Serving under 6 PMs!

~ Memoirs of a Cabinet Secretary by Bernard Percival Peiris. Sarasavi Publishers. Price: Rs 700

When the British Government refused to undertake the drafting of a Constitution in the midst of World War II, D.S. Senanayake, Vice-Chairman of the Board of Ministers selected a 37-year-old Assistant Legal Draftsman to draft the Constitution that would lead to the grant of independence to Ceylon. He was gazetted as an assistant to the Legal Secretary (one of the three key officials in the administration at the time, the other two being Chief Secretary and Financial Secretary), confined to his home at Panadura, and warned by Senanayake that if his assignment leaked out in any form or shape he would be "hanged by the neck".

The man who was given this responsible task was Bernard Percival ( B.P.) Peiris whose memoirs have just come out as a near-300 page Sarasavi publication. His is a fascinating story of when he served as Secretary to the Cabinet under six Prime Ministers. It covers the period starting from pre-independence to the early 1960s when he decided to retire once the Government decided to make Sinhala "fully effective" in the administration.

"From January 1, 1964 accounts were to be kept in the official language which I did not understand. I was required, as Head of Department, to certify the correctness of my Appropriation Account which went to the Auditor-General and the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Representatives. After twenty-seven years of honourable public service, twice honoured by the Sovereign (he had been conferred the MBE & OBE during his career), once only surcharged by audit in a sum of six cents for overpaying my dear friend Harry Wendt on a travelling claim for going from the Legal Draftsman's Chambers to the State Council, I was not prepared to sign an important financial document of the Government like the Appropriation Account in a language I did not understand," he sums up his decision to retire.

Discussing how he set about the task of drafting the Constitution, he recalls how he was unable to consult any of his colleagues in the face of D.S. Senanayake's threat to hang him! "I had to rely on myself. There was no one I could take into confidence. I struggled alone, sometimes tearing sheet after sheet of foolscap. Many small but difficult points arose for consideration."To him the Ministers' Draft prepared by Sir Ivor Jennings was confusing and had to be redrafted. It had to be divided into Parts, each Part coming into operation on a different day. Once he finished the job after "months of dreary but interesting work", he had to type the document. "I borrowed a typewriter and typed three copies. I am no typist and all the work was done with one finger of each hand. This was a slow and painful business which took me a very long time as the draft went to fifty two pages of foolscap. The spacing was sometimes wrong; the alignment of the paragraphs was not always correct; there was much mis-typing, but the typing at last came to an end and I was happy."

The memoirs are full of anecdotes which also reveal the mood of the times. To quote just one example - Being war times, his petrol ration for an Austin Eight was two gallons a month. He was travelling to Colombo from Panadura. When one night he was urgently summoned by the Legal Draftsman Barclay Nihill to the Galle Face Hotel where Nihill was staying, he told him that there was no petrol in the car. There was no train either at that time of the night. "When I met him the next day, he thought it was preposterous that I should be given only two gallons of petrol a month and wrote, with his own hand, a letter to the Petrol Controller saying that I was engaged on matters of high state which could not be disclosed and asking that I be given all the petrol I needed."

Armed with the letter he went to see the Controller. "To my surprise, I came across a small man in boots that were too big for him. On the way to the general office, I passed three notices which said prominently in red 'No interviews today' and entered a working room presided over by the person I thought was the Office Assistant. I saw a man walking among the clerks' desks smoking a cigarette but he took no notice of me. I kept standing at a table until at last he came to me and said rudely 'No interviews'. I asked whether he was the Office Assistant and he repeated what he said earlier. I repeated my question a little louder and he answered 'Yes' in a very superior voice. Speaking staccato I said 'If you are, read this. Here's a copy for your file. I want the original. Send me twenty five gallons' coupons to the Legal Secretary's office' and left."

He sums up the attitude of the official thus: "Why cannot public servants be courteous when courtesy costs nothing? I have noticed that it is always the small man, promoted, who tries to throw his weight about. The big men are there because they are big and they know the rules."

