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5 - The Briggs Plan

March 1950 to November 1951

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2021

Karl Hack
Affiliation:
The Open University, Milton Keynes
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Summary

The Briggs Plan is well known, but this chapter shows it instituted much more than a civil–military executive committee system and ‘population control’ through resettlement. Instead it aimed at a broader ‘geodemographic’ control of people and space, including ‘things’ such as food. It intended this to variously weaken insurgent–rural population links, provide ‘cover’ for the popultion to refuse what insurgents asked of them and create killing grounds as it forced insurgents to approach resettlements in more predictble ways. This chapter shows multiple individuals threatening resignation as the staggering scale of the plan – over 1 million were moved – tested people to the limit. It ends with promising signs but also still-high incident levels and rising concern in the wake of the killing of the high commissioner, Sir Henry Gurney, in October 1951. It also reminds us that even as geodemographic control was tightening and the first amenities for the resettled appearing, Briggs’s idea of clearing successive area was going nowhere. The operations were just too short, and too short of covering entire communist committee districts, to stop the MCP regenerating afterwards.

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The Malayan Emergency
Revolution and Counterinsurgency at the End of Empire
, pp. 191 - 246
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • The Briggs Plan
  • Karl Hack, The Open University, Milton Keynes
  • Book: The Malayan Emergency
  • Online publication: 16 December 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139942515.006
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  • The Briggs Plan
  • Karl Hack, The Open University, Milton Keynes
  • Book: The Malayan Emergency
  • Online publication: 16 December 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139942515.006
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The Briggs Plan
  • Karl Hack, The Open University, Milton Keynes
  • Book: The Malayan Emergency
  • Online publication: 16 December 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139942515.006
Available formats
×