In July 1950, the Colonial Office contacted the Films Division of the Central Office of Information asking them to ‘compile and complete, from material shot by the Crown Film Unit or obtainable from other sources, a film on the current operations in Malaya and Singapore’. The Colonial Office agreed to pay half of the initial budget of £1,500. The War Office initially offered to cover the remaining costs, but withdrew its sponsorship ‘when the scope of the film was decided’. Instead the remaining money came from the Foreign Office and Commonwealth Relations Office (‘Letter from Colonial Office to COI’, 17 July 1950, INF 6/996).

Alien Orders used footage from This Modern Age, from the Crown War Office picture Men of the World (1950), from BBC television coverage and, in particular, from Malayan Film Unit material. While the MFU produced films primarily for local audiences within Malaya, Alien Orders was intended, for the most part, for theatrical distribution within Britain, as the COI monthly release for March 1951. Initially, it was agreed that two versions of the film would be produced, each with a different commentary. The Colonial Office proposed that this second version ‘would be made for use by the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Relations Office in Asia and for distribution in colonial territories generally’. Although plans for a separate version were abandoned, Alien Orders did still play overseas. British Information Services, for example, distributed it non-theatrically within America (INF 6/996).

In March 1951, the month of Alien Orders’ cinema release, the Prime Minister Clement Attlee summoned Commissioner-General Malcolm MacDonald and Commander-in-Chief FARELF, Sir John Harding, to 10 Downing Street to discuss the ‘slow progress’ of the Briggs Plan within Malaya (Ramakrishna, 2002, 91). Lieutenant-General Harold Rawdon Briggs had arrived in Malaya to assume his post of Director of Operations in April 1950 and outlined a ‘counter-guerrilla’ strategy intended to bring the rural Chinese under government control, and to undermine terrorist morale. At the heart of his plan was the intensification of government propaganda, evident in the appointment in September 1950 of Hugh Carlton Greene as head of the Emergency Information Services. The production of Alien Orders, while intended primarily for British audiences, indicates the increasing prominence now afforded to film within the Emergency. However, the rhetoric and events depicted within the film make little reference to Briggs’ proposals and predate his arrival in Malaya.

The film includes a broadcast from Malcolm MacDonald (the son of the former PM Ramsay MacDonald) from July 1948 in which he discussed the attempt by ‘militant Communists’ to ‘establish gangster rule in Malaya’ (The Straits Times, 8 July 1948, 1). It also shows the murder of Dr Ong Chong Keng, a Federal Executive and Legislative Council member, on 31 August 1948. Speaking at the council a month earlier, Dr Ong had urged the ‘Chinese who are taking part in these activities to leave the country and go back to China’ (The Times, 2 September 1948, 4). Upon his murder, The Straits Times stated that he had been murdered ‘because, as is only too well known, he had all along been opposed to Communism and had not hesitated to denounce it’ (The Straits Times, 2 September 1948, 1). In relying on existing library material, the film shows events and broadcasts that may be deemed outdated within the context of the Emergency. However, The Straits Times did note the historical significance of Dr Ong Chong Keng’s murder in an article in April 1951. This murder ‘more than any other factor roused the people into realising the grim realities of terrorism’, it stated, marking the beginning of ‘Red terror in Penang’, and showing ‘at close range the cold blooded reality of the Communist menace’ (The Straits Times, 24 April 1951, 6).

Some of the policies presented within Alien Orders were still at the forefront of the Emergency campaign by March 1951, most notably the resettlement of rural Chinese communities. Although resettlement was in place ‘all over the western states’ by the start of 1950, Briggs championed and expanded these schemes after June 1950, moving 117,000 people in 82 Resettlement areas by January 1951 (Ramakrishna, 2002, 93, 94).

The film inevitably celebrates the British initiatives within Malaya, for example in presenting ‘Anti-Bandit Month’ as an unqualified success. Historian Kumar Ramakrishna offered an alternative view. ‘The utter bankruptcy of Government expertise in the area of spoken, printed and broadcast propaganda reached its nadir’, he wrote, ‘during the pointless endeavour called Anti-Bandit Month, which ran from 26 February to 5 April 1950’. While noting the perceived successes of the scheme, Ramakrishna argued that it made ‘no fundamental contribution’ to the counterinsurgency campaign, and had little effect in rural Chinese areas (Ramakrishna, 2002, 79,80).