2014/09/26 by Roger C. Arditti, Philip H. J. Davies · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Military History and Strategy #World Wars: History, Literature, and Impact #Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East
paper · doi:10.1080/03086534.2014.941157
openalex publication_date 2014/09/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
An item of conventional wisdom in our understanding of the Malayan First Emergency is that the original security organisation, the Malayan Security Service (MSS), was a comprehensive failure, prompting its dissolution and replacement with the Malayan Special Branch. This article challenges that orthodoxy, arguing first that MSS actually produced accurate assessments of Malayan Communist capabilities and intentions prior to 1948 although the actual outbreak of violence did come as a tactical surprise. Second, recently released documents show that the abolition of the MSS arose instead from a protracted turf war over the control of intelligence in Malaya with the Security Service (MI5), particularly in the person of the latter's director general, Sir Percy Sillitoe . An outsider to the intelligence and defence communities, Sillitoe was disinclined to manage inter-agency disputes in the joint fashion that had developed during the Second World War, and instead marshalled opposition to the MSS in Whitehall that resulted it being dismantled. This in turn led to a breakdown in security intelligence activity, at the very start of the Emergency, that would not be fully resolved until the Malayan Special Branch became fully operational nearly four years later.