ජාත්‍යන්තර සමාජවාදී විකල්පය – ශ්‍රී ලංකාව

hartal is a general strike and a violation of civil law. According to the interpretation of Colvin R. de Silva, a leader of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party who led the Hartal, it can be compared to ‘Nonagathaya’. That is the abandonment of work for a limited time during the Sinhala and Tamil new year rituals. The ambivalence of the leaders who led the Hartal is clear from that interpretation. It meant proposing to the people who had a tradition of agitation and strikes since the end of the 19th century to remain quietly at home. The leaders of the Hartal demonstrated their desire to ensure it did not develop in a revolutionary direction.

On 12 August 12 1953, the Hartal was called by the Lanka Sama Samaja Party(LSSP), Communist Party of Sri Lanka (CPSL) and the Revolutionary Lanka Sama Samaja Party (VLSSP) and their affiliated trade unions. The appeal for the Hartal said:

“The following organizations are asking the people to hold Wednesday, August 12, as a day of national opposition. We request the people, from all sections, to participate in the protest by closing their shops and establishments, not going to workplaces and schools, holding mass meetings and hoisting black flags. We request all those who work in restaurants, dispensaries and medical institutions, and those who supply food and medicine to those institutions, not to stop working on that day and to protest by wearing black signs.”

The reason for calling this Hartal was that the United National Party government, which won an absolute majority of seats in the Parliament in the general election held in May 1953 began within months to burden the oppressed people of Sri Lanka by raising the prices of essential consumer goods, cutting school lunches and social welfare programs like health, and increasing postal fees, including telephone and telegraph charges.

The immediate cause of the Hartal was the increase in the price of a kilo of rice from 25 cents to 72 cents in the government’s 1953 budget. Tax concessions and other allowances were granted to the rich in the same budget.

A petition with 70,000 public signatures was handed over to the government protesting the tax hike on the oppressed people before the Hartal began.

Meanwhile, local public protests had also started. On 18bJuly 18 1953, an anti-budget rally was held in Jaffna with the participation of Jaffna MPs. On 21 July the people of Ambalangoda, Randombe protested by blocking the roads. The local government bodies of Moratuwa, Wadduwa, and Jaffna passed anti-government motions. In the last few days of July, anti-government protests spread in the coastal areas of Galle district. The police officers who came to suppress them were beaten and chased away by the women.

Leftist parties could not remain silent when oppressed people started to protest against the government. They were forced to unite and lead the anti-government struggle. Under pressure, the Communist Party proposed conditions for a united struggle. Its main condition was to refrain from criticizing the Soviet Union. In response, the LSSP stated that such conditions would hinder the political freedom of the LSSP and were unnecessary. When the people’s opposition gathered, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), which was created by breaking away from the ruling UNP, also announced that it would enter the fight.

S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, leader of the SLFP, participated in the rally held on 23 July 1953 to announce the Hartal. The rally was held in front of the Parliament on Galleface Green. It had been reported that Bandaranaike, who had come to the Parliament meeting that day, had been called to the Hartal meeting by force when he was leaving Parliament. More than 50000 people participated in that rally. As a true capitalist leader, Bandaranaike announced the day before the Hartal that the SLFP would not participate. The movement became too dangerous for the capitalist class.

Peradeniya University students took to the streets on 11 August, the day before the Hartal. The police brutally beat the students. The students fought back and attacked the police. The people’s support for the student protest was so big that the vice-chancellor had to come forward as the guarantor of the arrested students. This was only done due to the mood of support from the people. About 75,000 workers in Colombo and nearby cities went on strike on the day of the Hartal. The strike spread throughout the plantations. In Ratnapura district alone, the work of 28 estates was completely stopped. In the Western, Southern and Sabaragamuwa provinces, black flags were hoisted on houses in every major town as well as in the countryside. In almost every local town, people protested in the streets. Trees were cut down and roads were blocked. Telephone lines were cut and lines of communication were blocked.

The government declared an emergency at 11.45 am on 12 August to counter the Hartal. The army was called to assist the police. Left-wing newspapers were banned. The police opened fire on the people to quell the protests. The death toll is said to be 11. They were Edwin in Pettah, Almis of Rathgama, Euragaha S.H Rubal, Kirulapane Periathambi, Dodanduwe T.M Panagoda, Dankotuwa A. Sardiris, Dompe S. K. A. Sirisena, Kirulapana T. Sirisena, Matupala of Hikkaduwa and Modara Douglas Nikalas.

Shootings on 13 August left a further 21 people dead, the Daily News reported. The Prime Minister later stated in Parliament that he could not provide accurate figures. On the day of the Hartal all the roads leading into Colombo were blocked by the people. The government panicked. The capital was not a safe place to hold the emergency meeting of the Cabinet. So it gathered on a British ship anchored in the port. From there, the government announced that the price of a kilo of rice would be reduced to 32 cents. Finally, on 13 October 1953, Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake resigned.

