Donoughmore Commission
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The Donoughmore Commission was responsible for the creation of the Donoughmore Constitution in effect in (then) Ceylon between 1931-47.
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[edit] Commissioners
The commissioners were four British parliamentarians appointed by Sydney Webb, the first Labour Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1927. Their task was to draft a new constitution for Sri Lanka that would not only satisfy the aspirations of all the groups within the island, including British plantation owners, but also enable Sri Lanka to take its place as a partner in the socialist British empire that Webb envisioned.
Two of the Commissioners, Dr. Drummond-Shiels and Frances Butler, had been Labour Party London County Councillors for many years prior to entering parliament and serving in the short-lived Lib-Lab government coalition stitched together by Lloyd George in 1926. They were serious-minded men in the traditional Labour "Christian Socialist" mould. Above all, they were missionaries for the equitable, socialist vision of the world Webb was proselytising. Lord Donoughmore, on the other hand, was a genial Liberal peer, best known for championing women's right to university education and a gourmet palate.
[edit] Consultation
The Donoughmore Commission arrived in Sri Lanka early in 1928 and spent four months interviewing islanders. The Commissioners listened to a plea for female suffrage for educated women, and granted suffrage to all women aged 21 in Sri Lanka - at a time when British suffragettes were still fighting to have the voting age lowered from 28.
[edit] System developed
Having noted that the island was riven by power struggles between competing ethnic groups, it devised a system of executive committees that would control all government departments. Every parliamentarian in Sri Lanka would sit on one of these committees, ensuring that no one ethnic group could control all levers of power and patronage. Instead, all executive decisions would require a measure of consensus among the different ethnic representatives.
[edit] Reception of the Constitution
The majority Sinhalese MPs undermined and discredited this original constitutional settlement. They finally managed to get rid of it in 1947.
Sri Lanka remained virtually independent, with full control over domestic affairs, using the mechanism of universal suffrage to elect a national government at a time when only white countries in the European empires had that privilege, and continue its passage to relative prosperity without any major ethnic clashes for 16 years. Under the island several subsequent constitutions, Sri Lanka has suffered communal violence.
[edit] References
- Russell, Jane; Communal Politics Under the Donoughmore Constitution, Tisara Prakasakayo, Colombo 1982
