Malayan Emergency

At issue: Political identity of postcolonial Malaya

Date: June 16, 1948-July, 1960

Location: Malayan Peninsula

Combatants: Commonwealth and Malayan forces vs. Malayan Communist Party guerrillas

Principal commanders: British, Lieutenant General Sir Harold Briggs, General Sir Gerald Templer; Communist, General Secretary Chen Ping, Deputy General Yeung Kwo, Commander Lau Yew, Siu Mah

Principal battles: Kajang, Kuala Krau, Semenyih

Result: Elimination of Communist-led military forces in peninsular Malaya

Background

The Malayan Communist Party directed extensive guerrilla warfare activities against the Japanese during World War II. Its principal strategist was Chen Ping, an ethnic Chinese with ties in the international Communist movement. His forces received arms and training from the British, and at the Japanese surrender in August, 1945, the party controlled 4,000 armed guerrillas, 6,000 organized support personnel, and widespread caches of arms, ammunition, and supplies. After the war, the Communist Party emerged as the principal political organization of the ethnic Chinese population. In late 1945, food shortages, unemployment, and the return of a British colonial administration caused a wave of unrest that was compounded by assassinations and strikes. Britain’s preference for training ethnic Malays to administer postcolonial Malaya exacerbated traditional tensions between the Malay and Chinese populations.

When the formation of the quasi-independent Malayan Union was announced on February 1, 1948, the Communist Party, led by Chen, adopted a policy of using armed force to achieve Communist-led independence. The Malayan Communist guerrillas were organized into battalion-sized units, which in late February, 1948, initiated a series of assaults against Malay and British civil and military targets and attacks on European plantation managers and their families. As strikes and violence spread, the British resolved to eliminate the Communist threat before granting full independence to Malaya.

Action

By mid-June, 1948, a full-scale insurrection had developed, with Communists leading both strikes and violence in urban areas and an armed guerrilla movement based in the rural hinterland. The government of the Malayan Union declared a state of emergency on June 16 and formally requested British military assistance. British, Indian, and other Commonwealth military forces quickly joined local Malayan forces in antiguerrilla operations. Martial law was declared on July 5, 1948. That month, British-led special forces ambushed a Communist command post south of Kuala Lumpur at Kajang (July 16, 1948), killing Lau Yew, commander of the Malayan Races Liberation Army, as the guerrilla organization was known. Nonetheless, Communist forces launched an offensive in September, 1948. One attack, at the town of Kuala Krau (September 11, 1948), resulted in the deaths of hundreds of civilians and scores of government soldiers and police.

In April, 1950, Lieutenant General Harold Briggs took command of all pro-government forces and introduced the Briggs Plan, which was to isolate the enemy from its sources of supply and from the general populace by containing it in mountain and jungle bases, which could then be attacked using paratroopers and main-force units. Peasants, squatters, and ethnic Chinese who supported the Communist rebellion were forcibly removed from their communities into government-built New Villages encircled by barbed wire and overseen by Malayan police. By 1952, 461,000 people had been relocated into more than five hundred New Villages. The resettlement program proved effective in denying food, supplies, and new recruits to the Communist insurgents. Briggs was forced by failing health to leave his command, and British interests suffered another loss when High Commissioner for Malaya Sir Henry Gurney was killed in 1951 in a Communist ambush led by guerrilla commander Siu Mah. In mid-1952, General Gerald Templer assumed both the military and civilian posts previously held by Briggs and Gurney. Templer focused on improving antiguerrilla tactics while conducting sweeps of Communist jungle bases.

The Communist leadership sought but failed to attract military aid from the People’s Republic of China. This, plus Britain’s military effectiveness under Templer and the reduced civilian assistance available to the Communists under the Briggs Plan, led to a shift in the Communists’ tactics. Large-unit attacks on military and police targets were abandoned, and greater emphasis was placed on political propaganda and low-level guerrilla warfare.

In October, 1953, Templer launched a drive against the Communist Party’s command structure based in Pahang, driving its principal leaders across the border into Thailand. British forces succeeded in driving a wedge between the main Communist armed units in the northern and southern sectors of the Malayan Peninsula. Paratroops were then employed in attacks on isolated guerrilla bases in mountainous central Malaya. With the success of the offensive, martial law was ended in some areas in late 1953. Further offensives against guerrilla strongholds forced Communist leaders to agree to cease-fire talks at the end of 1955.

The talks collapsed when Chen refused to agree to the dissolution of the Malayan Communist Party although the party’s active guerrilla force had been reduced to around 1,000 ill-equipped men in several small, isolated bases. British intelligence, aggressive tactics, and superior mobility wore down the remaining insurgents. During an attack on a Communist base in southern Selangor, at Semenyih (April, 1956), British special forces killed Yeung Kwo, leader of the Communists’ political propaganda program.

Satisfied that the Communist insurgency was under control, Britain granted Malaya full independence in 1957. The new government offered amnesty for Communist Party members and guerrillas. Defections increased, and terrorist attacks dropped off sharply. By this time, the Communist Party had lost most of its influence with Malaya’s ethnic Chinese population, which turned increasingly to commerce and to more conservative political parties.

Aftermath

By offering the Chinese population full participation in the political process, independent Malaya undermined the Communists’ appeal to traditional ethnic antagonisms between the Malay and Chinese communities. Popular support for the Chinese-led Malayan Communist Party dropped significantly after 1957, and by 1960, virtually all armed insurgent activity had ceased, although the Communist Party leadership did not renounce its commitment to armed struggle tactics. In July, 1960, the government of Malaya ended the state of emergency.

Milestones in the Malayan Emergency

Resources

Coates, John. Suppressing Insurgency: An Analysis of the Malayan Emergency, 1948–1954. Boulder Colo.: Westview Press, 1992.

Jackson, Robert. The Malayan Emergency: The Commonwealth’s Wars, 1948–1966. London: Routledge, 1991.

Kheng, Cheah Boon. Red Star over Malaya: Resistance and Social Conflict During and After the Japanese Occupation of Malaya, 1941–1946. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1983.