In 1948, the Communists and the British colonial government in Malaya entered a period of guerrilla fighting which has become known to history as the Malayan Emergency.
The name derives from the state of emergency declared by the colonial administration in June 1948 to extend the powers of the police and military. The state of emergency was officially lifted in July 1960.
In the broadest context, the events leading to the emergency include the following: The establishment of British hegemony over Malaya in the 19th century. The importation of large numbers of Chinese and Indians as labourers for colonial industry, primarily tin mining and rubber planting. The formation of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) in the 1930s. The rout by the Japanese of the British in the early part of World War II. For many Malayans this dispelled a myth of British omnipotence. The rise of the MCP-led Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) as the main resistance against the Japanese during their period of occupation.
This article focuses on the immediate antecedents to the Emergency, beginning shortly after the Japanese surrender and British reoccupation in August and September 1945.
Labour unions In September to December 1945, General Labour Unions (GLU's) arose, sometimes with MCP guidance. They organised themselves as regional bodies rather than trade-specific bodies; this was consciously done in an effort to promote racial integration since particular racial groups tended to predominate in particular trades, e.g.; Chinese in mines, Malays in the civil service, often Indians on plantations.Morgan, p. 165
A number of short strikes were held, not necessarily involving entire GLU's. They had little material result but demonstrated a capacity to act.
There were considerable economic grounds for labour unrest. Real wages were below the pre-war level in 1948 compared to 1939 wages had risen about 3 times but the cost of living had gone up 4 times, so the real wage was about 3/4.
Normal pre-war rice consumption had been per day. In April 1946 the rice ration in Singapore for an adult male was reduced from per week; in mid-August it was further reduced to per week, where it remained until an increase in December.Morgan, p. 161. He cites Keesings Contemporary Archives 1943-46, 8246A; and "SAR 1946", pp. 11, 12.
The Annual Report of the Colony of Singapore for 1946 reported that the majority of infant deaths were due to rice shortage and lack of proper food.
A survey of working-class families in the Report for 1947 found that only 22% of them had sufficient food energy in their diets and that 30 to 40% of the children suffered from malnutrition.Annual Report of the Colony of Singapore for 1946, p. 37, and Annual Report of the Colony of Singapore for 1947, pp. 74-76; cited in Morgan, pp. 161, 2. In its internal reports in 1945 the British administration recognised the tendency of such conditions to produce unrest, and stated that the strikes were motivated by economic conditions rather than a political programme.
Nevertheless, the British administration was not tolerant of the disturbances.
In October 1945 the Chinese-language newspapers Shih Tai Jit Pao and Pai Ma Tao Pao were closed and their editors and staffs convicted and imprisoned for sedition because of their use of the term "economic exploitation".Morgan, p. 172.
A large strike, peaking at 18,000 workers on 17 December, broke out in Singapore. At that point, some members of the administration began taking the position that the strikes are political, not economic.
Historian Daud Latiff argues that the British were restrained from taking even harder measures against the strikes at this stage for two reasons: The MPAJA had not yet been disbanded, still had its weapons, and could pose an enormous problem if provoked into rebellion.Latiff, pp.126-9. In the changed political climate at the end of World War II, actions which could be viewed as repressive or fascistic might cause large public relations problems, or damage Britain's international image at a time when she was in competition with the United States for global political allegiances.Latiff, pp.133,4.
Protest and strike Beginning on 29 January 1946, a large strike occurred, centred around Singapore. It was largely in protest over the arrest and conviction (after two acquittals) of the former head of the Selangor section of the MPAJA, Soon Kwong, for punishing a Japanese collaborator on 10 September 1945, when the MPAJA was still in partial control of the country.
150,000 to 200,000 workers walked off the job; by the 31st Singapore was at a "standstill"; Soon Kwong was released on 3 February.The police said 150,000 workers were on strike in Singapore, the Times estimated 200,000 were on strike (Morgan, pp.166,7); the GLU claimed that over 173,000 workers were on strike in Singapore and surrounding states (Latiff, p. 135). The charge against Soon Kwong had been extortion and he had received a four-year sentence for it on 3 January. (Red Star Over Malaya, pp.252, 261.)
A large demonstration was called for 15 February 1946, the fourth anniversary of the fall of Singapore. The organisers claimed that it was in memorial to the thousands of Malayans who had fallen in the defence of Singapore or been executed by the Japanese in the three weeks after that; but the authorities felt that it was an impertinent celebration of Britain's embarrassing defeat. They banned the demonstrations and on 14 February arrested 24 leading activists and placed them under deportation orders. On the 15th, demonstrators were confronted by troops who killed one and wounded 17 in Singapore and killed 17 in Johore.Morgan, p. 167. He cites the following works: F.S.V. Donnison, British Military Administration in the Far East, London, 1956; Straits Times (Singapore), 16 and 18 February 1946; Daily Worker (London), 18 April 1946; C. Gamba, The Origins of Trade Unionism in Malaya: A Study in Colonial Labour Unrest, Singapore, 1962, pp. 189, 90.
