CEYLONESE TROTSKYIST
LEADER SPEAKS IN NEW YORK
Bala Tampoe, a leader of the Cey- al in Paris. lonese Trotskyist movement and secretary general of the 25,000-member Ceylonese "It would be a big mistake," Tampoe Mercantile Union, addressed the Militant stated, "to say that the degeneration of Labor Forum in New York, September 1, the Trotskyist mass party in Ceylon was during an extended tour of the United States.
Tampoe had been invited to the U.S. to participate in a six-week seminar on U.S. domestic and foreign policy at Harvard University. During this visit he spoke at a number of meetings.
The subject of Tampoe's Militant Labor Forum talk was the "Colonial Revolution in Southeast Asia." The Trotskyist leader outlined the history of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (Revolutionary) of which he is secretary, and the unfolding of colonial revolution following World War II.
Above everything else, Tampoe felt that the Japanese occupation of various British, French and Dutch colonies had precipitated the revolutionary movements following the war. It showed that "an Asian colored nation could defeat the white imperialist master nations."
The first wave of anti-imperialist struggle, culminating with the victory of the Chinese revolution, Tampoe continued, had declined as bourgeois parliamentary illusions afflicted mass colonial parties.
The key to anti-imperialist struggle in both India and Ceylon, Tampoe said, was to develop mass anticapitalist parties. He noted that both nations, although formally independent, are dominated by British interests and their economies are trapped in stagnation until these capitalist ties are broken.
Speaking of the seminars in which he participated at Harvard, Tampoe said that the overwhelming impression he got was that "the U.S. is hopelessly stuck in Vietnam and doesn't know what to do." BALA TAMPOE
A lively question period followed the responsibility of the Fourth Interna- Tampoe's presentation in which he further tional leadership. detailed the history of particular problems facing revolutionary movements in "It took place as a result of con- Southeast Asia. ditions in Ceylon as well as external con-
ditions in the world situation, and it in-
One member of the audience pointed volved a degeneration of the leadership of out that the Lanka Sama Samaja Party in the Fourth International in Ceylon itself." 1964 had played exactly the same role in Ceylon as the class-collaborationist par- Tampoe explained that he had been ties Tampoe had criticized. It entered a a member of the politbureau of the LSSP bourgeois government and thereby saved for ten years and had seen his closest and t. most trusted comrades degenerate. But he
said that situation was not unlike Trot-
The major blame for this betrayal, sky's fight in the Third International. the questioner felt, should be placed on One can't blame Trotsky for the degenerathe leadership of the Fourth Internation- tion of the Third International.
"It is not the responsibility of some people in Paris," he said. "I won't hold some people in Paris responsible if I degenerate. I might have gone with them, I had the prospect of becoming a labor minister....
"And it is important to remember when we broke with them, even though we were a minority, the Fourth International not only endorsed us, but expelled the majority."
Tampoe was asked whether a military defeat of the U.S. in Vietnam would not be a great spur to the world colonial revolution. The Ceylonese Trotskyist warned against putting hope on a military dislodgment of Washington's vast force in South Vietnan.
Washington cannot win militarily, he felt, but it also cannot afford to lose militarily.
The great danger lies in Moscow's success in forcing a new détente in Vietnam, he said, comparable to the 1954 Geneva accords.
This is undoubtedly the reasoning behind Washington's new emphasis on bringing the Vietnamese question to the UN, Tampoe felt. He raised the possibility that Washington had reached an agreement on the nature of a détente in the recent talks with Kosygin at Glassboro, New Jersey.
But politically, Tampoe ended, the U.S. has already suffered a major defeat and is getting into deeper trouble each day the war proceeds. "Seventeen million Vietnamese have shown that it is possible to stand up against the military giant."