which was despatched on 14th June MacDonald pointed out that his phrase
’must be struck down1 referred to the suppression of violence, not of the Communist Party, which had been the substance of the initial query from the British Government.
criminals. Firearms were easy to obtain and a shocking record of brutal crime had demonstrated a general collapse of police efficiency:
"Returning British police officers found that they had to measure against the power of imperfectly controlled crime, the dregs of a Police Force; badly equipped, shabbily dressed, with no morale, and
carrying its share of hatred and contempt which the Japanese system of secret police working through spies and informers had called down upon the whole force. There were few, if any, to take the place of
the old personnel who had been trained in investigation; all
standards of honesty were gone; the extortion practised by the police was frightful, and the whole force was so rotten with corruption as
to require a special branch of the Criminal Investigation Department to attend to its own delinquency,"28
In this situation, the government's first responsibility was to revitalise the police and, where possible, to take other measures to cure lawlessness. Instead, it virtually refused to enforce the Banishment Ordinance by which criminals and undesirable aliens had been deported before the war, even though the Deputy Chief Civil Affairs Officer, and the
C-in-C Allied Land Forces South East Asia, both represented in the strongest possible terms the potential threat to organised government inherent in a projected M.C.P. demonstration intended for March, Admiral Mountbatten refused to act by preventive arrest of the communist leaders and only reluctantly agreed to expel them.
28 Jones, p 169. The composition of the force was predominantly Malay. However, the majority of Gazetted Officers were British. Comparative
figures for the years 1947 and 1952 are given below:
1947 1952*
,Gazett- Police Gazett- Police
,
ed Inspec - Lieut- Rank ed Inspec- Lieut- Rank Offic- tors enants & Offic- tors enants &
ers File ers File
European .130 " T 8 - - 532 697 - Malay 19 115 - 7,999 54 264 ; - 23,700 Indian & Pakistani 3 41 - 1,469 18 I 170 | 1,554 Chinese 2 24
-
402 16 281 j 2,191 Eurasian & Others - 4 33 5Lii.L.
284-The figures do not include Special Constables and civilian Asian staff. Annual Report 1953, p 224.
"His reluctance," according to the British Official War Historian, "proceeded not only from his personal conviction of the advantages to be gained from a liberal approach, but from the knowledge that it was at that time a part of the British Government policy for the future of Malaya that the power to banish should not be used."20
Admiral.Mountbatten's motives are unquestioned, but Malayan officials with a far greater local experience than he remained convinced that this was not the way to confront subversion:
"Almost immediately," states Onraet, "danger signals were to be observed; organised crime, organised political agitation, and a host of opportunist criminals became progressively bolder and more numerous. The police force made little impression on what was no longer a crime but a flood whose monthly tides have topped for over two years the annual high water marks of pre-war years."30
In 1948 little was known of the techniques of communist revolutionary warfare, but at least intuitively and from long acquaintance with similar problems, experienced police officers realised that the government’s post-war liberal policies would founder unless instituted on a framework of properly restored law and order. It was apparent to them that the British Government had acted prematurely when it had decided that the former laws governing the activities of societies were to remain in abeyance. Great numbers of secret societies as well as the M.C.P. were allowed to proliferate. As these societies began to regain the^r grip on racketeering, black
marketting and extortion, general lawlessness increased and the communist party revelled in the chaos.
Moreover, in their attempts to deal with these problems there were, even among European officers, a number of factors which weakened morale. Responsibility for failures, and f^r wrong decisions taken is an occupational hazard for which any career professional within a hierarchical organisation has to be prepared. Yet even when compared with a parallel service such as the army, the qualities of leadership required of Police Officers at the more junior levels are in certain respects more exacting. The distinction has been made by Field Marshal Lord Harding:
"The big difference between the two services is that for the most part soldiers operate in groups under the direct personal leadership of their officers, whereas policemen work mainly as individuals out of sight of their officers, and often out of contact with them for long
20 Dennison; O p .Cit. , p 391. The point here is that although the Government did eventually act, it did so with reluctance. And since the M.C.P. was at the time engaged in a cynical trial of strength with the
Government,the latter did not exactly emerge with its authority enhanced. S,T., 15th April 1947.
periods as well. For that reason alone command of police forces is the more difficult of the two. It is easier to inspire men to do their duty in the face of difficulty and danger when you are with them on the spot, than to do so at the end of a telephone line in an office miles away."31
The streng-th of a rural police station in the first months of the Emergency was generally not more than seven. And, in a number of instances it was the police post in the isolated village which, by holding out against insurgent attacks, had to ensure that government control in up-country Malaya was maintained.
In the higher ranks, an additional factor promoting self-consciousness of the hazards of professional life was the fear of the 'axe'. Some normal redundancies, together with the emerging process of r lalayanisation', gathered momentum as the Emergency went on. But in any case the world had entered a new era for the colonial policeman. As country after country encountered emerging nationalism or communist
insurgency, the grave and heavy responsibilities bearing upon senior police officers compared with most other civil servants became manifest. The problem can best be illustrated by the following examples, where each of the officers concerned departed abruptly, and in some cases in a mysterious silence from his command during or after the events shown in each case:
Territory Officer’s Name Event Singapore Foulger Hertzog
Riots Singapore Wiltshire Hertzog
Riots
Federation Gray Communist
of Malaya Terrorism
Post
Deputy Inspector General (Designate) Colonial Police Forces.
Commassioner, Singapore Police.
Commissioner, Federation of Malaya Police.
(cont’d)
31 From an article by Field Marshal Lord Harding in the magazine of the Police College, Ryton-on-Dunsmore. Quoted in Police Gazette, p 12.
