I read an excerpt from “The participation of women in the social reform, political and labour movements in Sri Lanka”, a 1980 essay by Kumari Jayawardena. Below are a few of my favorite bits from it. https://twitter.com/sachp/status/1388429630927900672

“Except for laundry workers, early strikes among urban wage workers were in purely male occupations — printers, Carter’s, and railway and harbour workers. But during the general strike of 1923, led by A.E. Goonesinha and the Ceylon Labour Union, when 20,000 workers of Colombo in

both the private and public sectors struck work, women workers at factories joined their male comrades on strike. This was the beginning of the staunch support that A.E. Goonesinghe acquired among working class women.”

They included “Emalias Hamy of Hunupitiya, an active and militant fighter who is remembered for an incident that occurred during the famous tramway strike of 1929, when she garlanded the tram company owner Cedric Bousted, with a snake!”

“In the plantation sector the first trade union was formed by K. Natesa Aiyar and Satyawagiswara Aiyar in 1931.....Meenachi Ammal who was married to Natesa Aiyar made a sensation by appearing at public meetings and thrilling the crowds with her songs

describing the sufferings of the estate workers. In the period after 1945 many Tamil women from estates became active in the trade union movement which grew in strength. Among them Kokilam Subbiah is best known for the novels she wrote” on the degradation of plantation workers.

“Many working class women took a more active interest in union activities during the war (WW2) — especially the women workers in the tea picking and fibre factories of Colombo. The best known of these was Ponsinahamy of Wanathamulla, a worker at Hayley & Kennys, a militant of

the Ceylon Trade Union Federation (CTUF). She was one of the group of women workers led by Hedi Keuneman who during the tramway strike of 1945 lay down on the tramrails to prevent the trams from moving and was involved in fisticuffs with the police.”

“Another woman famous in the trade union sphere was a Muslim from Slave Island, Maimoon, who worked at Hendersons, and was a CTUF activist. She was a popular platform speaker in Sinhala and Tamil and a familiar figure during the strikes of war (WW2) and post-war years.”

“These two women leaders, Ponsinahamy and Maimoon, were influential both at their places of work and in their neighborhoods. During elections the Left candidates’ agents would canvass for votes along with these two, as their wielded enormous political influence among

the working class of their areas. They were class conscious women, who were politically more advanced than A.E. Goonesinha’s militant band of women. They used to attend study classes for women held by the Communist Party,

and during the post-war period of industrial unrest and general strikes, they led the women workers in strike activity and demonstrations.” #MayDay2021 #SriLanka