Michael Van Der Poorten (Mike Banda) 1930-2014 Mike’s Funeral Service will be held on Friday 12 September 2014, 4-5.15pm, at the West Chapel of the Golders Green Crematorium, Hoop Lane, London NW11 7NL. Directions: 10min walk from Golders Green Tube station. Buses: 82, 260, 102. Please arrive at 3.45pm. Contact: Estella Schmid [email protected] Tel 020 7586 5892 or 07846666804 It is with profound sadness that we announce the death of Michael Adrian Van Der Poorten (known as Mike Banda) who passed away peacefully on Friday 29 August 2014. Born in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) on 23 August 1930, of Eurasian parents, he was educated at the Trinity College, Kandy. Mike became a revolutionary socialist in his youth and remained a life-long Marxist, socialist activist and committed internationalist whose determination to see a world free of oppression and exploitation was undiminished to the end. Obliged to leave Sri Lanka in the 1950s and take up residence in the UK, Mike together with his brother Tony, joined a Trotskyist group led by the late Gerry Healy and entered the Labour Party from which they were shortly expelled after advocating radical socialist policies. Leaving the Labour Party, Mike together with other expelled comrades, founded the Socialist Labour League (SLL) in 1958. In 1974 the SLL was dissolved and replaced by the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) headed by Gerry Healy, who was a political force of some influence on the left throughout the 1960s to 1980s. Mike was the party’s general secretary when the WRP dissolved into factions over an internal dispute. The political degeneration of the WRP which occurred under the leadership of Healy convinced Mike of the necessity to analyse the causes of the decline of Trotskyism and to project a new political strategy for the socialist movement based on a concrete analysis of the totality of developments since the Second World War. Following his resignation from the WRP in 1986, Mike and Tony together with a group of comrades founded the “Communist Forum” (later renamed “The Communist”) which explored his abiding interest in the issues of self-determination, national liberation movements and the struggles of subject peoples such as the Kurds, Tamils, Kashmiris, South Sudanese and Somalis. In particular Mike and Tony recognised the justice and resistance of the Tamil Eelam struggle and the Kurdish struggle and both were early supporters of the struggle of the Kurdish people in Turkey under the leadership of Abdullah Ocalan and the PKK. Mike and Tony worked closely with the Kurdish community in the UK including the Halkevi and the Kurdistan Workers Association (now Kurdish Community Centre) and later the Kurdistan National Congress (KNK). They were both co-founders of the Kurdistan Solidarity Committee (1989) and the Peace in Kurdistan Campaign (1994) and worked as editors and writers. Mike’s activism and writings on self-determination and the national question were primarily aimed at persuading the left to take them more seriously as he was convinced that these issues were central to politics in the contemporary world, especially with the onset of globalisation and the collapse of the Soviet Union. His many friends and comrades will recall fondly his sharp intelligence and wit, scathing attitude towards the foibles of the rich and powerful. In discussion, Mike was always ready to challenge conventional ideas and never ceased to offer illuminating comment and original insights into current affairs and key political issues. Like his lineal predecessors - the Winters - who campaigned with Wilberforce in Battersea in the 19th Century for the ending of slavery and like his uncle, Francis van der Poorten, one of the first communists in Indonesia, Mike’s stand was defiant and uncompromising (rootsweb.ancestry/~lkawgw/gen1159.html). Sadly, Mike was in poor health in his later years having contracted first diabetes and then Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease which progressively worsened over the past six years. During this time he was cared for by his partner Estella and for over three years had been resident in the St John’s Wood care home where he passed his last moments restfully on Friday afternoon 29 August 2014. He leaves a partner of some 28 years, Estella, his brother Emil (in Sri Lanka) as well as daughters and sons from previous relationships including Menika, Ranmal, Dan, Anna, Peter and Ben.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 18:16:22 +0000
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