document SRI LANKA:
THE FOLLOWING IS THE SECOND PART OF THE TEXT OF
A POLITICAL RESOLUTION APPROVED BY THE CENTRAL
COMMITTEE OF THE REVOLUTIONARY MARXIST PARTY,
SRI LANKA (CEYLON) SECTION OF THE FOURTH INTER-
NATIONAL. THE FIRST PART OF THE TEXT APPEARED IN 3. LEGISLATIVE MEASURES OF THE UNITED FRONT The legislative measures adopted by the Government so far have been designed (a) to enable the break up of existing land-holdings of private individuals and private companies into smaller units of less than 25 acres paddy land or 50 acres coconut or other high land, in order to increase the number of small landowners and to promote more intensive agricultural development on that basis, whilst leaving the main plantation system in tea, rubber and coconut, more or less intact, (b) to fix a "ceiling on incomes, " subject to administrative concessions, in order to effect "compulsory savings," and to promote capital investment thereby, in accordance with state plans for the development of industry and agriculture, (c) to establish a greater state control and participation in foreign trade, and to minimise losses of foreign exchange through corrupt trade practices and smuggling of gems, (d) to revise the administration of justice to minimise the laws' delays, with greater state control, and with provision, under the Criminal Justice Commission's Act, to keep per-
30 will stimulate all these tendencies and will itself receive
Fresh powerful impulsions from them. The task of internationalist revolutionaries is to encourage with all their might the international extension of the hopes and battles of the Portuguese proletariat.
FOR ACTIVE INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY OF THE WORK-
ERS OF ALL COUNTRIES WITH THE PORTUGUESE PROLE-
TARIAT!
FOR INTERNATIONALIST UNITY BETWEEN THE WORKERS
OF PORTUGAL AND THE COLONIES!
LONG LIVE THE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION IN PORTUGAL
AND THE COLONIES!
LONG LIVE THE SOCIALIST UNITED STATES OF EUROPE!
FOR AID TO AND SOLIDARITY WITH THE LIGA COMU-
NISTA INTERNACIONALISTA OF PORTUGAL FROM ALL
REVOLUTIONARIES! INPRECOR, NO.0, MAY 9, 1974, p.31. THE REVOLUTIONARY MARXIST PARTY WAS FORMERLY CALLED THE LANKA SAMA SAMAJA PARTY (REVOLUTIONARY). ERRONEOUSLY, THE CHANGE IN NAME WAS NOT INDICATED IN INPRECOR NO. 0.
sons accused of insurgent or subversive activities in prison, at the sole discretion of the Ministry of Justice, withour recourse to the ordinary courts of low,
(e) to make retrenchment and lay-offs of workers in private establishments subject to state control, but with no check on employers' powen of termination of the employment of workers on disciplinary grounds,
(f) to centralise the university educational system in order to exercise greater state control over it.
4. THE JVP AND THE UNITED FRONT GOVERNMENT
Before establishing the new Constitution and embarking upon the implementation of its economic programme, the United
Front Goverment set about to suppress and ultimately destroy the main threat that it saw to itself from the Left, namely the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), and to keep the mass movement rigidly in check thereafter, under the Emergency.
The JVP was a historically important manifestation in Ceylan of the worldwide radicalisation of youth in the last decade.
It manifested certain specific characteristics of the upsurge of the Colonial Revolution after World War II, with an idon-
Bala Tampoe speaking during o May 1, 1974, meefing organized by the Ceylon Mercantile Union and the Revolutionary tity of its own, deriving from the socio-historic conditions under which it came into existence in Ceylon. Rejecting the "Parliamentary road to Socialism" of the two main traditional Left parties in Coylon, the LSP and the CP(Moscow), and breaking away from the political tutelage of the CP(Peking-wing), with which they were first associated in 1964-65, Wijeweera and other revolutionary-minded youth organised the JVP during the period 1965-70. Till it began to be publicised in the newspapers as the "Che Guevara" movement, in April 1970, it remained nameless and virtually unknown. Nevertheless, its leaders were able to promote the radicalisation of Sinhala youth, mainly in rural and semiurban areas, where there were poor prospects of subsistence on the land and even poorer prospects of securing suitable employment for most of them, and to project this radicalisation in a revolutionary direction, under their leadership. They succeeded in propagating their revolutionary ideas, based on Marxist/Leninist ideology, on a scale never previously attempted in Ceylon by the traditional Marxist Left. Influenced as they undoubtedly were by the armed guerilla and national liberation struggles that have taken place in the Third World since the end of World War Il, and especially by the successes of the Chinese and Cuban revolutions, they appear to have pur forward an over-simplified theory of revolution, particularly in relation to the role of armed struggle, to achieve the overthrow of capitalist rule. Their approach to this question no doubt appealed particularly to student and unemployed youth, who desired to put an end to the capitalist system, and rejected the revolution in words and reformism in deeds, as well as the outright opportunism and cless collaborationism of the troditional Left parties in the SLFP-led United Front. The JVP first revealed its existence under that name in a Icaflet issued in connection with the general election of Marxist party, Sri Lanka section of the Fourth International. CEYLON MERCANTILE UNION
FOR THE Долома вита вирши 215860 31
May 1970, in which it warned that the UNP might set up a military dictatorship, and called for support of the United Front of the elections, in that context, By that time the movement had already attained mass proportions. It spread more rapidly after the elections, when it became evident that the United Front Gor ernment was incapable of fulfilling the promises that had induced the masses of rodicalised Sinhala youth to give the United Front their support at the elections, which proved to be decisive in bringing about the downfall of the UNP Govemment. The predominantly semi-proletarian and to some extent petty-bourgeois character of the JVP, its almost completely Sinhala racial composition, and its lock of an experienced leadership with a correct appreciation of the strategy and tactics necessary for uniting the forces of the urban, rural and plantation proletariat, through the development of the class struggle, rendered the JVP incapable of developing into a revolutionary organisation of the proletariat, on its own. Unfortunately for the JVP, the United Front subjected it to political denunciation as an agency of foreign and local reaction as it began its public political activity in August 1970, in an attempt to rouse direct mass hostility against it. When this effort failed, the United Front Government furned to the use of the police to harass and repress the new movement, in onticipation of the attacks of the Government on mass living standards and to prepare the way for the suppression of any active mass opposition to its policies. Whilst this repression did not stem the growth of the JVP amongst the student and unemployed rural and semi-urban youth, in the very areas in which the United Front had won sweeping electoral victories in May 1970, it did serve to prevent the penetration of the JVP into the traditional mass movement, especially in the urban areas. Still more unfortunately for the JVP, the repression undoubtedly strengthened adventurist tendencies within its youthful ranks.
