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| Striking
back The strike collapsed a few days later, but since then, there has been no turning back for Bala Tampoe - the name that has become synonymous with the struggles of the working class in Sri Lanka. What was set in motion that day has led to him being in the forefront of a series of victories for the working masses in the country resulting in better working conditions, salaries and other rights but for Bala Tampoe, who has completed over 57 years as the General Secretary of one of the leading trade unions in the country, the Ceylon Mercantile Union (CMU), the job is yet not done. "It is my fate that has brought me down this path," Mr. Tampoe says talking of the dramatic turn his life took over the years. He was born Balendra Tampoe Phillips on May 23, 1922 in Negombo. "My father was an excise officer in British India and my mother lived with him in Bangalore. Shortly before I was born, she returned to Sri Lanka and I was born here," he said. He stayed on in Sri Lanka with his mother and older sister till the age of three and attended nursery at Newstead College in Negombo before returning to India to join his father. Over the next five years, most of his education was confined to home tutoring by his mother, "who taught us basic English and Sinhala”. The reason they were not in school was because in British India there was a quota to get children admitted to English schools." For every four British and Anglo Indian children, only one Indian child was admitted and Ceylonese were considered Indian," he explained. And it was his rejection from a leading school in Bangalore, which he thinks had a psychological impact on him, and made his mother who was a strong supporter of Mahatma Gandhi's civil disobedience movement against British rule in India an even more ardent supporter for an end to colonial rule, which in turn influenced him. His mother had sent in his application for admission to Bishop Cotton Anglican School, a leading English medium school. The application had been made in the name of B.T. Phillips and a few days later a letter arrived confirming his admission and asking him to come with the school fees to enrol as a student there. Young Bala had gone to the school with his mother and was ushered into the office of the Principal, an Englishman. However when the Principal saw them and the admission letter, he had said, "There is some mistake”. The reason he had been given admission was because it was presumed that he was English as his name was B.T. Phillips - a name that did not reveal his nationality. "My admission was rejected on the day of my admission itself, " he said. When they returned to Sri Lanka and he was admitted to Royal College, Colombo in 1930, his mother made sure that his application was made in the name of Balendra Tampoe Phillips in case there was a repetition of the earlier incident. “In 1944, I officially changed my name to Bala Tampoe after placing an advertisement in the paper," he said. In 1939, he entered the University of Ceylon with the aim of entering the Ceylon Civil Service, the top administrative service in the country. It was here that he was introduced to Marxism and his life took an unexpected direction. "I met two fellow students from the Dramatic Society - Richard (Dicky) Attygalle and Trevor Drieberg and it is through them that I was introduced to Marxism and subsequently joined the underground Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) which had been banned by the British under the wartime regulations, for opposing the war." Soon he was involved in the distribution of the underground party newspaper, the "Samasamajist" and was asked along with Dicky Attygalle to make contact with British troops serving in Colombo and carry on an anti-war campaign. With his involvement in the LSSP, young Bala gave up his idea of joining the CCS but after passing out of university applied for the post of lecturer in Horticulture and Botany at the Department of Agriculture. But on his first day at work, he felt he was not destined for this job. "I knew I would not be there long because I told another officer present on my first day, 'I feel like a prisoner as a government servant'." In the midst of these developments, the stage was being set for the biggest general strike in the country in May 1947. Still a lecturer, Mr. Tampoe yet continued with his work as an LSSPer discreetly, even lecturing selected students in Marxism. The 1947 strike was organised by the General Clerical Services Union (GCSU) of which T.B. Illangaratne (later Cabinet Minister in several SLFP-led governments) was President and Mr. Tampoe had his first brush with trade union activism. With Mr. Illangaratne having to take over the leadership of the GCSU, he had to return to Colombo and Mr. Tampoe was asked to take over the Kandy branch of the union during the strike. The strike started at the Labour Ministry in Colombo on May 31, with the clerks coming out on strike. "Once the strike was announced by the chief clerk of the ministry, Geoffrey Kunanayagam, office by office, floor by floor, all the staff in the ministries in the building came out on strike. It started spontaneously but spread like wild fire and government administration was almost completely paralysed by the second day of the strike," he recalled. "I had no previous experience of strikes but on June 3, I made my first public speech in front of the Maligawa and defied the public appeal for all those on strike to go back to work by the British Governor Sir Henry Monck-Mason Moore," Mr. Tampoe said. He knew his job was at stake as he himself was an employee of the public service with a letter of appointment from the Cabinet Secretary himself. "I was all fired up and had made up my mind. The first underground lesson I learnt from Doric De Souza (fellow LSSPer) was the saying by French revolutionary (Jean Paul) Marat - 'You must think things out to the end'. So I did that before getting on stage. The worst that could happen was I would be interdicted or dismissed but I knew before I starved, 99 per cent of the Ceylonese population would do so. I had decided I would even work as a domestic servant if I lost my job," he said. By June 5, a striker, Kandasamy was shot dead as they marched towards the Sapugaskanda oil refinery and the strike began to collapse. Even though Mr. Tampoe did his best to hold the strike as long as possible and keep up the morale of the strikers, it was officially called off on June 9 at De Mel Park in Colombo. All the striking workers were taken back to work but there was an exception. When he tried to return to work, Mr. Tampoe was asked to explain in writing his absence from work between June 3 and 9. He explained that when an important sector went on strike to win rights for all public servants, "my conscience demanded that I give my full and active support to them and this necessitated my absence from work”. The reply he received was short. "Your services are no longer required." This brought an end to his career in the public service but the incident infused enough will and vigour in Mr. Tampoe to want to dedicate the rest of his life to the struggles of the working class. Thus began his role as a full-time trade union leader becoming the General Secretary of the CMU in 1948, a post that he holds to this day. Having fought and won a year's wages and reinstatement for an employee of Plate after the first CMU strike in 1949, Mr. Tampoe decided to borrow some money from his sister and enter Law College after being persuaded by his friends that "he had the gift of the gab so why not use it". Since then he has defended hundreds of workers in court. While in university aged just 19, Bala Tampoe addressed its Biological Society on a somewhat unusual topic: "Marxism and Biology". His lecturer was so impressed he sent him a certificate stating, "He has a keen and critical mind and reads widely. He will go far." That remains one of his most prized possessions. The words could not have been more prophetic. |
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