Oh boy, time for the story of Lai Teck, true name unknown, secret agent extraordinaire, traitor of all traitors, mass comrade killer, a man who betrayed 2 communist organisations to 3 hostile security services. After insertion into the Malayan Communist Party in 1934, he played his hand so well that by 1939 he was elected its leader. Swanning around Singapore on his red sports bicycle in suit and hat during World War 2, his actions led to the deaths of over a hundred high-level members of his party. Yet by the end of the war he was basking in the adulation of the surviving Party members and considered a hero.

MYSTERIOUS BEGINNINGS

Lai Teck’s life before he arrived in Malaya is shrouded in mystery. He was born in Saigon in 1903 to a Vietnamese father and Chinese mother. At different times and to different people, he introduced himself as Nguyen Van Long, Hoang A Nhac and Pham Van Dac - whether one or none or all of these names were his true name is unknown.

He joined the Indochina Communist Party at an early age but was arrested by the French Indochinese Security Service for communist activities in 1925. They released him after he agreed to work for them as an agent against the Indochina Communist Party.

How he spent the next few years is pretty hazy. By the late 1920s Lai Teck was in Moscow working for the Comintern, possibly as part of Ho Chi Minh's policy of sending young cadres for further training. He was subsequently posted to Shanghai where he worked for the Comintern’s Far Eastern Bureau.

Around 1934, the French arranged a meeting between Lai Teck (or whatever name he was using at the time) and the British Special Branch to see if they might have some use for him in their fight against Malayan communism. In one version of the story, this was because his cover had been blown and he needed to leave Vietnam in a hurry. Or it may simply have been part of normal cooperation between colonial security services against communism.

Either way, timing was fortuitous as morale in the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) was at a low point. Not only had the British been extremely successful in arresting many of its leaders, it was undergoing an internal split between the predominantly Hainanese hardliners and the more moderate Hakkas. In addition, it was facing a funding crisis as the Great Depression had left many of its members in dire straits.

The British took advantage of this to provide Lai Teck with a cover story and forged documents to back it up. He was to be, according to a later Japanese source, 'a troubleshooter and a Comintern liaison chief in Hong Kong who had been ordered to visit Malaya to deal with the Malayan Communist Party's crisis', and thus the Lai Teck (莱特) persona was born.

Lai Teck travelled to Hong Kong. On arrival, he went to an innocent looking shop that was actually a front for communication between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the MCP. There, he showed his 'credentials' to the shopkeeper and gave him his cover story. Having actually worked for the Comintern for several years he was able to put on a convincing show, and he was given funds to buy a boat ticket to Singapore.

On arrival in Singapore, he went to the headquarters of the Singapore Vegetable Growers Association, another innocent looking establishment that was actually an MCP front. He was then passed on to a senior member of the MCP, introduced himself and presented his cover story and documents yet again.

At the time, communication between the MCP, CCP and Comintern was poor. In 1930, the CCP had relinquished control of communist activities in Southeast Asia and the Comintern had taken over. In 1931, the Comintern sent a 3-man mission to Singapore to help the fledgling MCP, but 2 of the 3 were quickly arrested. The intelligence this yielded led to the arrest of Ho Chi Minh in Hong Kong and the closure of several communist networks there. It also led to the Chinese government arresting 2 important Comintern agents, Hilaire Noulens and his wife Tatiana Moissenko, in Shanghai. That led to the closure of Comintern networks in Shanghai for at least 2 years and the collapse of communication between the MCP and the Comintern.

INFILTRATING THE MCP

With the situation still messy in 1934, nobody in the MCP thought to verify Lai Teck’s story, given his convincing performance. He was thus accepted as a member of the MCP and almost immediately looked up to. The MCP at this point was just 4 years old. Its members were generally poorly educated and working in lowly occupations. The average age of a party member was just 26. At 33, Lai Teck was older and much wiser. According to his cover story, he had studied communism in Russia and had been a member of the CCP's Shanghai Town Committee, which was not far off from the truth. He was cosmopolitan, multilingual, well-informed on international affairs, experienced and so well-versed in communist theory that he was nicknamed 'Malaya's Lenin'.

He also displayed a great talent for organisation, most notably in 1937 when he played a leading role in organising a massive coal miners' strike in Batu Arang. It was so well organised that the British were seemingly caught flat footed, and the strikers were able to set up their own Soviet, the first ever in Malaya. It didn't last long, of course - Lai Teck had persuaded Special Branch to let the strike go ahead so that he would look good within the MCP. Eventually the British shut the whole thing down, but the mission had been accomplished and Lai Teck had come out of it looking like a hero.

Thus, when MCP leaders started disappearing at an even more alarming rate than before, nobody suspected Lai Teck.

The information he provided to Special Branch resulted in the arrest of numerous members of the Central Committee who were subsequently banished to China. For many of them (though by no means all) this was a death sentence, for the KMT government in China was fiercely opposed to communism and would have them arrested on arrival and executed.

At the same time, Lai Teck encouraged the MCP’s internal divisions and infighting. After the arrests of 2 successive chairmen of the Central Committee in December 1935 and March 1936, no doubt due to intelligence provided by Lai Teck, fingers were pointed at one of the MCP factions, again, possibly at the urging of Lai Teck. MCP leadership decided to have the suspected traitors ‘removed’. 3 suspects were lured to Johor and murdered: 1 was strangled, 1 was shot and 1 simply disappeared. Shortly after, the party conducted a purge of party opponents.

With MCP leaders being rapidly eliminated by both the British and each other, there were many opportunities for promotion. As a result of this and the talents he had displayed, Lai Teck was elected to the Central Committee in 1935. In 1936 he was elevated to Deputy Secretary. 4 months later his superior, the Secretary-General, was ‘coincidentally’ arrested. By 1939 Lai Teck had become the Secretary-General of the MCP, in other words, the MCP was now being run by a British agent!

(Continued in reply)