Anil Moonesinghe (15 February 1927 – 8 December 2002) was a Sri Lankan Trotskyist revolutionary politician and trade unionist. He became a member of parliament, a Cabinet Minister of Transport in 1964, the Deputy Speaker of Parliament from 1994 to 2000 and a diplomat. He has authored several books and edited newspapers and magazines. He was chairman and general manager of a State corporation. He briefly held the honorary rank of colonel.

Moonesinghe was born in Colombo Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon), on 15 February 1927. A member of the family of Anagarika Dharmapala, who named him 'Anil Kumar', he was raised with Buddhist and Sinhalese nationalist values, as well as a strong opposition to the colonial power, Britain.

He attended Royal College, Colombo, an elite institution known for producing many radicals, civil servants and bourgeois politicians, where he excelled in athletics and earned his colors. During the Second World War, he organized a group of boys to aid the Japanese in the event of a landing on the island, earning himself the nickname 'Rommel' at school. Later, he became influenced by communism, expressing admiration for the Red Air Force. Alongside Osmund Jayaratne and Dicky Attygala, he formed a communist group at Royal College, which eventually adopted a Trotskyist stance.

Moonesinghe went on to University College Ceylon (which later became University of Ceylon), where he excelled in athletics. He represented his university at the All India Universities Athletic Meet held in Lahore in 1944, an event held regularly during that time. He briefly taught at Royal Primary School, which had been relocated to Glendale Bungalow, Bandarawela. He was awarded an exhibition to the University of London and traveled to Britain in 1945 aboard a troopship. When news of Churchill's defeat in the general election reached the ship, all the soldiers on board cheered and threw their caps in the air, which greatly encouraged him.

At University College, London, he studied law. It was during this time that he met his future wife, Jeanne Hoban, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) whom he influenced towards Trotskyism. He also befriended Stan Newens, who would later serve as a Labour & Co-op MP. They joined the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), where they were affiliated with the faction led by Tony Cliff, known as the 'State-Caps' due to their characterization of the USSR as 'State-Capitalist'. The group later became the Socialist Review Group (SRG), centered around the publication Socialist Review, which eventually evolved into the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Both Anil and Jeanne were in attendance at the founding conference of the SRG. Through his involvement in the group, he became acquainted with Max Shachtman and his theory of 'bureaucratic revolution'. He also interacted with figures like Jock Haston and Ted Grant. Within the RCP, he used the pseudonym 'Anil Kumaran'.

For a period, he worked as an overhead crane operator at Southern Forge Ltd in Langley, Slough. He married Jeanne Hoban in 1948, and together they moved into a houseboat named 'Red October' that they constructed themselves, located on the Thames near Marlow. They both joined the Labour Party in Slough, following a faction of the RCP led by Jock Haston. Anil became a speaker for the National Council of Labour Colleges, while Jeanne was elected to the Executive of the Labour Leagues of Youth and later placed on the list of Labour Parliamentary candidates. They were both connected with the MP for Slough, Fenner Brockway, and with George Padmore, the prophet of Black African Liberation.

In 1952, Anil was urgently summoned back to Colombo by his parents. After being called to the Bar, he practiced law throughout the island. Both he and Jeanne joined the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) and worked with the Lanka Estate Workers' Union (LEWU), which organized laborers on the tea and rubber plantations. Despite Ceylon gaining a form of independence in 1948, British influence remained strong on the island. British planters pressured the government to deport Jeanne, but she went into hiding, and the LSSP successfully fought to prevent her deportation.

In 1954, the LEWU sent Anil to the Mohomediya Estate in Agalawatte, located in the Pasdun Korale, to organize a strike. His efforts were so successful that the Agalawatte branch of the LSSP requested him as the party's parliamentary candidate for the constituency. At that time, the seat was held by the United National Party (UNP) with a comfortable majority, as the plantation workers, a significant minority of the electorate, had been disenfranchised by the UNP government in 1949. In 1956, he won the election and represented Agalawatte in Parliament for 11 years. During his tenure, he worked diligently for his constituency, constructing roads and schools through self-help initiatives and advocating for the welfare of the poorest sections, particularly the neglected lower castes.