Also in February, labour set up a country-wide organisation called the Pan Malayan General Labour Union (PMGLU). Over the ensuing 12 months there was a rapid expansion of trade unionism throughout Malaya, with the PMGLU as the guiding force; by April 1947 the PMGLU had a membership of 263,598—over half the total work force—and encompassed 85% of the individual trade unions.Morgan, p. 170. The attitude of the Malayan worker became more assertive during this period; for instance, "A strike was reported of Chinese and Indian hospital workers because they no longer wanted to be addressed as 'boy' ....",Morgan, p. 168. and workers began to see their subjection to physical punishments as unacceptable.Morgan, p. 168. See also Harper, p. 130: "Tamil trade unionists refused to suffer any longer the use of the derogatory term 'Kling'. Estate workers no longer dismounted from their bicycles when a dorai, or planter, passed by." Harper cites E.A. Ross, minute, 10 February 1946, and LAB/92/47. Historian T. N. Harper writes of the period:
Some of the Indian Labour Unions became affiliated with the PMGLU, others did not—most notably P. P. Narayanan's Negri Sembilan Estate Indian Workers' Union, which opted to remain a communal entity to fight the pay differential between Chinese and Indian workers.Harper, p. 134.
"Communal" in this context means composed of members of only one community or racial group. The period saw a considerable upsurge in the number of strikes: in March 1946 the docks and tin smelter at Penang were "paralysed"; in April a railway strike began which lasted several weeks; there was striking among Indian plantation labourers along the entire west coast of the peninsula; and unrest continued in Singapore.
The journal British Malaya wrote in September 1946 that "there have been an average of 27 strikes a week for the last seven weeks ...."British Malaya, Sept 1946, p. 69, in Morgan, p. 170. Between April 1946 and March 1947, 713,000 worker days, or 2 per employee, were lost to strikes in Malaya, and in Singapore, 1,173,000 worker days, ten per employee, were lost.Stenson, Repression and Revolt, p. 11. He cites Malayan Union Department Annual Report 1947, Table X; Malayan Union and Federation of Malaya Labour Department Monthly Reports, 1948; and Singapore Labour Report 1948, Table XIV.
The government countered this movement by changing some of thelaws and regulations on trade union activity, and resuming the enforcement of others that had been left in abeyance after the war.
By, at latest, early 1947, the ordinary trespassing law was being used to keep union organisers from addressing the workers on plantations. For instance in late March 1947, a large police force came to the Dublin estate in Kedah to arrest a Federation of Trades Unions official for trespassing as he was speaking to a group of workers there.
When the workers closed ranks around the official to protect him the police opened fire, killing one worker and wounding five.Morgan, p. 178.
Incidents such as this demonstrate that the situation was already somewhat revolutionary in that the workers were disputing, at least to some extent, the rights of private property, and the establishment was willing to use severe measures against them. Indeed, among Indian estate labour in Kedah in early 1947 there appears to have been something almost akin to the formation of soviets:
In a clash at the Bedong estate on 3 March 1947, 21 labourers were injured; "the strike leader died of injuries received at the hands of the police a few days later"; 61 were sentenced to six months' imprisonment.Morgan, p. 178. He cites Straits Times, 5 and 8 March 1947.
The 1940 Trade Union Ordinance required that unions in Malaya (unlike those in Britain) be registered, which meant that they had to open their books and other processes to inspection by government officers. The registration provisions were not initially enforced after World War II but beginning around the time that the civil administration (Malayan Union) took over from the British Military Administration (BMA) in April 1946, moves were made to require trade unions to register.
The registration rules were somewhat restrictive; for instance government employees and non-government employees could not belong to the same union or even to unions affiliated with each other, and union funds could not be used for political purposes. Under these rules the GLU's were un-registerable and therefore could not operate legally.
The Singapore GLU (SGLU) reached an accommodation with the Trade Union Adviser in Singapore, S.P. Garrett, whereby it could reorganise as a Federation (not a union) and operate legally without registering. Accordingly, the SGLU became the Singapore Federation of Trade Unions (SFTU) in August 1946 and was (temporarily) safe from the law.
Shortly afterwards (25 August) the PMGLU on the peninsula, hoping for a similar application of the rules, reorganised itself as the Pan Malayan Federation of Trade Unions (PMFTU). However, the Trade Union Adviser in Malaya, John Brazier, was less sympathetic than Garrett and he and the registrar, Mr. Prentiss, quickly thwarted this move by ruling that all of the Federation's branch unions, which had to register, could not accept the guidance of any non-registered entity, and could not remit a portion of their funds to a federation or use funds for sympathy strikes. This left the PMFTU and its affiliates in legal quicksand, although no moves were taken yet to prosecute them.
The labour movement was dealt a serious legal blow in October 1947 when the right not to be fired merely for the act of striking, which had been somewhat customary although by no means universally upheld,