Japanese, and for a good reason: the Japanese,
during the early years of occupation from 1942
to 1943, oppressed the Chinese more savagely
than the other two nationalities living in Malaya,
the Indian immigrants and the indigenous
Malays. Indeed, many Malays and Indians had
collaborated with the Japanese and hoped to
gain independence with Japanese consent. The
Japanese later became more accommodating
towards the anti-communist Chinese of the busi-
ness community, whose help they needed. They
might even have granted independence, at least
nominally, had it not been for the sudden end of
the war in August 1945.
The British returned to Malaya unopposed.
The Chinese communists had decided to collab-
orate with them and to follow the constitutional
path to independence. Chinese guerrilla groups
came out of the forest where they had carried on
the armed struggle and disbanded, hiding their
weapons in the jungle as a precaution. The colo-
nial administration hoped to re-establish peace
and good order and to prepare for the electoral
participation of all three races in Malaya on a basis
of equality. These early plans envisaged that the
peninsula of Malaya would be unified, the tradi-
tional Malay rulers deprived of most of their
powers and a more democratic political regime
introduced. Singapore, largely Chinese and a
British colony, would be developed separately.
But the British solution satisfied no one. The
leaders of the 3.5 million Malays, most of whom
were peasants belonging to the poorest section of
society, feared that by conceding equal rights to
more than 2 million Chinese and 700,000 Indian
immigrants they would lose control of their own
country. They therefore opposed the reduction of
the powers of the Malay rulers, who at least
ensured that Malaya was ruled by Malays. The
Chinese also objected. They were against the
separation of Singapore from the rest of Malaya,
as this would reduce their influence outside
Singapore. In the end the British government had
to withdraw these proposals. In the meantime,
both the Chinese communists and the Malays
soon realised that, while the British intended
to rule benignly, their timetable for Malayan
independence was long term indeed. They had
resumed imperial rule in Malaya, not for reasons
of false national pride, but because Malayan
rubber and Malayan tin were vital export earners
for the shaky post-war British economy. When
the standard of living of the British people was at
stake, the Labour government that came to power
in 1945 was as imperialist as the Conservatives.
In 1946, among the majority of the Malays, a
non-militant party was formed, the United Malay
National Organisation, to safeguard the rights
of the Malayans and of the Malay rulers. The
Chinese communists also became active in
politics. They demanded that the British should
leave Malaya and tried to make it unprofitable for
them to stay, by infiltrating trade unions and
calling strikes. When this had no effect they esca-
lated their pressure by mounting terrorist attacks
on the British rubber plantations and by murder-
ing planters. Unable to make headway by consti-
tutional means, the Chinese communists in 1948
resorted to an all-out armed struggle from jungle
bases. But in Malaya they constituted less than
half the population, and in the war – or
Emergency, as the British called it – that followed
they never enjoyed any support or sympathy from
the Malays. With the help of some 100,000 Malay
police, 10,000 British and Commonwealth
troops, including Gurkhas, the British pursued
the Chinese into the jungle. Although the
Chinese guerrillas never amounted to more than
6,000, to defeat them was an exceedingly difficult
military operation. It involved the resettlement of
some half a million Chinese peasants who had
been eking out a living in the jungle and upon
whom the Chinese guerrillas relied for food sup-
plies. The Chinese kept up resistance for more
than a decade, but by 1952 the real threat they
posed had been removed.
In one significant respect, the communist insur-
rection simplified matters: those Chinese who did
not support the communists now found common
ground with the Malays. The future of Singapore
remained a thorny problem, but the future of
Malaya would now be settled in negotiation with
the British; the Malays and anti-communist
Chinese wanted neither an economic nor a social
revolution, nor indeed an armed struggle for
independence. The Malayans, skilfully led by the