The Malayan Emergency was an armed conflict between communist guerrillas and British Commonwealth forces. Deployment of defence personnel during the emergency demonstrated Australia’s commitment to regional security during the Cold War (1947 to 1991). The successful counter-insurgency campaign laid the foundation for an enduring friendship and defence cooperation between Australia and Malaysia.
The Federation of Malaya was a self-governing colony of the British Empire from 1 February 1948 to September 1963, when it became Malaysia.
On 16 June 1948, the Federation of Malaya declared a state of emergency in response to rising violence from the Malayan Communist Party (MCP). The declaration was sparked by guerrillas assassinating 3 British staff at 2 plantations in the northern state of Perak.
The guerrillas, most of whom were Malayan Chinese, were seeking to overthrow the British colonial administration in Malaya.
Australia's involvement
The conflict was perceived by Australians as a defence against communism but it was also an anti-colonial conflict.
During the emergency, Australia deployed:
- Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) squadrons
- Royal Australian Navy (RAN) vessels to the British Commonwealth Far East Strategic Reserve (FESR)
- Australian Army infantry, artillery and other units.
Australia first committed to the conflict in June 1950, deploying a training team and 2 RAAF squadrons (transport and bomber).
Australia increased its commitment in 1955 after co-forming (with the United Kingdom and New Zealand) the FESR to defend Malaya and Singapore from internal and external threats.
Australia deployed Navy, Army and further Air Force elements from 1955 onwards. The insurgent threat was already declining, but Australian forces nevertheless contributed to the defeat of the insurgency.
More than 7,000 Australians served in the Malayan Emergency between 1950 and the conflict’s official end in 1960. Several Australian service personnel were killed in action. The Australian War Memorial Roll of Honour names 39 Australians who died on active service in the Malayan Emergency (2 RAN, 29 Army, 8 RAAF); others were wounded, injured in accidents or medically evacuated.
Sergeant Jock Richardson of the 'stand by' platoon from B Company, 2nd Battalion, the Royal Australian Regiment (2RAR) waits for his men to alight from an armoured truck on a road through a rubber estate in Perak, 1956. AWM HOB/56/0749/MC
Post-emergency operations
After the emergency was officially declared over, some insurgent activity still occurred along isolated parts of the Thai-Malay border. Australians continued to see active service in the border region until 1966.
Approximately 2,000 Australians served in post-emergency counter-insurgency operations on the Thai-Malay border between 1960 and 1966. The Roll of Honour names one Australian (Army) who died in Thai-Malay Border operations.
Australia maintained a force in Malaysia, winding down the force from the 1970s, and handing over the Butterworth airbase to the Malaysians in 1988.
Australia and Malaysia’s defence cooperation endures under the Five Power Defence Arrangements (Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and United Kingdom).
Soldiers from the 4th Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment, moving from hut to hut in a village as they carry out a routine patrol along the Malaysian-Indonesian border, Borneo, June 1966. Left to right: Corporal John Maloney, Private Bill McBride on the steps of the hut, and Private Arthur Francis, watched by local children. AWM FIL/66/0241/MC
Causes of the conflict
The Malayan peninsula had been an important location since European imperialism and global trade extended north into East Asia. Portugal, the Netherlands and, by 1786, Great Britain had colonised parts of the peninsula. The Malacca Straits, located between the Indian and Pacific oceans, were a valuable naval and shipping route between Asia and Europe. After the Japanese occupation of Malaya in World War II, Australia was also aware of the peninsula's strategic value.
The Malayan Emergency arose from political and ideological uncertainty in Asia following World War II, and from a long-standing antipathy between the British and the Malayan Chinese. Moreover, when the British resumed control after the war, the new administration failed to act firmly or consistently to solve social and economic problems in Malaya.
Succeeding Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee was prime minister of the United Kingdom between 1945 and 1951. His government’s foreign policy was marked by contradictions. A seemingly eager move away from colonial rule in the sub-continent contrasted with a ‘new colonialism’ in Africa.
The British administration’s policy in post-war Malaya was also characterised by contradictions and changes of heart. And its initial response to escalating violence on the part of the communists was also indecisive. The Malayan Union Proposals were the immediate cause of this violence.
In 1946, the British announced the union proposals, which would have led to the granting of citizenship to the Malayan Chinese. The proposals were, however, extremely unpopular with the wider Malay population, so the British withdrew them. This about-face enraged the Malayan Chinese. Some of them abandoned protests and strikes to began a campaign of violence that included intimidation, sabotage and selective assassination.
In 1948, the MCP tried to redirect this violence by converting the struggle against the British into a rural guerrilla war.
Although the assassinations of 1948 led to the declaration of a state of emergency, the British did not appoint Lieutenant-General Sir Harold Briggs as director of operations until 1950. Briggs completed a report that recommended:
- active anti-guerrilla operations
- cutting the guerrillas off from communities likely to help them
- a systematic clearance of Malaya from the south to the north.
Yet the assassination of Sir Henry Gurney, British High Commissioner of Malaya, on October 1951 suggested that, from a British perspective, the situation was continuing to deteriorate.
According to western accounts, the pivotal point in the conflict was the appointment in January 1952 of General Sir Gerald Templer as British High Commissioner and Director of Operations. During his 2-year command in Malaya, the energetic Templer carried out Briggs' recommendations, including the controversial resettlement of many rural Chinese into 'new villages'. Templer also offered the guerrillas rewards and other incentives to surrender.
As early as 1951, however, the MCP leadership was beginning to think that moving to a full-scale guerrilla war had been a mistake. From the mid-1950s, communist leaders, such as Chin Peng, realised that they could not win. So they began to press for a negotiated settlement to the conflict. Nevertheless, peace talks held over a 3-month period from December 1955 failed, not least because of the strong stance taken by British-backed Malayan representatives, such as Tunku Abdul Rahman, who would only consider an unconditional surrender by the guerrillas.
When Malaya became an independent federation in August 1957, with Tunku Abdul Rahman as Prime Minister, the avowed anti-colonialism of the communist cause became meaningless. Indeed, the new government was now able to call the struggle against the guerrillas 'the People's War'.
The struggle itself was effectively over by 1958 when the last significant group of guerrillas still at large in Malaya surrendered at Telok Anson in Perak, and others fled north into the remote areas near – and across – the border with Thailand.
The Malayan government did not, however, declare an end to the state of emergency until 31 July 1960. By that time 6,700 guerrillas, 1,800 Malayan and Commonwealth troops and more than 3,000 civilians had lost their lives in the conflict.
