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’. It demanded ‘special protective rights’ for the Malays in the economy, and perhaps marked the origins of what was to be the central platform of Malaysia’s post-colonial economic development.107 A host of other, often local, initiatives sprang from this, such as ‘people’s schools’ built by villagers, and commercial and co-operative ventures. This kind of activity was, to Dr Burhanuddin, ‘the stirring of dormant Malay soul’.108 It was also fertile ground for the Malay communists, who were well represented in these debates. A peasants’ front, or barisian tani, was founded and led by a graduate of Masyhur al-Islamiah in Penang, Musa Ahmad. He was later to become the chairman of the MCP. The communists involved were instructed to conceal their political leanings; it was now Party policy to ‘show its respect for the Malay race by giving them concessions’.109

This bred hostility and reaction. Conspicuous by their absence at Gunong Semanggol were the leaders of UMNO. They urged the more conservative ulama to boycott the conference. Dato Onn launched a stinging attack on it in a speech at Tangkak in his home state of Johore: ‘We have seen the danger that came out from the jungle in 1945, and today we are going to see the danger descending from the mountain [gunong] under the cloak of religion.’ His audience was in no doubt that he was referring in one breath to Gunong Semanggol and to the MPAJA. He would repeat this warning several times in the coming months.110 During this period the British and UMNO worked in concert to shore up their influence in the kampongs, particularly through the appointment of trained and steady men as village headmen who would be a mainstay of government control. Headmen possessed considerable influence over the lives of peasants, and API complained of their obstructionism. Fearing that, after the defeat of the Malayan Union, UMNO would disintegrate, Onn began to convert it into a national institution; but only in 1949 did the leadership agree to a single direct membership, and even then some affiliates opted out of it. UMNO was run from Onn’s office as chief minister of Johore, to the sultan’s increasing annoyance, and from the legal practice in Ipoh of its general secretary, Haji Abdul Wahab. UMNO was, throughout its history, to rely heavily on such personal and family networks.111 It was continually short of money, not least to meet the fees of its British legal adviser, Sir Roland Braddell. In May the Sultan of Johore bailed it out with a donation of $5,000.112 Perhaps the strongest grass-roots movement within UMNO was its women’s organization, but it struggled for recognition within the party. Dato Onn’s son, Captain Hussein bin Onn, recently demobbed from the British Indian Army, led the youth wing. A painstaking, conscientious man who would serve as the third prime minister of independent Malaysia, he lacked his father’s charisma. UMNO struggled to compete with API and AWAS to capture the imagination of the young. Instead, it relied on its power base in the State administrations to advance its cause.

A PEOPLE’S CONSTITUTION

In 1947, an empire was lost, and an empire regained by the British. But there remained powerful challengers to colonial authority in Southeast Asia. And whilst opposition forces seemed to be travelling different paths, by the end of the year the British and their Malay allies were haunted by the prospect that they might, against all expectations, converge. The search by ethnic minorities for belonging; the demand of trade unionists for material progress; the Malayan Communist Party’s need for allies, and the drive by the Malays for economic advancement all seemed to come together in the question of the new constitution for Malaya. A blueprint for a new Federation of Malaya had been agreed by the British, UMNO and the Malay rulers in secret talks throughout the second half of 1946. Although Malay leaders remained bitter about the Malayan Union episode – none more so than Dato Onn himself – they had defeated its most objectionable aspects. The Federation guaranteed the