Lanka Sama Samaja Party
The Lanka Sama Samaja Party, often abbreviated as LSSP, is a major Trotskyist political party in Sri Lanka. It was the first political party in Sri Lanka, having been founded in 1935 by Leslie Goonewardene, N. M. Perera, Colvin R. de Silva, Philip Gunawardena and Robert Gunawardena. The party is currently led by Tissa Vitharana. The party was founded with Leninist ideals, and is classified as a party with socialist aims.
The LSSP emerged as a major political force in the Sri Lankan independence movement during the 1940s, during which time the party was forced to go underground due to its opposition to the British war effort. The party played an instrumental role in the Indian independence movement and later Quit India Movement through the Bolshevik–Leninist Party of India, Ceylon and Burma. Its efforts contributed to India's and Sri Lanka's independence from the British Empire, in 1947 and 1948 respectively.
The LSSP spearheaded the 1953 Hartal, caused by vast food price inflation under the United National Party government. Maintaining the price of rice at 25 cents per measure had been an electoral promise by the UNP in the 1952 elections, and the introduction of the new rate of 70 cents elicited massive public anger.
From the late 1940s to 1960s, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party served as the main opposition party of Sri Lanka, whilst being recognised as the Sri Lankan wing of the Fourth International, a Trotskyist political international. During this period, the party was able to use its considerable political influence to reform the former British colony of Ceylon into a socialist republic by nationalising organisations in the banking, education, industry, media and trade sectors. In 1964, the party joined the United Front alongside the Sri Lanka Freedom Party and formed a socialist SLFP-led government, leading to its expulsion from the Fourth International. Through their election landslide in 1964, the United Front brought the world's first non-hereditary female head of government in modern history, Sirimavo Bandaranaike to power as Prime Minister of Sri Lanka. The party peaked in political strength in the 1970s, when it was again leading a coalition government with several of its leaders in key cabinet roles.
In recent years, the party has played a supporting role in several coalition governments led by the SLFP, such as from 1994–2001, 2004–2015, and 2020–2022. The party has had no parliamentary representation since 2024.
Name
The Lanka Sama Samaja Party was the first modern political party in Ceylon, later Sri Lanka. It was noted for its choice to use a native name rather than an English name, and its members were known as "Samasamajists". The party was the first Marxist party in South Asia. The Sinhala term samasamajaya was one coined by Dally Jayawardena in the Swadesa Mitraya to translate the term 'socialist'. However, the usage of samasamajaya has since been superseded by samajavadaya in everything but in the names of the LSSP and various of its splinter groups. The Tamil term samadharmam was used to translate 'socialist', but nowadays the English term is used.History
The Lanka Sama Samaja Party was founded on 18 December 1935, with the broad aims of Sri Lankan Independence and Socialism, by a group of young politicians. The group at the foundation numbered a bare half-dozen, and composed principally of students who had returned from study abroad, influenced deeply by the ideas of Karl Marx and Lenin. The original group consisted of Leslie Goonewardene, N.M. Perera, Colvin R. de Silva, Philip Gunawardena and Robert Gunawardena.Origins
The LSSP grew out of the Youth Leagues of Ceylon – societies of young people, mainly intellectuals, who wanted independence for British-ruled Sri Lanka – in which a nucleus of Marxists had developed. The party's leaders were predominantly educated returnees from study in London; youth who had come into contact with the ideas of the European Left and were influenced by Harold Laski, an English political theorist and professor at the London School of Economics. Dr S.A. Wickremasinghe, an early returnee and a member of the State Council from 1931, was part of this group. The Youth Leagues campaigned for independence from Britain, notably organising opposition to the so-called 'Ministers' Memorandum', one which in essence called for the colonial authorities to grant increased power to local ministers.Wellawatte Spinning and Weaving Mills Strike
The group, through the South Colombo Youth League, became involved in a strike at the Wellawatte Spinning and Weaving Mills in 1933. The mills; the island’s largest textile factory at that time with 1,400 workers, gave the members of the Youth League a chance for leadership as well as experience in trade union agitation. During this period, the collective published an irregular journal in Sinhala, Kamkaruwa.Suriya-Mal movement
In 1933 the group got involved in the Suriya-Mal movement, which had been formed to provide support for indigenous ex-servicemen by the sale of Suriya flowers. The Suriya-Mal movement surged as a reaction to the fact that at the time Poppy Day funds went solely to British ex-servicemen. The movement was honed by volunteer work among the poor during the Malaria Epidemic of 1934-1935. The volunteers found that there was widespread malnutrition, which they helped fight by making pills of Marmite yeast extract.Early period
In 1936 the LSSP contested the State Council elections in four constituencies and won two of them, Avissawella and Ruanwella. The two new members, Philip Gunawardena and N.M. Perera, worked at the dismay of the British Colonial government; one that they were trying to dismantle.Around this time, the LSSP began fraternal relations with the Congress Socialist Party of India. Mrs Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya of the CSP was invited by the LSSP for a highly successful political tour of the island. Leslie Goonewardene was also sent as a delegate to the CSP. Despite their move towards Indian relations, the LSSP maintained a clear distance from the Indian radical left, and considered the Communist Party of India to be an extremist force.
