It marked an end, as well as an ill-fated beginning. Shifting from their earlier dismissive course, British officials put Chin Peng and seven other Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army leaders up in Singapore’s Raffles Hotel. They wined and dined the wartime guerrillas before the supremo himself awarded each of them with the Burma Star and the 1939/45 Star. With crowds and photographers there to bear witness, the event was a resplendent affair. Its meticulous choreography projected a Britain that was now firmly in control as Mountbatten, clad in white
