Britain and Kenya’s Constitutions, 1950–1960 By Robert Maxon

the colony’s LegCo was racially defined, as noted earlier, with specific numbers of seats in the legislature reserved for each racial group.

Asians and Africans had long opposed this system, which provided rolls for communal voters. They demanded a common roll system. In such a system, all those qualified to vote would appear on a single roll. They vote for one slate of candidates. From the middle of the 1950s, the CO also came to favor the introduction of a common roll system for Kenya, but the opposition of most European politicians to such an initiative meant that a common roll proved to be a highly contentious political issue until the conclusion of the first Lancaster House conference in 1960. So also was the issue of voting rights and a limited or universal franchise for the African majority. By contrast, there was little debate over the type of electoral system appropriate for Kenya. The system considered for Europeans and Asians was the “plurality-majority” method, as practiced in Great Britain, where single-member constituencies returned representatives to the legislature. The winner is the candidate to obtain the most votes but not necessarily a majority over all opponents.²² For the first African elections in 1957, conversely, the colonial state imposed a very different system, termed a qualitative franchise, which involved complicated qualifications and multiple votes. The later was utilized for the 1958 African elections as well, but the African LegCo members elected in 1957 and 1958 made the achievement of universal suffrage and a common roll a top priority in their constitutional demands.

For the emergence of a democratic system for a colonial context, the composition of the executive branch was also very crucial. Prior to 1950, a nonelected governor and heads of departments exercised executive authority. All these were initially colonial civil servants (termed officials). These heads of departments formed the core of the colony’s Executive Council, which was appointive and advised the governor. With the governorship of Sir Philip Mitchell (1944–1952), the colony’s Executive Council assumed a different form with the introduction of the so-called member system, which placed specific government departments under