and Mr Strachey. CAB 129/28, CP (48) 171, dated 1 July 1948, ‘The Situation in Malaya’: Cabinet memorandum by Mr Creech Jones. CAB 129/28 G(51) 59 (Malaya), Cabinet Memo by Oliver Lyttleton on his Visit to Malaya. CAB 129/40 CP (50) 125, Preliminary Report for Cabinet on Mr Griffith’s Visit to Malaya and Singapore, June 1950.

302

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

CAB 129/48, Lyttelton’s Report on Mission to Malaya. CAB 129/59, Secret, ‘Sanders–Lee Meng Exchange: Memorandum by the Minister of State’, 11 March 1953, and ‘Sanders–Lee Meng Exchange: Memorandum by the Secretary of State for the Colonies’, 13 March 1953. CAB 158/20/JIC (55) 28, Top Secret, Chiefs of Staff Committee, Joint Intelligence Committee, Colonial Intelligence and Security, 1945–65. CAB 158/30, JIC (57) 115, ‘Intelligence Organisation in the Colonial Territories’, 8 November 1957. CO 171/178, Confidential Inward Telegram No. 215, Sir Henry Gurney to Colonial Secy, 14 February 1949. CO 275/11/50, letter dated 13 September 1950. CO 531/7300, Min Yuen Organisation. CO 537/3741, No.76 Colonial Secy to Sir Henry Gurney re. points raised in Field Marshall Sir Wm. Slim’s Report, October 1949. CO 537/3751, Top Secret letter from Sir Franklin Gimson, Governor of Singapore, to HT Bourdillon, Colonial Office, dated 26 February 1948. CO 537/3751, Supplement no. 3, MSS PIJ no 1/48, dated 1 April 1948. CO 537/3752, Growth of Communism since 1924 among Malays/Indians in Malaya, Malayan Security Service Political Journal No. 14/48. CO 537/3753, Malaya—Political Developments (1948–9). CO 537/3753, No 35, MSS Political Intelligence Journal No 15/48, 15 August 1948. CO 537/4374, No. 5, Notes on Tour of SE Asia by Field Marshall Sir Wm. Slim, October 1949. CO 537/4733, minutes by JB Williams and GF Seel, 28–31 May 1948. CO 537/4773, No. 2 Secret, Despatch No. 5, Sir Henry Gurney to Colonial Secy re. lack of Chinese-speaking police officers & Insurance: Insurgency & Counterinsurgency, 30 May 1949. CO 537/5439, Need for Strengthening Special Branches and Intelligence Services, December 1949. CO 537/7255, Strengthening Information Services in Malaya, 1951. CO 537/7271, Weekly Situation Reports, 1951. CO 537/7271, Secret, Federation of Malaya Operational Intelligence Summary, No 88, 16 March 1950. CO 537/7292, Top Secret, ‘Kuomintang. The Strength and Activities of Kuomintang Members in Singapore’. CO 577/5973, Secret. ‘Police Department Staff. Internal Differences’, letter from SWP Sutton, officer administering the Malayan government, to Sir Henry Gurney, and Jenkin’s letter of 10 November 1950 to the Acting Chief Secretary, Federation of Malaya.

bibliography

303

CO 717/167, The Emergency Regulations Ordinance 1948. CO 717/169, CTs use of Limestone Caves near Ipoh. CO 717/178, Police Mission, November 1949. CO 717/182, Review of Chinese Affairs, December 1948. CO 717/183, Pan-Malayan Review ‘Sino-Malay Relations, 1949’ & Federation of Malaya Monthly Newsletter, No. 6. CO 717/201 52849/41, Squatter Problem in Federation of Malaya, 1950. CO 825/82/55404/4, Singapore Political Review—Threat to Security by CPM, June 1950. CO 967/84, Secret, Briefs Federation of Malaya. CO 1020/343, Training of Malayan Civil Servants in Languages. CO 1022/103, ‘Directive to Sir Gerald Templer on Appointment as High Commissioner for Federation of Malaya, 1952’. CO 1022/145, External Aid for Malayan Communists. CO 1022/146 SEA 75/02, Secret, Letter from DE Thomas, MP, re. Lee Meng Case, February 1953. CO 1022/148, Organisation of Chinese Resistance to Communism in Malaya (Tan Cheng Lock). CO 1022/165, Secret, Pan-Malayan Security Cooperation. CO 1022/165, Secret, Reorganisation of Malayan Police. CO 1022/205 CIS (53) (3) (Amended Final), Top Secret, Malay Participation in Emergency, June 1953. CO 1022/205 CIS (52) (2), Final, Top Secret, Situation on Malayan-Thai Frontier, September 1952–August 1953. CO 1022/205 CIS (52) (7), Final, Top Secret, ‘Review of Security Situation in Malaya as at 30 September 1952, prepared by the Combined Intelligence Staff on Instructions of Director of Intelligence, Malaya’. CO1022/205 CIS (53) (7), Top Secret, paper by Combined Intelligence Staff, ‘Review of Emergency Situation on the Thai/Malaya Frontier’, 19 August 1953. CO 1022/3, Representations against Sentence of Death (Lee Meng). CO 1022/48 File SEA 10/172/01, Proposal that ‘Bandits’ in Malaya should be officially known as ‘Communists’. CO 1022/5, Top Secret, Director of Operations Directive No. 21. Special Branch Intelligence Targets. CO 1022/51 10/285/01, Organisation & Functions of Malayan Intelligence Services, 1951–2. CO 1030/10, Secret, Review of Emergency Situation in Malaya at end of 1956. CO1030/12, Confidential letter dated 14 January 1954, from CC Whitaker, British Consulate, Songkhla, to Sir Geoffrey Wallinger, KCMG, Her Majesty’s Ambassador,

304

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Bangkok (some sections of the despatch have been masked out under Section 3(4) of the Public Records Act 1958). CO 1030/12, Confidential Paper by GA Boon, British Consul, Songhkla, The South Siam Frontier and Malayan Emergency, August 1954. CO1030/12, ‘Secret Report from British Ambassador, Bangkok, dated 21 July 1954, to Rt Hon Anthony Eden, MC, MP, Foreign Office. CO 1030/12 12/62/01, Cooperation with Siam Police over Frontier Incidents, 1954–5. CO 1030/16, Committee of Ministers to Consider Security and Intelligence Services in Malaya during Emergency and Pre-Emergency Period. CO 1030/168, Report by Colonel Muller, Insp. General Colonial Police, on visit to Malaya, 1955. CO 1030/230, No 11, ‘Malayanisation of the Public Service in the Federation of Malaya’, July 1955. CO1030/230, No 22, ‘Letter from Sir D Watherston to JB Johnston on the discussions of the Malayanisation Committee, 1 June 1956’. CO 1030/73, Top Secret, ‘Government Responsibility for Internal Security. Note on Transfer of Authority for Internal Security to the Portfolio of an Elected Minister’, WLR Carbonnell, Commissioner of Police, 5 December 1955. CO 1037/90, ‘Establishment of a Regional Police Training College, Far East’, minute, dated 21 August 1957, from PAP Robertson to Mr Carstairs. CO 1037/106, Conference of Colonial Police Commissioners, Record of Proceedings. CO 1045/484, Communist Influence in Chinese Schools, 1959. CO 50745/3/45, AH Dickinson’s report, 22 December 1945, ‘The Colonial Office—Its Policy in regard to officers who deserted immediately preceding the fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942’, addressed to GEJ Gent, Eastern Department, Colonial Office, and Gent’s reply. CO 50745/5/445, letter from Edward Gent to AH Dickinson, 14 December 1945. DEF 7/421/10A, Secret, Despatch No. 3 (12 January 1950), Sir Henry Gurney to Colonial Secretary, ‘Progress of Counterinsurgency Campaign, 1948–November 1949’. FO 371/69698, Military Situation in Malaya, August 1948. HS 1/228, Far East India General 144, ‘SOE Operations in Far East: Psychological Warfare Division’, 1945. NAB 250, Foreign Office Weekly Intelligence Summary, ‘Indo-China 1946’. PREM 8/1406/2, ‘The Malayan Situation and the Far East’: J Strachey urging appointment Regional Supremo. PREM 11/113, General Templer’s Comments on Special Branch Training School. WO 106/5990, Secret, Director of Operations Review (1957): Army & Police Strength and Composition. WO 208/3934, Top Secret, Pan-Malayan Review No. 3, 29 September 1948, ‘KMT Activities’.

