Solomon Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike, the fourth prime minister of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), spent six years in England. He studied between 1919 and 1925 at Christ Church College, Oxford. During his time there, he lived with a working class family as a shortage of rooms in the College had forced Christ Church to find lodgings elsewhere. Bandaranaike was struck by the hierarchical structure and social conventions that excluded him from the student fraternity.

During his first year at Oxford, his father moved to London for a year together with his sister who was presented as a debutante at Buckingham Palace in 1920. Bandaranaike tried hard to fit in and found it difficult to deal with his fellow students’ rejection, especially considering his own family’s preoccupation with status and power. In 1920 he was allotted a room in Christ Church College, sharing a corridor with Anthony Eden. After passing his classics exams with a second class degree, he switched to law.

In his third year at Oxford he became actively involved in the Oxford Union, delivering speeches on democracy, policies on India, and the British government’s policies in Egypt. He established himself as a regular speaker at the Union and his performance was praised in the Oxford Magazine for its ‘vigorous thinking and his animated, insistent delivery’ (4 May 1922) . In June 1923, he became Secretary of the Oxford Union and in March 1924 was elected Junior Treasurer. His exposure to Indian Nationalism at Oxford had a profound impact on his world view. It led him to conclude that his father’s political support for the British and the feudal system in Ceylon were anachronistic.

Bandaranaike returned to Ceylon in 1925 and became actively involved in the island’s politics and independence movement. He was elected to the Colombo Municipal Council in 1926 and joined the United National Party. He was a member of the State Legislature from 1931 onwards. He became Ceylon’s fourth prime minister in 1956 and was assassinated in 1959.

S. A. Wickremasinghe was born in Akurassa, Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, in 1901. He was schooled in Ananda College, Colombo. He first arrived in Britain for his education in 1926. In 1927 he was joint secretary of the Indian Majlis student society and had active links to the Communist Party of Great Britain. In 1929 he graduated with an MBBS from the University of London where he also got his MRCP form the Royal College of Physicians.

By 1931 he had returned to Ceylon and with Philip Goonewardena was involved in social work, helping lower caste communities. Wickremasinghe was a member of Ceylon's State Council from 1931-6, advocating complete independence. He lost his seat in the 1936 election.

He subsequently returned to London with his wife, Doreen Young, to open a doctor's surgery in South London, near Elephant and Castle. During his time in London he became involved in the India League and renewed his links with the Communist Party of Great Britain. Wickremasinghe was a founding member of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party in 1938, which convened regular meetings and protests, often in conjunction with the India League in London. He co-organized with Krishna Menon a conference on 'Socialism in India and Ceylon' in 1938. Wickremasinghe and the Sama Samaja Party were closely associated with Ben Bradley and the Communist Party of Great Britain. He founded the Communist Party of Ceylon in 1943. In 1945 he represented Ceylon at the inaugural World Labour Organisation held in France. He continued to campaign for Ceylon's independence and remained involved with leftist politics in Sri Lanka until his death in 1981.

Of an elite Parsee background, Avabai Wadia arrived in Britain aged 14, accompanied by her mother and to join her brother. She attended Brondesbury and Kilburn High School in London where she was the only South Asian pupil. She excelled at school and went on to train as a barrister at Lincoln’s Inn, becoming the first Ceylonese woman to pass the Bar exams. As a direct consequence of her success, the Law College in Colombo opened its doors to women. She was called to the Bar in 1934 and eventually found a chambers willing to take on a South Asian woman. Committed to women’s rights, Wadia was an active member of a number of women’s organizations in Britain. She was also involved with the Labour Party and the Indian nationalist movement in Britain. On her return to India, she pioneered the family planning movement.