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Chin Peng paints a picture of a typical Chinese
boyhood in pre-war colonial Malaya. He traces his
intellectual conversion to communism, recalls his
early years as an underground activist against the
colonial masters and relates tales of his anti-Japanese
guerrilla days working with Force 136. But the CPM-Force
136 ties were nothing more than an alliance of convenience
- on both sides.
The imposition of a corrupt and incompetent British
Military Administration (BMA) for Malaya and Singapore
in the immediate post-war period sets the scene
for intensifying discontent between the colonial
authorities and the people at large. Chin Peng provides
a first hand account of these days and describes
specific ill-considered steps taken by the BMA to
restore colonial control steps, he maintains,
that determined the path to inevitable armed conflict.
Both Conservative and Labour governments in Britain
long maintained Chin Peng and the CPM were part
of an international communist conspiracy directed
first from the Kremlin and then from Peking. Once
again, Chin Peng is able to throw an entirely new
light on these accusations which, at the time they
were being made, formed the very foundations on
which Britain based her justifications for a continuing
colonial role in Malaya and Singapore.
Supported by archival reports Chin Peng delves
into the deep rift in British political circles
in the late 1940s over whether 'highly spirited'
Australian forces should ever be invited to become
involved in Malaya.
On the matter of what constitutes terrorism, Chin
Peng is uniquely placed to say a great deal and
does so. He writes that it took him decades to discover
the truth behind the 1948 massacre of civilians
at Batang Kali, a few miles north of Kuala Lumpur,
by a patrol of Scots Guardsmen.
With further backing of declassified documentation,
My Side of History shows how the colonials
manipulated propaganda about communist terrorists
while quietly sanctioning such activities as the
ghastly beheading and mutilation of felled guerrillas.
This barbaric behaviour was supposedly undertaken
in the interests of 'accurate' identification. Then,
there was the popular British tactic of displaying
dead corpses as public warnings of the fate awaiting
those who opposed the colonial masters. Some of
the more 'notorious' slain guerrillas had their
corpses paraded from village to village, for days
on end.
Terrorism has many guises.
Chin Peng examines how the colonials, in pursuit
of British justice - Malayan Emergency style - showed
no qualms about loading the judicial benches to
achieve the required guilty verdicts for alleged
terrorist activity. He cites two specific cases
to illustrate how justice was dealt out as much
by backroom manipulations as by response to courtroom
evidence.
Chin Peng's book makes it very clear that the life
of an anti-British guerrilla in the Malayan jungles
had few high points. The text takes us from jungle
camp to jungle camp, from one hair-raising attack
to another, as superior British military tactics,
weaponry and field strength exact their toll.
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Alias
Chin Peng
In
this context, Chin Peng writes about his direct
association with fellow world revolutionaries and
provides fascinating insights into his dealings
with Mao Tse Tung, Deng Xiao Ping and Chou En Lai
in China, Ho Chi Minh, Le Duc Tho and Le Duan in
Vietnam, and Pol Pot in Cambodia. 
