By June 1948 a cycle of rural violence was in motion for which the leadership of the Malayan Communist Party was largely unprepared. Many of its wartime veterans – older, married and re-established in civilian life - were reluctant to follow their old commanders into the jungle. Captured guerrillas confirmed that the party leadership had assumed that any armed struggle would begin from September 1948, and it was only by September that guerrilla mobilisation was deemed to be complete. Against the judgement of some of his commanders, Chin Peng decreed that the MCP should seize power by the ‘Yenan Way’. However, its forces - the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) - were denied early successes in establishing liberated areas, particularly in an attack on Gua Musang in Ulu Kelantan and operations around Batu Arang and Kajang on the west coast. A slow revision of guerrilla strategy began which culminated in the October 1951 Directives in which the MCP sounded a tactical retreat to deep jungle bases, especially in northern border areas, and reactivated the united front through labour, youth, educational movements and approaches to the Malay masses, strategies which had been prosecuted to great effect during the party's heyday of the Malayan Spring. It was only after 1951 that the government began to take the initiative: its troops learned the art of ‘fighting guerrillas with guerrilla methods’, and the bulk of the rural Chinese were resettled into protected areas.