Mark Anthony Bracegirdle

Mark Anthony Lyster Bracegirdle (10 September 1912 – 22 June 1999), was an Anglo-Australian Marxist revolutionary, who played a key role in Sri Lanka's independence struggle. He was one of the handful of European Radicals in Sri Lanka. The Bracegirdle Incident revolved around him.

Bracegirdle was born in Chelsea, to Ina Marjorie Lyster and James Seymour Bracegirdle, and was educated in Kennington. He emigrated to Australia with his mother, a suffragette who had been active in the Labour Party and a candidate in 1925 for the Holborn borough. He studied art at a Sydney art school and trained as a farmer in the outback. In about 1935 he joined the Australian Young Communist League (YCL).

In 1936 he sailed on the SS Bendigo for Ceylon (as Sri Lanka was then known). He began 'creeping' (i.e., learning the trade of tea-planting) on Relugas estate in Madulkelle near Matale. Bracegirdle was working among the Tamil plantation labourers ('coolies'), who were treated inhumanely, receiving very little health care, even less education and living in 'line rooms' which were worse than cattle sheds in England. Militancy among these workers was increasing. He was dismissed for fraternising with the workers and for taking their side in labour disputes. He joined the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP).

On 28 November 1936, at a meeting in Colombo, the president of the party, Dr Colvin R. de Silva, introduced him, saying: 'This is the first time a white comrade has ever attended a party meeting held at a street corner.' He made his first public speech in Sri Lanka, warning that the capitalists were trying to split the workers of Sri Lanka and pit one against the other.

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