According to Chin Peng the Central Committee was divided, and Sharkey’s advice
was decisive, given the Australian Communist Party’s reputation for being able to sustain
labour disputes.23
The March meeting therefore decided on ‘defensive violence’ to support labour
disputes. The May Central Committee meeting went further, and concluded that
the result of this policy would be increasing British repression — for instance the proposed
May 1948 Trade Union Amendment. It therefore called for gradually increasing
defensive violence up to and including an inevitable final people’s war. By June, therefore,
the MCP were preparing their supporters for the ultimate ‘full-scale’ British
attack. In his words, ‘So we had to get our armed forces ready, our nucleus ready
before September. Not launching our armed uprising in September but get ready
before September. So when the full-scale attack happens, we can react.’ In the meantime,
another Central Committee meeting was to be held in July or August, in time(by the MCP’s reckoning) to make more detailed plans. These, it was expected, would
include a move to set up a headquarters in the fairly inaccessible interior of Pahang,
and a liberated state in mountainous parts of the northeastern state of Kelantan which
had harboured the MPAJA during the war.24
Chin Peng’s version therefore fits the ‘revisionist’ position fairly well, in arguing
that there was little international influence. He modifies it in accepting there was an
MCP plan of sorts, but sees this as a series of intended ‘defensive’ responses to
increasing British repression. Chin Peng’s version of events forms a bridge to the
next sections, which re-examine the historiography against original documents,
mostly from 1948 itself, and reads Chin Peng’s statements and actions ‘against the
grain’. These two sections deal firstly with the international communist line, and
secondly with the question of what MCP plans were in 1948.