The Hartal was a struggle by the urban working class of Sri Lanka against a capitalist government with the support of the plantation working class and rural peasants. But it is clear from the following statement of Hector Abeywardane, who is considered a theoretician of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, that the left-wing parties who led it did not aim to seize power:

“It is true that the Hartal of 1953 was the first anti-government mass action on a national scale in our country. But that action is a protest. A Hartal is a gathering of public protest. Complete shutdown of workplaces, offices, shops, courts etc. It is not the kind of action that can be escalated into a seizure of state power. The mass mobilization that took place through the Hartal of 1953 did not end there. It proved to be the prelude to the dramatic change that began with the 1956 general election. Since then, the Sri Lankan people have shown the ability to combine the experiences of mass struggles with the election of governments of their choice through parliamentary elections.”Hector Abeywardhana Selected Writings: The Hartal and Our Critics — 1977 August

Pallis Serasinghe, a working-class activist who led militant workers in the capital who participated in the Hartal movement, wrote in 1987:

“The fact that the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, which was the pioneer of the Hartal, did not take a decision on the steps to be taken from August 13th and did not give guidance to the people, is causing pain to us, the working class, who have committed themselves to that movement. After the Hartal of 1953, there were setbacks in the movement again. The reason for this is that the LSSP failed to advance the people’s struggle against the capitalist system and neo-colonialism by filing the various classes gathered during the Hartal. Bandaranaka and Philip Gunawardena took advantage of that weakness.”

In 1987, he wrote and published the book titled “Seventy Years of History of Government Workers” which is considered to be the first concise report written by a worker on trade unions in Sri Lanka.

Seeing the continuation of the Hartal as a danger, the leaders N.M. Perera (LSSP), Philip Gunawardena (Revolutionary Lanka Sama Samaja Party) and Peter Kenneman (CP) appealed for an end to the Hartal. That plea went as follows:

“We commend the people of Sri Lanka for acting nobly according to the request to hold a Hartal on August 12, 1953. We were able to express the strength and unity of the people in protesting the removal of subsidies including rice. The government panicked and declared its inability to govern the country by declaring a state of emergency. We request everyone not to fall for the provocations of the police and the government. The initially announced 24-hour Hartal ended (Thursday). Therefore, we request everyone to go back to work and continue their activities.”

But it was seen that it would take many days to restore the services.

Although strikes were not new to the people, the Hartal was. Work stoppages played an important role in the Hartal, but it was not primarily a strike action. It was a true mass battle in which the people outside the working class also participated. The people, who had never seen such a protest, expressed public trust and admiration for the Left movement which led this protest movement. But based on that belief, the leaders of the left did not work to lead the working class.

The Revolutionary Lanka Sama Samaja Party, which retreated to nationalism, together with Bandaranaike’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party, a capitalist party, formed the People’s United Front (MEP) and ran in the 1956 elections. After that, they took up positions as cabinet ministers of the established government. In the 1956 elections, the LSSP and CP supported the MEP capitalist coalition in a non-contest agreement with them. The end result was the beginning of the decline of the left.

Even though the people stood up against the government, no matter how strong the people’s strength was, there was no political leadership in the Hartal to lead such a force towards the people’s victories. It is a clear fact that the LSSP and Communist Party and other left-wing organizations that were operating at that time were not ready to face such a people’s uprising. At that time, those parties who claimed to be Marxists engaged in full-fledged capitalist parliamentarian and social democratic politics. They had not built an organization capable of leading such a huge protest of the people towards a break with the whole system. The current Marxists must grasp that knowledge, that lesson, which the people have gained from the sacrifice of their lives.

In order not to stop there, to correct those shortcomings, just as when we discuss the lessons of the Paris Commune, this great uprising can be used to create the necessary steps to overcome the shortcomings of the Marxist movement in this country. Realizing that the historical mission of this era is the same, they should use their experience and accumulated knowledge to build a new genuine Marxist party. Through the Hartal, the people understood the true face of the pro-imperial United National Party, but as a result this role was taken over by the local capitalist forces led by the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, and thus the capitalists were able to keep the people within the limits of capitalist politics.

Today’s Marxists should pay attention to the fact that the old Marxist political parties and organizations slowly dissolved into full parliamentarianism, and the working-class movement became limited to full trade unionist and welfare organizations, becoming legal advisory institutions instead of combative organisations of the working class. Undoubtedly, it will be very important to study how this change happened. Although the people stood up strongly during the Hartal process, the old left parties and organizations (pretending to be Marxists) failed to lead the people and turn this popular uprising into the beginning of an anti-government revolutionary political movement because those organizations did not have the necessary foundation to build a revolutionary political action.