Winston Churchill famously said that ‘History is written by the victors’ – but does that mean the history of the losers is any less significant or valuable? It is probably because of the idea that history is written by the victors that historians today find themselves interested in other histories. Christine Chan, an undergraduate in history at the National University of Singapore uncovers one such history through the figure of Eu Chooi Yip.

The name “Eu Chooi Yip” (or ECY) might be familiar to readers of biographies of Singapore’s first generation of leaders such as Lee Kuan Yew, S. Rajaratnam and Goh Keng Swee or of communist leaders like Chin Peng and Fong Chong Pik. Eu Chooi Yip (1918-1995) is best remembered for being an economics student at Raffles College, the Secretary of the Malayan Democratic Union (MDU), Singapore’s first political party after the Second World War, and the leader of Singapore’s underground communist movement in the 1950s.

Christine’s piece can be found in the New Mandala blog, hosted by the Australian National University.