Our Man in Malaya by Margaret Shennan

Author:Margaret Shennan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789814423878
Publisher: Monsoon Books Pte. Ltd.

Dear Bob,

Bearer … Tsai Siew Chuen is an old pal of mine – 24 years of jungling together–whom I can thoroughly recommend. Like so many of them he is untrained to any trade … If you can do anything to fix him up I shall be very grateful. I hate to see these fellows – grand chaps of their day – wandering around bewildered and becoming increasingly feckless as time goes on.5

But the most assiduous by far in his pursuit of John was Liew Yau, who claimed compensation in August 1947, as pensions and gratuities for the members of the Ex-Comrades’ Association. John referred the claim to the Secretary for Chinese Affairs (SCA) in Singapore, who took it forward to the Colonial Secretary in Singapore, asking for it to be handed to Far East Land Forces (FARELF). The matter rumbled on, as the War Office and GHQ FARELF continued to saddle John with the problem. In December 1947 the Major General Administration FARELF asked for a full briefing from him. John wrote a seven-page document on the MPAJA and a commentary on Britain’s outstanding obligations. He stated firmly his opinion that the general claim for back pay was settled at disbandment.6 His final contribution to this saga was to serve as a conduit between the Ex-Comrades’ Association and the new Federation government that replaced the Malayan Union on 1 February 1948, after Liew Yau asked him to transmit all the documentation on the ex-MPAJA claims to the Deputy Chief Secretary.7 However, now, two and a half years after the end of the war, John was thoroughly tired of the whole business, including the game of musical chairs played by the civil and military authorities, furthermore, he had also lost all patience with Liew Yau, who was still pushing the claims of 1,115 men – claims John considered to be bogus. As for the Ex-Comrades’ Association itself, John was now convinced that it was quite simply and evidently ‘a 100% political organisation and poisonously revolutionary at that’.

* * *

In September 1947 John had written home with a confusing picture of the political scene. Perceiving a marked deterioration in law and order, during the spring the British press had highlighted the incidence of intimidation producing a ‘fear-laden atmosphere’ in Malaya, and raised calls for action from Asians as well as British officials and planters. At the same time the attitudes of people like John and Jim Hannah were lambasted by traditional right-wing journalists: ‘The idea which certain liberal-minded British had in the early days of the re-occupation, that the British would he able to continue cooperating with those left-wing groups which had given them useful help during the war, has long since been shattered.’8 Six months later. John probed his parents as to how the press was then presenting the Malayan situation – ‘I dare say the recent banditry scares have even filtered through to the home papers’ – so he wanted to reassure them. ‘Politically things are quietening down a bit, though in fact we are threatened with a public services’ strike at the moment.

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