bibliography

305

Rhodes House Library, Oxford, United Kingdom (RHL) MSS Ind. Ocn. 128, Confidential, WD Horne, ‘Notes on Outlook Overseas Chinese’. MSS Ind. Ocn. S254, Top Secret, JD Dalley Papers ‘Threat of Communism in Malaya and Singapore, 1947’. MSS Ind. Ocn. S254, Top Secret, John Dalley, Special Conference on Communism Malaya/Singapore under Chairmanship HE British Governor-General, June 1947: Memo on History of MSS. MSS Ind. Ocn. S254 (2), JD Dalley to Sir Ralph Hone re: Malayan Security Service, July 1948. MSS Brit. Empire, S486/2/1, Sir Arthur Young Papers, Narrative Report on Progress of Emergency June 1948–March 1953; ‘Detention & Deportation during Emergency’; Surrender Policy 1953; Confidential Comments on Senior Police Officers. Royal Commonwealth Library, Cambridge University, United Kingdom (RCL) BEAM Collection, Report by AH Dickinson, CMG, OBE, ‘Organisations in Malaya concerned in period September 1939–February 1942 with Political Security and Security’, 12 January 1946. BEAM Collection, Bryson Papers, ‘Twenty-nine-and-a-half years in the Malayan Civil Service’. Documents in the private collection of the author CP/485 Federation of Malaya Police Headquarters letter 7 September 1950. Department of Information Services, Federation of Malaya, No 1062, Kuala Lumpur, 7 February 1952, ‘A Message to the People of the Federation of Malaya from His Excellency Sir Gerald Templer, the High Commissioner for the Federation of Malaya’. Despatch No 14, Top Secret. High Commissioner for the United Kingdom, Kuala Lumpur, to Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, London, 5 November 1980. Letter from Richard A Poole, American Consul, Kuala Lumpur, to Donald Nicholson, Chief, Division of Security, Department of State, Washington, DC, 1 June 1950. Books, articles and other non-archival sources The Age (Melbourne). Akashi, Yoji, ‘Lai Teck, Secretary General of the Malayan Communist Party, 1939–1947’, Journal of the South Seas Society, Volume 49, 1994, pp.57–103. Aldrich, Richard J (ed), British Intelligence, Strategy and the Cold War, 1945–51, London & New York: Routledge, 1992. Aldrich, Richard J, Intelligence and the War Against Japan: Britain, America and the Politics of Secret Service, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ——, The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence, Woodstock & New York: The Overlook Press, 2002.

306

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Andaya, Barbara Watson & Andaya, Leonard Y, A History of Malaysia, London: The Macmillan Press, 1982. Andrew, Christopher, Her Majesty’s Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community, New York: Viking Press, 1986. Annual Report Federation of Malaya Police 1948, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1949. Annual Report Federation of Malaya Police 1949, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1950. Annual Report of the Singapore Police Force 1948, Singapore: Government Printer, 1949. The Australian (Sydney). Ban Kah Choon, Absent History: The Untold Story of Special Branch Operations in Singapore 1915–1942, Singapore: SNP Media Asia Pte Ltd, 2001. Barber, Noel, The War of the Running Dogs: The Malayan Emergency, 1948–1960, London: Fontana Books, 1973 (3rd impression). Barham, AS, A Short History of the Emergency, Kuala Lumpur, 21 October 1951. Bedingham, F, ‘Smashing the CTs in Johore’ in Stewart, Brian (ed), Operation Sharp End: Smashing Terrorism in Malaya 1948–58: Memories of the Malayan Police, Newark: Acorn Publishers, 2003. Bennett, Richard M, Espionage: Spies and Secrets, London: Virgin Books Ltd, 2002. Blair, Anne, There to the Bitter End: Ted Serong in Vietnam, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 2001. Blake, Christopher, A View from Within: The Last Years of British Rule in South-East Asia, Somerset: Mendip Publishing, 1990. Block, Jonathan and Fitzgerald, Patrick, British Intelligence and Covert Action, London: Junction Books Ltd, 1983. Bloodworth, Dennis, The Tiger and the Trojan Horse, Singapore: Times Books International, 1986. Blue Lamp Newsletter of the Retired Senior Police Officers Association of Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur). BMA Annual Report Singapore Police 1946, Singapore: Government Printer, 1947. Bowers, Tom, The Perfect English Spy: Sir Dick White and the Secret War 1935–90, London: Mandarin Publishers, 1996. British Malaya (London). Braithwite, Sir Rodvic, ‘Assessment and Analysis: Building an Accurate Picture’, in Harold Shukan (ed), Agents for Change: Intelligence Services in the 21st Century, London: St Ermine’s Press, 2000. Bunyan, Tony, The History and Practice of the Political Police in Britain, London: Julian Friedman Publishers, 1976.

bibliography

307

Carver, Michael, War Since 1949, London: Weidenfield & Nicholson, 1980. Catling, Sir Richard, ‘The Catling Memoirs, IV. Retrospect’ in Royal Malaysian Police Former Officers Association of the United Kingdom Newsletter, Issue 11, August 2001. Cheah Boon Kheng, ‘Some Aspects of the Interregnum in Malaya, 14 August–3 September 1945’, Journal of South East Asian Studies, 8, No. 1, March 1977, pp. 48–74. ——, From PKI to the Comintern, 1924–1941: The Apprenticeship of the Malayan Communist Party, Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 1992. ——, ‘Legal Period, 1945–48, MCP and Relations with Malays, British and “bourgeois nationalists”’, p 2, discussion paper, Chin Peng Workshop, Australian National University, 22–23 February 1999. ——, ‘The Legal Period: 1945–8, The Malayan Communist Party and its Relations with Malays, British and “Bourgeois Nationalists”’, in CC Chin & Karl Hack (eds), Dialogues with Chin Peng: New Light on the Malayan Communist Party, Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2004. ——, The Masked Comrades: A Study of the Communist United Front in Malaya, 1945–48, Singapore: Times Books International, 1979. Chin, Aloysius, The Communist Party of Malaya: The Inside Story, Kuala Lumpur: Vinpress Sdn Bhd, 1995. Chin, CC, ‘In Search of the Revolution: A Brief Biography of Chin Peng’ in CC Chin & Karl Hack (eds), Dialogues with Chin Peng: New Light on the Malayan Communist Party, Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2004. Chin Peng, Alias Chin Peng: My Side of History (as told to Ian Ward & Norma Miraflot), Singapore: Media Publishers, 2003. ‘Chin Peng Workshop’, The Australian National University, Canberra, 22–23 February 1999. Chin, CC & Hack, Karl, Dialogues with Chin Peng: New Light on the Malayan Communist Party, Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2004. Chinese-English Dictionary, The, Hong Kong: The Commercial Press, 1979. Clague, Peter, Iron Spearhead: The True Story of a Communist Killer Squad in Singapore, Singapore: Heinemann Educational Books (Asia) Ltd, 1980. Cleaveland, Norman, Bang! Bang! in Ampang: Dredging Tin during Malaya’s Emergency, San Pedro: Symcon Publishing Co, 1973. Cloake, John, Templer, Tiger of Malaya, London: Harrap, 1985. Clutterbuck, Richard, Conflict and Violence in Singapore and Malaysia, 1945–1983, Singapore: Graham Brash, 1984 (revised and enlarged edn). ——, The Long, Long War: The Emergency in Malaya 1948–1960, London: Cassell, 1967. Coates, John, Suppressing Insurgency: An Analysis of the Malayan Emergency, 1948–1954, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992.

