On 17 June 1948, seventy-five years ago this weekend, the British Prime Minister, Clement Attlee declared war on the ethnic Chinese Malayan Communist Party (MCP). Except he did not call it a war; he called it an ‘Emergency’.
It seems that the British plantation and trading companies in Malaya, such as Sime Darby, Guthrie, Harrisons & Crossfield, London Tin and Dunlop, demanded that the word ‘war’ should not be used because it would make their businesses uninsurable.
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