Lim Kean Siew 
reviews
Anthony Short's
In Pursuit Of Mountain Rats

THIS IS A FASCINATING BOOK on a fundamental period of Malayan history, the Emergency and the insurrection of the Chinese MCP. He writes as a historian with the sensitivity of one who had personally gone through part of the struggle. Indeed, he served as a soldier and one wonders if his passion was because of the period he must have gone through as a soldier and this involvement which gives his book a sense of concern that makes the reading a compulsion and a pleasure.

The way the book came to be written and its subsequent publishing outside the country speaks for itself.  Apparently Short began to write the book in 1960 as the result of an agreement in 1960 with the Malayan Government in which it was agreed he could write without censorship but, unfortunately, when he submitted his abridgement of the first three chapters to the Government in 1968 for approval, no indication from the government was forthcoming for the next three years and he was eventually told that the book was not to be published in spite of his offer to remove what was most secret and subversive of the text.

Eventually the manuscript was accepted by the Oxford University Press and it was published afer a dispute as to who had the copyright. He says this regarding the incident:

"It is to me a matter of the utmost regret that the Government of Malaysia which I believe is still fundamentally tolerant should object to an account based on evidence that is presumably not yet in dispute".

That would seem to suggest that it might never have been published at all if he had not had his way. 

Returning from England in 1953, I had not seen the beginning of the Emergency and how it evolved and had to take things as they were. I returned to be involved in politics but, being in the opposition, I was therefore at a disadvantage and not privy to government texts, so I had to think and move almost by instincts, fed, as it were  by the British propaganda machine.  This is not quite right for history, so it was fortunate that I came across this book. Unfortunately, though first published in 1975, I only came across it today in the Cultured Lotus 2000 edition. 

But Short did not write the book to come to any conclusions. They were left to the readers like ourselves, Malayans then and Malaysians today. He did not write a personal account but as a historian and he had access and put down the facts as he saw them and thought them relevant. Needless to say, the facts were plenty and I was glad that I came across many facts that seemed to support my view.  But his job was not to preach as he says in his book,

"It is, I think, improper for a non-Malaysian to suggest which of the two events - the defeat of the communist insurrection or the attainment of independence - was the more important in from or in time for the future of Malaya."

It was the Federation Agreement that cut off Singapore from Malaya and removed the majority power the Chinese had and gave to the Malays their sultanates and their  rights and a sense of what they had to fight for. At that point the struggle became racial rather than a class struggle and that allowed the British to clamp down hard on the Chinese, at first as the anti national Chinese society, and, later as Communistic. There was the MDU. They were Malayans and English educated, but they were considered anti-British and therefore dangerous. 

In fact, though the struggle became increasingly bitter and by the time the Emergency was established, the future was already clear.  Was the Emergency necessary and was there another option? Could not a policy had been developed to win the Chinese over instead of forcing them to cow down before the guns of the British soldiers, which was the idea of the Emergency?. This was another interesting thought the writer provoked. In itself, he never questioned it, perhaps because he was British and it was not an option to him, that was not his point. 

According to him, the Federation of Malaya Agreement had virtually split Singapore from Malaya and the Chinese dominance had been cut down to size. The Malays were split from the Chinese and there was a change of attitudes and outlook and targets and national aims in them which demolished the MCP idea of launching a war from the countryside and made it meaningless and almost racial insurrection. 

As he put it, on pages 156-157, "From the beginning of the insurrection the situation within Malaya alone was sufficient to create a good deal of tension between the Malay and Chinese communities. Most important was the racial composition of the combatant forces: armed Chinese guerrillas and numerous Chinese supporters on one side, Malay police, soldiers and special constabulary on the other". . 

The idea of a united countryside supporting the MCP had virtually been torn to shreds and the MCP defeated in their aims and heir objectives even before they chose an all out war since the countryside had been divided. Further, the Government had the  backing of a well trained and well armed British army recruited from a safe base and a different country which the Kuo Min Tang of China did not have. The odds were in favour of the government who had prepared for the fight and to win the battle. It was only a question of time, so why was there this stampede? So why the Emergency? A change of policy and a softer approach might have solved the problems even if it would take a longer time. 

