Henry Gurney

So the actions taken during the emergency by Britain, the massacres, the new villages, that obviously stoked tensions within the Malayan Communist Party, within this guerrilla rebel group, and so they retaliated.

They stepped up their attacks, and in October 1951, they killed the British High Commissioner, Sir Henry Gurney.

This was probably the peak of the violence.

In the following year, the rebels started to lose ground and started to lose influence because the plans for independence changed.

As it was, he was waved away with three or four people clapping, not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Sir Henry Gurney, the civil secretary to the mandate administration, described the British task in those final months with memorable candour.

It was, he said, to cut off the branch on which we were sitting.

The branch must hold to May the 15th, but must fall exactly on that day.