Southern Rhodesian Legislative Council election, 1914

The Southern Rhodesia Legislative Council election of 18 March 1914 was the sixth election to the Legislative Council of Southern Rhodesia. The Legislative Council had resolved in 1913 that it should have twelve elected members, together with six members nominated by the British South Africa Company, and the Administrator of Southern Rhodesia. The Resident Commissioner of Southern Rhodesia also sat on the Legislative Council ex officio but without the right to vote. This office was first held by Robert Burns-Begg, from 1 April 1915 by Herbert James Stanley, and from 1 April 1918 by Crawford Douglas Douglas-Jones.

In 1912 the franchise arrangements had been altered for the first time since the Legislative Council was established. To be eligible for registration as an elector, the voter had to be a British subject by birth or naturalisation, male, over the age of 21, and to have lived in Southern Rhodesia for six months continuously, as before. Where previously a voter had to be able to sign their name and write their address and occupation, they were now required to be able to complete the registration form in their own handwriting if required, and to write from dictation fifty words in the English language.

The means qualifications were doubled, so that voters had to have either occupied immovable property worth £150 within the electoral district, or have received salary or wages of £100 per annum. As before, ownership of a registered mining claim in Southern Rhodesia also qualified a voter, whether resident or not.

New districts were drawn up for this election by a delimitation board. A policy decision was made that each district should return a single member, and the delimitation board was charged with producing district with an equal number of voters, taking into account community or diversity of interests, means of communication, physical features and sparsity or density of population. The board was permitted to depart by up to 20% from absolute equality, if the board thought fit. In the end, three of the districts were almost entirely urban (Salisbury, Bulawayo North and Bulawayo South) while all the others contained substantial areas of countryside.

Previous elections to the Legislative Council were contested by individuals standing on their own records. By 1914, although no political parties had been created, the candidates for the Legislative Council were broadly grouped in two camps. The first camp were supporters of the renewal of the Charter from the British South Africa Company and therefore of the present administration of Southern Rhodesia. The second camp favoured moves towards full self-government within the Empire. The election results showed that the supporters of self-government were decisively defeated in every district, although the subsequent byelection in Marandellas did give them a single seat.

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