The political struggles of the Malayan Spring were played out against a backdrop of agrarian crisis and terror. This chapter explores the dynamics of terror, and through this seeks to revise existing accounts of the origins of the Communist rebellion in Malaya. The debates of historians have focused on the extent to which the revolution was planned by the MCP or precipitated by colonial repression. The answer to this question has been sought within high politics, through a mire of intelligence reports and such records of leftist organisations as have survived. Yet key fragments of these secret worlds are missing and likely to remain so. As the former MDU leader, Gerald de Cruz, reminds us, revolutionaries rarely commit their conspiracies to paper. Moreover, as soon as the righting began a post facto rationalisation of events was underway on both sides. We shall see how colonial intelligence reports became an apologia for past failings, and how, through its propaganda, the MCP attempted to regain control of its revolution. Myths were generated to ascribe responsibility for the violence that were to have a profound influence on the way the Emergency was perceived. To expatriate opinion in Malaya at the time - and to many later historians - the Emergency was a product of the confusion and failure of colonial administration and its ignorance of the nature of the challenge facing it. Once the Emergency was subsumed into Britain's global struggle against Communism, it was seen primarily as a problem of policy; as a source of bureaucratic lessons, rather than as a social experience.