Antifascist Peoples Freedom League

a Burmese political organization. It was established in August 1944 as a united national front for struggle against the Japanese occupiers; its ranks included petit bourgeois proletarian and patriotic bourgeois forces. Its organizers were the Communist Party, the People’s Revolutionary Party (from 1945, the Socialist Party), and the National Army. Its presidents were U Aung San (1944–47) and U Nu (1947–58). In March 1945 the league led a national anti-Japanese uprising and then opposed the English imperialists who were returning to Burma.

After Burma’s independence was proclaimed (Jan. 4, 1948), the league formed a national government. It was the ruling political coalition until 1958, basically expressing the interests of bourgeois-landlord circles, although it continued to include sizable petit bourgeois urban and rural strata. A number of mass organizations were directed by the league, including the Trade Union Congress (Burma), the Burmese National Peasant Organization, and the Women’s League of People’s Freedom. After a series of internal splits (from 1946), the organization divided completely into two factions (1958); one, headed by U Nu, became the Union Party, while the other, led by right-wing socialists, retained the earlier title. The legal existence of both ceased in March 1964, when a one-party system was introduced and all parties except the Burma Socialist Program Party were banned.