Blackwell Reference Online

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Born in Randombe, a village near Balapitiya, Ceylon, Colvin de Silva was a leading political activist, labor leader, Trotskyist theoretician, and popular orator in Sri Lanka. He went to England to pursue higher studies and was the youngest student ever to receive a doctorate from London University. While active in the Ceylon Students' Association in London, he met pro-communist students and was recruited by the young communist firebrand, Philip Gunawardena , to a circle of Trotskyists in London. Returning to Ceylon, de Silva joined the South Colombo Youth League, affiliated to the All-Ceylon Youth Congress. With Gunawardena he led a successful strike at the Wellawatte Spinning and Weaving Mills, providing the Marxist group with its first trade union base. In December 1935 he participated in the founding conference of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) , serving as the party's president for the next four years. He used his legal skills to combat colonial repression, notably the attempt to deport a young Australian party sympathizer, Mark Bracegirdle, for the shooting of a Tamil worker during a strike on the Mooloya Estate in 1940. On June 17, 1940 the colonial government, rattled by LSSP's anti-war and labor agitation, banned the party, jailing de Silva and three party leaders. In April 1942 the imprisoned Trotskyists escaped and fled to India. In Bombay, de Silva actively ... log in or subscribe to read full text