Viplavakari Lanka Sama Samaja Party

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Lanka Sama Samaja Party

Youth Leagues Suriya-Mal Movement Bracegirdle Incident 1953 Hartal

Personalities Philip Gunawardena Pieter Keuneman Anil Moonesinghe N.M. Perera Edmund Samarakkody Colvin R de Silva S.A. Wickremasinghe

European Radicals in Sri Lanka

Politics of Sri Lanka Political parties in Sri Lanka Elections in Sri Lanka

Trotskyism Fourth International

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Viplavakari Lanka Sama Samaja Party (Revolutionary Ceylon Equal Society Party) was a group that broke away from the Trotskyist Lanka Sama Samaja Party, since Philip Gunawardena (of one the two principal LSSP leaders) refused to reconcile with the Bolshevik Samasamaja Party. When the BSP and LSSP fused in 1950, Gunawardena split to form VLSSP.

In 1952 VLSSP entered into an electoral alliance with the Communist Party. In the parliamentary elections that year, VLSSP won one seat (represented by Gunawardena's wife, Kusumasiri Gunawardena).

Ahead of the 1956 elections, VLSSP joined Mahajana Eksath Peramuna led by Sri Lanka Freedom Party. VLSSP won five seats in the parliament as part of MEP. MEP won the elections, and Gunawardena became the minister of agriculture and his party colleague P. J. William de Silva became the Minister for Industries. But the presence of the leftist VLSSP in the government irritated the rightist sections of SLFP, who maneuvered VLSSP out through a series of intrigues. MEP fell apart and the government was defeated. In 1959 VLSSP was disbanded and Gunawardena reorganized his party with the name Mahajana Eksath Peramuna. His new party was however not a trotskyist formation.

VLSSP should not be confused with Lanka Sama Samaja Party (Revolutionary), which was a later splinter-group of LSSP.