Peiris describes in detail the process of how the draft was discussed by D.S. Senanayake and Sir Ivor Jennings along with the Legal Secretary Sir Robert Drayton and Legal Draftsman Nihill and once agreed, fifteen copies were sent to the Colonial Office and the Ceylon (Constitution) Order in Council was duly approved. Peiris was happy that utmost secrecy had been maintained throughout. "D. S. was happy. He saw me in the State Council lobby one day, put his arm round me, and introduced me to about ten Councillors saying "Gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to the draftsman of the Order in Council." He then drafted the Elections Order in Council and other laws related to the institutions to be set up under the Soulbury Constitution.

In 1947 D.S. Senanayake ordered Peiris on the telephone to take charge of the Cabinet Office as Assistant Secretary. (The Secretary to the Treasury was also ex officio the Secretary to the Cabinet). Peiris was appointed Cabinet Secretary in October 1954 by Prime Minister Sir John Kotelawala.

In addition to interesting discussions in the Cabinet during the tenure of numerous Prime Ministers (he served six of them) Peiris describes his involvement with Commissions and Conferences. The Commonwealth Foreign Ministers Conference (when D.S. Senanayake was Prime Minister) was the first such conference to be held in Ceylon. The Colombo Plan was initiated at this conference. In addition to the proceedings at these conferences, Peiris relates the lighter moments particularly how evening parties went.

A chapter each has been devoted to a Prime Minister in the book. Peiris discusses how each Prime Minister handled Cabinet meetings and ministers and also assesses each one's personality. Of D.S. Senanayake he says: "Except on one occasion when he had to see his doctor, D.S. was never late for a meeting and he insisted on other Ministers being punctual. All the Ministers (there were only 14 in the first Cabinet) complied with this request except S.W.R. who was invariably more than one hour late and who, on arrival, would greet the Prime Minister with a 'Good Morning D.S.’when every other Minister addressed him as 'Sir', and inquired what business the Cabinet had transacted in his absence." In the Chair, D.S. was firm and would not allow a Minister to raise a matter which was not on the Agenda unless the circumstances were exceptional.

Peiris assesses D.S. thus: "D.S. was not a scholar, he had not been to a university and had no academic degree. He was an agriculturist and a gentleman-farmer and loved the land. He told me that he has planted his coconut land, probably at Botale, with his own hands and was very proud of it. But he has also been brought up early in the school of politics and was a master of political strategy which was the result of experience. There was no hypocrisy behind him. In fact, it might be said that his want of hypocrisy was his greatest liability. He was able, with that experience of his, to seize the core of the matter under discussion and throw away the non-essential covering".

Peiris remembers an incident in the early days involving Mr. Bandaranaike. "S.W.R. D. was a pipe smoker who smoked that excellent tobacco, Old England Curve Cut, packed in a neat, slim tin case which slipped easily into the hip pocket. One day he came to a meeting with a tin of local tobacco. I saw him struggling to open the tin with its cutter. He was not used to it because his former tin had no cutter and opened easily. I walked across to him and asked 'May I help you Sir?' 'Please do' he said. I took the tin and found he had been trying to cut the thick bottom foil which was impossible. I turned the tin round, put the cutter in place, and opened it in about ten seconds. I handed the opened tin to him saying 'Sir, you have been trying it the back way'. He roared with laughter saying, 'That's a bloody good one my dear fellow, a bloody good one.'"

Peiris says S.W.R.D. was intellectually arrogant. "In spite of his attempt, for political reasons, to camouflage himself in a cloth and banian, he could not divest himself of his aristocratic background and upbringing. He had many human faults and weaknesses, but, if you caught him at the right moment, you could make his steeliness in his heart melt because there was kindness, sympathy and understanding in him."