Territory Officer's Name Event Post
Cyprus Robins E.O.K.A. Commissioner, Cyprus Police Terrorism
Cyprus Bibles E.O.K.A. Deputy Commissioner, Cyprus Police. Terrorism
Cyprus Lock E.O.K.A. Deputy Commissioner, Cyprus Police. Terrorism
Kenya 0 ’Rourke Mau-Mau Commissioner, Kenya Police.
Terrorism 32
In addition, a distinct cleavage existed among European officers between those who had been incarcerated in Japanese prisons and those w7ho had escaped. Many of the latter had returned as members of Force 136 and the B.M.A., and after the Japanese surrender there were clear signs of enmity between the two groups. When late in 1948, a large number of ex-Palestine policemen arrived, including the new Commissioner, W.N. Gray, a further rift developed which a subsequent police investigation failed to heal.33 jt was not until W.L.R. Carbonell, an old Malaya hand and a veteran of Changi became Commissioner in 1953, that domestic peace was really
restored in the police force. Whatever justification existed for the claim by either group that favouritism in professional matters was sown the other, such bickering detracted from performance.34
32 Ibid., p 12. It is revealing to compare the Malayan experience with the situation which confronted the Commissioner of Police, Cyprus in August 1955: TMr. Robins, the Police Commissioner was at his wits end.... Coming from Tanganyika a few months before, he had been asked to turn a weak peacetime force, used to trailing after pickpockets and erring motorists, into a body capable of dealing with armed terrorism. Negligence, mean ness, stagnation over the years had sapped the spirit of his men long before E.O.K.A. appeared. Every expenditure proposed by his predecessors was foredoomed. EvenX-175 for torches had been struck off: the police were expected to grope for criminals in the dark. Completely without
radio, often without a telephone or transport, police stations were being raided one after another.... The Emergency had brought many hours of overtime without extra pay, and policemen at roadblocks often depended on sharing the soldiers food.7 Foley, C.; Island in Revolt, London, 1962 p 36.
33 Interviews with Catling, Madoc and Waller. 34 Ibid.
Nor was morale enhanced by conditions of service. Before the Second World War police officers had been the servants of individual States and different conditions of training and service prevailed. An advantage of the reorganisation on a country wide basis after the war was that the force could now be more flexibly deployed, but in practice standardisation of method's necessarily takes time and, even when the Emergency broke out, redeploying a man from his traditional haunts to a higher priority area elsewhere was difficult.35 Moreover, even in 1965, after the Emergency had ended a Gazetted Officer was, on average still working fifty-four hours overtime a month without extra pay, and during the Emergency itself the situation was far worse.35
By the time the Emergency was declared, although the police force was beginning to regain the ascendancy over crime, it was still 2,000 under strength and lamentably short of arms, radios, vehicles and even uniforms. By the time General Templer left Malaya in 1954, the Malayan Police, enormously expanded, reorganised, tested and confident, was one of the finest organisations of its type in the world. In June 1948 however, it was woefully ill-prepared for the task which awaited it.
A rmed Forces
When the insurrection began, it was at once obvious that the under strength police force was incapable of controlling the situation. The armed forces were therefore placed in aid of the civil power and commenced operations almost immediately.37
Anyone might have been forgiven for failing to forsee the length and difficulty of the Emergency in 1948, but in retrospect at least the
optimism of some public statements does suggest a certain naivete. In a broadcast of 6th July 1948, the General Officer Commanding (G.O.C.) Malaya, Major General Boucher said, 'I have had experience in fighting red
terrorists in Greece and India, and I can tell you this is by far the easiest problem I have ever tackled.'38 And yet, twelve years later the
35 In a letter to the writer, Mr. W.N. Gray (Commissioner of Police 1948-51) stated that when he first arrived in Malaya in August 1948, he found he had to obtain the permission of the Sultan before posting a police officer from one state to another. He said that he soon put a stop to the
practice.
35 Police Gazette, pp 21-29. 37 M.C.P., Terrorism, p 4. 38 S.T., 7th July 1948.
insurgent high command was still intact. Even allowing for the difficulty of tracking and destroying insurgents in large areas of primeval jungle, the performance of the army fell far short of the G.O.C.'s extravagant promises.
The main reason was that the army, like the intelligence organisation and the police, was not prepared for counter-insurgency operations. Although the army had a long and generally impressive record of counter-insurgency (for example in Upper Burma in 1886, in South Africa during the Boer War, and mere recently in Greece and Palestine) the
specialised professionalism required in anti-terrorist operations has seldom been an abiding skill in any army. Moreover, Malaya was a unique situation and even the best doctrine from other areas was seldom directly applicable. Most infantry battalions in Malaya formed part of a strategic reserve and
internal security was not considered part of their task. There were no proper facilities for training until the Far East Land Forces Training
Centre was established at Kota Tinggi in June 1949,"° and no common tactical doctrine emerged until the first ATOM Pamphlet (Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya) was published in 1952. Indeed, the forces available in 1948 had little local experience and in any case were undergoing reorganisation.
In addition to the two battalions of the Malay Regiment, the bulk of the troops in Malay were provided by the Brigade of Gurkhas who had six battalions dotted up and down the mainland and a seventh on Singapore Island. In many respects it was fortuitous that so many troops were available in Malaya at all. The Gurkha battalions were stationed there
after the partition of India, apparently because there were no other suitable areas to wThich they could be sent. Apart from the lst/6th, the lst/7th and the 1st/10th Gurkha Rifles who had all come from Burma in January, the