308

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Coe, John Josiah, ‘Beautiful Flowers and Poisonous Weeds: Problems of Historicism, Ethics and Internal Antagonisms—The Case of the Malayan Communist Party’, PhD dissertation (restricted), University of Queensland, 1993. Colonial Annual Report Malaya 1948, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1949. Colonial Office List 1948, London: HMSO, 1948. Colonial Office List, Federation of Malaya, 1951. Colonial Office Staff List, Federation of Malaya 1941. Colonial Annual Reports—Malaya, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1948. Comber, Leon, ‘“The weather has been horrible”: Malayan Communist Communications during the Emergency (1948–60)’, Asian Studies Review, Vol. 19, No. 2, 1995, pp. 37–57. ——, ‘The Malayan Security Service (1945–1948)’, Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 18, No. 3, Autumn 2003, pp. 128–53. ——, ‘Tun Dato Sir Tan Cheng Lock’s Role in Shaping Malayan-Chinese Attitudes towards the Malay World’ in Chinese Studies of the Malay World (Ding Choo Ming & Ooi Kee Bang, eds.), Singapore: Eastern Universities Press by Marshall Cavendish, 2003, pp. 190–204. ——, 13 May 1969: A Historical Survey of Sino-Malay Relations, Kuala Lumpur: Heinemann Asia, 1983. ——, Review of Chin Peng: My Side of History (as told to Ian Ward & Norma Miraflor) in Intelligence & Natational Security, Vol. 19, No. 1, Spring 2004, pp. 125–9. Communist Party of Malaya: Selected Documents, South East Asia Documentation Group, 1979. Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya, The (ATOM), Restricted. Kuala Lumpur: Director of Operations, 1952. Corfield, Justin and Thomson, Michael (eds), The Corian 1998, Corio: Geelong Grammar School, 1999. Craig, RJW, A Short Account of the Malayan Emergency, Kuala Lumpur: Royal Malaysia Police, September 1964. Cross, JB, Jungle Warfare: Experiences and Encounters, London: Guild Publishing, 1989. Cruikshank, Charles, SOE: Special Operations Executive in the Far East, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Davies, Philip H, ‘The SIS Singapore Station and the SIS Far Eastern Controller’, in Richard J Aldrich, Gary D Rawnsley, and Ming-Yeh T Rawnsley (eds), The Clandestine Cold War in Asia, 1945–65. Western Intelligence, Propaganda and Special Operations, London & Portland, Frank Cass Publishers, 2000, pp. 105–29. Dorrill, Stephen, MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service, New York: The Free Press, 2000.

bibliography

309

Dow, MW, ‘Counterinsurgency and Nation Building: A Comparative Study of PostWorld War II Antiguerrilla Resettlement Programs in Malaya, the Philippines, and South Vietnam’, PhD dissertation in Geography in the Graduate School of Syracuse University, 1965. Drysdale, John, Singapore: Struggle for Success, Singapore: Times Books International, 1984. Economic Colonialism in Southeast Asia, Division of Research for the Far East, Office of Intelligence Research, Department of State, Secret OIR Report No.5036 (PY), Washington, DC. Edwards, Peter, ‘The Adoption of Armed Struggle by the MCP in 1948’, discussion paper presented at the Chin Peng Workshop, Australian National University, Canberra, 22–23 February 1999. ——, ‘The Malayan Emergency (1948–1960) as a Case Study in Low Intensity Conflict’ in Carr, Barry & McKay, Elaine, Low Intensity Conflict, Theory and Practice in Central America and Southeast Asia, Melbourne: La Trobe University of Latin American Studies & Monash University Centra of Southeast Asian Studies, n.d. Elphick, Peter, Far Eastern File: The Intelligence War in the Far East 1930–1945, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1997. ——, Singapore: The Pregnable Fortress. A Study in Deception, Discord and Desertion, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1995. Elsbree, Willard H, Japan’s Role in Southeast Asian Nationalist Movements 1940 to 1945, New York: Russell & Russel, 1953. Emergency Directives issued by Director of Operations, Federation of Malaya, Secret Nos. 1–21, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1952. Eng Ming Chin (Suraini Abdullah), Regimen Ke-10 dan Kermerdekaan (‘The 10th Regiment MNLA and Independence’), Hong Kong: Nan Dao Publishers, 1998. Farouk, Omar, ‘The Historical & Transnational Dimensions of Malay-Muslim Separatism in Southern Thailand’ in Lim Joo Hock and Vani, S (eds), Armed Separatism in Southeast Asia, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1984. Federation of Malaya and its Police, The, 1782–1952, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1952. Federation of Malaya, A Short History of the Malayan Communist Party, (Secret), Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, January 1955. ——, Annual Report Federation of Malaya Police 1951, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1952. ——, Annual Report 1948, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1949. ——, Annual Report for 1949 Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1950. ——, Annual Report for 1950, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1951. ——, Annual Report for 1951, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1952. ——, Annual Report for 1952, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1953.

310

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

——, Annual Report for 1953, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1954 ——, Annual Report for 1954, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1955. ——, Police Staff List, 1955. ——, Report of the Police Mission to Malaya, March 1950, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1950. ——, The Communist Threat to the Federation of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Government Printer, 1959 (Kuala Lumpur Legislative Council Paper No. 23 of 1959). ——, The Police Ordinance with Rules: The Police Regulations 1952, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1952. Fisk, EK, Hardly ever a dull moment, Canberra: National Centre for Development Studies, The Australian National University, 1995. Gebauer, David & Price, Liz, ‘Gua Temporong’, Journal Malayan Branch Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. LXVIII, 1955. Griffiths, Sir Percival, To Guard my People: The History of the Indian Police, London: Ernest Benn Ltd, 1971. Guardian (Manchester). Gullick, JM, Malaysia, London: Ernest Benn Ltd, 1969. Hack, Karl, ‘British Intelligence and Counter-Insurgency in the Era of Decolonisation: The Example of Malaya’, Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 14, No. 2, (1999), pp. 124–55. ——, Defence and Decolonisation in Southeast Asia: Britain, Malaya and Singapore, 1941–1968, London: Curzon Press, 2001. Hall, Richard V, A Spy’s Revenge, Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 1987. ——, The Secret State: Australia’s Spy Industry, Stanmore, NSW & N. Melbourne: Cassell Australia Ltd, 1978. Han Suyin, ‘Malaya: The Emergency in its Seventh Year’, New York: The Reporter, XI, December 16, 1954, pp. 23–27. ——, …and the Rain my Drink, London: Panther Books Ltd, 1956. Hawkins, Lewis James, ‘British Administration of Malaya during the Emergency, 1948–1957’, MA History thesis, University of Delaware, June 1970. Harding, Sir John & Gent, GEJ (eds), The Dominions Office and Colonial Office List for 1940, London & Unstable: Waterloo & Sons Ltd, 1941. Harish, SP, ‘Insurgency in Southern Thailand: Ethnic or Religious Conflict?’, Singapore, Institute of Defence & Strategic Studies, Nanyang Technological University, 14 April 2005. Harper, TN, ‘Health, Welfare and the Reconstruction of the Colonial State in Malaya 1945–1948’, paper presented at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Conference, Centre for Advanced Studies, National University of Singapore, 1–3 February 1989. ——, The End of Empire and the Making of Malaya, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

bibliography

311

Haswell, Jack, British Military Intelligence, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973. Hatton, Tim, The Tock Tock Birds: A Spider in the Web of International Terrorism, Sussex: The Book Guild Ltd, 2004. Heather, Randall W, ‘Intelligence and Counter-Insurgency in Kenya 1952–56’, Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 5, No. 3, July 1990, pp. 57–83. The Herald (Melbourne). Hillam, Ray Cole, ‘Insurgent Communism: the Problem of Counter-Measures in Malaya, Vietnam and the Philippines’, PhD thesis, The American University, Washington, DC, 1964 Hurst, Steve, ‘The Crisis in the Malayan Police Force. 1948–52’, MA dissertation, Department of Modern History, Royal Holloway College, University of London, September 1999. Jackson, Robert, The Malayan Emergency: The Commonwealth Wars, 1948–1966, London & New York: Routledge, 1991. Jeffery, Keith, ‘Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence: Some Reflections on the British Experience’, Intelligence & National Security, Vol. 2, No. 1, January 1987. Jones, RV, Reflections on Intelligence, London: Mandarin Paperbacks, 1990. Jukes, Geoffrey, The Soviet Union in Asia, Sydney: Angus & Robertson (Publishers) Pty. Ltd in association with The Australian Institute of International Affairs, 1973. Jumper, Roy Davis Linville, Death Waits in the ‘Dark’: The Senoi Praaq, Malaysia’s Killer Elite, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2001. Kaur, Amarjit, Historical Dictionary of Malaysia, Metuchen, & London: Scarecrow Press Inc, 1993. Keesings Contemporary Archives Kennedy, Brian, ‘Templer in Malaya. The Architect of Independence’, BA (Hons) thesis, Faculty of Social Sciences, Flinders University of South Australia, 1998. Kennedy, DE, The Security of Southern Asia, London: Chatto & Windus for the Institute for Strategic Studies, 1965. Kiernan, VG, Colonial Empires and Armies 1815–1960, Shroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing Ltd, 1998. Komer, RW, The Malayan Emergency in Retrospect: Organisation of a Successful Counterinsurgency Effort, Santa Monica, Calif: Rand Corporation, 1972. Kratoska, Paul H, The Japanese Occupation of Malaya 1941–1945, St. Leonard’s NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1998. Lam Swee, My Accusation: Written Against the Blind Struggle of the Malayan Communist Party, Kuala Lumpur: Director of Information Services, 1951. Laws of Malaya, Act 18, Internal Security Act 1960, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1961. Leary, John, The Importance of the Orang Asli in the Malayan Emergency 1948–1960, Working Paper No. 56, Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, 1989.

