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What particularly offended the Burmese government was not so much the illegality of these acts but the open contempt displayed towards it and towards the Burmese people. The pained Nu reported a case where young Karen levies had surrounded and neutralized a Burmese government military post and then publicly urinated in the direction of the soldiers to register their disdain.65 At this point Rangoon had very few cards to play. Rather than redeploying its scarce troops, let alone putting at issue the loyalty of the Karen battalion, the government had to bargain for time politically. It reopened talks on the question of Karen autonomy in humiliating circumstances and hoped for the best. It also promoted Smith Dun from army commander-in-chief to commander of all the country’s armed forces. This pacified the Karens under arms and persuaded them that their home villages were not likely to come under immediate assault from the Burmese. Most of them were anyway inclined to give the government the benefit of the doubt and were much more hostile to the communists than to the socialist government.

There still remained the question of Force 136. ‘I think we shall have to try to stop all this Force 136 plotting’, noted Peter Murray at the Foreign Office.66 The officials then began to try to put out the fire themselves. They alerted the government of India to Tulloch’s presence in Calcutta. In London, they planned to have Frank Owen rebuked. They also informed the Daily Mail’s owner, Lord Rothermere, of the dubious activities of his paper’s editor. Rothermere, of course, loftily disavowed any intention of intervening in Burmese politics, despite his paper’s sympathy with the Karens and detestation of communism. This disclaimer appeared to fall flat when the embassy reported in early September that Alexander Campbell, a Daily Mail reporter and close friend of Tulloch, was already in Rangoon.67 He seemed to be in town for more than journalism and ‘pays more visits to Calcutta than would seem to be justified solely by his work as a correspondent’. The Burmese police had come to this conclusion, too. On 17 September Campbell was arrested in his room at the Strand Hotel and bundled into a cell at police headquarters.68 The Burmese police claimed that they had discovered incriminating evidence in Campbell’s room, including a draft money order from Tulloch.69

Maung Ohn, a Burmese representative in Europe, later passed on three letters to Tom Driberg which appeared to incriminate Tulloch and Campbell. The MP was worried that capitalist forces were attempting to overthrow the fledgling Burmese government. In a curious Boys’ Own Paper jargon, the letters from ‘Skunk’ (apparently Campbell) to ‘Pop’ and ‘Ewan’ paint a picture of confusion.70 The Karen insurgents were desperately short of arms and ammunition. Other minorities were not being too co-operative and without further aid the Karens were unlikely to try to push on to Rangoon. The funding that British business was going to provide as military help for the Karens was not forthcoming. Instead, the Karen leadership was surprised to be asked for money by the British conspirators. They refused, ‘so no filthy fochre for you, Pop’, one of the letters commented. Despite tantalizing references to arms on ships in Brisbane harbour and the doings of ‘Oliver and the Rev.’, censorship made communication with Calcutta difficult. It was nearly impossible to smuggle arms through that city because the taxis that ran to the airport were almost all driven by Indian Special Branch operatives. Tulloch’s correspondent had other problems, too. He ended one letter with a query: ‘Any news of that little bitch my wife when you left London?’

The arrest of Campbell coincided with several other suspicious events. The Burmese police also arrested an American pilot, who had illegally flown an old Lockheed Hudson aircraft to Mingaladon airport near Rangoon on an unspecified secret mission. Burmese troops confronting rebel Karen forces in the Karenni