Westlake, Donald E - NF 01 (20 page)

And then something did. Or did it?

The Walrus and the
Carpenter Were walking close at hand; They wept like anything to see Such
quantities of sand; "If this were only cleared away," They said,
"it would be grand!"

—Lewis Carroll,
Through the Looking-Glass

Here come Fisher and Chapman, all things
to all people.

In the beginning of December it was
announced in
London
that two
Members of Parliament, Nigel Fisher and Donald Chapman, would be leaving very
soon for the
Caribbean
to solve the
Anguilla
problem. The two M.P.'s had all the necessary qualifications; one was a
Conservative, the other was Labour, and both were old friends of Colonel
Bradshaw's.

As Nigel Fisher said before
leaving, "Our job is to try to find ways of reuniting
Anguilla
with St. Kitts." Of course, immediately after that remark he also said,
"We have no intention of being seen to be taking sides."

The Delegation was preceded by a
small administrative team, containing a radio and a radio operator and a cipher
clerk, and led by a man named Anthony Lee. Lee didn't know it but he was on his
way to the worst mess of his life.

But to begin with, Lee was merely
running the administrative team for the Parliamentary Delegation. He was
forty-four when he first landed on
Anguilla
. The son of
an Anglican clergyman, he'd served in the Royal Navy in the Second World War,
went to Cambridge, and afterward joined the Colonial Service, but always on a
contract basis, never as permanent staff. After serving ten years in
Africa
,
mostly in
Tanganyika
,
he spent two years in private industry but apparently preferred working for the
Government; he applied for a post with the Commonwealth R
elations
Office, got a new contract, and went off to
Aden
until the British had finished setting up their ghastly
Southern
Yemen
federation. After his
Aden
tour he was offered the job as secretary to Fisher and Chapman's Parliamentary
Delegation. It was suggested that an English administrator might be assigned to
Anguilla
for a period of time and that he might turn out
to be the man.

Anthony Lee is a gentle,
soft-spoken man who prefers a simple life in which he can follow simple orders.
He is six feet four inches tall, so that he towers over just about everybody
else in the
Anguilla
story, but despite his height—or
perhaps because of it—he is not at all a forceful personality. He moves with
the tide, he follows orders competently and diligently, and in a normal
circumstance he is probably the ideal representative of a far-off Authority:
the unabrasive vessel through which Authority's desires are made manifest.

Unfortunately,
Anguilla
never has been a normal circumstance.

When Fisher and Chapman arrived,
the
Beacon
ran a Delegation Special supplement that pretty well covered
the events of their stay.

The advance guard [said the paper]
consisted of Mr. Tony Lee with radio operators and equipment to be in constant
touch with
London
, and a team of
secretaries, which shewed that they intended to do an efficient and
comprehensive job. Prior to the arrival of the M.P.'s, Mr. Greatorex, the
British Representative, and Mr. Lee inspected the island and were seen climbing
down the Fountain, and nearly getting lost in the bush.

And also:

Along
with the two parliamentarians came two others, Cecil Greatorex and Tony Lee,
both astute figures in the British Foreign Service, ranking among the
authorities in colonial affairs, both with colourful experiences in
Africa
,
the
Middle East
and the
West Indies
. Mr.
Greatorex we have already welcomed to our island before, and each time we have
grown fonder of him. Mr. Lee we have just come to know, and find him a most
charming and helpful diplomat.

And what of the Parliamentary
Delegation itself? The
Beacon
says:

Our
guests are Mr. Nigel Fisher and Mr. Donald Chapman, members of a parliamentary
delegation sent to work out possible solutions to our political impasse with
St. Kitts and the other world States represented in the United Nations.
Mr.
Fisher,
54, married and the father of two children, previously an
Under-Secretary of State for the colonies, with a vast experience of West
Indian affairs, is the President of the Delegation.
Mr. Chapman
, 44,
unmarried, is Chairman of the Delegation, representing the present Labour
Government, also with long experience in the
Caribbean
. These two men were specially chosen from the whole of Parliament as
having the greatest understanding of our local problems.