In the second  place, the MCP was never an invincible force in itself. It was riddled with informers, the principal of which was Loi Tek, its Secretary-General who had been in control since before the war when he came in from somewhere in Indochina. He had picked the party clean of its leaders, selling them out to the Japanese during the war and then to the British till his cover was blown about a year before the Emergency when he was exposed. He had inflicted untold damage to the MCP. But he had also disappeared with all their cash he could lay his hands on. How strong was the party with a double or treble agent heading their ranks. 

Did not their strength lie in the dissatisfaction of the Chinese with their lot and was that not the incubation hotbed of their recruitment?

Finally, the Chinese were divided between the haves and the have nots who also were divided between those who supported the Kuo Min Tang who was in the MCA. Did not that further divide the ranks and the success of the guerrilla policy of the MCP? For example, it was rumoured that Khaw Kai Boh, a junior police officer then in Perak, who alerted the British to the fact that the MCP was already indulging in total war against the estates, a warning which woke them up to finally decide on the Emergency, was in sympathy with the KMT. His sympathy for and his attachment to the MCA became a matter of much rumour.  He later became a Minister of the MCA, after he had to leave Singapore whilst still in the police force. 

According to Short, the Government was undecided what to do and their Malayan Secret Service headed by Lieutenant-Colonel Dalley; it had "surprising little information regarding the intentions and the capabilities of the post-war Malayan Communist Party" It was Malcolm Macdonald who was of the view that action had to be taken because he believed the MCP was becoming more active than his men thought.

He "had little confidence in the judgements from Kuala Lumpur and this spread to the High Commissioner who wrote to General Galloway in early 1948 that "the present situation was far from being clear cut and free from obscurity". These views were  reflected by the Commissioner General Edward Gent in his conference on June 20th 1948. 

Khaw Kai Boh, then a juniior officer supported his views. He reported that "the MCP had already launched a programme, in which all means were being used, to bring the rubber industry to a standstill". But there was nothing new in this report except that there was now a suicide squad, which was an open secret. But it was news that warmongers liked to hear.

Was not a stubborn enemy whose ranks could be perpetually fueled by the callousness and cruelty of the Emergency the result of the Emergency itself? Instead, the British, like the Israelis, brought out their military might and wholesale incarceration to  kill the proverbial ants and the military mind of General Templer ploughed resistance under the iron treads of the tanks? To these questions we find no answers. It is a pity. But then, the thinking of that time was different.

It has been argued by many that there was violence before the Emergency. That I agree. But my question was, if there was no option to Emergency,  was it necessary? To those who say that violence was mounting, I ask, how could that have been possible as they were being killed and was it not true that the violence became even more pronounced after the Emergency? 

No sooner as the Emergency was declared in 1948, terror and counter terror began to mount and the atrocities by the British forces had begun grow. In a conference of CPOs, we begin to hear of ammunition being planted on dead bodies to justify their killing.  A British Ferret officer, it was reported in November 1948, told of the killing of two middle aged Chinese who were identified as one who had "organised supplies, the other as porter' and one of them had been shot by the officer himself. His informant was an aborigine and the men had just been shot without any inquiry. 

In the case of the Kachau incident, known as " Little Yenan" for being an active guerilla base, on the consent of the CPO himself, the whole village of some thirty homes were set alight after a warning of some two and a half hours for the families to remove all their moveable belongings and to vacate their homes.

This was a retaliatory punishment because of attacks on two nights against a mine and a rubber estate and in spite of the fact that two of the villages had been government agents. In the event of the fire, the inhabitants also lost their personal property because of the intensity of the flames and so they lost everything. The "OCPD Kajang, who was actually responsible, made no pretence that the village  was burned down by mistake".

They say that reading is a good habit to be developed and certainly this is one book which leads us to accept that habit.#