312

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Lee Kuan Yew, From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965–2000, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000. Lee Ting Hui, Communist Organisation in Singapore: Its Techniques of Manpower Mobilisation and Management, 1948–66, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Field Report Series No. 14, 1976. ——, The Open United Front: The Communist Struggle in Singapore 1954–1966, Singapore: South Seas Society, 1996. Leong Chee Woh, Scorpio: The Communist Eraser, Taiwan: Lao Bai & Tang Publishing House, 1996. Lewis, GED, Out East in the Malay Peninsula, Petaling Jaya: Penerbit Fajar Bakti Sdn. Bhd, 1991. Lianhe Zaobao (Singapore). Lim Cheng Leng, The Story of a Psy-Warrior Tan Sri Dr CC Too, Selangor: Lim Cheng Leng (privately published), 2000. Lim, Peter, ‘Tan Sri Dr Too Chee Chew: A Distinguished Alumnos’, in The Alumni, No. 1, September 1992. Lyttelton, Oliver, Viscount Chandos, The Memoirs of Lord Chandos, London: The Bodley Head Ltd, 1962. Madoc, GC, ‘Jungle Forts’, Kuala Lumpur: The Straits Times Annual, 1961. Malayan Establishment Staff List as at 1 July 1941, London: Colonial Office, 1942. Malayan Establishment Staff List 1948, London: Colonial Office, 1949. Malayan Police Magazine (Kuala Lumpur). Mao Zedong, Primer on Guerrilla War, translated by SB Griffith II in TN Greene (ed), The Guerrilla and How to Fight Him, New York: Frederick A Praeger, 1962. Margeson, J, Lieut-Colonel, A Short History of the Royal Regiment of Wales, Cardiff, 1977. Maxwell, Jackson, Ferguson, JF, and Jackson, RL, Report of the Police Mission to Malaya, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1950. McIntosh, Amy, Journey into Malaya, London: China Inland Mission, 1956. McKnight, David, Australia’s Spies & their Secrets, Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1994. Merz, Caroline (ed), Wise after the Event, Norwich & Los Angeles: Tagman Press, 2003. Miller, Harry, Jungle War in Malaya: The Campaign against Communism, 1946–60, London: Arthur Barker, 1972. Mohamed Reduan Haji Aslie and Mohd Radzuan, Haji Ibrahim, Polis Diraaja Malaysia: Sejarah, Peranan dan Cabaran (‘The Royal Malaysian Police: History, Role and Challenge’), Kuala Lumpur: Kumpulan Karangkraf Sdn. Bhd., 1987. Morah, Patrick, ‘The History of the Malayan Police’, Journal Malayan Branch Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. XXXVI, Pt. 2, No. 202, 1963. Morais, Victor J, Who’s Who in Malaysia, Petaling Jaya: 1965.

bibliography

313

Mountbatten, Vice-Admiral, The Earl of Burma, Post Surrender Tasks: Section ‘E’ of the Report to the Combined Chiefs of Staff by the Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia 1943–1945, London: HMSO, 1969. Moylan, Sir John, Scotland Yard and the Metropolitan Police, London & New York: Putnam & Co., 1934. Muggeridge, Malcolm, Chronicles of Wasted Time 2: The Infernal Grove, London: Wm. Collins Sons & Co, 1973. National Intelligence Machinery, London: The Stationery Office Ltd, 2000. The New Straits Times (Kuala Lumpur). The New York Times. Ng Ngee Seng, ‘Sir Henry Gurney as High Commissioner in Malaya (6 October 1948 to 6 October 1951): A Critical Assessment’, MA History, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, November 2002. Nik Anuar Nik Mahmud, ‘The Malayan–Thai Police Border Agreement, 1949. The Practicalities of the Malayan–Thai Border Cooperation’, p 449, in Proceedings of the 4th International Conference of Thai Studies, 11–13 May 1990, Volume II, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Kunming, China. O’Ballance, Edgar, Malaya: The Communist Insurgent War, 1948–1960, London: Faber & Faber Ltd, 1966. O’Toole, GJA, Honorable Treachery: A History of US Intelligence, Espionage, and Covert Action from the American Revolution to the CIA, New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991. The Observer (London). Onraet, René, ‘Building the Special Branch’, The Straits Times, 18 December 1946. Osipov, V, ‘Templer Loses His Temper’, Soviet Press Translations, 8:3:1953. Park, Bum-Joon Lee, ‘The British Experience of Counterinsurgency in Malaya: The Emergency 1948–1960’, PhD dissertation, The American University, 1965. Pillai, MGG, ‘Taking on the Malay Reds’, Asiaweek (Hong Kong), 22 July 1977. Porch, Douglas, The French Secret Service: From the Dreyfus Affair to the Cold War, New York: Farrer, Strauss & Giroux, 1995. Postgate, Malcolm, R, Operation Firedog: AirSupport in the Malayan Emergency, 1948–1960, London: HMSO, 1992. Pugsley, Christopher, From Emergency to Confrontation: The New Zealand Armed Forces in Malaya and Borneo 1949–65, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pye, Lucien W, Guerrilla Communism in Malaya: Its Social and Political Meaning, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1956. Rahman, Abdul, Putra al-Haj, Looking Back, Kuala Lumpur: Pustaka Antara, 1977. Raj, JJ Dato’, The War Years and After: A Personal Account of Historical Relevance, Kuala Lumpur: Pelanduk Publications, 1995.

314

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Ramakrishna, Kumar, ‘Content, Credibility and Context: Propaganda, Government Surrender Policy and the Malayan Communist Terrorist Mass Surrenders of 1958’, Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 14, No. 4, 1999, pp. 242–66. ——, ‘Telling the Simple People the Truth: The Role of the Strategic Propaganda in the Malayan Emergency’, Malayan Branch Royal Asiatic Society, Kuala Lumpur, Vol., LXXV, Pt. 1, 2002, pp. 49–68. ——, ‘The Making of a Malayan Propagandist: the Communists, the British and C.C. Too’, Malayan Branch Royal Asiatic Society, Kuala Lumpur, Vol. LXXIII Pt. 1, 2000. Ratanachaya, General Dato’ Kitti, The Communist Party of Malaya, Malaysia and Thailand, Bangkok, Duangkaew Publishing House, 1996. Roberts, Adam, ‘The British Armed Forces and Politics: A Historical Perspective’, in Cynthia H Enloe and Ursula Semin-Panzer (eds), The Military, the Police and Domestic Order: British and Third World Experiences, London: Richardson Institute for Conflict and Peace Research, 1976. Robertson, Eric, The Japanese File, Hong Kong: Heinemann Educational Books (Asia) Ltd, 1979. Robinson, Henry Howe, The Intelligence Establishment, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970. Salient Operational Aspects of Paramilitary Warfare in Three Asian Areas, Washington, DC, Department of the Army, Office of the Asst. Chief of Staff, 1954. Sammons, Lloyd Foster, Captain US Army Reserve, Field Marshall Sir Gerald Walter Robert Templer: The General who Tamed the Communist Threat in Malaya, Quantico, VA: Marine Corps Development & Education Command, Command and Staff College, Marine Corps University Archives, 25 March 1986. Sanger, Clyde, Malcolm MacDonald: Bringing an End to Empire, Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995. Sarkesian, Sam C, Unconventional Conflicts in a New Security Era: Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, Westport, Connecticut & London, Greenwood Press, 1993. Scurr, John, The Communist Insurrection in Malaya, London: Osprey Publishing Ltd, 1982. Sharpley, Cecil, The Great Delusion: The Autobiography of an ex-Communist Leader, London: W Heinemann Ltd, 1952. Sheppard, Mubin, Taman Budiman: Memoirs of an Unorthodox Civil Servant, Kuala Lumpur: Heinemann (Asia), 1979. Shockley, Henry A, ‘The Reluctant Raj: Britain’s Security Role in Malaysia (1940–1970)’, PhD dissertation, The American University, 1973. Short, Anthony, The Communist Insurrection in Malaya 1948–60, London: Frederick Muller Ltd, 1975 (reprinted by the Cultured Lotus Press, Singapore, under the title In Pursuit of Mountain Rats). Sin Jew Jit Poh (Singapore).

