Anil Moonesinghe

Anil Moonesinghe (15 February 1927 – 8 December 2002) was a Sri Lankan Trotskyist revolutionary politician and trade unionist.

Moonesinghe was born in Colombo Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon), on 15 February 1927.

A member of the family of Anagarika Dharmapala (who named him 'Anil Kumar'), he was brought up with Buddhist and Sinhalese nationalist values, as well as an abhorrence of the colonial power, Britain.

He went to school at Royal College, Colombo, an elite institution which produced many radicals as well as civil servants and bourgeois politicians, where he won his colours in athletics.

During the Second World War he organised a brigade of boys to aid the Japanese if they landed on the island and earned himself the nickname 'Rommel' at school.

Later he became influenced by communism (he wrote in praise of the Red Air Force).

Together with Osmund Jayaratne and Dicky Attygala, he formed a communist group in Royal College.

This group gradually moved to a specifically Trotskyist stance.

Moonesinghe went on to University College Ceylon (which later became University of Ceylon), where he excelled in athletics, representing his University at the All India Universities Athletic Meet, which was held regularly in those years, in Lahore in 1944.

He taught briefly at Royal Primary School, which had been evacuated to Glendale Bungalow, Bandarawela.

He won an exhibition to the University of London and went to Britain in 1945.

He sailed on board a troopship; when the news of Churchill's defeat at the general election came through, all the soldiers on board threw their caps in the air and cheered, a fact which greatly encouraged him.

At University College, London, he studied law.

There he met his future wife, Jeanne Hoban – a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) whom he converted to Trotskyism – and Stan Newens, who was later to become a Labour & Co-op MP.

They joined the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), in which they were associated with the group around Tony Cliff, the so-called 'State-Caps' after their characterisation of the USSR as 'State-Capitalist'.

The group later became the Socialist Review Group (SRG), organised around the Socialist Review which evolved into the Socialist Workers Party (SWP).

Both Anil and Jeanne were present at the founding conference of the SRG.

Through the group he got to know Max Shachtman, becoming familiar with his theory of 'bureaucratic revolution'.

He was also familiar with Jock Haston and Ted Grant.

Within the RCP he went by the Pseudonym 'Anil Kumaran'.

For a time he worked as an overhead crane operator at Southern Forge Ltd, Langley, Slough.

He married Jeanne Hoban in 1948 and they moved into a houseboat called 'Red October', which they built together, on the Thames near Marlow.

They both entered the Labour Party in Slough, on the heels of a group of the RCP, led by Jock Haston.

Anil was a speaker for the National Council of Labour Colleges; while Jeanne was elected to the Executive of the Labour Leagues of Youth, later being put on the list of Labour Parliamentary candidates.

They were both associated with the MP for Slough Fenner Brockway and with George Padmore, the prophet of Black African Liberation.

At the time the British were still very powerful on the island, in spite of Ceylon having obtained a form of independence in 1948.

The British planters prevailed upon the government to deport Jeanne, but she went into hiding and the LSSP fought successfully to prevent the deportation.

At the time, the seat was held by the United National Party (UNP) with a comfortable majority (the plantation workers, who were a large minority of the electorate, were disenfranchised by the UNP Government in 1949).

His parents summoned Anil back to Colombo urgently in 1952.

He was called to the Bar and practised law all over the island.

He and Jeanne joined the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) and worked in the Lanka Estate Workers' Union (LEWU), which organised labourers on the tea and rubber plantations.

In 1954 the LEWU sent him to the Mohomediya Estate in Agalawatte, in the Pasdun Korale (county) to organise a strike there.

He was so successful that the Agalawatte Local of the LSSP asked for him to be sent as the Party's parliamentary candidate for the constituency.

In 1956 he won the election for this seat in Parliament representing Agalawatte for 11 years.

He worked hard for his constituency, building roads and schools through self-help and worked for the welfare of the poorest sections, particularly for the neglected so-called lower castes.

He also successfully contested the working-class Dematagoda Ward of the Colombo Municipal Council, but found that working in Agalawatte took up too much time for him to devote any to his ward work.

He became a member of parliament, a Cabinet Minister of Transport in 1964, the Deputy Speaker of Parliament from 1994 to 2000 and a diplomat.

He has authored several books and edited newspapers and magazines.

He was chairman and general manager of a State corporation.

He briefly held the honorary rank of colonel.