‘The price we had to pay’

Perception and Reality in the Memories of a Veteran of the Malayan Emergency

Abstract

Memory is never a static snapshot of a past reality, but an organic process of recall; as much contingent on the demands of the present as the prism of each narrator’s perception of the past. A veteran’s perception of the Malayan Emergency sees acceptance of British involvement in Malaysia’s affairs as ‘what we had to do to give them freedom, otherwise they’d be wearing jackboots now’. The testimony a narrator produces is a window into their process of recall; what is remembered, what is forgotten and what is left unsaid: ‘People, whether young or old, remember what is important to them’. Ultimately, memory is a fallible tool subject to mutations over time; the weight of collective and cultural memories limit individual recollection. Personal narrative is a product of subjectivity.