bibliography

315

Sinclair, Georgina, ‘Sir Arthur Young: The Quintessential English Policeman, Pt. 2, Chief Constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary October 1969–November 1970,’ Proceedings of the Royal Ulster Constabulary Historical Society, Spring, 1999, pp. v–viii. Singapore Annual Report 1948, Singapore: Government Printer, 1949. Singapore Annual Report 1957, Singapore: Government Printing Office, 1959. Singapore Standard Smith, JB, Portrait of a Cold Warrior, Second Thoughts of a Top CIA Officer, New York: GP Putnam Sons, 1976. SOE: Operations in the Far East: An Introductory Guide to the Newly Released Records of the Special Operations Executive in the Public Records Office, London: Public Records Office, 1993. The Star (Kuala Lumpur). Starner Francis L, ‘Communism in Singapore and Malaya. A Multifront Struggle’, in Scalapino, Robert A. (ed), The Communist Revolution in Asia: Tactics, Goals and Achievements, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1969. The Statesman (London). Stockwell, AJ, ‘British Imperial Policy and Decolonization in Malaya 1942–52’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 13, i, October 1984, pp. 68–87. ——, ‘Policing during the Malayan Emergency’, in Anderson, David M and Killingray, David (eds), Policing and Decolonisation: Nationalism, Politics and the Police, 1945–1965, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992, pp. 105–26. ——, British Policy and Malay Politics during the Malayan Union Experiment 1942–1948, Kuala Lumpur: MBRAS Monograph No. 8, 1979. The Straits Budget (Singapore). The Straits Echo and Times of Malaya. The Straits Times (Singapore). Stuart, Francis, Towards Coming of Age: A Foreign Service Odyssey, Nathan, Queensland: Centre for the Study of Australian-Asia Relations, Griffiths University, 1989. Stubbs, Richard, Hearts and Minds in Guerrilla Warfare: The Malayan Emergency 1948–60, Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1989. Sunderland, Riley, Organising Counterinsurgency in Malaya 1947–1960, Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, 1964. Taplin, Will L, ‘Six General Principles of Intelligence’, Intelligence & National Security, 3(4), 1989. Thambipillay, R (ed), Commemorative Book on 50th Anniversary of the Malayan Emergency (1948–1960), Ipoh: Perak Planters’ Association Publication, 1998. Thambipillay, R, The Malayan Police Force in the Emergency 1948–1960, Ipoh, privately published, 2003.

316

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Threfall, Adrian, ‘The Malayan Emergency. An Historiographic Analysis’, BA Hons. Thesis, School of Social Sciences, Victoria University, Melbourne, 2003. Thurston, Anne, Records of the Colonial Office, Dominions Office, Commonwealth Relations Office and Commonwealth Office, London: HMSO, 1995. The Times (London). Todd, Paul & Black, Jonathan, Global Intelligence: The World’s Intelligence Services Today, London: ZED Books Ltd, 2003. Too, CC, ‘The Communist Party of Malaya and its Attempts to Capture Power—Part One: Armed struggle that was doomed to fail’, New Sunday Times, 3 December 1989, pp. 10–11. ——, Notes on History of the Communist Party of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Library, 1990 (microfilm). Toohey, Brian and Pinwell, William, Oyster: The Story of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, Port Melbourne: Wm. Heinemann Australia, 1989. Tracey, Michael, A Variety of Lives: A Bibliography of Sir Hugh Greene, London: Bodley Head, 1983. Trenowden, Ian, Operations Most Secret. SOE: The Malayan Theatre, London: William Kimber, 1978. Tugwell, M, ‘Terrorism and Propaganda Problems and Response’ in Paul Wilkinson and Alasdair M Stewart (eds), Contemporary Research on Terrorism, Aberdeen University Press, 1987. United States Department of State, The Role of the Communists in Malaya, Washington, DC, Department of State, Division of Research for the Far East, (Secret) OIR Report No. 3780, 16 March 1947. United States Central Intelligence Agency, Federation of Malaya, National Intelligence Estimate No. 64–58 [sic], 14 January 1958 (Secret), Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 1958. Vasu, Norman, ‘Thailand’s Restive South. Time to Acknowledge the Multiplicity of Thainess’, Singapore, Institute of Defence & Strategic Studies, Nanyang Technological University, 22 June 2005. Wan Hamzah Awang (Wahba), Detik Sejarah Rundingan Baling (‘Account of the Baling Conference’), Kuala Lumpur: Utusan Publications Distributors Sdn. Bhd, 1985. Warner, Denis, Out of the Gun, London, Hutchinson, 1956. West, Nigel, MI5: British Security Service Operations 1909–45, New York: Stein & Day, 1981. ——, The Circus: MI5 Operations 1945–72, New York: Stein & Day, 1983. White, Nicholas J, ‘Capitalism and Counter-insurgency? Business and Government in the Malayan Emergency, 1948–57’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 32/1, 1998, pp. 149–77. Who Was Who, London, A & C Black Publishers, 1996. Who’s Who, London: Adam & Black, 1960.

bibliography

317

Wright, Peter with Paul Greengrass, Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer, New York: Viking Press, 1987. Yong Chin Fatt, The Origins of Malayan Communism, Singapore: South Seas Society, 1997. Yoong Siew Wah, ‘Reminiscences of a Singapore Special Branch Officer’, unpublished ms, 1984. Yuen Yuet Leng, ‘Operation Ginger: A Federal Food Denial Operation (The Ginger Story) 16 January 1956–9 March 1959’, unpublished ms. ——, Operation Ginger, Kuala Lumpur: Vinpress Sdn. Bhd., 1998. Zakaria Haji Ahmad, ‘The Police and Political Development in Malaysia: Change, Continuity and Institution Building of a ‘Coercive’ Apparatus in a Developing Ethnically Divided Society’, PhD dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, May 1977. ——, ‘The Police and Political Development in Malaysia’, in Zakaria Haji Ahmad (ed), Government and Politics of Malaysia, Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1977. Zainon Ahmad, ‘Telling the Full Story of Merdeka’, Sun Weekend (Penang), 10–11 September 2005. Documentaries/Videos ‘Special Operations Executive. Arms and the Dragon’, Videofilm BBC, London, (V8/84) ‘Malaya: The Undeclared War (East Special)’, BBC2 Film, London (NBH/1.001D), 19 June 1998 ‘Majlis Forum Darurat 1948–1960’ (‘Forum on the Malayan Emergency 1948–1960’), Videofilm, Arkib Negara, Kuala Lumpur, 18 November 1992 I Love Malaya, Documentary film about former communist guerrillas who returned to Malaya after signing of 1989 peace accord. (Producers: Chan Kah Mei, Ho Choon Hiong, Eunice Lau, Christopher Len & Wong Eng Eng), ISEAS Singapore Film Programme, 25 November 2006 ‘Empire Warriors. The Intelligence War’(Malayan Emergency), BBC2 Film, London, 3 December 2004 Lelaki Komunis Terakhir (‘The Last Communist’), Part-documentary film about Chin Peng , (Director Amir Mohammed), Kuala Lumpur, May 2006

318

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Reproduced from Malaya's Secret Police 1945-60: The Role of the Special Branch in the Malayan Emergency by Leon Comber (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2008). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available at < http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg >

Index Abdullah, CD, 238n.13 aborigines, Malayan, see orang asli Admiralty System (intelligence grading), 84 (Table 3) Ahmad, Musa, 254, 265n.33 Allen, JF, 32, 63 (Chart 2) Allison, John M, 37 Arinitohev, AM, 15 ATOM (Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya, The), 11, 66, 77n.43, 86, 122 Australian Communist Party, 239n.28 Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), 204, 216n.19 Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), 204 Bain Norman, 32 Balan, RG (Roger), 54n.88, 100n.6, 187 Barling Talks, 284, 293n.47 Barlow, Jack, 4–5, 160–2, 171n.53 Barnett, T Harvey, 23n.53 Barry, Major JC, 31 Bedingham, FT, 165–6 Bedlington, Stanley S, 260, 267n.62 Bennett, C, 276 Bevan, Ernest, 107 Blades, EAG (Alan), 31, 33, 50n.31, 241n.48 Boucher, Lieut. Gen. Charles, 65–6, 75n.22 Bourne, Lieut. Gen. Sir Geoffrey, 88, 212, 255, 290n.9 Brent, David, 126n.20 Briggs, Lieut. Gen. Sir Harold, 72n.1, 76n.26, 113, 120, 125, 127n.28, 136, 141–2, 147–72, 160, 167n.5, 172n.71, 173–4, 214, 286 Briggs Plan, 99, 113, 127n.28, 147–50, 151 (Chart 5), 156 (Chart 6), 164, 167,

