On the 30th anniversary of the death of Comrade Keerthi Balasuriya
By
David North
19 December 2017
This letter was sent by WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North to a gathering of the Socialist Equality Party in Sri Lanka marking the 30th anniversary of the death of Keerthi Balasuriya. Comrade Keerthi was the founding general secretary of the Revolutionary Communist League (RCL), the Sri Lankan section of the International Committee of the Fourth International and predecessor to the SEP. The event was held at the Colombo Cemetery in Sri Lanka on December 18.
Dear Comrades,
Thirty years ago, on December 18, 1987, Comrade Keerthi Balasuriya died at the untimely age of 39. When I received the news on that Friday morning, it came as a terrific shock. Only a few weeks earlier, Keerthi and I had worked together in London, writing a political statement on the treacherous accord between the Indian and Sri Lankan bourgeoisie. It was difficult to believe that this brilliant revolutionist, at the height of his intellectual and political powers, was suddenly gone.
Keerthi’s death was an irreplaceable loss to the International Committee of the Fourth International and its Sri Lankan section. In Sri Lanka, Keerthi had led the Revolutionary Communist League since its founding in 1968. Under the most difficult political conditions, exacerbated by the increasingly unprincipled national opportunism of the British Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP), Keerthi fought to uphold the revolutionary internationalist program upon which the founding of the RCL had been based.
In October 1985, as the crisis within the WRP erupted, Comrade Keerthi traveled to London. He immediately aligned himself with those within…