Doreen Young Wickremasinghe

Doreen Wickremasinghe (known before her marriage as Doreen Young) was a British leftist who became a prominent Communist politician in Sri Lanka and a Member of Parliament (MP). She was one of the handful of European Radicals in Sri Lanka.

Doreen Wickremasinghe was the daughter of two British 'ethical Socialists'. While a student in London in the 1920s, she became involved in the India League and carried out other anti-imperialist work. Here she met Dr S. A. Wickramasinghe, a radical Sri Lankan moving in Communist and radical circles while a post-graduate student in London.

Dr Wickremasinghe offered to find her a job in Sri Lanka. She became the principal of a Buddhist girls' school in Matara, Sujatha Vidyalaya (1930–32), where her work on the curriculum included replacing British history with Sri Lankan and world history, and permitting the teachers to get qualified, moving the school away from its emphasis on 'training for wifehood'. During this period she learnt Sinhala. In 1933 she was offered the post of principal at the leading Buddhist girls' school, Visakha Vidyalaya, but the offer was withdrawn on the news that she was to marry Dr Wickremasinghe. After marrying Dr S.A Wickremasinghe, she took up another post as principal of a leading Colombo Buddhist girls school, Ananda Balika Vidyalaya, where her work included promotion of Sri Lankan arts, and teaching Asian poetry. She was removed in 1936 because it was feared she had made the school a centre for anti-British activity - she definitely was responsible for many young women from the Buddhist schools joining the Left.

She and Dr Wickremasinghe had two children, Suren (an architect) and Suriya (Amnesty International IEC Chairperson, 1982–85).

In 1933 she wrote an article, The Battle of the Flowers which appeared in the Ceylon Daily News and exposed the absurdity of forcing Sri Lankan schoolchildren to purchase poppies to help British veterans at the expense of their own, which caused her to be vilified by her compatriots. This was the beginning of the involvement of the South Colombo Youth League in the revival of Suriya-Mal Movement on a new anti-imperialist and anti-war basis. The movement, which both opposed school pupils' compulsory participation in Poppy Day, and offered yellow Suriya (Portia tree) flowers for sale as an alternative, posing the question, 'whose need is more dire, the ex-servicemen in England or the poor of this country?'

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