A fight ’til the end
The 67th anniversary of Sir Henry Gurney’s assassination prompts Alan Teh Leam Seng to take a look at the pertinent events that took place in the early days of the Malayan Emergency
next official car flying pennants is accepted by their leader. Siew Mah realises that after all the trouble his men had gone through in preparation for the intended ambush, he had to give them a win to boost their otherwise sagging morale. a hail of gun fire moments later to send Gurney crumpling on the grass verge. The British High Commissioner to Malaya is dead.
Although the incident happened exactly 67 years ago, it’s easy to put to mind the events that took place on that fateful Saturday afternoon based on the Straits Times report I accidentally stumbled upon while searching for a misplaced book among the piles of reading material in my study.
Despite not being in very good condition, I’m still able to put together the badly fraying newspaper pieces and read Harry Miller’s detailed account written soon after he visited the scene of the assassination and spoke to survivors, including Gurney’s widow and Staples. It was nothing short of a miracle that the duo managed to escape unscathed as 35 bullet holes were counted on their Rolls Royce. the streets of Kuala Lumpur to witness Gurney’s cortege on a gun carriage make its way towards the Cheras War Cemetery in Kuala Lumpur, many a tear was shed for the man who was the chief architect of British policy since the first day he arrived in Malaya on Oct 1, 1948.
Succeeding Sir Edward Gent, Gurney had been Chief Secretary in Palestine during the last two years of the British mandate.
Described as a slight man of 50, with receding hairline and grey moustache, Gurney’s self-confidence was almost legendary during the last few frightful months in the Middle East. He even insisted on his daily round of golf up until the day when he theatrically wound up the administration by taking the last plane out of Palestine.
Upon his arrival in Kuala Lumpur, Gurney was quick to grasp the situation and realised the fundamental truth that the communist uprising was a political war where arms alone could never subdue. To him, the major key to victory was political stability.
The Malayan government had to function and, more importantly, the people must see the administration run ‘business as usual’ style or else there’d be no hope for the millions caught up in the turmoil. Gurney strongly believed that without hope and belief in the government, the only alternative for the people would be communism.
With the support of like-minded Malayan administrators like Malcolm MacDonald, Gurney successfully persuaded London not to lean towards an all-out war.
He warned that an unending pattern of escalation and the inevitable toll on innocent civilians would result in hatred for the