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not yet a political party; it remained an umbrella organization without a direct membership, and Onn’s personality, projected through constant public speaking, dominated the national movement. But he became subject to increasing antagonism from those excluded from the constitutional discussions: from those in his own party, the Malay left and the non-Malays. The leaders of the Malay Nationalist Party and API also toured the kampongs. They never forgave Onn for his rejection earlier in the year of a greater free-Malay nation. By the end of 1946, from as far away as Mecca, Malay residents of the holy city of Islam attacked Onn as ‘Indonesia’s enemy No 1’.106 A battle was beginning for the hearts and minds of the kampong Malays. And when the new proposals were finally made public on Christmas Eve 1946, a storm of non-Malay protest would be unleashed.

But for the British in Malaya, in dramatic contrast to Burma, the last months of 1946 were a time of consolidation. The new federal proposals kept much of the impetus towards a strong central government, whilst placing a great deal of power within the states in the hands of the rulers’ chief ministers. The objective remained ‘a real coherence which will make possible progressive political development’, as Arthur Creech Jones, the former head of the Fabian Colonial Bureau who replaced Hall as Colonial Secretary in October, told Gent.107 By the end of the year, Creech Jones was able to reassure the cabinet that they had achieved the substance of what they wanted to achieve in the Union. Beyond Malaya, Britain’s outposts on Borneo were also coming under more direct colonial control. Vyner Brooke, the third White Rajah of Sarawak, whose private fiefdom extended some 730 kilometres along the western seaboard of Borneo, agreed to pass his rights to the crown. There were protests from his nephew and heir, Anthony Brooke, and from some of his people. With a small group of courtiers in Singapore, Anthony remained pretender to the throne, but a century of Anglo-Malay kingship had come to an end. The affairs of the British North Borneo Chartered Company were wound up, with generous compensation to its shareholders, but there was to be no relinquishing of British rights there in the face of the territorial claims of the neighbouring Philippines. With Malcolm MacDonald’s appointment the British struggled to find a convenient shorthand for this melange of empire. The term ‘Malaysia’ – used from the later nineteenth century by missionaries and revived in the 1930s by an American social scientist – seemed likely to alarm the people of Borneo; any move by the British to appropriate the old notion of ‘East Indies’ was likely to annoy the Dutch and the French. The idea of a ‘Governor General’ was also something of a misnomer, as MacDonald did not, strictly speaking, govern anything. A compromise phrase, ‘British South East Asia’, was felt to be ‘uncouth’. To Bevin it had a ‘somewhat “imperialistic” ring’. But, for want of a better alternative, it stuck.108

There was a growing ‘surfeit of Excellencies’ in Singapore at this time. In addition to the Governor General of British Southeast Asia and the governors of the Malayan Union and Singapore, responsible to the colonial secretary, there was now also a special commissioner for Southeast Asia, responsible to the Foreign Office. This was further recognition of the centrality of the region, and of the way in which its nationalist politics were intertwined with each other. This post began as a plan for a resident minister, but memories of the unhappy time of Duff and Diana Cooper in Singapore before the fall, were too tender. The appointee was Miles Lampson, Lord Killearn, a senior diplomat who had recently completed eight years’ service in Cairo. Killearn was also unhappy with his job title, considering it ‘reminiscent of the Salvation Army’, but he had a formidable brief which ranged from tackling the food emergency to acting as an honest broker in Indonesia. Killearn was a big man – 6 feet 5 inches tall and 18 stone – and was an imposing presence