Chapter eight - General Templer, Colonel Young and the Special Branch: the implementation of the Briggs Plan

Summary

The appointments in early 1952 of General Sir Gerald Templer as High Commissioner/Director of Operations and Colonel Arthur Young as Commissioner of Police after General Briggs left Malaya represented a distinct pivotal point in the twelve-year long campaign against the CPM/MNLA. This chapter assesses the restructuring of the police and the further development and refinement of the Special Branch and intelligence that took place during Templer's and Young's time. The secondment of JP (Jack) Morton, a senior MI5 officer who was head of Security Intelligence Far East, Singapore, as the Malayan Director of Intelligence, will also be considered. This was a critical period for the Special Branch as the Briggs Plan was implemented; thus the results of the Plan will be examined too.

General Templer arrived in Kuala Lumpur on 7 February 1952, accompanied by the newly appointed Deputy High Commissioner, Donald (later Sir Donald) Charles MacGillvray, who was transferred from the West Indies where he had been Colonial Secretary. It was the first time that a Deputy High Commissioner had been appointed and it was announced that MacGillvray would handle the ‘routine’ administration of the country, leaving General Templer to concentrate on major policy matters and ‘the personal direction of measures to defeat the Communist bandits [sic]’.

Referring to General Templer, Oliver Lyttelton, Secretary of State for the Colonies, emphasised that his wide knowledge and experience of intelligence would be of great use in his assuming the appointment. Following Lyttelton's visit to Malaya a few months earlier, he had already come to the conclusion that the success of the campaign against armed communism would depend more than anything else on the appointment of a ‘supremo’ and the improvement of intelligence provided by the Special Branch.