Bracegirdle Incident
In 1937, the British Colonial Governor Sir Reginald Stubbs attempted to deport a young Anglo-Australian planter, Mark Anthony Bracegirdle, who had joined the LSSP. He went into hiding in defiance of the Governor and the LSSP started a campaign to defend him. He appeared on the platform at that year's May Day rally, and was able to have his deportation order quashed in the courts. Through this incident, Stubbs was isolated. The incident led to the further strengthening of an argument for independence as the Bracegirdle incident had brought almost the entire State Council into opposition to the colonial government.Bracegirdle had been working among the plantation labourers, who were often working in squalid conditions, receiving very little health care, education and living in 'line rooms'. In 1940, the Lanka Estate Workers' Union intervened in a strike at Mooloya, becoming the harbinger of a wave of trade-union action on the plantations.
Initial Trotskyist ideals
Meanwhile, in the LSSP a number of members had become influenced by the ideas of the Left Opposition led by Leon Trotsky. Individual party members, notably Philip Gunawardena, had encountered Trotskyist groups earlier during stays in Britain and the USA. The Trotskyists within the LSSP came together and formed a secret faction known as the "T" group. The group's original members were Philip Gunawardena, N. M. Perera, Colvin R. de Silva, Leslie Goonewardene, Robert Gunawardena and Vernon Gunasekera, the Party Secretary. They were later joined by Edmund Samarakkody and V. Karalasingham.Fourth International
In 1940, the LSSP split with the expulsion of the pro-Moscow fraction led by S. A. Wickremasinghe, M. G. Mendis, Pieter Keuneman and A. Vaidialingam. The expelled members formed the United Socialist Party which later evolved into the Communist Party of Ceylon. With the expulsion of the communists, the LSSP planted itself as an independent Trotskyist party. In its heyday, the LSSP was the Fourth International's most successful component.At the outbreak of the Second World War, the party was forced to go underground due to its opposition to the British war effort. The two State Council members of the party and others on its Central committee were arrested and jailed, but Leslie Goonewardene evaded arrest and went underground.
New Programme and adoption of Constitution
On 20 April 1941, a secret conference in Kandy, attended by 42 delegates, was held. Leslie Goonewardene, who was in hiding, attended this conference at which the new programme and constitution were adopted. The cover organisation of the party enabled him to work for a period of one year and three months till he left for India. An openly functioning section of the party was established, led by Robert Gunawardena, S.C.C. Anthonipillai, V. Karalasingham, K.V. Lourenz Perera and William de Silva. The 'open' section of the party led a strike wave in May 1941 and strikes in 1942 and 1944.Proscription and move to India
Following the Japanese raid on Colombo on 5 April 1942, the imprisoned leaders escaped and fled to India. In India, the proscribed LSSPers merged their party into the Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India, Ceylon and Burma. Preparatory work had been done in this connection by Leslie Goonewardene, Doric de Souza and Bernard Soysa. The LSSP thus became the Ceylon section of BLPI. Through the BLPI, the Ceylonese trotskyists attained their formal membership in the Fourth International. The Ceylonese Samasamajists who went to India participated actively along with the BLPI in the struggle for independence that commenced in August 1942 in India. It was generally realised that the impending open revolt against imperialism in India was going to be decisive for the future not only of India but of Ceylon as well. Their property and assets back home were confiscated. Various other members were arrested. Only Colvin R. de Silva, Leslie Goonewardene, Vivienne Goonewardena and Selina Perera succeeded in evading arrest up to the end.During the war there was a split in the movement. N. M. Perera and Philip Gunawardena opposed a merger into the BLPI and formed the 'Workers' Opposition'. After the war, they reconstructed LSSP as an independent party. Members of the other section, formed out of the exiled BLPI nucleus, effectively maintained a separate party, the Bolshevik Samasamaja Party. The latter group functioned as the Ceylon section of BLPI and was led by Colvin R. de Silva, Leslie Goonawardene and Edmund Samarakkoddy.
The relation between the two groups was often antagonistic. The BSP accused the LSSP of "organisational Menshevism". The LSSP accused the BSP of being introvert doctrinaires. LSSP wanted to build a mass-based party, whereas the BSP concentrated on building a cadre-based party. On 25 October 1945 fist-fights broke out at between the two groups at a meeting of the BSP.