[p. 84]
The July general elections in Ceylon swept into office the Sri Lanka Freedom party headed by Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike, widow of the former prime minister, who was assassinated by a Buddhist monk a year ago. The voting gave the SLFP 75 of the 157 House seats, the United Nationalists 30, the Tamil Nationalists 12, the Lanka Sama Samaja party (Trotskyist) 12, the Communist party 5. Independents and lesser parties took 19 seats.
The victory of the SLFP was facilitated by its tripartisan electoral bloc with the Lanka Sama Samaja and the Communist parties, though the new government formed by Mrs. Bandaranaike does not include representatives from either of these two parties.
The support accorded the Bandaranaike party by the Ceylonese Trotskyists, and their entry into an electoral alliance with it, constituted a complete reversal of previous policy. In the national elections last March the ISSP, the most influential working-class party in Ceylon, campaigned against the SLFP and all other parties on a program of revolutionary socialism under the slogan of 'Elect a Sama Samaja Government." The line of independent working class political action received an impressive ten per cent of the popular vote.
[p. 85]
At that time N.M. Perera, chairman of the LSSP, wrote, "A capitalist government whether of the UNP or SLFP brand will bring endless trouble and disaster to the country." The LSSP had consistently condemned the policy of backing one group of rival capitalist politicians like the SLFP against another, explaining that such a policy deceives the masses. It counterposed to collaboration with capitalist parties or governments the objective of putting an anticapitalist workers' and farmers' government in power. Yet in July, it reversed its electoral policy of March.
This new political course not only overturned the past position of the LSSP but is at variance with the traditional socialist principles of the Trotskyist movement which has opposed collaboration with capitalist parties as injurious to working-class interests It follows the pattern of "Popular Front" combinations in many countries whereby working-class parties have been lined up with disastrous results behind a section of the capitalist rulers.
After the elections the Secretary of the LSSP, Leslie Goonewardene, issued a statement, published in the Aug. 4 Ceylon News, which read in part:
"The LSSP will co-operate with the SLFP Government as an independent party in every activity which carries the country forward along progressive lines. The LSSP will assist the SLFP Government to defeat and overcome any and every saboteur effort of Big Capital and the foreign imperialists. The LSSP will particularly assist the SLFP Government in every anticapitalist step it takes. The LSSP will resist to the utmost any effort from any quarter to throw the masses back in their struggle to go forward to a socialist society.
"In accordance with the above the LSSP Parliamentary Group will not join the Opposition but will function as an independent group in Parliament."
It appears from this statement, which contained no criticism of the capitalist SLFP or warning to the people against the consequences of its actions, that the LSSP leadership is continuing its false policy of political support to the SLFP.
The LSSP has correctly maintained in the past that abandonment of independent working class politics and trailing behind capitalist politicians can only bear evil fruits. Further developments of the class struggle within the setting of the ascending revolution in Asia must also soon make this. manifest in the present situation in Ceylon.
As the damaging results of their new course become clearer, the majority of the LSSP will, we trust, reassert their adherence to the tested principles of Marxism and return to the revolutionary positions which gave the party such merited prestige among the Ceylonese masses.