TNAG-0714-FCO40-910-Future-of-the-Dependent-Territories-1978 — Page 21

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European experience be regarded) creates "strong government" whilst

still founded on a demouratic basis (in Parliament).

To this last

was sometimes (but not always) added the vital and critical rider

"provided that there is in the country a stable 2 party system"

qualification

(a vital which cannot be gone into here).

The force, or lack of it, of these arguments is evident enough, but

there was also in the Colonial Office a strong prejudice against any other

system. Certain members of the Office, at the time (early 1960's) when

so many of the Westminster constitutions with which we had endowed our

newly independent colonies were failing, urged consideration of the

American system (which was of course, in reality, largely the reproduction

of our own classical 18th century constitution with its separation of

powers and 'checks and balances'), but the prejudice against this was

only too clear; if the criticisms then levelled against it

of producing

deadlock between Executive and Legislature-were believed, it would have

seemed impossible for the U.S. system to work at all !

-

The one great departure from our Westminster system in our colonial

administration was that recommended (and adopted) in Ceylon by the

Donoughmore Commission in 1928 where, to avoid the obvious danger of the

power of a virtually sovereign Parliament being wielded by an Execuživė” based onli, kred /a mere majority in a society deeply and widely divided into different

racial, religious and cultural communities, the Single Council plus

was recommended.

Committee system. This in practice failed, though it is far from evident

that that was due to any inherent defects in the system, and it is inske

instructive to observe the comments of the subsequent Commission under

Lord Soulbury of 1945 in defence of its recommendation of the Westminster

model as the remedy;

"We are well aware that self-government of the British Parliament- ary type carried on by a technique which has taken centuries to develop may not be suitable or practicable for another country

but it does not follow that the invention of modifications to meet different conditions elsewhere will be any more successful.... At all events, in recommending for Ceylon a const- itution on the British pattern, we are recommending a method of government we know something about, a method which is the result of long experience, which has been tested by trial and error and which on the whole works well".

- a comment hardly remarkable for its profoundity.