168n.14, 180, 189, 197, 213–4, 219, 239n.24, 287–8 Brimmel, JH, 203 British Advisory Mission Vietnam (BRIAM), 4, 18n.4, 196n.74, 241n.47 British Military Administration Malaya (BMA), 25, 30 British Police Mission to South Vietnam, 4–5, 171n.53 Bryson, Hugh, 44–5 Captured Enemy Personnel (CEP), 4, 8, 79, 82, 98, 108, 122, 135, 138, 160–2, 199, 204–5 Carbonnell, WLR (Bill), 184, 195n.61, 273 Cassells, General Sir James, 262, 268n.72, 291n.25 Catling, Sir Richard, 114 Chan Fook Wing, 63 (Chart 2) Chin Aloysius, 238n.13, 257, 266n.33 Chin Peng, 2, 5, 16, 19n.11, 29, 69, 91, 94–5, 100n.13, 125n.11, 147, 150, 165, 169n.19, 219–23, 236–7, 238n.16, 246, 249, 252–4, 260, 262, 265n.32, 268n.65 and n.73, 270, 283–4, 293n.47 China, 16, 40, 69–70, 134, 139, 150, 152, 162, 209, 222–3, 242n.51, 249, 253–4 Chinese language, importance of, and training, 34, 71, 99, 107, 113–6, 127n.29, 128n.36, 137, 259 Chinese schools, 80, 129n.46, 142, 208–9, 216n.15 Christie, Ian D, 37 CIA, 16, 177, 203, 241n.49, 260 CID, see Malayan Police Clutterbuck, Major Gen. RL (Richard), 7, 19n.12 Cold War, 5, 15–16, 29, 160 Colonial Office Political Intelligence Summary, 97

319

320

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Colonial Office Review of Current Intelligence, 97 Communist Party (British), 15, 40, 54n.88, 112 Communist Party of Thailand, 250, 252–3 Communist Party of China (CCP), 253–4, 265n.31, 268n.65 Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) Anti-British National Liberation War, 10 Armed Work Force, 91, 142 Central Committee, 9, 14, 91, 100n.6, 125n.11, 159, 162, 165, 188, 207, 219, 222, 230, 236, 250, 252–6, 265n.33, 290n.6, 292n.31 couriers, 9, 79, 82, 100n.13, 142, 219, 222–5, 228, 231,235, 237, 239n.28 Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA), xix, 1, 14, 64, 70, 79, 89, 90 (Table 11), 163 (Chart 7), 275 (Table 11), 279 Malayan People’s Anti-British Army (MPABA), 14 Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), 14, 28, 87, 89, 94 Malayan Races Liberation Army (MRLA), 14 Min Yuen, 13, 22n.39, 45, 79, 81, 110, 141–2, 145n.24, 153, 160–1, 168n.9, 171n.42, 203, 206–7, 226, 228, 241n.46, 279, 281 organisation of CPM/MNLA, 9, 40–2, 45, 55n.88, 79, 90–5 (Chart 3), 110, 142, 162, 205, 214, 221, 224–5, 242n.51, 249–50, 252, 261, 268n.73, 270, 285 political and military organisation, 91–2 (Chart 3), 94 South Malayan Bureau, 9, 162 strength of CPM, 67, 69–70, 90–1 Town Committee (Singapore), 5, 10, 87–8, 220 Conference of Colonial Police Commissioners, 111–2, 127n.25, 291n.20 Conference of Communist and Workers’ Parties of Countries within Sphere of British Imperialism, 15, 100n.6 Conference of the Communist World Peace Council, 239n.23 Corridon, RB (Richard), 33, 51n.40, 187

couriers see Communist Party of Malaya Craig, RJW (Dick), 83, 91, 101n.15, 210 Critchley, TK, 276 Cross, Colonel, John, 70, 78n.47 Dalforce, 29, 48n.23 Dalley, Lieut. Col. JD (John), 29, 30–3, 39–41, 44, 49n.30, 59, 71 ‘dead-letter boxes’, 82, 87, 100n.13, 202, 208, 224–5, 260 Dempster, Fergie, 16 Deng Xiaoping, 265n.32 Dickinson, AH (Arthur), 26, 47n.8, 74n.9 Director of Intelligence, 131, 138, 157, 179–80, 188, 193n.35, 203, 209, 212, 255, 286–7 ‘domino theory’, 16, 23n.51 Dulles, Alan, 16 Duthie, JN (Ken), 61, 63 (Chart 2), 117, 128n.40 Edwards, Peter, 7 Elphinstone, W, 33 Emergency Operations Council, 271 Emergency Regulations, 38, 82 Exportkhleb, 23n.46 Fairburn, JE (John), 33, 228, 241n.49 Fairburn, William, 241n.49 FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), 126n.18 Federal Intelligence Committee (FIC), 185, 187–8 Feng Yeh Kim, 160, 172n.58 Fenner, Tan Sri Sir Claude, 61, 63 (Chart 2), 73n.9, 80, 85, 184, 195n.61, 200, 203, 210, 215n.6, 259 Fisk, EK, 196n.74 Force 136, 14, 22n.41, 73n.9, 94–5, 220–1 Foulger, Lieut. Col. RE, 46n.3 ‘Four Square Agreement‘, 16 French Indo-China, 26, 67, 95, 178 Frontier Intelligence Bureau, 137 Gage, Sir Barclay, 259, 266n.35, 267n.60 Galloway, Lieut. Gen., 75n.22 Gent, Sir Edward, 33–4, 37–40, 44–5, 65, 74n.9, 75n.17 Gimson, Sir Franklin, 20n.19, 43, 119

index

Glass, Alan, 256 Goh Chin Kim, 87–8 Gray, Lieut. Col. WN (Nicol), 65–6, 71, 75n.19, 75n.20, 112–3, 116–7, 120, 123–5, 128n.40, 138, 148, 174–6, 181–3, 251 Greene, HC, Sir Hugh, 155, 157–8, 178 Gullick, John, 116, 128n.39 Gurney, Sir Henry, 59, 65–6, 68, 70–1, 85, 97, 108, 116, 119–20, 125, 126n.14, 132, 147, 175–6, 182, 280 Hardy, S (Tim), 256, 266n.45 Harper, RWE, 251, 255, 264n.45 Hatton, TE (Tim), 181, 191n.11, 207–8, 272–3 Herren, Louis, 224, 239n.27 Holding Centre, 85–7, 101n.25, 136, 197, 228, 230, 232, 235 Home Guard, 77n.42 Hone, Sir Ralph, 35, 42, 56n.97, 59 Hong Kong, 15, 26, 113–4, 119, 127n.30 Hor Lung, 162, 164–6, 172n.56, 172n.58 Horne, DJ, 274 Huang Wei, 254 HUMINT (human intelligence), 8, 79, 122, 270, 283, 285, 288 Hussain, Tan Sri Mohd, 200, 217n.38 Indonesia, 16, 42 Information Research Department (IRD), 160 International Liaison Department (ILD), 254 Jantzen, Bob, 160 Japan, and Japanese, 12, 14, 26, 136 espionage, 47n.11 Japanese Protection Village Program, 150, 169n.19 kempetai, 27–8, 64, 95 Japanese, surrender, 27 occupation of Malaya, 64–5 Jeffery, Keith, 66, 82 Jeffery, Maj. Gen. Michael, 269 Jenkin, Sir William, 88, 102n,36, 113, 117, 120, 123–5, 128n.43, 130n.67, 130n.69, 131–45, 138–40, 142, 143n.1, 153, 174,

