Malaya's secret police 1945-60

LEON COMBER

Malaya’s secret police 1945-60: the role of the Special Branch in the Malayan Emergency

Singapore: ISEAS, 2008. 324 pp. ISBN 9789812308290 hb £46.95 hb; ISBN 9789812308153 pb £21.95

Reviewed by Simon C. Smith, University of Hull

The Malayan Emergency – Britain’s ‘Asian Cold War’ – has unsurprisingly attracted a great deal of historical attention. Leon Comber, a former Chinese-speaking officer in the Special Branch of the Malayan Police and now prolific writer on Southeast Asia, has added to this literature by producing a thoughtful, well-researched, and penetrating examination of the role of Special Branch in combating, and eventually defeating, the Malayan Emergency. His achievement is all the greater given the lacuna in the records, especially among ‘classified documents’.

Comber’s study begins by examining the decidedly uncertain start made in counter-insurgency operations against the Communist Party of Malaya and its military wing, the Malayan Races Liberation Army, by the Malayan Security Service (MSS). The failure of the MSS to warn the colonial government of the impending outbreak of violence by the communists, coupled with disenchantment with its director, Col. John Dalley, led to its winding up in August 1948 and replacement by Special Branch, one located in Malaya the other in Singapore. Quite apart from the difficulty of establishing a new intelligence gathering service at the height of a major insurrection, Special Branch initially lacked Chinese language competency which impeded its effectiveness. Nevertheless, Comber notes that by the early 1950s, ‘Special Branch had begun to settle down as the “eyes and ears” of the government’, adding that it had become ‘more confident and proficient in establishing a widespread network of agents and informers and collecting, collating, analysing and disseminating information’ (p. 98). Comber pays particular attention to the work of Sir William Jenkin who, as Director of Intelligence, reorganised and retrained Special Branch. Among Jenkin’s successes was a recruitment drive to increase the number of Chinese probationary Special Branch inspectors. According to Comber, the work of Jenkin made the Head of the Federal Special Branch, Guy Madoc’s, task ‘much easier’ when he assumed this role in February 1952 (p. 143). Comber also pays glowing tribute to the Director of Operations, General Harold Briggs, whose eponymous Briggs Plan ‘provided the Special Branch and the uniformed branch of the police, the civil administration and the fighting forces with a set of directives that laid down clearly the path they should follow ... to defeat the communist insurgency’ (p. 167). Indeed, the author goes so far as to suggest that ‘it is impossible to imagine the maturation of the Special Branch without the brilliantly conceived Briggs Plan and the developments involving the Special Branch that arose from it’ (p. 288).

In emphasising the role of Briggs and Jenkin, both of whom left Malaya before the arrival of the new High Commissioner and Director of Operations, General Sir Gerald Templer, in early 1952, Comber is implicitly giving support to the interpretation, presented most recently by Karl Hack, that the tide was turning in Britain’s favour before the arrival of Templer and that much of this was due to the success of the Briggs Plan. Indeed, Comber argues that the Briggs Plan ‘had a large part to play ... in the continued improvement in the security situation that took place during General Sir Gerald Templer’s time as High Commissioner and Director of Operations’ (p. 167). This interpretation contrasts with the so-called ‘stalemate thesis’ associated with Richard Stubbs, Anthony Short, and others that deadlock had been reached by the end of 1951 which required Templer’s energy, drive, and much-vaunted ‘hearts and minds’ strategy to break. If the Templer period did have a defining moment, it was the separation of Special Branch from the Criminal Investigation Department since this ‘provided Special Branch with an enhanced status, enabled it to develop professionally along its own lines, and cast off the perception that it was somehow an appendage of the CID’ (p. 287).

Comber has succeeding in producing a highly readable account that significantly enhances our understanding of the reasons for British success in defeating the post-war communist insurrection in Malaya. If there is a criticism, it is that his relatively light engagement with the historiography means that his contribution to existing debates is implicit rather than explicit. Nevertheless, he makes a strong case for the centrality of Special Branch in British success during the Emergency. As he concludes: ‘In the final analysis, the Special Branch outwitted the communist insurgents’ (p. 287).