Forgotten Wars_ Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia - Christopher Bayly [64]
The Malayan Union was seen as a first step to ‘self-government’, if not full independence. The time-scale of what Labour ministers called colonial ‘partnership’ was entirely open ended. It was axiomatic to the British that before the war there was no local patriotism in Malaya. Dressed in the borrowed robes of nationalism, the British would now create it. After 1945 the fashioning of a ‘Malayan’ national identity became the lodestar of imperial policy. Until this point the term ‘Malayan’ had no legal status; it was neither a census category nor a synonym for ‘Malay’. Yet the word had taken on a more fixed meaning in the inter-war years to refer to those people who were locally domiciled and who did not perhaps retain any overriding loyalty to their country of origin, and it was adopted in particular by English-educated Eurasians, Straits Chinese and some Indians.10 As the future of Malaya was debated in London, the European ex-residents of the Association of British Malaya also staked their claim: ‘For all intents and purposes we are Malaya.’11 What was now called ‘nation-building’ was taken up with an evangelical fervour by a post-war generation of British officials and educators.
But it was unclear as to what a ‘Malayan’ nation might be founded upon. The idea seemed not to relate to any one ethnic group, but had to encompass all of them. The British tended to see it, as they preferred to see all colonial nationalism, in terms of the culture of a responsible middle class, united by English education and the values it carried. The language of Shakespeare, the King James Bible and the Atlantic Charter was the key to multiracial harmony and to colonial peoples’ continuing loyalty to the British Commonwealth. This vision was to collide violently with other nations of intent. But it was a bold experiment: Victor Purcell was adamant that the ‘utmost freedom’ be allowed so that political parties could emerge and ‘achieve a balance of power amongst themselves’. The draconian laws that controlled speech, publication, assembly, societies and trade unions, were all to be suspended. This was to herald Britain’s liberal intentions. But, as Purcell made clear, it was also to honour the bargain struck in the jungle between John Davis and ‘Chang Hong’. For the first time in its history the Malayan Communist Party was coming out into the open.
‘BLACK MARKET ADMINISTRATION’
The British Military Administration (BMA) of Malaya was a khaki-clad revolution in government, the most direct form of rule that Malaya had experienced in its history. It united Malaya and Singapore as never before and took on functions that were entirely novel in a colonial context: refugee and relief work; food rationing and nutrition; social welfare and public relations. Yet for 208 days after 4 September 1945, the BMA operated in conditions where in many places the apparatus of state had all but broken down, or where people had opted out of it entirely. Ralph Hone, former head of the Malayan Planning Unit and now Chief Civil Affairs Officer, was to claim that ‘no single problem arose when Malaya was occupied which had not already been considered by the planning staff’.12 Yet he was desperately short of resources and expertise. Hone himself, although he had been legal adviser to a government of occupation in Italy’s African colonies, which he took as a model, had never visited Malaya, nor had much practical experience of administration. His team was reinforced by junior army