James Cannon, one of the co-foun ders of the Fourth International, and one of the foremost leaders of world Trotskyism until his death last year, once said the one of the tasks of any revolutionary organis ation must be to instil workers with a sense of their own working class history —their struggles, their vietories, and their defeats.
This is above all true in Britain, where nationalist and reformist traditions are particularly deep. Consequently we will be running a column for the next year which brielly details the main events in the history of the workers move ment on the anniversary of their re-acurrence. 5 JANUARY 1919: Start of the "Sparthe organisstion which had just become ine berman Communist rarty A workers" demonstration, protesting at the dismissal of a left-ving police chief by the Social Democratic gov eement, rook over newspaper offices and railway stations. These actions, which grew over several days and were anded by the Social Democratic Inaders, Ebert and Noske, was pert of a whole perod of revorationary insidority in Germany, during which there were Rohan Wijeweera, the main leader of the now-banned Sri Lankan revolutionary organisation JVP (Janata Vimukti Peramuna ation Front), was sentenced a fortnight ago to life imprisonment by the specially constituted court which had been trying him and other revolutionaries for the last two years. The charges included "waging war against the Queen", (though the country has been a republic for two ycar now), ligh treason, etc.
The SVP. which developed in the late 1960s, had by 1971 attained massive support in the countryside. The Ceylonese ruling class then dec ided to unleash a wave of repression before they could link up with the urban working class. The JVP waged ed by the Bandaranaike regime, which was supported by Pakistan. India, Britain, the USSR, the USA and China.
Obituary:
by all the purties in the coalition government which include the -People's Liber- Communist Party and the ex-Tretskyist Lanka Sama Samaja Partydisplay of its power: 60,000 JVP members, supporters and sympathisers were massacred in cold blood.
The Ceylonest army, egged on decided in April 1971 on a barbaric PARODIES while the remainder bave been kept in prison, A special Criminal Justice Commission, with unlimited powers was set up to try the conspirators. The trial began two years ago, with trade untion leader Bala Tampoe defending a number of the prisoners and lepally advising Wijeweera, who conducted his own defence.
Throughout the trial the three