All-Malaya Council of Joint Action
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All-Malaya Council of Joint Action
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| Leader | Tan Cheng Lock |
| Founded | 14 December 1946 |
| Dissolved | 1948 |
| Headquarters | Singapore |
The All-Malaya Council of Joint Action (AMCJA) was a coalition of political and civic organisations in Malaya formed to participate in the development of a constitution for post-war Malaya in preparation for independence and to oppose the Constitutional Proposals for Malaya (also known as the Federation Proposals or the Anglo-Malay Proposals) which eventually formed the basis of the Federation of Malaya Agreement.
In seeking to solve some of the administrative incoherence in the pre-war British ruled Malaya, a policy of constitutional development which incorporated the twin goals of constitutional unity and a common citizenship within Malaya was developed as the basis for eventual self-rule and independence of the territory. The first proposal called for the Federated Malay States and Unfederated Malay States to be joined into a larger federation styled the Malayan Union. It was expected that Penang and Malacca would be severed from the Straits Settlements to join the new federation while Singapore remained a separate Crown Colony.
Significant Malay opposition to the Union was spontaneous and widespread as it was seen as a departure from the traditional pro-Malay policies of the British and the removal of sovereignty of the Malay rulers while a significant majority of non-Malays were generally divided or indifferent to the proposals. The preoccupation with post-war rebuilding and the lack of an existing Malaya-centric political discourse meant that even the community most likely to view Malaya as their home like the Straits Chinese and second generation non-Malays failed to appreciate the implications of the Union until it was abandoned by the British. Only openly anti-colonial movements like the radical Malayan Communist Party (MCP) and the more moderate Malayan Democratic Union (MDU), established by English educated left-leaning middle-class intellectuals in Singapore in 1945, emerged to support the proposal with the caveat that Singapore was included in the Union.
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