• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 4405 0

soldiers felt unconstrained by civil considerations in the screening of squatters. Under relentless pressure, Gurney insisted that martial law should not be declared. The irony of this was that soldiers were less restricted than they might have been under the law of war. ‘It is most important’, Gurney stressed, ‘that police and soldiers who are not saints, should not get the impression that every small mistake is going to be the subject of a public enquiry or that it is better to do nothing at all than to do the wrong thing quickly.’59

The police continued to act as a paramilitary force. One young lieutenant stationed in Campbell Road, Kuala Lumpur, described his first encounter with a jungle squad of Chinese detectives, of which by the end of the year there were 230: ‘All wore black shirts with black shorts or long trousers, and trilby hats, always inclined to the right. The style of headgear was probably copied from actors seen in countless American B pictures shown nightly in the Cattle Shed, an affectionate name for the open-cinema in the Lucky World Amusement Park.’60 The chief of police, Nicol Gray, was under increasing attack for his methods, not least from his own officers. Gurney accused the Old Malaya contingent of a campaign of ‘deliberate disloyalty’ against Gray, and lambasted them in turn for neglecting to tackle the corruption which was rampant in the force.61 Some of the bitterest disputes were over intelligence and its uses. The British were engulfed by an information panic. The Malayan Security Service was dissolved and its functions devolved to the Special Branch, but it had, in 1948, only twelve officers and forty-eight inspectors; most of them expatriates or Malays. Only 5 per cent of the police force was Chinese, and even the translation of captured materials was a problem.62 But from this, lessons were being learnt. A police mission visited Malaya at the end of 1949: it recommended a return to normal police training and methods and, above all, the need to recruit Chinese into the force.63 Slowly, some of the key elements of a counter-insurgency programme were being identified, if not yet fully implemented.

The new state arm of ‘public relations’ moved to the heart of counter-terrorism. In 1949, 51 million information leaflets were produced, many of them dropped in the jungle; government spokesmen toured villages, in the manner of local story-tellers. But the message was indistinct. The early leaflet campaigns were mercenary in their appeal – ‘Give information to the police. Get good rewards. Live happily with your family’ – or platitudinous in their tone – ‘Communism is the enemy of honest workers’.64 Visual propaganda was often brutal: photographs of dead guerrillas were circulated, notably of Liew Yao. But this could be counter-productive. Broadcasting the acts of terror of the MNLA merely seemed to increase its notoriety; it added to the mood of menace, to a sense that the government was losing its grip.65 The British dismissed communist propaganda as semi-literate and crude. As Chin Peng admitted, ‘Our pronouncements were largely unadorned and straightforward. What you read was what you got.’66 Yet they often possessed what the voice of the colonial government lacked: an ability to appeal directly to rural communities, in their own idiom. Detained communists spoke of ‘propaganda’ as a positive and empowering force: ‘After you have had their fierce propaganda, you can’t do without it. It gives you so much strength, you feel weak when you don’t have it.’67 Despite the difficulties, the MCP ran a network of underground presses, roughly cyclostyled productions such as the Humanity News in Perak, the Vanguard Press in Selangor, the Battle News and Combatant News at Pahang, and other ephemeral titles. They served as internal newsletters for isolated jungle units and their supporters, but they also reached out to the general population. The message was often effectively wrapped around recent local events. Allegations of rape were common and these fed popular rumour and fear of the security forces; the