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| Sunday, 15 December 2002 |
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A Leftist to the last Sunday essay by Ajith Samaranayake
The death of Anil Moonesinghe removes from Sri Lanka's political scene one of the more significant of the second generation leaders of the LSSP cast in the colourful mould of most Left politicians even as his chequered political career which took him from the LSSP to a breakaway faction of that party and then ultimately to the SLFP points to the aborted hopes of a socialist transformation of Sri Lanka's society in which many politicians of his generation invested their energies and talents. Although he ceased to be a LSSP leader more than two decades ago, at his death Anil Moonesinghe will go down as perhaps the most senior politician of that party to survive the vicissitudes of his time. For people like Anil Moonesinghe do not easily lose their beliefs irrespective of whatever political party they might have moved to. He was equally at home as a top leader of the LSSP, as a Minister of the short-lived SLFP-LSSP Coalition Government of Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike in 1964 and as Chairman of the Ceylon Transport Board during her second Government in 1970. Likewise he never really abandoned his faith in socialism being prepared like the late Leslie Goonewardene to study Euro-Communism and even experiment with a mix of capitalist and worker-ownership models in areas such as his beloved transport sector in later years. political radical That was a measure of his intellectual curiosity and seriousness of political purpose which he retained to the last. Anil Kumar Moonesinghe was born to a respected Sinhala Buddhist family and was a grandson of Angaraika Dharmapala, the charismatic, if volatile, leader of the Sinhala Buddhist renaissance of the last century. This perhaps led to a mixed intellectual baggage. On one hand he derived from his grandfather a sense of nationalism although subsuming it in later years in proletarian internationalism but perhaps more markedly he also derived from this ancestry a sense of political radicalism which was to stand him in good stead in later life. As an alumnus of the London School of Economics he was cast very much in the mould of his mentor, the late Dr. N.M. Perera,that most distinguished of pupils of Harold Laski, the prophet of the British Labour Party. In fact Moonesinghe was a member of the Labour Party as a student and shared with N.M. something of that debonair intellectual outlook and bohemian personal ways which were so much a part of the Left intelligentsia of the times. He returned to Ceylon in 1952 as a Barrister-at-Law of the Middle Temple and immediately plunged into LSSP politics serving as a Poliburo member and Assistant Secretary of the Party. By this time the split between the LSSP faction led by Dr. Perera and the ELPI faction led by Dr. Colvin R. de Silva had ostensibly been healed and the party united in 1950 but this historical split in Sri Lanka's oldest political party was to haunt Anil Moonesinghe throughout his life as a LSSPer. The split had first occurred in India when the party was underground but took its most concrete form in 1947-48 over the nature of the Independence bestowed on Ceylon by the British. While the BLPI took up the position that this Independence was a fake the LSSP argued that there was a gradualist potential for the Independence to become an ultimate reality. Anil Moonesinghe's career shows that at crucial points of difference within the LSSP he had always tended to side with Dr. Perera. Thus in 1964 when a majority decision was taken for the LSSP to join the SLFP in a coalition government it was the relatively junior Moonesinghe and Cholomondely Goonewardene (albeit a more senior party personality) who with Dr. Perera took office as Cabinet Ministers while the more senior Dr. Colvin R. de Silva and Leslie Goonewardene opted to be on the sidelines. And in the early 1980s when Dr. de Silva became party leader after Dr. Perera's death Moonesinghe led a breakaway faction actually claiming that they were the real LSSP and that the old BLPI had hijacked the party. All this might seem absurdly quaint to a new generation on the Left but what it also points to was a time when ideas were taken seriously unlike today when a remarkable poverty of the intellect has become the central motif of politics. The idea which drove Anil Moonesinghe and his generation was that of scientific socialism but by the time he returned to Ceylon and became MP for Agalawatta in 1956 the LSSP was already trapped in the pitfall of Parliament. What is more, Moonesinghe also belonged to that faction of the party which believed in a gradualist approach to