Edmund Samarakkoddy
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Honourable Edmund Samarakkody MP |
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| එඩ්මන්ඩ් සමරක්කොඩි | |
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| Member of the Ceylonese Parliament for Dehiowita |
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In office 1952–1960 |
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| Preceded by | Reginald Perera |
| Succeeded by | Soma Wickremanayake |
| Member of the Ceylonese Parliament for Bulathsinhala |
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In office 1960–1965 |
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| Preceded by | Bibile Fonseka |
| Succeeded by | Mangala Moonesinghe |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 19 April 1912 |
| Died | 4 January 1992 (aged 79) Colombo, Sri Lanka |
| Political party | Revolutionary Workers Party |
| Alma mater | Ceylon Law College |
| Profession | Lawyer |
| Ethnicity | Sinhalese |
Edmund Peter Samarakkody (19 April 1912 – 4 January 1992) was a Ceylonese lawyer, trade unionist, politician and Member of Parliament.
Samarakkody was born on 19 April 1912. He was educated at S. Thomas' College, Mount Lavinia. After school he joined the Ceylon Law College, qualifying as a proctor.
Samarakkody married his first cousin Dagmar Samarakkody. They had a daughter (Chulanganee) and a son (Nahil).
Samarakkody became a proctor of the Supreme Court in 1936 and started practicing law in Badulla. He then worked at the Mount Lavinia bar for over four decades.
Samarakkody became involved in anti-imperialist nationalistic politics in the early 1930s when he joined the Colombo South Youth League (CSYL), an affiliate of the All Ceylon Youth Congress. In 1933 Indian workers at the Wellawatte Spinning and Weaving Mills went on strike and were supported by the CSYL. The strike was undermined by A. Ekanayake Gunasinha and his Ceylon Labour Union which used Sinhalese blacklegs to break the strike. In the 1920s Gunasinha had been the first to organise labour in Ceylon.Colvin R. de Silva, Leslie Goonewardena, Philip Gunawardena, Samarakkody and S. A. Wickramasinghe established the Wellawatte Mill Workers Union with de Silva as its president.
Samarakkody was one of the founding members of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) in December 1935 and was elected to its executive committee. He took a leading role in militant leftist action, including the strikes at Vavasseur Coconut Mill and the Colombo Commercial Company Fertiliser Works in 1937, the latter for which he and Goonewardena were arrested. The LSSP was beset with internal divisions - militants within the party (Colvin R. de Silva, William de Silva, Goonewardena, Vernon Gunasekera, Philip Gunawardena, Robert Gunawardena, N. M. Perera, Samarakkody etc.) formed the "T" group (Trotskyist) which sided with Leon Trotsky in the International Communist whilst Stalinists (P. Kandiah, M. G. Mendis, A. Vaidyalingam, Wickramasinghe etc.) formed another group. The Stalinists were expelled from the LSSP in 1940 and went on to form the United Socialist Party (later reconstituted as the Communist Party of Ceylon) in 1941.
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