The British-led authorities in Malaya declared an Emergency nationally on 18 June 1948. This was in response to rising MCP-inspired violence targeting labour contractors, strike breakers, and Kuomintang supporters. This MCP violence reversed the trend of 1947 to early 1948, when violence had been declining from postwar highs. It followed British abandonment of proposals to vastly expand citizenship, and replacement of the April 1946 Malayan Union with a February 1948 Federation that entrenched Malay sovereignty and special rights. It also followed British curtailment of trade union activity. These changes helped persuade MCP leaders, in March and May 1948 Central Committee meetings, to gradually increase targeted violence.
The MCP aimed to prepare for full insurgency when the British further intensified arrests or banned the MCP and satellite organizations—something it expected by September 1948. It helped their decision that international communist policy was also moving away from peaceful coexistence with other parties in 1948, as the international Cold War gathered pace (Chin, 2003, pp. 195-207; Hack and Wade, 2009; Hack, 2021, pp. 26-56). It also helped that the MCP’s Secretary-General Lai Teck, the architect of the postwar ‘united front from above’ (hereafter called ‘united front’), was unveiled as a traitor in early 1948.
The choice of the term Emergency stemmed from the British and colonial practice of declaring Emergency powers at times of unrest (CO, 1948a). This allowed the authorities to preserve civil law, while issuing exceptional ‘regulations’ covering matters such as detention without trial. Emergency regulations would eventually grant wide powers over arrest, detention, deportation, residence, movement, and access to food.
The Malayan Emergency lasted until 31 July 1960, and was limited thereafter to border areas. Remnants of the MCP’s Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) continued to operate from the southern Thai border until December 1989, when peace accords were signed. There was a period of incursions and assassinations during a second, smaller Emergency, around 1968–1975 (Ong, 2015; Hack, 2021, pp. 459-465).
By contrast, during the peak of the first Emergency between 1950 and early 1952, up to 40,000 local and Commonwealth soldiers, 67,000 police, and 250,000 Home Guard faced around 7,000 to 8,000 insurgents who were backed by multiple mass organizers
(Min Yuen) and up to a million sympathisers. Insurgents and supporters remained over 90 per cent Chinese, with significant minority support from Indians and Malay nationalists and trade unionists. Malay support included the all-Malay 10th Regiment, founded in Pahang in 1949, whose leaders included prominent left-wing Malays (The National Archives, UK, 1957a and 1957b).
But the ‘nationalist’ issue, or more bluntly the MCP and MNLA’s deficit in non-Chinese adherents, would remain a challenge for the MCP. Pre-existing Sino–Malay tensions, due to greater Chinese economic wealth, a Malay fear of being politically eclipsed, and Sino–Malay violence after the MCP briefly occupied many towns following the Japanese surrender in August 1945, all helped to limit broader MCP recruitment.
The struggle against Malaya’s Japanese occupiers from late 1941 to 1945 had made MCP-led anti-Japanese fighters’ heroes for many Chinese. But demands for recruits and support, and punishment of ‘collaborators’ led to violent Malay responses in some areas. Racial violence flared sporadically from April 1945 to March 1946, especially in parts of Perak and Johor, with several hundred killed (Cheah, 2012, pp. 170–239). This ended when some Malay sultans helped establish interracial goodwill committees, while the MCP and Chinese Chambers of Commerce appealed to Chinese for calm. After 1948, many wartime fighters, having previously demobilized (Figure 1) returned to arms.
Figure 1 Members of the wartime Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army march before demobilizing in December 1945