Traitor to imperialism
Mark Bracegirdle arrived in Ceylon in 1936, hoping to make a career in the colony's tea plantations. A former member of Australia's Young Communists, he quickly identified with the Tamil plantation workers, who had been uprooted from India, and faced long hours, bad housing and low wages.
After only seven months, the Reluges Estate Madulkelle terminated his services, and booked him a one-way steamer ticket back to Australia. But Bracegirdle stayed on in Ceylon, championing the cause of the Tamil estate workers. He joined the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP-Equal Society Party), the colony's first political party, and a thorn in the side of the planter regime.
The British settler elite was outraged at Bracegirdle's exposé of the sub-human conditions on the plantations, and they began to agitate about the "communist threat to law and order and worker discipline." The Times of Ceylon newspaper, and the British-dominated police forced the Governor to order Bracegirdle's deportation.
The young activists went underground, shielded by members of the LSSP. He was finally arrested in 1937, after he addressed a mass rally of 50,000 in Colombo's Galle Face Green. His lawyers argued that the Governor's exercise of absolute power interfered with the liberty of a British subject, violated the rule of law and the colony's constitution.
to free the island from colonial rule. His anti-imperialist determination provoked a national debate on the freedom of the individual, the limits of executive power, the right of the judiciary to question the executive, and the political question of workers rights
Bracegirdle left Ceylon in 1937 He was a conscientious objector during the second world war, later joined Aldermaston marches against Britain's nuclear weapon progmember of Britain's Labour Party. In the 1970s, he worked as a Transport Manager for Zambia's Flying Doctor Service. [WM/JD] * The Bracegirdle Affair, by Wesley S. Muthiah and Sydney Wanasinghe, is available from 27 Belmont Ave, London N13 4HD, Great Britain. Tel. +44 181 882 3423
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