321

176, 179, 182–4, 197, 200, 210, 214, 219, 255–6, 286–7 Johnson, Col. WC, 107–8, 110, 125n.2 Joint Intelligence Committee (Far East). 32, 79, 96–7 Joint Intelligence Committee (London), 32, 96–7, 108, 176–7, 180 jungle forts, 189, 273, 291n.17 Kang Sheng, 234 Kemp, Cyril, 203 kempetai see, Japan, Japanese Khan, Inspector Ahmad, 187 Khaw Kai Boh, 41, 56n.96, 227, 240n.41 Killearn, Lord, 32, 78n.51 Kirke, CMJ, 33 Kitson, General Sir Frank, 19n.12 Knott, T, 32 Komer, RW, 61 Korean War, 16 Kuomintang (KMT), 37, 39–41, 54n.86, 55n.95, 75n.17, 95, 110, 118, 129n.48, 226–7, 240n.41, 249, 264, 293n.44 Lai Teck, 32, 39, 41–2, 50n.34, 80, 95, 104n.65, Lam Swee, 159 Langworthy, Lieut. Col. HB, 44, 46n.3, 65, 116 Larby, KB, 33 Lee, Irene, 228–30, 242n.56 Lee Kuan Yew, 51n.40 Lee Meng (Lee Ten (Tien) Tai), 219, 223, 228–37, 238n.6, 244n.74, 281 Leighton, Eric, 203 letter interception, 85, 225 Leung Chee Woh, 115, 216n.25, 279–81 Lewis, GED, 137 Liew Yit-Fun, 37, 52n.66 Lim Hong Bee, 54n.88 Liu Shao-chi, 11 Livingstone, DN, 33 Local Security Officers (LSOs), 32, 34, 215n.14 Lockhart, Gen. Sir Rob, 84 (Table 3), 120–1, 129n.55, 183, 186, 216n.27 Lyttelton, Oliver (Viscount Chandos), 119–21, 123, 173–5, 178–9, 191n.16

322

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

Machin-Cooke, PE (Peter), 255, 266n.36 MacDonald, The Rt. Hon. Malcolm, 33, 38–40, 42, 44–5, 70–1, 78n.51, 97, 119, 175, 234, 247 MacGillvray, Sir Donald Charles, 173, 204, 212, 271, 273, 290n.9, 291n.18 McLean, Lieut. Col. JM, 31 Madoc, GC (Guy), 31, 139, 143, 152, 180, 184, 190, 194n.58, 197, 199–200, 203, 206, 209, 212, 217n.41, 256, 287 Martin, Arthur, 193n.38, 179, 204 Malay Nationalist Party (MNP), 39, 40, 99 Malaya, population, 34, 51n.48, 60, 73n.6, 81 Malayan Democratic Union (MDU), 39–40 Malayan Chinese Association (MCA), 118, 120, 133, 76, 227, 240n.39, 269 Malayan Chinese Brigade, 118 Malayan Chinese secret service, 118 Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) see Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) Malayan People’s Anti-British Army (MPABA). see Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) see Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) Malayan Police, xix, 34, 39, 61, 64, 68, 131 Auxiliary Police, 77n.34, 118, 182 British inspectors, 49n.27 casualties in Malayan Emergency, 6 (Table 1), 70 Chinese in police, 34, 60–1 CID (Criminal Investigation Dept.), 3, 13, 25, 28, 32, 34, 43, 59, 60–1, 62 (Chart 1), 63 (Chart 2), 88, 117, 131–2, 138, 182–5, 190, 194n.50, 197, 214, 287 Field Force, 73, 259, 276, 278 jungle squads, 76n.33, 259 organisation of, 62 (Chart 1) Police Frontier Force, 85 Police Intelligence Bureau, 124, 138 Special Branch, xix, 1–9, 11–2, 16–7, 26, 46, 59, 61, 62 (Chart 1), 63 (Chart 2), 64–8, 71–2, 76n.30, 85, 88–9, 96,

98, 107–8, 110–12, 115, 117, 119–22, 128n.37, 131–2, 134, 136–7, 139, 140 (Chart 4), 144n.13, 147, 149–50, 153–4, 156 (Chart 6), 156–9, 162, 167, 170n.30, 172n.67, 173, 175, 178, 180–3, 186–8, 189–90, 191n.9, 194n.50, 197, 205–6, 208, 213–5, 219, 223, 230, 232, 235, 240n.41, 245–8, 251, 253, 269, 279, 282–4, 285, 287–8 Special Branch Border Section (Penang), 256–7, 260 Special Branch Planning Committee (Federal), 206 Special Branch Training School, 17, 141, 197, 200–1, 204, 208, 210, 215n.9, 237, 259, 273–4, 282 Special Constables, 76n.34, 128n.37, 149, 182 Special Operations Volunteer Force (SOVF), 4 strength of Malayan Police, 49n.27 (1948), 60, 68 (May 1949), 70 (1951–2), 72n.4 (1952–3), 132–3,182, 184–5, 213, 237 Malayan Races Liberation Army (MRLA) see Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) MSS (Malayan Security Service), 1, 3, 12, 15, 17, 25–57, 59, 71, 75n.17, 185, 241n.49, 286 Malayan–Thai Special Branch Office, Songkhla, 257 Mao Zedong, 29, 265n.32, 290n.6, 292n.39 Marshall, David, 284 Mellersh, Air Vice-Marshall FJW, 20n.19 Metropolitan Police Special Branch (London), 3, 64, 74n.12, 74n.13, 111, 274 MI5 (British Security Service), 3, 17, 17n.2, 26, 30, 32, 35, 40, 43, 79, 96–7, 111–2, 126n.18, 141, 179, 184–6, 189, 193n.38, 199, 209, 274 Security Liaison Officers (SLOs), 50n.36, 96, 112, 141, 179, 186, 203 Military Intelligence Officers (MIOs), 7, 89, 111, 154, 187, 203, 207, 287 MI6 (British Intelligence Service), 16–7, 17n.2, 23n.46, 32, 40, 79, 83, 96–7, 101n.15, 112, 179, 193n.38, 200, 203, 237n.2, 241n.49, 256–7

index

Miller, Henry, 8, 70 Min Yuen see Communist Party of Malaya Morgan, Major KS, 30, 48n.29 Morris, NG (Nigel), 38, 51n.38 Morton, JP (Jack), 125, 127n.23, 179, 185, 188–9, 193n.35 194n.50, 200, 207, 209, 287 Muller, Col. WA, 73n.7, 120, 129n.53 Nan Zao Zhi Chun (‘Spring in the South Seas’), 94 New Villages, 77n.42, 79, 82, 149, 152, 154, 168n.14, 168n.9, 168n.14, 169n.20, 174, 213, 276, 279, 285 Noone, Pat, 195n.74 Noone, ROD (Richard), 188, 195n.74 O’Connell, BMB (Basil), 61, 63 (Chart 2), 74n.10, 117, 128n.40 Oldfield, Sir Maurice, 16, 203, 237n.2 Onraet, René, H. de, 5, 30 Operation Bintang, 276–7 Operation Ginger, 263, 269, 276, 278, 280–1, 292n.32 Operation Service, 181 orang asli, 188–9, 223, 225, 262, 279, 291n.17 Owen, Maj. Gen. David Lloyd, 176, 178, 192n.23 Palestine Police, 60, 65, 75n.20, 116, 128n.37 Palmer, DS (Desmond), 228, 241n.47 Peace Agreement, 262, 292n.39 Peace Villages, 236 Peterson, EDC (Eric), 158, 160, 170n.39 Phao Sriyanondh, Gen., 251, 253, 255, 266n.35 Phibun Songkhran, Field Marshall, 247, 263n.6, 266n.35 Phoenix Park, Singapore, 39, 96 Pope, Eric, 257 Psychological Warfare, 60, 69, 90, 147, 155, 158, 160–1, 164, 170n.31, 171n.47, 186, 213 Public Service Commission, 271 Pye, Lucien W, 8

323

‘Q’ Operations, 4, 165, 172n.67, 278, 280, 285, 292n.31 Quixley, RW, 33 Rahman, Tunku Abdul, 41, 162, 164, 172n.58, 176, 212, 261, 271–3, 281, 284, 293n.47, 293n.48 Razak, Dato Abdul, 261 Report of Police Mission to Malaya, 43, 116 rewards, 135 (Table 7), 136, 154, 162, 220, 280, 285 rubber, and rubber estates, 14, 23n.44, 36, 120, 124, 130n.70, 149, 180 Rumsey, Brigadier LC, 274–5 Russia see Soviet Union Ryves, HTB (Harvey), 33, 51n.39, 199–200, 210, 217n.38 Sambanthamurthi, Inspector TS, 99 Saris Thanarat, Field Marshall, 261, 266n.35 Scott, Gordon, 256 Security Intelligence Far East (SIFE), 16, 40, 75, 96, 185, 200, 237n.2 Security Liaison Officers (SLOs) see MI5 Senoi Pra’aq, 189 Short, Anthony, 25, 35, 39, 71 Sillitoe, Sir Percy, 43, 112 Sinclair, Sir John, 16 Singapore, 5, 8, 15–6, 27, 35, 37, 44, 187, 242n.51 Singapore Police, 27, 29–30, 241n.49 Special Branch (Singapore), 5, 9, 10, 12 16, 25, 27, 30, 42, 95, 95, 102n.32, 185–7, 219–20, 228–9, 240n.41, 241n.49 Sheppard, Tan Sri Dato’ Mubin, 41 Siu Mah, 280–1 Sizov, Papel Ivanovich, 15 Slim, Field Marshall Sir William, 66, 112–4, 116, 119, 121, 127n.26, 183 Smith, RG (Bob), 257–60, 267n.50 Soh Chee Tham, 260, 268n.64 South Malayan Bureau see Communist Party of Malaya Soviet Union, 14–5, 40, 112, 160