A two-man Delegation, and one of
them is President and the other one is Chairman. If it had been a three-man
Delegation, what would the third man have been? Emperor?

And what did Fisher and Chapman
think of the Anguillans, now that we have seen what the Anguillans thought of
them? Novelist John Updike was staying at Jerry Gumbs's Rendezvous Hotel while
Fisher and Chapman were there; in a piece he did later in
The New Yorker
,
Updike writes, "One of the Englishmen in the Parliamentary mission
referred to the Anguillans as 'the poor dears,' and another, as we lay on the
beach, in answer to my question as to what St. Kitts was like, answered, with a
wave that included the immaculate beach and the turquoise sea, 'Bout like this.
A bloody 'ole.'"

Fisher and Chapman arrived at the
bloody hole and were greeted by the poor dears. Ronald Webster made a speech:
"Mr. Greatorex, Honourable Gentlemen of Parliament, Mr. Lee. On behalf of
the Council and the people of
Anguilla
we wish to
express our warm welcome to you, especially at this time. We are indeed
grateful for having you here, and may your stay be an unforgettable one. I can
assure you that there is law and order in our beautiful island, and I am asking
you while you are here to guarantee our safety from any attacks, and I am sure
that you will have a wonderful stay in
Anguilla
.
Anguillans are peaceful, loving and law-abiding people. Our desire for freedom
is still as resolute as on the eleventh day of July 1967. It is our firm desire
to negotiate and achieve some amicable solution. Now you are free to go from
home to home and get the views of the people, have a nice lunch, a sea bath,
visit anywhere in our island, and judge for yourself. Friends, I thank
you."

This was on Monday. According to
the
Beacon:

On
Tuesday the 5th the Delegation visited the Valley Schools, and were really
shocked at the overcrowding there, and said it was the worst they had ever
seen. They also visited the hospital and saw the improvements there effected
since the secession.

In
the evening there was an official party at the house of the Medical Officer to
meet the Anguillan notabilities informally. Unfortunately, there was no room to
invite the wives. . . .

Fisher and Chapman met with as many
Anguillans as they could during the next few days, impressed the local citizens
with their apparent desire to listen and understand, and wound up with a social
event nicely reported by the
Beacon:

On
the Thursday evening, our visitors were invited to attend a Cantata at St.
Andrews Church East End, which had been arranged some time before it was known
they were coming. In getting there they experienced most of the hazards of
Anguilla
—running out of petrol, the rocky roads, and the dust. Mr. Ronald
Webster welcomed them to the Cantata, and gave them the opportunity to
introduce themselves to the crowd there.

Mr,
Webster himself took part in the singing of a trio with two young ladies, and
revealed that he has a very good tenor voice. The Rector announced that he
would have loved to say that the next item was a duet by Mr. Fisher and Mr.
Chapman, but had to pass on to the next item of the full programme.

It's a pity they didn't get to do
their duet, but as the Delegation Special supplement of the
Beacon
says
in its windup:

It
is obvious that we cannot expect any pronouncement from the Delegation while
they are on this island. The real battle has got to be fought in St. Kitts.
Anything may happen there, as the people of St. Kitts are getting very restive,
and the Anguillan problem is part of a bigger problem involving
St. Kitts and Nevis
. We are grateful for having had two men of such great
friendliness and understanding, and while we are standing firm to our
legitimate demands, we realize the very difficult task that lies ahead of them
when they land in St. Kitts. Perhaps they may pay us another visit before they
return to
Britain
.

The
prayers of all Anguillans go with them, that they may find a solution
acceptable not only to us, but to the other islands.

Good-bye.
God be with you.

Fisher and Chapman next went to St.
Kitts to see Colonel Bradshaw. There was no published account of that meeting,
but appafently it didn't run very smoothly. "The distrust on both sides
was very great," Nigel Fisher said later. "On a small scale, it was
quite a difficult negotiation, because neither side would meet the other, and
we had frequently to go to and from
Anguilla
and St.
Kitts to get agreement."

