The first months of the Emergency saw chaos and uncertainty as both sides were caught off-guard and scrambled to organise. A combination of MCP policy of intermingling with rural villagers and British policy of exerting ‘pressure’ on the same villagers saw huts burned, people shot running and ‘excesses’ including twenty-four killed at Batang Kali. In effect, rural civilians were caught between MCP ‘terror’ (objectively, if not by intent) and British ‘counter-terror’ and pressure. Government, meanwhile, was gestating more positive measures, so that by the year’s end it was pushing states to start resettlement of villagers and was working with Chinese leaders in the MCA.