Ceylon Workers' Congress
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Ceylon Workers' Congress
இலங்கை தொழிலாளர் காங்கிரஸ் ලංකා කම්කරු කොංග්රසය |
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| Leader | Arumugam Thondaman |
| Founder | Savumiamoorthy Thondaman |
| Founded | 1939 |
| Preceded by | Ceylon Indian Congress |
| Headquarters | 72 Ananda Coomaraswamy Mawatha, Colombo 07 |
| National affiliation | United People's Freedom Alliance |
| Parliament of Sri Lanka |
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The Ceylon Workers' Congress (CWC) (Tamil: இலங்கை தொழிலாளர் காங்கிரஸ், translit. Ilaṅkai Toḻilāḷar Kāṅkiras; Sinhalese: ලංකා කම්කරු කොංග්රසය Lanka Kamkaru Kongrasaya) is a political party in Sri Lanka that has traditionally represented Tamils working in the plantation sector of the economy (Sri Lankan Tamils of Indian Origin).
The CWC was formed by Savumiamoorthy Thondaman as an Indian Estates Workers Trade Union in 1950. It was an outgrowth of the Ceylon Indian Congress (CIC), formed in 1939. In 1950 the CIC changed its name to the Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC) and became the largest trade union in the country. Another trade union, the Democratic Workers Congress (DWC), was formed in 1956 as a breakaway faction of the CWC as a result of leadership rivalries between the president, S.Thondaman, and the general secretary A. Aziz. The former retained control of the CWC to date. Thondaman has been the dominant trade union leader of the Indian Tamil workers for nearly four decades. As president of the Ceylon Indian Congress, he contested the Nuwara Eliya seat at the 1947 general election and won. His party put forward seven candidates in the plantation electorates and six of them were returned.
The political potentiality of the Indian Tamil workers and the CIC led by Thondaman were viewed as threats to the power of the ruling United National Party. Another view was that the enfranchisement of the Indian workers would interfere with the representation of the Kandyan Sinhalese in the legislature. However, the main reason for the disenfranchisement was the fear of political leaders like Senanayake (and even Ponnambalam) that the estate sector would become a prey to the Marxist movement. The left movement was militant and had a public image which conceled the fact that its political strength was minuscule. However, the political leaders of the era had a more pessimistic prognosis.
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