324

MALAYA’S SECRET POLICE 1945–60

squatters, 67, 72n.1, 82, 109, 113, 119, 126n.13, 127n.28, 147, 149–50, 152, 167, 168n.13 Stafford, W (Bill), 37, 52n.65 Starner, Francis, 5 Stuart, Francis, 32 Sun Lai Foong, 165–6 Surrendered Enemy Personnel (SEPs), 4, 7–9, 82–3, 98, 108, 122, 135–6, 138, 142, 154–5, 159–61, 162, 165, 199, 204–5, 221, 231–2, 277–8, 280 (Table 13), 285 Sutcliffe, D, 203 Sym, HB, 30

‘turning operations’, 81, 100n.8, 102n.31, 188, 242n.53, 278, 285, 292n.31 trade unions, 35, 75n.17, 80–1, 139, 140 (Chart 4), 161, 197, 293n.44 Singapore Federation of Trade Unions (SFTU), 36 Pan-Malayan Federation of Trade Unions (PMFTU), 36, 159 World Federation of Trade Unions (WFT), 11, 15 Tremlett, FI (Innes), 95, 104n.69

Tan, Cheng Lock (Tun Sir), 118, 120, 122, 129n.46, 133, 176, 227, 234, 240n.39, 284 Tan Hong, 164 Tay Ah Meng, 87–8 technical devices, 86 telephone tapping, 85 Templer, General Sir Gerald, 21n.30, 87, 125, 127n.23, 152, 167, 173–96, 190n.1, 191n.19, 192n.25, 192n.28, 200–1, 205–6, 210, 212, 214, 215n.11, 224, 234–5, 239n.27, 273, 283–4, 287–8 terrorists, definition of, 13 Thailand, Malaya–Thai frontier, xix, 9, 16, 85, 93, 125n.11, 136–7, 142–3, 152, 166, 184, 188, 205, 210, 214, 219, 221–4, 230, 236, 238n.13, 245–63, 246, 249, 250–1, 255, 262, 266n.35, 271, 274–6, 281, 258, 289, 292n.39 Bangkok, 245, 251, 253, 255, 260–1, 265n.33, 268n.65 Betong, 246, 249–50, 252–3, 260–1, 264n.9, 265n.33 Songkhla, 245, 248, 251–2, 255–61, 267n.53 Thompson, Sir Robert GK, 4, 19n.12, 150, 169n.16 tin, and tin mines, 14, 36, 120, 124, 130n.70, 149, 180, 276 Too, CC (Tan Sri Dr Chee Chew). 90, 158–9, 224 torture, 83–4

Walker, Arthur E, 37 Wallinger, Sir Geoffrey, 258 Warner, Denis, 252 Weir, DA (Douglas), 46n.8, 199 Whitaker, CC, 258 White, DG (Sir Dick), 17, 112, 126n.23, 179, 193n.35 ‘White Areas’, 152, 166, 169n.22, 208, 262, 276 Wilson, Chief Supt. AE (Frank), 172–4 Winterborn, Major PH, 40–1 wireless communications, 220–2, 238n.9, 238n.13 Wong Fook Kwang (alias Tit Fung), 229, 242n.51 Wong Lin Hong, 87–8 Woolnough, HJ, 33 Wu Tien Wang, 54n.88 Wylie, IS (Ian), 33–4, 51n.38, 61, 63 (Chart 2), 73n.9, 80, 85, 184, 291n.18 Wynne, ML, 30

Vietnam, and Vietnam War, 4, 5, 7, 16, 169n.16, 171n.53

Yoong Siew Wah, 102n.34, 102n.35, 241n.49 Young, Colonel Sir Arthur, 21n.30, 112, 167, 173–96, 190n.5, 287 Yuen, Dato’ Seri Yuet Leng, 52n.60, 292n.31, 292n.32 Zhen Bao (‘True News’), 10

Reproduced from Malaya's Secret Police 1945-60: The Role of the Special Branch in the Malayan Emergency by Leon Comber (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2008). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available at < http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg >

Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) (photo: Leon Comber)

Malayan Police Jungle Squad forming up outside Central Police Station, High Street, Kuala Lumpur (December 1948) before leaving on a jungle operation (photo: Leon Comber)

Malayan Police Jungle Squad (Selangor 1949) (photo: Leon Comber)

Police patrol with informer approaching hut used by communist guerrillas (Selangor 1949) (photo: Leon Comber)

British troops attacking hut (photo: Leon Comber)

Hut being burnt down (photo: Leon Comber)

Malayan Police parading with fixed bayonets on the Padang (now Freedom Square), Kuala Lumpur (1948) which brings out well the para-military aspect of the Malayan Police at the time (photo: Leon Comber)

Jack Barlow, Johore Special Branch officer, with Lau Hon, a surrendered communist guerrilla, 21 milestone, Yong Peng/Labis Road, Johore, en route to Kluang to examine captured communist documents (9 February 1951) (photo: Leon Comber)

Malayan Police escort for d e p o r t e d c o m m u n i s t supporters on board SS Anhui at Hoihow (Haikou), Hainan Island, China (May 1949). This is the only known occasion when Malayan police came face-to-face with the Chinese army (photo: Leon Comber)

Malayan Police Depot, Jalan Gurney, Kuala Lumpur, (1948–1960) (photo: Department of Information, Kuala Lumpur)

Special Branch Training School, Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman, Kuala Lumpur (1948–1960), an old dilapidated Chinese mansion which had seen better days, that was owned by a leading Malayan-Chinese family (photo: Department of Information, Kuala Lumpur)

Sir Edward Gent, Governor, Malayan Union, visiting the Police Officers Mess in June 1948 a few days before he left on his ill-fated flight to London (photo: Leon Comber) Malayan Police Officers Mess, Venning Road, Kuala Lumpur (1948–1960) (photo: Colonel RGW Lamb)

Colonel WN Gray, Commissioner of Police, Malaya, (1948–1952) (photo: Malayan Police Magazine) Colonel Arthur Young, Commissioner of Police, Malaya (1952–1953) (photo: Malayan Police Magazine)

Tan Sri Sir Claude Fenner, Inspector-General Royal Malaysian Police (1958–1966) (photo: Malayan Police Magazine)

WN Carbonnell, Commissioner of Police, Malaya, meeting General Phao Sriyanonth, Director-General Thai Police and Director of Thai Intelligence, at Kuala Lumpur airport (1954) (photo: Malayan Police Magazine)

Lieutenant General Sir Harold Briggs, who was employed in a civilian capacity as Director of Operations, Malaya (1950–1952) (photo: Malayan Police Magazine)

General Sir Gerald Templer, High Commissioner and Director of Operations, Malaya (1952–1954), addressing Malayan soldiers (photo: Department of Information, Kuala Lumpur)

Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra al-Haj, Malay(si)a’s first Prime Minister (photo: Leon Comber)

The Rt Hon Malcolm MacDonald, British Commissioner-General for SE Asia, relaxing in the grounds of his residence at Bukit Serene, Johore Bahru, one of the Sultan of Johore’s palaces (photo: Leon Comber)

Dato’ Seri Yuen Yuet Leng, a senior Special Branch officer, who played an important part in ‘Operation Ginger’ (see Chapter 12). He subsequently became Chief Police Officer, Perak and filled other senior posts in the Malayan Police (photo: Dato’ Seri Yuen Yuet Leng)

Old foes meet. Chin Peng, Secretary General, Communist Party of Malaya, and Leon Comber, at the Australian National University, Canberra (February 1999) (photo: Leon Comber)

Leong Chee Woh, a senior Special Branch officer, who with Dato’ Yuen played an important part in ‘Operation Ginger’. He retired from the police as Dy Director Special Branch (Operations) Malaysia (photo: Leong Chee Woh)

Lee Meng (Lee Ten Tian Tai), the ‘Grenade Girl’, a member of the CPM’s Perak State Committee, whose arrest and sentencing to death became an international cause célèbre (see Chapter 10) (photo: Department of Information, Kuala Lumpur)