Chapter one - The nature of the Malayan Emergency

Summary

The historiography of the Malayan Emergency (1948–60), and what has been called the ‘shooting war’, has already been well-covered in the literature, but the role of secret intelligence and the Malayan Police Special Branch in the armed struggle against the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) and its military wing, the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA), has hitherto been largely neglected. In this book, the focus is on the Special Branch, the main intelligence agency of the Malayan government. Of course, there have been several emergencies in the history of Malaya since the end of the Second World War. The present study is focused exclusively on the First Emergency of 1948–60, at a time that tested the capacities of both the British colonial government and the local Malayan government after independence in 1957. Already, at the conclusion of that first Emergency, there was evidence of ongoing communist opposition, which led to what has been called the ‘Second Emergency’, but that subject is beyond the scope of this book.

Although intelligence studies have come under the academic scrutiny of Western historians and political scientists, who have come to regard intelligence and political surveillance as a critical feature of modern state and society, similar studies have not emerged in the Asian context. This book attempts to make good this deficiency. It deals with the role of the Special Branch in the Emergency and argues that successful intelligence gathering was a crucial feature not only of British colonial rule in Malaya, but also of the independent Malayan government that took over from the British in 1957. There is little doubt from the evidence presented in the following chapters that without the political and military intelligence provided by the Special Branch, it would not have been possible for the Malayan authorities to defeat the CPM's armed uprising and bring the Emergency to a successful conclusion in 1960. The expertise and operational intelligence provided by the Special Branch was critical.