Editing Malayan Emergency (section)

===Socioeconomic issues (1941–1948)===
The economic disruption of World War II (WWII) on [[British Malaya]] led to widespread unemployment, low wages, and high levels of food price inflation. The weak economy was a factor in the growth of trade union movements and caused a rise in communist party membership, with considerable labour unrest and a large number of strikes occurring between 1946 and 1948.{{sfn|Newsinger|2015|p=41}} Malayan communists organised a successful 24-hour general strike on 29 January 1946,<ref name="Eric Stahl 2003">Eric Stahl, "Doomed from the Start: A New Perspective on the Malayan Insurgency" (master's thesis, 2003)</ref> before organising 300 strikes in 1947.<ref name="Eric Stahl 2003" />

To combat rising trade union activity the British used police and soldiers as strikebreakers, and employers enacted mass dismissals, forced evictions of striking workers from their homes, legal harassment, and began cutting the wages of their workers.{{sfn|Newsinger|2015|p=41}} Colonial police responded to rising trade union activity through arrests, deportations, and beating striking workers to death.{{sfn|Newsinger|2015|p=42}} Responding to the attacks against trade unions, communist militants began assassinating [[strikebreaker]]s, and attacking anti-union estates.{{sfn|Newsinger|2015|p=42}} These attacks were used by the colonial occupation as a pretext to conduct mass arrests of left-wing activists.{{sfn|Newsinger|2015|p=41}} On 12 June the British colonial occupation banned the PMFTU, Malaya's largest trade union.{{sfn|Newsinger|2015|p=42}}

Malaya's rubber and tin resources were used by the British to pay war debts to the United States and to recover from the damage of WWII.{{sfn|Newsinger|2015|p=42}} Malaysian rubber exports to the United States were of greater value than all domestic exports from Britain to America, causing Malaya to be viewed by the British as a vital asset.<ref name="De07">{{cite journal |last1=Deery |first1=Phillip |title=Malaya, 1948: Britain's Asian Cold War?|url=https://vuir.vu.edu.au/15471/1/15471.pdf|via=[[Victoria University, Melbourne|Victoria University]] Research Repository|journal=[[Journal of Cold War Studies]]|location=Cambridge, MA|publisher=[[MIT Press]]|date=1 January 2007 |volume=9 |issue=1 |pages=29–54 |doi=10.1162/jcws.2007.9.1.29}}</ref><ref name="Siver, Christi L 2009. p.36" /> Britain had prepared for Malaya to become an independent state, but only by handing power to a government which would be subservient to Britain and allow British businesses to keep control of Malaya's natural resources.{{sfn|Newsinger|2015|p=43}}