In 2000 Ian Ward a former Daily Telegraph journalist, contacted Chin Peng to start what
Ward has called “a complex and, at times, fiery collaboration”. It resulted in the publication
of Chin Peng’s memoirs under the title, My Side of History. Although it came out a year
before the publication of the Canberra Dialogues, My Side of History was written after the
Canberra workshop and in many ways grew out of that workshop. Indeed, one senses
that Chin Peng regarded the ANU colloquium as a test-bed for a full-scale autobiography.
They are complementary, though very different books. Dialogues consists of transcripts of
discussions supported by papers which had been prepared to provide a structure for the
occasion, whereas My Side of History is a continuous narrative ghosted by Ian Ward and
his wife, Norma Miraflor. In My Side of History Chin Peng elaborates episodes which were merely alluded to in the seminar sessions. Many of these incidents are exclusively
autobiographical, such as his scramble to evade capture a few hours after the Emergency
was declared in Perak on 16 June 1948 and his hazardous trek to China in 1960. As we
shall see, he also expatiates on events which he did not witness at first hand. A further
difference between the two publications is that the large canvas of an autobiography (which
runs to over 500 pages) gave Chin Peng greater scope than was offered by the workshop to
develop a sustained critique of British colonialism and a plangent apologia for the armed
struggle.