Jeanne Hoban (3 August 1924 in Gillingham, Kent – 18 April 1997 in Sri Lanka), known after her marriage as Jeanne Moonesinghe, was a British Trotskyist who became active in trade unionism and politics in Sri Lanka. She was one of the handful of European Radicals in Sri Lanka. Early years She was born in Gillingham, Kent. Her father, Major William Leo Hoban was a British featherweight boxer and former soldier of Irish roots, her mother, May Irene Free, was a small businesswoman of partly Jewish extraction. Her early life was spent in a variety of Army camps. In 1936, her father was appointed an instructor at Eton College, and they settled in Slough. She attended Slough High School for Girls, where she became Head Girl in 1942. During the Second World War, she was once machine-gunned by a Nazi Luftwaffe aircraft. Although selected for London University, she had to do her two-year National Service as a government inspector in the Bristol aircraft factory at Staines. There she joined the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in 1943. She was a member of the Transport and General Workers' Union and came from a fairly radical background – the Merseyside branch of what would later become the Militant tendency used to meet in her aunt's house in Birkenhead. To the end of her life, she maintained that the members of the CPGB were the most dedicated and conscientious political workers she ever knew. At University College London and LSE, she studied law. There she met her future husband, Anil Moonesinghe, who converted her to Trotskyism, and also a young conscientious objector called Stan Newens, who would later become a Labour Party MP and MEP. RCP and Labour Party The three of them joined the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), and Jeanne was elected to its National Executive. She fell out early with Gerry Healy, who was most prominent in the RCP at the time, but remained close to Ted Grant. She was associated with the group around Tony Cliff, the so-called State-Caps after their characterisation of the USSR as state-capitalist. The group would later become the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). She married Anil Moonesinghe in 1948 and they moved into a houseboat called Red October, which they built together, on the Thames near Marlow. They both entered the Labour Party in Slough, on the orders of the RCP. Jeanne was elected to