Revisionist literature portrays a British counter-terror stretching across 1948–9, if not longer. This chapter shows how, in fact, counter-terror was ‘bureacratised’ in 1949, becoming far more controlled but also larger-scale, with ‘structural violence’ (slow-burn long-term reduction in life chances due to deportation, huts burned etc.) taking off as excess killings declined. Meanwhile, the insurgents tried, and failed, to establish main bases and larger forces. On failing, they switched to attempting to build multiple, local-based company-level forces, more indirect roots towards growing their strength. This sent incident levels soaring again. This chapter therefore revises the revisionist accounts, but just as importantly tells a cohrent story about the main-base strategy that the MCP hoped would set it on the path to victory, and its replacement strategy of building from more numerous, smaller base areas.

1947–8 saw fateful decisions by the MCP and the British, with these interweaving to create a spiral towards violence. This chapter traces the ‘long cold war’ that preceded and framed these events, the decision-making by both sides and how they combined both with international communism and local events at Sungei Siput to spark a full-scale insurection and counterinsurgency.

What caused MCP strategy to radically change in October 1951, and to what effect? This chapter shows the MCP believed it had to change as geodemographic control tightened, and how it switched to a ‘long war’ strategy with lower force and incident levels but more determined subversion and greater use of the deep jungle. It then traces how that new strategy played out over 1951–4, until by the latter date the headquarters had retreated to south Thailand, numbers were falling slowly but inexorably and the MCP had started to contemplate negotiation. Above all, this chapter threads together the story from the communist perspective, both above with Chin Peng and colleagues, and from below in its struggles in the New Villages.