About two weeks were spent
traveling back and forth between the two islands. Almost from the beginning
Fisher and Chapman realized the best they could hope for was a temporary
agreement; the distrust on both sides was so great that no permanent solution
was likely to be worked out in the short time they had available. So they aimed
at the idea of leaving Tony Lee on
Anguilla
for an
interim period of about a year, to give some semblance of legality to the
island while a more permanent arrangement could be hammered out.

But even an interim arrangement was
difficult to achieve. Neither side wanted to seem to be giving in on any of its
positions. The British accepted Bradshaw's dominion over
Anguilla
,
and therefore had to have his permission to assign Tony Lee there. They also,
for more obvious and fundamental reasons, had to have the Anguillans'
permission before leaving him there. In order to get it all accomplished,
Fisher and Chapman apparently had to behave rather like insurance salesmen; a
lot of vague promises were spoken, most of which had faded like morning mist
when it came time to write things down.

For instance. Bradshaw agreed to
the interim period because he thought he would get
Anguilla
back when the year w
^T
as up. On the other hand, the Anguillans
thought the idea was a step-by-step breaking of the link with St. Kitts, with
the interim year to be followed by an adjustment either to Crown Colony or
Associated
State
. As Atlin Harrigan put it in
an editorial in the
Beacon
a month later:

We
are like a man sitting down to a many-course dinner at a big hotel. He knows
that by the time dinner is over he will have had all he can eat, but it will be
served to him course by course, and the next course will come when he is ready
for it. The whole dinner is not put on the table at one time. No, Mr. Bradshaw,
we have got all we want for the present, and we are sure that at the end we
will be quite satisfied, and not the least because everything has not been
handed out on a plate, but we are going to have the satisfaction of working for
it ourselves.

Meanwhile, Bradshaw was announcing,
in a speech on
Nevis
, "The people of
Nevis
are saying, 'See,
Anguilla
has got what it wanted, and
we have to get what we want, too.' But I want to go on record as saying,
Anguilla
has
not
got what it wanted, and
Nevis
will never
become another
Anguilla
."

Also, the Anguillans had been left
with the impression that Colonel Bradshaw's clutch on their savings in
Kittitian banks would be loosened and that the island's Land Registers would be
turned over to the Island Council by the St. Kitts Government; two things
Bradshaw hadn't the slightest intention of doing. In fact, Chapman himself, a
year and a half later, pointed out that the savings and the Land Registers were
Bradshaw's "trump cards, and if he gave them all away he would never get
Anguilla back."

A short while after the Interim
Agreement had been worked out, Lord Lambton, a Conservative M.P., visited both
St. Kitts and
Anguilla
, and wrote, "
Anguilla
believes that its independence has been established. St. Kitts believes that
Anguilla
will be returned to it by the British Government at the end of the year. A
settlement based on such misunderstanding will do more harm in the long run
than an unpopular decision would have done now."

Fisher and Chapman disagree.
"No one was misled in any way about the interim solution," Fisher
says, and Chapman says, "There were no misconceptions about the interim
settlement."

This perfect understanding was
attained by December 18. Nigel Fisher has since described the windup on
Anguilla
,
saying, "The Anguillans are not at all easy people to negotiate with,
because, perhaps through lack of political experience, they are not politically
very sophisticated. Mr. Webster is honest but not very articulate, deeply
religious but rather obstinate, an ^ardent patriot for
Anguilla
but not a very self-confident leader of his own people. He was nervous of
leadership and wanted always to carry his followers and the people with him at
every stage of the negotiations. He had no idea of negotiating privately, and
even when agreement was reached we had to obtain all the signatures from all
the leading people all over the
Island
of
Anguilla
ourselves. We also had
to announce at a great public meeting the solution that had been agreed. It was
rather embarrassing that we should have to do that, but we did it because Mr.
Webster was unwilling to do it himself until he saw that the agreement was
acceptable to the people."