Communism in Malaysia and Singapore

Although in the past few years occasional brief monographs on se­ lected aspects of the Communist movement in some parts of the Singapore-Malaysian area have been published, a comprehensive booklength study has not appeared thus far. The present volume is an initial step in that direction. It is, in the main, a political survey which has taken account of social and economic factors only when the par­ ticular focus of the book demanded it. Since most of what has been written up till now about Communism in Singapore and Malaysia has concerned itself with the Malayan guerilla insurgency and its various ramifications in the late forties and fifties, the following pages have placed primary emphasis on events in the last five years, especially on the period since the formation of the Federation of Malaysia on Sep­ tember 16, 1963. The absence, moreover, ofa formal "above ground" Malaysian Communist Party today has of necessity structured this inquiry in terms of the operations of various shifting Communist fronts and their relationship to the problems of the present Singapore and Malaysian political environment upon which they feed. Communism in Malaysia today, as Malaysian security officials whom this writer interviewed, repeatedly emphasized, is a matter of scattered eruptions and comparatively isolated front activity with few if any inter-organizational linkages. Research certainly confirms a picture of a rather fragmented movement. Along with Malaysia's geographic peculiarities this circumstance has dictated a region by region approach in the following pages.