Chapter six - The rise of the Special Branch (1950–52): Sir William Jenkin

Summary

The watershed years for the reorganisation, restructuring and training of the Malayan Police and its Special Branch may well be said to have been between 1950 and 1954. The overall structure of the Special Branch that finally emerged after 1954 was, in fact, to remain unchanged, except for minor variations, until the end of the Emergency in 1960. During this time, several important figures emerged on the Malayan scene, and the recommendations they made concerning the development of the police, and the Special Branch in particular, were examined in the previous chapter. This chapter seeks to analyse the important part played by Sir William Jenkin and identify his achievements in reorganising and strengthening the Special Branch during his relatively short stay of one-and-a-half years in Malaya before he resigned. It will examine, too, the attention he paid to coastal and border security, his codification of the work of the Special Branch, and the joint police–military operational intelligence rooms that he established.

Jenkin had a distinguished career in the Indian Police Special Branch and the highly regarded Indian Intelligence Bureau in Simla before coming to Malaya and he was the first trained professional intelligence officer to take over the Malayan Special Branch. He arrived in Kuala Lumpur to take up his appointment as ‘Adviser of the Special Branch/CID’ on 22 June 1950. At this stage, the Special Branch was still subsumed in to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID). At the end of the year, his appointment was redesignated as Director of Intelligence to facilitate his work in advising and assisting in the reorganisation of the Special Branch/CID. He was the first officer to hold the appointment of Director of Intelligence in Malaya.

Jenkin quickly realised the vital importance of strengthening the Special Branch by increasing the intake of Chinese officers, a matter that had been recommended several times in the past, but with little being done about it. He proposed that an additional 215 Chinese probationary inspectors should be appointed to the Special Branch as soon as possible and argued that this was absolutely essential if the Special Branch was to carry out effectively its function as the government's main intelligence agency and provide the military with operational intelligence. He reasoned that if more Chinese personnel were employed in the Special Branch, it would be easier to obtain intelligence.