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sergeants who came with him, added further divisions to a police force torn by the resentments of war and internment. There were resignations and retirements, including that of John Dalley. The new arrivals placed the local system of apostolic succession in promotions in jeopardy and challenged old methods. Nicol Gray’s paramilitary approach was deeply unpopular and the Palestinian sergeants acquired a brutish reputation. In the disdainful words of one senior Malay official, ‘They kept Chinese women as mistresses and spent most of their time drinking.’87 It was true that they broke many of the codes of pre-war empire and this exposed the class snobbery of colonial society. Once again, European clubs in Singapore excluded men in uniform. These tensions were later satirized in the tragicomic form of Nabby Adams in the 1959 novel Time for a Tiger. The Somerset Maugham epoch was giving way to the Anthony Burgess era. The new arrivals were welcomed by the planters, not least for their training of special constables. Many lost their lives. They were part of a broader influx of new blood into colonial society. Many new police recruits were recently demobbed national servicemen who had seen a glimpse of the colonial good life and were determined to enjoy it themselves. Others were adventurers who had not settled to peace and civilian life: ‘There were infantry officers, Air Force pilots, Royal Navy frogmen, Commandos, Paras and Force 136; all ranks from Lt/Col down…’88 Their conditions of life were a long way from what was promised; they were often cooped up in fenced compounds in remote areas, often without electricity or company, and the casualty rate was high. One of the basic rules of self-preservation was to ‘Go to the biggest village in your area and run up a large bill for food and grog with the largest Chinese shopkeeper, always keep your account in debit. He, the shopkeeper, might see you as an investment and do his best to keep you alive.’89

Colonial society armed itself. Most planters were veterans of at least one war, and some had special forces experience. Managers purchased large stocks of war materials on the open market and created elaborate defences of trenches, barbed wire, floodlights and traps of broken glass. One cook took the Emergency so seriously that he served only military rations of bully beef and tea. The wealthier estates hired small private armies. American miners played a leading role in armament. At Kampar in the Kinta valley, Ira Phelps, a Mormon employee of Pacific Tin, made armour from the remains of Japanese tanks on local battlefields to create Dodge weapons carriers. There were plenty of carbines available to the police, but precious little ammunition for them. Most of what existed had been acquired from the communists themselves. Pacific Tin offered to make clip magazines for the police in return for the arming of its British and US engineers. The chairman of Anglo-Oriental flew in guns from Sydney and Bangkok on Pan-Am. This gave a boost to the underground arms trade with Indonesia.90 The unvarying routine of estate life became more disciplined than ever, although individual managers had to constantly vary their movements to reduce the risk of ambush on the dangerous estate roads. Many believed that a popular manager would not be shot, but often popular men were killed by gangs passing through. By 1949, 745 planters and miners had honorary police rank. This gave them unprecedented powers over their workforce. One planter in Pahang later recounted firing in the dark at a moving light to enforce a curfew: ‘The next day, to my horror, we found that an elderly estate labourer had been seriously wounded. He had been breaking the curfew to collect some stored samsu [distilled toddy] from a cache in preparation for his daughter’s wedding celebrations the following day.’91 The upcountry clubs were a strange vista of Sten guns and stengahs, the staple whisky and soda.92 ‘Those were the days is heard frequently in up-country clubs’, reported The Times, ‘as the pistol-belt is buckled around the expansiveness