The Bala Tampoe story

The Bala Tampoe story

Malinda Words-BY MALINDA SENEVIRATNE-September 1, 2014 

Veteran trade union leader and General Secretary of Ceylon Mercantile, Industrial and General Workers Union Bala Tampoe passed away in Colombo at the age of 92 today.  I interviewed 'Comrade Bala' for the Sunday Island 13 years ago.  That interview (published on April 8, 2001) is reproduced here by way of tribute to a colorful and evergreen red, so to speak, in labor politics in Sri Lanka.

Marx said somewhere that men make history but not in the circumstances of their choosing. This is fundamentally a thesis about the dialectic character of structure and agency. For the most part, it seems, human beings are overwhelmed by the conditions they find themselves in, and allow themselves to be carried by the tide of seemingly inexorable processes. Still, the world is not without heroes and heroism, for there are those who challenge and radically alter contours of engagement in the social. In the process, inevitably, they succeed in redefining who they are, often in opposition to the cultural code dictated by genealogy and blood line. Such a man is Phillips Balendra Tampoe, or 
"Comrade Bala" to thousands of trade union activists the world over.
The Bala Tampoe Story by Thavam Ratna