Chapter three - The Special Branch takes over (1948–49)

Summary

The Malayan Special Branch found itself at a considerable disadvantage in taking over responsibility for political, security and operational intelligence at such short notice from the Malayan Security Service. Though the Special Branch absorbed most of the former Malayan Security Service personnel based in Malaya, it was still under-strength in the first few years of the Emergency. As related in the preceding chapter, the MSS itself was under-strength when it handed over its functions to the Malayan and Singapore Special Branches, and in Malaya Lieutenant Colonel Dalley had to arrange, at least temporarily, for the local police CIDs in the territories of Pahang, Malacca, Kelantan and Trengganu to cover political and security intelligence on behalf the MSS. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that at the beginning of the Emergency, the Special Branch was criticised by the higher echelons of the military and the civil administration for its perceived unpreparedness and slowness in providing operational intelligence. In many cases, handwritten and cyclostyled communist documents recovered from communist camps or found in the possession of captured or dead communist insurgents were discarded as being of little more than routine value and not afforded the importance they deserved. From the evidence available, it would seem there was some validity to the criticisms. One of the reasons for the jam of documents was, of course, that the Special Branch was under-staffed and simply unable to cope with the backlog of documents awaiting translation. The MSS may have inadvertently contributed to this state of affairs by handing over a large backlog of communist documents awaiting translation to the Special Branch in August 1948. In Dalley's letter of 13 July 1948 to Sir Ralph Hone, for instance, he admitted the MSS had a considerable accumulation of communist documents awaiting translation because of an acute shortage of translators and supporting office staff (Chapter 2).