[FI-P] Fwd: Bala Tampoe struggled against British imperialism

[Dr Vickramabahu]

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From: Amarasinghe Suranjaya <suranjayaamarasinghe at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 10:09 AM
Subject: Bala Tampoe struggled against British imperialism
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Bala Tampoe struggled against British imperialism

  0     September 4, 2014 2:00 am

By Vickramabahu Karunaratne


Bala Tampoe belongs to the era of the old heroic period of Sama Samajism
with the struggle against British imperialism and the Hartal that shook the
so called comprador bourgeoisie regime. Comrade Bala is dead as an
uncompromising proletarian leader.

Today the ruling elite may give him a state funeral; but it will not change
the basic nature of this trade union leader who did not accept any price or
present from the bourgeoisie. He joined the left movement when he was a
student and continued to work for the LSSP while he was a lecturer in
Botany and Horticulture in the Department of Agriculture. He came into the
limelight as a strike leader after his dismissal from public service, for
participating in the strike of public servants in 1947. Soon after, he
joined the CMU as an energetic new leader. He was also interested in
political theory and soon became a political teacher as well, within the
LSSP. At the same time, he was keen to work among the urban workers and
devoted much time for the CMU.


The CMU was originally built in 1928 as a white-collar union in the
mercantile sector. It was an organic working class organization with Labour
affiliations and welfarist social democratic thinking. After Tampoe became
its general secretary in February 1948, the union came under the influence
of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), which at the time was a part of the
Fourth International, the Trotskyite world organization.

So he became a Trotskyite who explained that a proletarian regime is
possible in the course of a permanent revolution. Revolt of the people
could start on the basis of democratic demands. But the inability of the
bourgeois political parties to establish a dynamic democratic change, will
give rise to an opportunity for the working class organization to lead the
struggle forward and capture power to establish a socialist state. In the
1950s and 1960s, this permanent revolution theory got rooted in the minds
of the working people. It was spread beyond the working class to include
the radical peasants and the fishing communities. Bala, a Tamil from Jaffna
proved that Trotskyism could spread beyond community barriers to build left
leaders in Tamil and Muslim communities. Tampoe was known for his militant
challenges to the political decisions of the government of the day. In
1963, he led a strike in the Colombo port that escalated into an all-island
general strike and defied the government of Sirima Bandaranaike when it
invoked its emergency powers.


When the LSSP left the Fourth International to join the Bandaranaike
government in 1964, Tampoe became a central leader of the Lanka Sama Samaja
Party (Revolutionary), which the United Secretariat of the Fourth
International recognized as its section. With the veteran LSSP leader and a
contemporary of NM and Colvin, Edmund Samarakkody joining him, many Sama
Samajist leaders at grass root level were hopeful of the new leadership of
the left movement. However the LSSP-R could not survive as a mass
organization. Bala and others failed to understand the mass backing
received by the opportunist leaders for their illusive project of building
socialism with populist bourgeoisie leaders. It was necessary for
Trotskyites to orient towards the masses following the coalition, and to go
into joint actions with them. However, when NSSP evolved as a mass party,
Bala was eager to work with us.

He remained loyal to the Forth International, though he was not very
active. In 2010 when the pro government thugs tried to kill me when I was
returning from London, after addressing the Tamil commemoration meeting, he
embraced me and said 'you are a true Sama Samajist living among us'.


He retained the position of CMU general secretary and participated actively
in major negotiations with the government and employers even recently. He
departed with the dignity and power of a proletarian leader. Workers will
remember him ever as a leader who remained loyal to the class in spite of
mistakes Bala made.



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