The 1948  massacre at Batang Kali of around two dozen ethnic Chinese rubber plantation workers and tin miners by a Scots Guards patrol couldn’t have resurfaced in the media at a worse time for the regiment. The massacre in Malaya has been back in the headlines recently due to a High Court review in London of a British Government decision not to order an inquiry into the killings. Now there’s speculation that the Scots Guards may be disbanded in the next round of defence cuts because it allegedly has the worst recruiting figures in the Guards Division. I don’t think that is going to happen, but the Scots Guards wouldn’t have Batang Kali hanging over their heads now if they had been more honest about it in the past. When the BBC aired a documentary in 1992 about the massacre it was condemned by highly placed members and former members as a foul slur on the regiment. The News of the World accounts of the massacre in 1970 were also dismissed as nonsense. There’s been a cover-up and the Scots Guards may yet rue their part in it. Meanwhile, at the High Court in London in a bid to torpedo a proper inquiry into the massacre, British Government lawyers have been arguing that the real bad guy was the Sultan of Sengalor. They said that Batang Kali was in his territory and the Scots Guards were answerable to him. Obvious nonsense. Then they argued that the British Government was entitled to wash its hands of all responsibility because Malaya was granted independence in 1957. A close look at what is known about the massacre reveals a number of seedy second-and-third raters  in both the military and the colonial administration who ordered and then covered up a wicked and stupid act. Proceedings at the High Court suggest nothing much may have changed when it comes to the calibre of British public servants.

The threat to the Scots Guards is only one of several to Scottish units in the defence shake-up expected to be announced soon. It seems almost certain that one of the Royal Regiment of Scotland’s five battalions will be axed. The question is which one. The 5th Battalion, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, is the most junior but the 4th Battalion, the Highlanders, is saidto have  the worst recruiting record and the highest number of non-Britons in its ranks. One rumour has it that it will be the 5th Battalion and its soldiers will be transferred into the 3rd Battalion, the Black Watch. The historic names may also to be dropped altogether and the battalions will be known only by their numbers. The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards may also be on the chopping block as the Army reduces its main battle tank fleet. Not a good time to be a Scottish soldier.

The Batang Kali Massacre is getting a lot of coverage in the media at the moment due to the  High Court  hearing in London at which relatives of those killed are challenging a British Government decision not to hold a public inquiry into the incident. I've said before that I think there should be a proper inquiry and the truth of what happened to 24 rubber plantation workers killed in Malaya by a Scots Guards patrol in 1948 should be established. What surprises me about the coverage I'm seeing is that many do not agree. Media website comments sections have people saying that it all happened more than 60 years ago and it doesn't matter any more. The arrogant bully-boy tactics employed by the British authorities to block  Malaysian attempts to hold their own inquiry a couple of years back are still souring relations between the two countries.  One clown suggested he should be compensated for the Highland Clearances. Others suggest it happened in a war and therefore the murder of civilians is justified. Perhaps these people are aware that British troops regularly massacre civilians in time of war. I'm certainly not aware of that. Others suggest that the lawyers representing the Malayans are only in it for the money. The hearing in London is not about compensation - though claims may follow. And the families say they have no interest in seeing the now-elderly surviving patrol members prosecuted. It's about ending a 63-year-old cover-up. In some ways the cover-up is worse than the massacre. The cover-up gives the massacre a seal of approval from Her Majesty's Government.

See Batang Kali Revisited

Two things baffle me about the Massacre at Batang Kali in 1948 of 24 ethnic Chinese rubber plantation workers by a patrol from the Scots Guards. Why is what happened still a British state secret? And why are there still people out there that won’t believe it happened?

In the past I’ve made a big deal of the women and children being loaded into vehicles and suggested this was evidence that there was more to the massacre than just a rogue patrol at work. It now seems possible that the vehicles were there to ferry the occupants of the Batang Kali settlement to work – and not sent by the Army to collect the women and children. In fact, it’s maybe unlikely vehicles would be sent by the Army; because it’s been alleged that the original plan was to kill everyone at Batang Kali. A soldier who was there has stated that the patrol had been told by one of their officers that the villagers at Batang Kali were supplying the local ethic-Chinese Communist guerrillas with food and were to be made an example of. The operation at Batang Kali was odd in that it was not led by an officer. From the start there were official suspicions about the patrol’s claim that all 24 men were shot while trying to escape. Surely, escaping men would have tried to scatter and wouldn’t have been mown down in several nice neat groups, one colonial administrator asked the Guardsmen. Then the administrator spoiled it by saying, allegedly, “I hope you get away with it”.

There is evidence that the villagers were indeed helping the guerrillas. Many other villages, either voluntarily or through coercion, were also aiding the Communists. As far as we know the only massacre was at Batang Kali. Why doesn’t Her Majesty’s Government want us to know why that was? Is it waiting until the last member of the patrol dies? Or are we never going to be allowed to find out what the truth is?

See Batang Kali Revisited

Well, it looks as though the word “twice” is biting the dust here in North America. Television advert after television advert insists that New such-and-such is “two times” as strong or effective, or whatever, than Old such-and-such or its nearest rival. I was always taught that one word is better than two and simple words were better than long ones. So, what’s happened to “twice”? I suspect that the smart folks who conduct consumer surveys and market research have cottoned onto the fact that an increasing number of Canadians don’t speak English as their first language. The country takes in something like 250,000 immigrants a year, who feed into a population of around 30 million. So, English-language advertising is being simplified to sell detergent and soap powder. If a good word must be killed off, then so be it.
As a writer, I look on the English language as a tool and I take an interest in it. It never ceases to amaze me that so much of what I consider good English usage used to set the teeth of language purists, some would say language fascists, on edge in the 1920s and 1930s. One of the beauties and strengths of the English language is that it is always evolving. But I seem to remember there was a time when people pushed against changes. Sometimes they won, sometimes they lost. But nowadays I seldom see a letter to the editor or a pundit pushing back against the ever-increasing torrent of poor English we’re being subjected to on a daily, nay hourly, basis in the media. I don’t know if it’s too late for British readers of this blog to come to the rescue of “twice” before it suffers the fate of such old favourites as “please” and “thank you”. But that’s another rant: along with…… oh, never mind.

I decided to check into how many British and Canadian officers were executed during the First World War and compare that figure with the number of sergeants and warrant officers shot by firing squad. How many of you would be surprised to learn that there were two officers shot for desertion and while the figure for senior Non-Comissioned Officers was five? The number of officers and senior N.C.O.s serving would have been about equal. So, it would appear that working class soldiers were held to a higher standard than their officers. Or perhaps officers were more inclined to be sympathetic to fellow officers when it came to dealing with battle exhaustion. Or maybe men chosen for command by virtue of which school they went to rather than on the basis of merit  were indeed braver.