Chapter ten - ‘The weather has been horrible’—the Special Branch and communist communications: a case study

Summary

It has been said that the Achilles heel of the Communist Party of Malaya was its communications. This chapter deals with the Special Branch's analysis of the CPM's communications system and the use of couriers during the Emergency period. It presents, too, a case study of a Special Branch operation leading to the arrest in 1952 of Lee Ten (Tian) Tai, alias Lee Meng (usually referred to by her alias), the leader of the notorious Kepayang Gang operating in the Ipoh area, and a leading communist operating under the direction of the CPM's Central Committee, who headed the communications system connecting Ipoh with Singapore and the CPM's Central Committee in southern Thailand. The case study of Lee Meng refers to the early part of the communist insurgency, when the threat to British Malaya was still serious because the new intelligence system introduced by Jenkin and the Briggs Plan was yet to be thoroughly tested. In some senses, the arrest of Lee Meng provided evidence of the expanded capacities of the new intelligence system, the growing confidence of Special Branch and the effectiveness of the co-operation between the Malayan and Singapore Special Branches.

The chapter analyses, too, the breakdown of law and order and the proliferation of communist terrorism in the Ipoh area between 1949 and 1951 with which Lee Meng was closely involved. Lee Meng's arrest and subsequent trial for being in possession of a hand grenade, a capital offence under the Emergency Regulations, received considerable publicity in the British and Malayan press. It presented several unusual features that will be discussed in this chapter, leading to the involvement of the British, Hungarian and Malayan governments, the British Commissioner-General for South East Asia, the Malayan High Commissioner and the Sultan of Perak, Sir Yussuf ‘Izzuddin Shah.