THORNY QUESTION FOR CEYLONESE CP
The December issue of World Marxist Review Lin French: La Nouvelle Revue Internationale], monthly magazine printed in Prague which voices the collective opinion of Communist parties adhering to Khrushchev's views, features a long article by Pieter Keuneman,: leader of the Communist party of Ceylon, entitled, “For Unity of the Working Class of Ceylon." The article purports to tell the story of the "fight for unity" in the Ceylonese working-class movement since the party was founded under Keunemants leadership,
‘The role of hero is naturally awarded to the Communist party while other formations are taken to task -- in a mild tone -- for "lack of understanding" or “sectarianism” on this key issue,
It would take us toofar afield to correct all the factual inaccuracies, half truths, distortions and omissions abounding in the article, It is sufficient to observe that Keuneman nowhere indicates that the August 1953 hartal [general strike] was led from beginning to end by the Trotskyists of the LSSP [Lanka Sama Samaja party]. Nor does it even hint at the treacherous role played by the Communist party during the Second World War when, in support of British imperialism, it gave up even the national struggle, Keuneman also remains silent on the split which just occurred in his party when the main trade union leader N, Shanmugathasan was expelled for his pro-Chinese leanings -- a strange way of supporting “unity of the working class,"
Most glaring of all is the failure to indicate that the Lanka . Sama Samaja is a Trotskyist party, the Ceylonese section of the Fourth International, We say most glaring because the article deals mainly _ with what to the Communist party is the problem of the LSSP, the prin-= cipal working~class party in Ceylon, and because it hails the formation of the United Left Front, a combination of the LSSP, the MEP [Mahajana Eksath Peramune (United Popular Front)-] and the CP. Not a single leader of the LSSP is: named, although Keuneman offers a glowing description of the giant 1963 May Day meeting of 150,000 persons at Colombo which was chaired by Comrade N.M.Perera and addressed by Comrade Colvin R, De Silva, chairman of the Co-ordination Committee of all the Ceylonese trade unions, .
How explain these remarkable gaps in Keuneman's article? Isntt it all the more important to speak clearly in view of his participation in a common front with Trotskyists who are still branded as "wreckers" and "saboteurs" in recent Soviet publications?
If Pieter Keuneman thought he could simply slip around this
-11.
thorny question his luck didn't last long. In the same issue, World Marxist Review features another article, from no one less than Corvalan, Teader of the Chilean Communist party, in defense of the "peaceful road,as a form of revolution," in which the following choice. bit. appears:
"The dogmatists, who enjoy the little enviable support of the Trotskyists, try by all means to discredit the Marxist-Leninist [4] thesis of the peaceful road, which they fraudulently identify with revisionism and reformism, and represent.as an abandonment of revolus tion. . ; , oo, Thus on page 5 the note is sounded that support ‘by the Trotsky=ists is "little enviable." But on page 69 Pieter Keuneman celebrates as a-big event the formation of .a common front in which his party is in the "little enviable" position of standing shoulder to ‘shoulder with "the Trotskyists,"
- Perhaps that is why he decided to keep uninformed readers of the World Marxist Review in ignorance of the fact that the ISSP happens to be a Trouskyis t party.