It was widely speculated at the time of Prime Minister Senanayake's death that he had advised the Governor-General to send for his son Dudley (Minister of Agriculture) to form the government. Peiris insists that such advice was not given and says he knows who concocted the story, but doesn't mention who. He goes on to say that although D. S. Senanayake would have been ignorant of Constitutional Law, he knew that in the matter of succession to Premiership, he could not exercise a right similar to that exercised in Buddhist Ecclesiastical Law under the rule of 'Sisyanu Sisya Paramparawa'.

Peiris then quotes the constitutional position set out by Winston Churchill in his War Memoirs to the effect that it was not customary for a Prime Minister to advise the Sovereign officially upon his successor unless he is asked to do so. As it was war time Churchill had sent the King a letter, at the King's request, prior to his crossing the submarine-infested Atlantic for discussions with President Roosevelt. The letter said: "In case of my death on this journey I undertake, I avail myself of Your Majesty's gracious permission to advise that you should entrust the formation of a new government to Mr. Anthony Eden, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, who is in my mind the outstanding Minister in the largest political party in the House of Commons and in the National Government over which I have the honour to preside, and who I am sure will be found capable of conducting His Majesty's affairs with the resolution, experience and capacity which these grievous times require".

Peiris makes an interesting observation on Sir John Kotelawala. "Ministers, like women, are entitled to change their minds and their opinions, but on one thing Sir John was firm and never once wavered. He laid it down that so long as he was in charge of administration in this country, no person would be employed in the public service who was a communist or who belonged to a revolutionary party".

Detailed accounts are given to Cabinet discussions on numerous pieces of legislation, how on several occasions Cabinet secrets leaked out in spite of tight measures like getting Cabinet papers back before the Ministers left the meeting, and how he was never suspected of letting any secrets out. To me, however, his observations on people makes fascinating reading.

Recalling the Ministers in the Bandaranaike Cabinet, he remembers there was a woman. "There was also Dahanayake, later to be Prime Minister, who was always punctual and who came barefooted to meetings with a bottle of eau de cologne and, before he gave up smoking, with a tin of Peacock cigarettes. C.P. de Silva was a double first in mathematics and excelled, by reason of his previous experience as a Civil Servant, in matters relating to land and irrigation.

"Philip Gunawardena is the only Minister I have worked with since the beginning of Cabinet Government who came to a meeting thoroughly prepared, not only on his own memoranda but also on papers submitted by other Ministers. When he spoke, he never failed to make a useful contribution to the discussion." Peiris believes the Paddy Lands Act, the Multi Purpose Cooperative Societies, the People's Bank and the cooperative banking system and a heap of other legislation would have given Philip Gunawardena tremendous power in the country and this was resisted by other Ministers. "These proposals were obviously put forward to implement his political creed and not for the furtherance of his personal position. I believe he was an honest man, not capable of being bribed or influenced. When he was annoyed, his reaction was violent."

Following Mr. Bandaranaike's death, Peiris was asked by Governor-General Sir Oliver Goonetilleke what the constitutional position was as regards the appointment of a successor. "I advised that when the Prime Minister was dead, the Governor-General had a completely free hand and was not bound to take advice. He did not exercise his constitutional right of appointment. Instead, he said, he would throw the ball back into their (Ministers') own court. He locked the Ministers up in his study and asked them to choose their leader." Their choice was Mr. W. Dahanayake who appointed a Cabinet of fifteen.

Peiris found Prime Minister Dahanayake was always punctual arriving in the Cabinet Room a few minutes before the time fixed for the meeting. He did not waste time and he disliked Ministers who wasted his time. Peiris recalls how at the first meeting (Peiris’s 720th as Secretary) when he found that the Ministers were late, he was asked what the quorum was. When the Prime Minister was told there was none if he (Secretary) had summoned the meeting and if the Prime Minister was present, he proceeded to dispose of 17 items before the first Minister arrived twenty minutes late. He refused to have those items reopened for discussion.

