Malayan Emergency

The Malayan Emergency also known as the Anti–British National Liberation War (1948–1960) was a guerrilla war fought in Malaya between communist pro-independence fighters of the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) and the military forces of the Federation of Malaya and Commonwealth (British Empire). The communists fought to win independence for Malaya from the British Empire and to establish a communist state, while the Malayan Federation and Commonwealth forces fought to combat communism and protect British economic and colonial interests. The term "Emergency" was used by the British to characterise the conflict in order to avoid referring to it as a war, because London-based insurers would not pay out in instances of civil wars.

The war began on 17 June 1948, after Britain declared a state of emergency in Malaya following attacks on plantations, which had been revenge attacks for the killing of left-wing activists. Leader of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) Chin Peng and his allies fled into the jungles and formed the MNLA to wage a war for national liberation against British colonial rule. Many MNLA fighters were veterans of the Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), a communist guerrilla army previously trained, armed and funded by the British to fight against Japan during World War II. The communists gained support from many civilians, mainly those from the Chinese community. The communists' belief in class consciousness, ethnic equality, and gender equality inspired many women and indigenous people to join both the MNLA and its undercover supply network, the Min Yuen. Additionally, hundreds of former Japanese soldiers joined the MNLA. After establishing a series of jungle bases the MNLA began raiding British colonial police and military installations.

The British attempted to starve the MNLA using scorched earth policies through food rationing, killing livestock, and aerial spraying of the herbicide Agent Orange. British units carried out extrajudicial killings of unarmed civilians, in violation of the Geneva Conventions. The most infamous example is the Batang Kali massacre, which the press has referred to as "Britain's My Lai". The Briggs Plan forcibly relocated a million civilians into concentration camps called "new villages". Many Orang Asli indigenous communities were also targeted for internment because the British believed that they were supporting the communists. The widespread decapitation of people suspected to have been guerrillas led to the 1952 British Malayan headhunting scandal. Similar scandals relating to atrocities committed by British forces included the public display of corpses. British armed forces suffered from well over a thousand casualties, presently making the emergency Britain's deadliest operational theatre since the Second World War.

Although the emergency was declared over in 1960, communist leader Chin Peng renewed the insurgency against the Malaysian government in 1968. This second phase of the insurgency lasted until the dissolution of the MCP in 1989.

The economic disruption of World War II (WWII) on British Malaya led to widespread unemployment, low wages, and high levels of food price inflation. The weak economy was a factor in the growth of trade union movements and caused a rise in communist party membership, with considerable labour unrest and a large number of strikes occurring between 1946 and 1948. Malayan communists organised a successful 24-hour general strike on 29 January 1946, before organising 300 strikes in 1947.

To combat rising trade union activity the British used police and soldiers as strikebreakers, and employers enacted mass dismissals, forced evictions of striking workers from their homes, legal harassment, and began cutting the wages of their workers. Colonial police responded to rising trade union activity through arrests, deportations, and beating striking workers to death. Responding to the attacks against trade unions, communist militants began assassinating strikebreakers, and attacking anti-union estates. These attacks were used by the colonial occupation as a pretext to conduct mass arrests of left-wing activists. On 12 June the British colonial occupation banned the PMFTU, Malaya's largest trade union.

Malaya's rubber and tin resources were used by the British to pay war debts to the United States and to recover from the damage of WWII. Malaysian rubber exports to the United States were of greater value than all domestic exports from Britain to America, causing Malaya to be viewed by the British as a vital asset. Britain had prepared for Malaya to become an independent state, but only by handing power to a government which would be subservient to Britain and allow British businesses to keep control of Malaya's natural resources. Under Britain's proposal, a British High Commissioner would choose the members of the Executive Council and the Legislative Council. Ninety percent of Malay Chinese, who made up 40 percent of the population, would not be given citizenship in the new state.

The first shots of the Malayan Emergency were fired during the Sungai Siput incident, on June 17, 1948, in the office of the Elphil Estate near the town of Sungai Siput. Three European plantation managers were killed by three young Chinese men suspected to have been communists.