Bala Tampo has been a central figure of the Sri Lankan labour movement for nearly 60 years. He has been General Secretary of the main private sector trade union federation, the CMU, continuously for 55 years, and remains so today. He was in the leadership of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) in the early 1950s. He split with the LSSP when the LSSP joined the coalition government in 1964. Since then he has worked mainly as a left-wing trade union leader. The LSSP was an outstanding section of the Fourth International from the late / 930s until 1964. At one time it had 12 members of Parliament and one member of the Senate. It led major trade unions and frequent mass struggles. Recently Bala Tampo was in London on the 50th anniversary of an historic struggle of the Sri Lankan working class - the great Hartal (or mass protest) of August 12 1953. Alan Thornett interviewed him for Socialist Resistance during his visit to London. Tampo's eye-witness account of his experiences that day brings out some of the struggles around the calling of the Hartal and the dynamics of the remarkable event itself. It also picks up the ongoing debate, after the Hartal, over whether it was a missed revolutionary opportunity. diet) proposed in the budget. The rural poor took to the streets, blocked roads,
lines, and fought the police. The UNP Government responded with a state of emergency and repression.
It was called by the LSSP with the support of the CP and the Tamil Federal Party, and it shook the government so much that within hours of it they had sought refuge on a British warship in Colombo bay. Tampo was involved in the Hartal throughout as a leading member of the LSSP. Alan: So you were already a leading member of the LSSP at the time of the Hartal? Bala: Yes I had been for quite a long time. I was elected to the central committee in 1950 at the unification conference between the LSSP and the Bolshevik Socialist Party and in August 1953 1 became the secretary of the trade union bureau. Alan: Were you a trade union leader as well by that time? Bala: Yes. With the Ceylon Mercantile Union, the trade union federation of the LSSP Alan: So the Hartal was called by the LSSP and the CP? Bala: Yes, the LSSP and the CP. But S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike of the Sri Lankan Freedom Party (the father of today's president) the leader of the opposition in Parliament was also involved at first. The issue at stake was a proposal, in the budget, to raise the price of rice.
The LSSP had organised a mass petition to campaign against it, and street protests had started. Then, with the CP and Bandaranaike, we called a mass meeting, in July, outside of Parliament on the day of the budget.
It was massive - 50,000 people turned up. The LSSP at that time had very militant Youth Leagues of about 10,000 members. The youth leagues were the main electoral and political base of the party.
They were shouting slogans and so on and pointing in the direction of Parliament"They were shouting slogans ...and then some stones were thrown. / approached the police chief and asked him if he was going to counter attack and he said my boys eat rice too'." and of course saying provocative things to the police, and then some stones were thrown. I approached the police chief and asked him if he was going to counter attack and he said "my boys eat rice too".
After the meeting the next step was to be the Hartal. We met (the LSSP and the CP) in Bandaranaike's house (in his drawing room) to fix the date. As far as the LSSP was concerned we wanted a date early in August, we had the 5th in mind. We knew the tension was rising, and we did not want to postpone it and drag it out too long.
People in the South were already on the streets, women who produced fibre from coconut husks in a village on the road to the south, Randombe, had clashed with the police - threatening them with the clubs they used on the coconuts.
Bandaranaike took the position that we should organise the Hartal in such a way that it would be really effective on a mass scale across the country, and that required time for preparation.
He therefore proposed a date beyond the third week of August. I proposed a date in between that and the 5th. Bandaranaike then came out with his real position - that we should carry on agitation for another two or three weeks and then discuss a date for the Hartal.
Philip Gunawareena (a leading member of the LSSP) who was sitting next to me got up at once and said: 'that means it will be postponed for ever'. Then everyone got up, and without a word, walked out of Bandaranaike's drawing room
As we went out of the house Bandaranaike stood and watched. I felt we should have said something so I wished him good night.
That was the end of Bandaranaike - he was not involved in the protests from that time on. We went on to the house of the CP leader and continued the discussion on the date - which was fixed for August 12th. Alan: What is your view about the character of the Hartal? I see that a former leader of the LSSP Edmund Sammarkkoddy, argues that it was a revolutionary situation which was missed. Bala: No that is not correct. Alan: When I read an account of it, it is like a revolutionary general strike - with mass action, street battles and so on. Bala: It was a protest general strike. It could have led on, in a more mature situation, to a revolutionary uprising. But that day, and the context in which it took place, it was nowhere near a revolutionary uprising. Alan: In the account in Revolutionary History (Blows against the Empire, 1997) you say that a revolutionary situation arises when people are prepared to die for the cause. This was the case wasn't it? Bala: Yes, it is true people were prepared to die on that day. I can relate an incident / witnessed. There was a young LSSP youth leader (of the Youth Leagues) who worked in the fish market in Colombo. His name was Edwin. I set out early in the morning of the 12th with Colwin Rdsilva (a central leader of the LSSP and an MP) to see what was going to happen at the Ratmalana railway workshops where there was a big powerful LSSP-led trade union.
Colwin had a Woolsley car with a rec pennant on the bonnet. On the way we witnessed a number of events including the murder of Edwin. We had started off through Colombo and passed a big private bus company, Gamini bus company, whict was a strong trade union base of the LSSP.
The workers had come out on strike and they had stopped this bus, asked the passengers to get off, and taken stones which they had broken up from the pavements, something similar to May 1968 in France and smashed up the bus with them. Then we went on to Pettah, which is near the centre of the city called Fort. It was a sight which I will never forget
As we were coming with the red pennant on the front of the car, we saw a whole mass of people advancing. It was a broad street, and there were police lined across the road with batons and shields. But the people were coming forward paying no regard to the police.
They were shouting slogans, more like a carnival, which reminded me of, I think, a remark by Karl Marx that revolutions are the festivals of the oppressed. It was that kind of atmosphere
The gas works were in the same area and there was a machine gun unit protecting the gas works, with an army sergeant in charge A crowd had gathered there and were demonstrating. And this sergeant had told the crowd to disperse because it was threatening the gas works.
And the crowd did disperse when he threatened to open fire. But Edwin still stood there in the middle of the road. He just stood there, opened his shirt and said "fire". He just stood there
Then the sergeant warned him again Again he stood there and said "fire". Then after a third warning there was a burst of machine gun fire and he fell down. He died on the way to hospital. When we went to recover his body next day there were six bullet holes across his chest.
After these events, when we got to the
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"After a third warning there was a burst of machinegun fire and he fell down. He died on the way to hospital. "
... railway works, there were 2,000 workers
In the morning of 11 September 1973, thirty years ago, tanks and aircraft attacked the Santiago Moneda palace, residence of Chilean President Salvador Allende. The nightmare of the left in Chile and internationally, a military coup against the left-wing Popular Unity government, was coming true.
Allende and his bodyguards came out of the palace with machine guns, scanning the sky for attacking planes. Within hours both Allende and the peaceful road to socialism in Chile were dead.
The right wing and the army took their revenge against the left. In 3 days 30,000 trade unionists, socialists and communists were slaughtered.
A reign of terror which lasted more than 15 years under the Pinochet military government ensued; thousands were tortured or 'disappeared'. Chilean workers were subjected to the most radical monetarist • September 2003 25
ernment. But the bourgeois state and its