Of all the photos I came across in my research, the one above intrigued me most. It is the office of the Communist Party of Malaya in downtown Kuala Lumpur, I believe where Kota Raya is today. The photo was taken in the 1930s, after the British authorities banned both the Communist party and the Kuomintang in 1930 to prevent the import of the Chinese civil war into Malaysia. How did the banned the Communist party managed to operate so openly in downtown KL? I believe it is to do with one of the most colourful personalities to have set foot in pre-independence Malaya. This is his most fascinating story.
He went by the name of Lai Teck but we really do not know his real name or even where he came from. Speculation was that he was an ethnic Chinese from Vietnam who disappeared from French IndoChina just before Lai Teck’s emergence in British Malaya. This Vietnamese, called Nguyen Van Long, Pham Van Dac or Hoang A Nhac, depending on who you asked, joined the communist party and turned informant for the French authorities after his arrest. He eventually gain the trust of Ho Chi Minh the Vietnamese communist leader, continuing to work for the French even when he was in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Moscow, where he was sent by Ho Chi Minh for training. It was believed that his cover was blown, causing him to leave Vietnam and the French passed him over to the British as a useful agent. Whether Nguyen Van Long/Pham Van Dac/Hoang A Nhac and Lai Teck were the same person we will probably never know but the modus operandi were identical. But why would the British take on an agent whose cover was blown and if it was not blown, why would the French give away their best agent? This man’s life only raises questions, answers for which he took to his eventual watery grave.
Whatever the story, sometime in the 1930s probably 1934, the British recruited Lai Teck to infiltrate the Communist Party of Malaya (‘CPM’). The name Lai Teck was apparently a Chinese pronunciation of Wright, his codename in the CPM. The Chinese, you see, usually have at least two syllables in their names and so the single syllable Wright became Lai Te. This eventually got him the nickname of Ronson, by way of Lighter. However I'm not sure about the story as why a Chinese would choose a prominent English codename is a bit beyond me - wouldn’t an everyday Chinese name be safer, but then again I am no expert in spy craft. Maybe Lai Teck himself could not pronounce his own codename.
Lai Teck was successful in gaining the trust of a very naive CPM leadership. The information he passed over to the British led to the assassination or arrest of many leaders. It was believed that he eventually was responsible for the death of over 100 communists. It was with Lai Teck in the party that the British allowed the CPM to operate: better to let them operate when you got eyes on them rather than for them to go underground. The British probably also supplied Lai Teck himself with resources and support to enable his climb up the leadership ladder, particularly after a successful coal miners strike in 1937 which enhanced his prestige within the party. In 1939, the party elected him to the post of their secretary-general, to lead a leadership for which had a personal role in decimating. This gave him access to party funds, which he had a habit of embezzling.
Then the Japanese invaded in 1941. Lai Teck himself was arrested by the dreaded Kempetai, the Japanese secret police and made a deal with the Japanese to inform for them on the Communist in return for his release. This eventually lead to the capture of the entire CPM leadership. Lai Teck organised a meeting of the CPM Central Executive Committee (‘CEC’) meeting in Batu Caves, then a little village outside KL. The Japanese launched a dawn raid and captured over 100 persons, destroying the entire leadership of the CPM and the nascent Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army (‘MPAJA’). It took years before the CPM and the MPAJA were reconstituted by a 19-year-old Chin Peng in 1943. And where was Lai Teck during the raid? He wasn't in Batu Caves because his car broke down.
Whoever Lai Teck informed to the Japanese however, he never betrayed any of his British contacts or the British agents parachuted into Malaya to work with the MPAJA. This was to ensure that in the event of a British victory in the war, he could remain on good terms with the British. So, after the Japanese surrender, he contacted British Special Branch officers in Singapore to continue working with them.
His position within the CPM however, got more precarious as a younger and more restive generation of leaders led by the young Chin Peng agitated for armed insurrection against the British, while Lai Teck argued for a peaceful revolution. Reports of embezzlement started to emerge as wives, mistresses and secret businesses were uncovered in Singapore, all paid by party funds. Finally, a communist member got access to Kempetai files and discovered that their Secretary-General had been informing on them to the Japanese all along. A meeting of the CEC was called in 1947 to confront Lai Teck with the evidence but he absconded with party funds and gold ingots. The meeting then condemned him to death and elected the 23 year-old Chin Peng to replace him as secretary-general.
Lai Teck lived his final days on the run, first to Singapore then Hong Kong and eventually ended up in Bangkok. According to Chin Peng’s account, a tip led Chin Peng to Bangkok to kill Lai Teck but Lai Teck kept one step ahead of his pursuers. In the end, he was found by three Thai Communists and during an altercation, he was accidentally strangled. His body was dumped in the river and the party funds that he embezzled were never found.
Thus died the most enigmatic Malayan in history, a triple agent dedicated to his own survival betraying hundreds of his communist comrades to three separate colonial powers. But before we condemn or write him off, let us pause pause a moment to consider the consequences of his actions, self-serving as they may be. He delayed the emergence of a communist armed uprising for a decade, weakening it by loss of funds and leadership perhaps to a point where it just fell short of winning power. Perhaps this was the one man who did most to prevent a communist Malaysia and maybe even stemmed the tide of communism in South East Asia, even if unwittingly. And we didn't even know his real name.
The next article explores prewar and war-time Malay nationalism leading to the First attempt at Merdeka and no, its not who you were told.
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