Re Malaya -- one of those "yes, but..."
The victory of the conservative nationalists and the failure of the left has resulted in much forgetfulness.
In 1945/46, it wasn't evident that the support for the left, taken broadly, was confined to a minority group dubbed the ethnic Chinese. It was likely a minority, but it definitely wasn't confined to a minority group.
The British success was to shape it so through a number of moves:
1. backing for the conservative nationalists who initially did not raise the cry for independence but for Malay ascendancy
2. suppression of the left nationalists and the left generally, finally pushing the communists into deciding to go underground (although it will be said that it was a comintern directive)
3. using the counter-insurgency to decimate the left through arrests and detentions and suppression of their organisations, choking off a wide-ranging discussion, fumbling for solutions and answers
4. leaving some of the "moderates" and most of the followers to join with the conservative nationalists to continue the fight for independence
5. pigeon-holing the communist left as "Chinese" -- to this day, the resettlement villages (the inspiration for the attempt in Vietnam) are known as Chinese New Villages -- successfully playing the race card
6. then, when British interests were secured, announcing independence, but keeping volatile Singapore out of it, until that could be pacified.
In 1948, on the eve of the launch of the counter-insurgency called the "emergency" for insurance purposes, the left, broadly defined, comprised left Malay nationalists, Chinese/Malay/Indian communists and fellow-travellers, segments of the English-educated intelligentsia, radical "Islamists", even bourgeois nationalists. It included people who had joined Subhas Chandra Bose's Indian National Army (although some here might characterise Bose as 'fascist'), persons who had willingly or unwillingly collaborated with the Japanese in the belief that it was one way to get the British out, trade unionists, etc. The communists, of course, opposed the Japanese, forming the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army, and worked with the Brits.
It is often forgotten that the first post-war party was the Malay Nationalist Party -- a left, radical nationalist grouping, some of whom had 'collaborated' with the Japanese. They had wonderful acronyms for the women's and youth wing: AWAS (Malay: Alert! Beware!) and API (Malay: Fire). That there was an alliance formed by Malay left nationalists and Chinese progressives under the leadership of a Chinese bourgeois: the PUTERA-AMCJA alliance (PUTERA stood for Pusat Tenaga Rakyat, or the Centre of the People's Energy/Force; AMCJA stood for All-Malaya Council for Joint Action)
What the British were able to do was to slice through this tangled web of alliances, promote their favoured group, decimate the rest, or rather their leadership, allowing the followers to drift to the conservative nationalists in their desire for independence, and the rest... is history. In that process, the communists -- heroes of the anti-Japanese resistance; the leader was made an OBE -- became CT's, communist terrorists, or just plain terrorists. Their insignia, the three stars, entered popular language as the word for gangster (samseng).
Nevertheless, as more honest, and more insightful persons have noted, the CTs pushed the process along, and probably sped up the timetable for independence, and perhaps even some of the terms -- the battle for "hearts and minds". A comparison here, perhaps, might be with the Ceylonese independence constitution which, on paper, looks better than the Malayan, but in fact had acted to exclude persons prior to codifying the rights of the included; the Malayan included more persons than it excluded, and then codified exclusion in part.
It might still play out this way in Iraq, what with hints here and there in this list that a US pull-out would just leave the Iraqis to the tender mercies of baathist and al-qaeda terrorists and/or islamist fundamentalists. And so it must have been in Britain with regards to Malaya -- how could we leave the good Malayans to the tender mercies of the CTs! Perhaps they were right! Still, what business was it of theirs? Shouldn't they have been busy-ing themselves with shaping a different Britain that would contribute to changing the circumstances in which Malayans would work out their future, rather than having Malayans try to work out a future in circumstances shaped by Brits with an eye to "British" interests?
No one has to support or denounce the alleged baathist or al-qaeda terrorists. But indeed if they are as marginal as claimed, then there's little concern that they are more than a bloody nuisance; why all the righteous kilobytes? However, in the context of occupation -- and depending in part on the intelligence of the occupying power -- their existence likely makes possible the demands of "moderates", despite the fears of the latter and the annoyance they have with the terrorists. The messiness of the real world...
kj khoo