Successful of the Briggs Plan on Counterinsurgency in Malaya

The First Malayan Emergency (1948-1960) was the turning point for the British military forces counterinsurgency doctrines as they were facing a traditional type of war, particularly the guerrilla warfare which was triggered by the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) in June 1948. It was a new challenge for the British since during World War 2 ; most of their campaign was focused on the conventional warfare. It was a huge significance to the military development of the British, in assessing their forces’ effectiveness in dealings with the insurgency. Eventually in Malaya, the British came out with the idea to “winning hearts and mind” of the Malayan citizen through the implementation of “The Briggs Plan” which was founded by Lieutenant General Sir Harold Briggs. This paper will briefly explain the importance of the British counterinsurgency doctrine development in Malaya through the manifestation of the Briggs Plan and its significance towards the beginning of the effective countermeasures in dealing with the CPM armed insurrections. Furthermore, there has been limited credits given to Briggs on the success of his plan even though we knew that the plan was carried out in just 18 months: a tight window for the time of execution. The Briggs Plan somehow shows the importance of the Civil-Military coordination in their war against the Communist insurrection in Malaya thus justifying the military intervention as inadequate to hunt down the Communist guerrillas successfully without a good coordination and cooperation from the civil administrative. The conclusion will include the effective outcomes of the Briggs Plan as the pioneer of the future British counterinsurgency programs in Malaya respectively. It is not unwarranted if some historians highlighted that Sir Harold Briggs was the British “saviour” in the early Malaya. Keywords: Counterinsurgency, doctrine, Civil-Military coordination