the capturing of political power and by the time the party split again in 1964 on whether it should join forces with the SLFP or not he was a leading member of the N.M. Perera led pro-Coalition faction. The point, of course, was that having opted for the parliamentary path the LSSP had realised after its defeat at the two 1960 Elections that it could not capture power alone. (In March 1960 for example both NM and Philip Gunawardena at the helm of the LSSP and the VLSSP respectively fondly believed they could be Prime Minister). Hence the Perera faction's decision to form an alliance with the SLFP and through it to penetrate the peasantry and the rural middle-class, the SLFP's natural constituency which the LSSP had hitherto superciliously dismissed as a petit-bourgeoisie. Here again Moonesinghe's politics was many-faceted. Although as a parliamentarian he represented the Aglawatta and Matugama seats (two of the most backward constituencies in the Kalutara district) he was also active as a trade unionist in the towns being the founding General Secretary of the United Corporations and Mercantile Union and taking over the mantle of President from NM of the redoubtable Sri Lanka Motor Workers' Union. This second position helped him greatly when he was made Chairman of the CTB at a time when it enjoyed the monopoly of bus transport running buses on the remotest routes at all hours of the day and night, a far cry from today. It was then a common sight to see the Chairman hopping into a bus bound for Pettah, say from Kirulapona, to see whether the commuters were getting a fair deal. Anil Moonesinghe thus bridged the rural-urban divide in LSSP politics although with his urbane ways and polished English delivery he was closer to the intellectual faction of the party than his rural constituents. Although a leading intellectual within the party he was also a skilled organiser and trade unionist, a man of action, although not disdaining theory. The tragedy of this second generation of the LSSP, however, was that by the time they reached the centre stage the Old Left had become obsolete and within their own parties a new third generation of leaders more attractive to the youth such as Vasudeva Nanayakkara had come to the fore. The JVP had become the main point of attraction for the radical youth. All these factors drove Anil Moonesinghe to breakaway from the LSSP and finally join the SLFP closing the cycle of his politics. He was twice a SLFP MP, in 1989 and 1994, the last time being elevated to the office of Deputy Speaker. He opted not to contest the last General Election and was posted to Austria as Sri Lanka's Ambassador. In many ways Anil Moonesinghe was the last of a now extinguished tribe. He belonged to that generation of Sri Lankans who were educated in Britain and what is more returned with an English wife. What the present generation might not know is that this tribe included not only radicals such as Anil and Pieter Keneuman but also such distinguished nationalists as Dr. G.P. Malalasekera and P. de S. Kularatne. Anil's first wife Jeanne joined Lake House and was instrumental in organising a trade union there much to the chagrin of the management which had strenuously upheld a 'no unions' policy. When she died in 1997 and I wrote a piece about her on this very page he wrote to me thus: "Thank you so much for the very nice and kind memorial you wrote about Jeanne. Though I was separated from her during the last few years, I continued to be close in spirit with her and valued her as a very close friend. I hope to be able to write a biographical sketch of Jeanne." confirmed Marxist Hailing from a conservative Sinhala Buddhist family he nevertheless became a confirmed Marxist but the fact that this was no youthful impulse was borne out by the fact that he retained his faith to the last although he may have changed political parties. He proved himself as an efficient organiser and manager and even briefly held ministerial office. He was a flamboyant personality and even had a streak of the maverick within him. In 1970 after the victory of the United Front Government of Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike he allegedly led a band which stormed Lake House and the year after as Chairman of the CTB organised what he styled the Hansa Regiment to safeguard the CTB and other state properties from the marauding JVP. One of the most promising second generation leaders of the LSSP he was yet denied leadership in the party not least because of the Byzantinne theoretical intricacies and in-fighting which has plagued Sri Lanka's Left. But he never gave up the good fight and his death robs us of one of the last Renaissance men in a sadly impoverished country. |
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