Bandaranaike’s was a victory for Ceylonese capitalists who favored the promotion of a local, overwhelmingly Sinhala and Buddhist elite, with a nonaligned foreign policy, as opposed to the pro-Western elites tied to Washington, London, and multinational corporations, who tended to back the right-wing United National Party (UNP). Her victory in no way benefited the island’s working class, which soon found itself at loggerheads with the Bandaranaike government in a major strike wave.
The LSSP adopted a “no contest” policy towards Bandaranaike and the CP that was, for all intents and purposes, an endorsement. It marked a new stage in the degeneration of the party, which had sided in 1954 with the revisionist faction led by Michel Pablo and Ernest Mandel against the orthodox Trotskyists who founded the International Committee of Fourth International. In an unprincipled quid pro quo, the LSSP did not criticize the pro-Stalinist maneuvers of Pablo and Mandel in exchange for a free hand to engage in opportunist tactics in Ceylon—including tacit alliances with chauvinist Sinhala political forces.
The LSSP’s support proved critical in propping up the Colombo regime, which had weathered a series of crises, beginning with the mass “hartal” demonstrations and strikes of 1953 that brought down the UNP government of Dudley Shelton Senanayake, the assassination of Prime Minister Solomon Bandaranaike, husband of Sirimavo, in 1959, and the collapse after just four months of another UNP government in 1960. (WSWS)
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