CEYLON: THE GREAT BETRAYAL CONTINUES

PART TWO The reunification in 1963 of the Pabloite tendencies into the Unified Secretariat of the Fourth International was an unprincipled fraud made possible only on the basis of no discussion of outstanding political questions.

(For legal reasons the Socialist Workers Party of America could not become an actual member of the Secretariat.)

This conspiracy of silence obscured the reactionary turn in Ceylon. To discuss this with the Socialist Labour League would have blown the reunification sky-high. Joseph Hansen and Ernest Mandel, therefore, kept silent and thereby permitted the rightward development of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) in Ceylon.

Indeed, the reunification congress declared its complete support for the LSSP leaders, partıcularly for their strategy of a United Left Front with the pro-Moscow Communist Party and Philip Goonewardene's People's United Front (MEP).

It was well known that the Communist Party wholeheartedly supported Mrs Bandaranaike's Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and that the MEP had actually participated in a coalition with the 1956 SLFP government.

The Unified Secretariat therefore assumed full •. responsibility for the abandonment of the Tamil (Indian immigrant) workers and for the United Left Front which was a major on coalition.

In December, 1963, Pablo himself sought unsuccessfully to raise the question of Ceylon inside the Unified Secretariat. But the same Pablo had refused all discussion with the SLL.

By now the degeneration was almost complete.

In reply to calls for a discussion, the Secretariat leaders declared, early in 1964:

It would be wrong for us as a body representing the movement as a whole to brush aside the deliberations of the majority of the LSSP leadership and refuse to grant them the time needed to prove in action the sincerity of their stand in relation to the United Left Front and the good faith of their assurances.

'It would mean first of to deliberately heat up atmospere in the LSSP by injecting the sharpest kind factionalism. A divisive po licy of this kind would put in jeopardy, if not destroy, fraternal relations between Unified Secretariat and leadership of the LSSP.

'The end result could be highly injurious to the Fourth International and to the LSSP, including its left wing which has absolutely no interest to put in question the unity of the party through the creation of undue internal friction and tension from any source.

In April 1964, just two months before the LSSP leaders joined Mrs Bandaranaike's coalition, they received a laudatory letter from the Unified Secretariat which declared that the United Left Front could establish 'its own political power on a genuinely socialist programme' and would provide 'another or Algeria'.

This United Left Front included the Stalinists!

The perspective of Stalinists participating in a non-revolutionary seizure of power linked with Trotskyists in a 'Left Front' flowed directly from Pablo's 1953 resolution, reinforced by the Pabloite obsession with the revolution-with-a-party' road of Cuba and Algeria.

Within weeks of the Unified Secretariat's letter being despatched Mrs Bandaranaike was to say:

'We cannot expect any resuits unless we get the cooperation of the working class •.. Disruptions, especially strikes and go-slows, must be eliminated and the development of the country must proceed.

'Some people feel that these troubles can be eliminated by the establishment of a dictatorship. Others say that workers should be made to work at the point of gun and bayonet.

'Still others maintain that a national government should be formed to solve this problem. I have considered these ideas separately and in the context of world events.

"Therefore, I decided to initiate talks with the leaders of the working class, particularly Mr Philip Goonewardene and Dr N. M. Perera.

'Can we form a coalition government? If so, how could this be done? These are the questions we considered. Afterwards they informed me that they could form a government on the basis of a common programme.' The LSSP leaders had entered secret negotiations with Mrs Bandaranaike precisely when they were faced with an unparalleled opportunity seize power.

At the beginning of 1964 the Ceylon Mercantile Union had won substantial gains which threw the Bandaranaike government into crisis. At the same time unprecedented trade union unity, involving both town and plantation workers, had been achieved around a programme of 21 demands. The largest audience of workers ever seen on • the island unanimously declared for a fight to a finish to win these demands.

Perera chose this period to conclude his Judas deal with the bourgeoisie-assisted by the Communist Party, which had always supported coalition, and by the leaders of the Pabloite International.

His action cannot possibly have been a surprise to Hansen and Mandel. In 1960 he had forwarded to the Unified Secretariat in Paris a letter which outlined precisely his proposals for exactly such a step.

This listed: (1) a no-contact pact (2) support for the formation of an SLFP government 'not hedged about with conditions' and (3) steps to bring about a programmatic agreement with the SLFP with a view to forming a joint government.

The programme on which Perera wished to embrace the SLFP involved strict limits on nationalization, and especially no nationalization of the banks.

This letter, in the hands of the Unified Secretariat for some four years before Perera was able to carry it into practice, specifically repudiated the Leninist characterization of the state: Top: June 1964 the first coalition of LSSP and SLFP parties. Next 1o Mrs Bandaranaike is Dr N. M. Perera.

It is no accident of history that in no country where universal franchise obtains has there been a revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist class.

"Though mass struggles leading to the overthrow of capitalism are conceivable, in point of fact such situations have never yet arisen, because the franchise has placed in the hands of the workers a vehicle for achieving power. Universal franchise one must admit has tended to blunt the edge of mass struggle. Militant working-class actions will continue to occur, but they do not reach the heights necessary for wresting power.' These were the issues which Mandel and Hansen sought to hush up in order not to destroy 'fraternal relations'. These were the leaders to whom the Unified Secretariat wished to grant 'the time needed to prove in action the sincerity of their stand'!

That, they certainly did.

They bolstered up capital rule and helped discipline the working class. As Perera had written to Mandel and his friends in 1960:

'LSSP ministers may have to take unpleasant decisions with regard to strikes, and the demands of the workers' This at a time when imperialism could no longer retain its hold on Ceylon through the capitalist parties alone.

This betrayal marked the definitive end of the Pabloite International as a revolutionary force, just as surely as Hitler's victory in 1933 marked the end of the Third International.

CONTINUED

The faith and confidence of the masses in Bangladesh has been squandered by the ruling Awami League in the interests of getting rich quick, says union leader Sirajul Hossain Khan.

Mr Khan is general secretary of the Sramik (Workers') Federation, which is the trade union the Maoistoriented Banglar Communist Party. Until recently he was also Dacca editor of the Eastern News Agency, but his reports were not to the liking of the Awami League governalliance National Awami Maulana Bashani, the Banglar CP is contesting the forthcoming election likely to be March next year. In the first days of independence it gave support to the Awami League government—a policy Mr Khan now considers was an error.

A particular source of embarrassment for pro-Maoists like Mr Khan was the Chinese support for Pakistan during the war and their current re. Thursday October 19, 1972 even then they will be swindled if they get anything at all, Mr Khan said. The moneylenders and usurers are robbing the peasants at an alarming rate and the government has done nothing to annul the crippling burden of debt on the peasantry.?

He said the present government was a government of the rising Bengali capitalists, backed by the pro-Moscow Communist Party which described as 'the the Awami League'.

It was trying to balance internationally between Indo-Soviet alliance hand and handouts of American capital on the other. 'They are trying sail two boats, which is a dangerous thing to do at the best of times, Mr Khan said.

The real appetites of the Awami League are thinly cealed behind 'left' phrases, as Mr Khan pointed out:

Awami League has is going "socialism" and would establish workers' and peasants' rule. But they say this only because today the slogan socialism is the passport to politics in Bangladesh.'