Discussing how Mrs. Bandaranaike came to be appointed Prime Minister, Peiris recalls how Sir Oliver obtained the opinion of several professors of Constitutional Law. All, except one, were of the view that it would be unconstitutional to appoint her. He was a Professor of Law at the University of London. After quoting a precedent from Southern Rhodesia, the Professor had stated that "it would be constitutionally proper for the Governor-General to invite Mrs. Bandaranaike to take office as Prime Minister. However, the Governor-General would have to take into consideration the fact that Mrs. Bandaranaike had not apparently found it practicable to stand as a candidate for election and the possibility that she might not be able to find a constituency even after her appointment or that she might be defeated at a by-election if she did stand as a candidate. It would be clearly improper for her as Prime Minister to advise the Governor-General to appoint her as a nominated member of either House".

Peiris raises an issue: "Mrs.Bandaranaike became Prime Minister with a seat in the Senate. In the matter of this appointment, did or did not the Governor-General act on advice? If he did, then the advice could only be given by the Prime Minister, and that would have been unconstitutional. If he did not, he openly flouted our Constitution. In any case, it is an extremely nice point for our legal pundits".Commenting that Mrs. Bandaranaike was at a great disadvantage having had no experience of the business of politics, Peiris says he was amazed to see how quickly she gathered the reins. "In a few months, she had grasped the essentials of how to run a Cabinet meeting and conduct Cabinet business. Always in the background was Felix Dias, virtual Prime Minister, who ran the meetings, a fact which several Ministers strongly resented.”

Obviously even Peiris had a tough time with Felix Dias. Peiris remembers how once he told the Ministers that he was responsible for their safety during meetings (if held in the Cabinet Office) and that all security measures had been taken, Felix Dias had retorted "What's the use Mr. Peiris of you talking of your responsibility and our safety after we are shot."

Peris has an interesting tale to relate about an appointment. "For reasons of safety, I asked that I be given the power to appoint all future minor employees to the Cabinet office. This was necessary as these employees served the Ministers with tea and refreshments during a meeting and Treasury circulars required me to get them from the Employment Exchange, and I would not know their background. My request was granted and I filled the first vacancy of sweeper which arose by the appointment of the son of the Senate cook whom I knew to be sober and well behaved. Some time later, two more vacancies arose. In one case, Felix Dias asked me not to fill the vacancy saying that he would send me a good man from Dompe, his constituency, which he did: and in the other case, I was told that Madam Prime Minister would be sending a man from Horagolla and that I was not to make an appointment on my own. And so, politics for the first time crept into the Cabinet office at the level of sweeper".To demonstrate his frankness, Peiris relates an incident of what he said when the Cabinet discussed about senior public servants meddling in politics. "I turned round to Madam and said I did not know what she had heard about me, that I had no politics and that I spent my spare time with my books, my music (he was a fine pianist) and the few friends that I had. I added that my only politics had been limited to exercising my right as a citizen to vote at a general election but that, in order to be at peace with my own conscience and to be perfectly honest, I must tell her that I always voted U.N.P. She said, ‘Mr. Peiris, I admire your frankness. Very few would have told me that.’ I continued to serve her loyally".

Referring to the removal of Sir Oliver Goonetilleke from the post of Governor-General, Peiris says that whatever Sir Oliver's other faults may have been, there was no doubt that he carried his office with great dignity during his long term of nearly eight years as the Queen's representative in the land. Sir Oliver's successor, Mr. William Gopallawa immediately after he assumed office on March 2, 1962, announced that he would give up the trappings of office, that is the official uniform, the helmet and plumes, the sword and medals and that he would wear a plain cloth and banian.

Peiris' memoirs are a treat. They cover a significant phase in the country's history with enormous changes in the political, economic and social fronts. His ability to keep the reader well informed of those changes mixed with so many stories is indeed amazing. And his daughter Kamala deserves a big 'thank you' for picking up the manuscript from a drawer many years after his death and getting it published.