Trace and Tell your Family's Empire Stories
Introduction
Jenny Eclair is an award-winning comedian and novelist, regularly seen on the TV programme 'Grumpy Old Women'. Jenny was a 'Forces' child, born in post-colonial Malaysia while her father, Derek Hargreaves, was posted there.
Derek, now 82, was first posted to Malaya in 1952 as a lieutenant fighting the communist uprising in the jungle. Jenny wanted to retrace his footsteps and unravel his part in the Malayan Emergency, a 12-year guerrilla war fought by Malayan Chinese communists against the British.
As military strategy turned to winning over the Malayans, the Emergency was to become known as the 'Battle for Hearts and Minds'.
Browser by chapterThe Malayan Emergency has its roots in the birth of the car industry during the early twentieth century, which turned the rubber industry into a global gold mine through the huge demand for tyres. Southeast Asian Indian and Tamil labourers formed the majority of the workforce on the rubber plantations, while the Chinese were particularly associated with tin mining.
The violence began in 1948 when three British rubber planters were killed by Malayan Chinese communists. The Malayan Communist Party, formed by Chinese Malayans in 1931, was closely tied to the growing communist movement in China and dominated the resistance movement against the Japanese occupation of Malaya during the Second World War.
Communist soldiers had fought side by side with the British against the Japanese during the war, but now they turned their weapons on the colonial authorities in an attempt to take over the country.
The 1948 constitution, which created the Federation of Malaya and favoured the Malay population, alienated sections of the Chinese community in Malaya. The Malayan Communist Party returned to the jungles and began a guerrilla war that would last another 12 years. The communists were supported by only a minority of disaffected Chinese Malayans, who by that time formed around 40 per cent of the population.
However, the battled-hardened guerrilla army were too much for the 10,000-strong Malayan Police Force to take on and the situation quickly grew out of control. A state of emergency was declared, giving the government additional powers of arrest and other special powers, in an attempt to contain the uprising. Troops were sent over from Britain, among them Jenny's father.