ALETIONANE AD SOCILISM 0000N
SRI LANKA The JVP established no communication with the Tamil-speaking masses, partly due to its lack of any Tamil cadres and also due to its theory of "Indian expansionism, " according to which the mass of plantation workers of Indian Tamil origin was regarded as being so subject to Indian bourgeois expansionist influence as to be virtually incapable of orientation in a revolutionary direction. Mainly for the reasons stated above, the JVP remained without any significant base in the urban proletariat or amongst the plantation proletariat, when it came under open repression, following the declaration of a state of emergency in March 1971. Following the arrest of Wijeweera on 13th March 1971, and the declaration of a state of emergency three days later, thousands of young persons were arrested and large numbers of them were subiected to police brutality. LSSP Minister, Leslie Goonewardene, openly avowed at the time that "necessary powers" had been given to the armed forces "to wipe out disruptive elements and to maintain law and order. " In that situation, the JVP leadership, since shown to have been already disrupted by factional conflict, and with Wijeweera in prison, seems to have been unable to take a decision as to how best to cope with the repression. Some of the leaders appear to have decided to launch attacks on police stations in certain areas, in circumstances and for reasons that are yet The attacks on some police stations that took place on and after 5th April have been stated by the Prime Minister herself to have been carried out with locally made hand-bombs and shot-guns, and without the support of any foreign power. They appear to have been largely uncoordinated and proved to be completely ineffective in stemming the repression, except temporarily in the southern and central ragions of the Island, where the JVP had strong bases of support, and where the police abandoned some small police stations for a short time in certain localities. These attacks nevertheless provided the Government with a pretext for the immediate suppression of the JVP and for the launching of a combined army and police onslaught upon the movement, which resulted in the massacre of thousands of youth and the imprisonment of over 18,000 others, thereafter, as "suspected insurgents." The fact that only sixty police and armed service personnel were killed during the insurgency, " according to official figures, whereas untold numbers of youths were killed by the "security forces, "serves to show that the United Front Government deliberately exaggerated the extent and misrepresented the nature of the attacks that took place on police stations and on the "security forces, " making them out to be an armed insurrection for the overthrow of the Government. This was to justify the liquidation of the JVP and the Govemment's call for and receipt of substantial military aid from the Anglo-American Imperialists, in particular. The political denunciation of the JVP by the Chinese Govemment, at the and of April 1971, following the counterrevolutionary suppression and liquidation of that movement by the Government, with prompt and substantial military Editeur responsable: René Groslambert, 34 rue Nothomb, 1040-Bruxelles Imprimerie spéciale de l'éditeur assistance from the Imperialist powers and from the capitalist government of india, followed by similar assistance from the Soviet Union and other foreign powers, including Pakistan, served to expose the unprincipled and opportunist character of the foreign policy of the Maoist regime, in relation to Ceylon. The virtual liquidation of the JVP as a political organisation has led to the demoralisation of large numbers of its odherents, in and outside the prisons and prison camps. This has been accompanied by a break up of the former leadership of the JVP, some of its leaders having become traitors, while considerable numbers of its former adherents have abandoned their revolutionary views altogether. In the circumstances the JVP os such, cannot be revived, even if the few thousand remaining political prisoners are released. At the some time, those of its former leaders and adherents who have retained their ideological commitment to Marxism-Leninism, despite the debacle they have suffered, and who draw the correct lessons from it, are capable of making a valuable contribufion to the building of a revolutionary Marxist vanguard, in In any event, the JVP experience was of historic importance. It has revealed to the world the revolutionary potentialities of the youthful rural semi-proletariat in Ceylon, under the neo-colonial regime established in this country after World War Il, and the essentially counter-revolutionary character of the United Front Government. If has also served to show that there are no short-cuts to a revolutionary overthrow of the regime by the proletariat.
To be continued.