BY

PRASAD GUNEWARDENE

Three decades ago when I was assigned to cover the trade union rounds with my colleague D. B. S. Jeyaraj for ‘The island’ newspaper, by the then Editor, Gamini Weerakoon, we both were in regular contact with trade union leaders like BalaTampoe, Alavi Moulana, Sirinal De Mel and Gamini Lokuge to name a few. Once when I met Comrade Bala at the Ceylon Mercantile Union (CMU) headquarters, I quipped, “I am here to meet the Emperor of the Working Class.” Sporting a mellifluous smile, Comrade Bala replied, “I am only a soldier in a great army of labour and will remain at that till I die”. He was proud to serve the union of working people. There was no greater calling than that to Comrade Bala.

In mass struggles, rulers described him as a militant. Contrary to that contention of rulers, Bala subscribed to the divine right of discontent to see improvements and to offer a better way of life for the working class. To address him as a trade union leader is perfect, as he spent 66 years of his lifetime serving the working class till he breathed his last.

Born to a prominent family in Jaffna, Philips Balendra Tampoe was educated at Royal College, Colombo. He did his BSc. at the University of Colombo and at the University of London. He passed out as an Advocate and practiced criminal law. Bala also served as a lecturer in botany and horticulture at the Agriculture Department before he was dismissed from public service for participating in a strike in 1947.

He joined the Ceylon Mercantile Union (CMU) in that year and later spearheaded the major strike at the Colombo Port in 1963 which forced the then Prime Minister, Sirima Bandaranaike to invoke emergency regulations. Comrade Bala was a staunch trade unionist through and through and a rare breed of genuine socialist.

He earned the love and the respect of just about everybody who ever met him inside and outside the trade-union movement. He was also a close friend of the media. In reality, he was everybody’s hero, whether they were labourers, drivers, peons or clerks. Bala simply wanted a better and just world for the workers to inhabit, with a society free of war, hunger, poverty, homelessness, unemployment and repression. That was Comrade BalaTampoe’s doctrine in trade unionism.

He led from the front to fight for those ideals and the CMU headquarters and roads were a natural home for him. Bala had the ability to address the workers in all three languages, a qualification that lacked in many rulers and politicians. Therefore, the capitalist minded leaders branded him as a dangerous ‘militant’ determined to destroy the capitalist system.

Bala Tampoe’s sincerity in everything he achieved or attempted to do, outsmart the capitalist class and it shone through his life, and he did not diminish his energies until his last breath.

He stayed active as the President of the Ceylon Mercantile Union. He wore his famous red cap with pride. He was astride a C- 90 motorcycle even at the age of 92 as the pillion rider to arrive at the venue to join the May Day rally this year rather than being driven in a limousine.

Bala Tampoe’s determination, intelligence, oratory, and passionate rejection of injustice brought him to maturity at a relatively young age as a trade union leader.

This great trade union leader’s political and economic judgments may have been open to question and debate. But his decency and honesty were beyond question and debate.

He was not afraid to criticize capitalist trade unions for obvious imperfections. The country and the working class hail him as one of the most remarkable and influential trade union leaders of the past and present century.

Comrade Bala Tampoe was simply a … ‘Leader of the Working Class’, and no historian should need to search for a more fitting epitaph.

Courtesy:Ceylon Today