Solidarity with the JVP?

“Ceylon: The JVP Uprising of April 1971” is a pamphlet published by Solidarity, a small libertarian socialist group in Britain. The pamphlet is undated, but was probably published in 1972. The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) was a Maoist-inspired movement which staged a quixotic rebellion against Sri Lanka's left-populist government in 1971. The badly planned and executed uprising was quickly (and bloodily) suppressed by Sirimavo Bandaranaike's administration.

Solidarity didn't support the Maoist, Guevarist and Sinhalese nationalist JVP, but regarded the events as significant for other reasons. Bandaranaike's populist Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) governed in coalition with the pro-Moscow Communist Party and the ex-Trotskyist LSSP. Both leftist parties supported the suppression of the JVP. The Soviet Union and China also expressed support for Bandaranaike's United Front government, China even offering Sri Lanka a huge, interest-free loan immediately afterwards. To Solidarity, these negative reactions to the JVP uprising starkly proved the bankruptcy of the traditional left and “really existing socialism”, since the JVP (despite their adventurism and erroneous ideology) was reacting against the refusal or inability of the traditional left to carry out meaningful reforms of Lankan society, let alone a real revolution. When the going got tough, the traditional left sided with the bourgeois SLFP and hence capitalism and imperialism (Solidarity's terminology).

Most of the pamphlet describes the history of Sri Lanka, and the various political players on the island. This section is apparently based on Fred Halliday's article “The Ceylon Insurrection”, published in New Left Review issue 69 (September 1971). Of course, the political analysis is Solidarity's own. The pamphlet further contains an interview, made by two Solidarity supporters, with Edmund Samarakkody, a Trotskyist leader who acted as defence counsel for the JVP during the repression, despite political differences with the group. The interview deals more extensively with the JVP itself. A third article, based on material already published by the Spartacist League, chronicles the bizarre Bala Tampoe affair. Tampoe was the leader of LSSP(R), a Trotskyist group, but also an important union official, and apparently a fairly conservative one, at that. At one point, he had a private interview with Robert McNamara in Washington! According to urban legend, the LSSP(R) supported JVP's uprising, but this is obviously incorrect. Tampoe's union, the CMU, hardly even supported strikes called by other unions…

A concluding article, “Third Worldism and Socialism”, explains Solidarity's own perspectives. Solidarity didn't believe that national liberation struggles could weaken capitalism or imperialism. Any kind of support to nationalism is therefore “reactionary”. An unpopular message at the time, no doubt!

I'm not sure how to rate this rare gem, but since it isn't *that* bad, I graciously award it three stars. A final irony: today, the erstwhile revolutionaries of the JVP have entered a coalition with…the SLFP.