Westlake, Donald E - NF 01 (22 page)

These meetings marked the low point
in Jerry Gumbs's relationship with his home island. While in
London
,
Ronald Webster said in public that Jerry Gumbs was "an evil man who would
not be allowed to have any part in
Anguilla
's
affairs." But when the
London
meetings were over, and the British— who had been talking so strongly against
Gumbs—had managed once more to accomplish nothing, Webster's opinion of Gumbs very
quickly rose again, until eventually it was higher than before.

By the time Webster got back to
Anguilla
the Interim Agreement was a shambles and the future was a mess. Webster was
talking about
really
going independent on January 9, the day after the Interim
Agreement would drop dead. Anguillans were choosing up sides as to whether he
was right or wrong.

Among those who opposed the idea
was Atlin Harrigan, who flailed away with his
Beacon
at everything that
moved: "For some time an element existed in
Anguilla
that attempts to destroy anything that does not coincide with their own
cabalistic views. These persons are only looking for personal financial gain
and don't give two hoots about the individuals and will use dirty methods to
achieve their aims, if and when
Anguilla
declares her
independence from
Britain
."

But Jerry Gumbs, who'd been back
talking about the Bank of Anguilla again—still with numbered accounts as the
main feature—was all in favor of independence. So was Wallace Rey, a member of
the Island Council. Wallace Rey, an excitable man at a public meeting, owner of
a prosperous hardware store, had run the island's Department of Public Works
until there was some question as to whether or not he was hiring out bulldozers
and other equipment belonging to the Government and forgetting to give the
rentals to the Treasury. (Of all the people I talked to in preparing this book,
Wallace Rey was the only one who offered to sell me information.)

And three Americans who had become
friendly with Webster also counseled independence. They were an odd assortment,
unrelated except by their citizenship. One was a Baptist minister from
Kentucky
named Freeman Goodge, a fire-breathing believer in dramatic solutions to all
problems. One was a man named Lewis Haskins, who, with his two teen-age sons,
owned and operated a small mica-sorting and plastic-jewelry-making factory on
the island; back in January of 1968, the Anguilla Alphabet in the
Beacon
had included,
"H
is for Haskins, the Father and Sons; Dad runs the
business, the Boys hold the guns." The father had been a moderate for some
time before coming to the conclusion that Anguilla would never get anywhere
with Britain, but the sons had been hanging around with the rougher young
people from the beginning, and of course that group inevitably favored whatever
decision was likeliest to start a fight.

Goodge and Haskins had both been
living on the island since long before the trouble had started, but the third
man was a recent arrival. His name was Jack Holcomb, and his life was somewhat
less alleged than, say, Sidney Alleyne's. He was forty-one, he said he was a
businessman, and his intention on the island was to start a
"basic-materials industry," meaning stone and brick and concrete and
other elements used in construction. But his background wasn't in construction.
Most recently he had run something called Solar Research Enterprises in
Florida
,
an outfit that made surveillance devices for private
detectives—"bugs," they're called in the trade. He had gone out of
business when his plant had mysteriously burned down.

He had been involved in
"surveillance" work before in his life; in
Los
Angeles
in 1955, while running a predecessor of Solar
Research Enterprises, he was tried for illegal wire-tapping but was not found
guilty. Much more recently, in 1967, he had become police commissioner in a
small suburb of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, called Sea Ranch Lakes, but was fired
when it was discovered there had been a narcotics charge in his youth; he'd
been arrested in Long Beach, California, for possession of barbiturates and a
hypodermic needle (and a blackjack), but the charges had been dropped.

More prosaically, Holcomb was
involved in real estate in
Florida
.
Less prosaically, he made business trips to the
Caribbean
,
though the business matters were vague. (When I wrote to him in December of
1969, he wrote back, "Purposefully I have omitted writing on a letterhead
until such time as I determine you are not one of the British agents still
trying to acquire certain information about Anguilla ... I could give the story
with documentation far greater than anyone since I was privy to the most
guarded secrets both of government as well as individuals involved. However ...
I would doubt that my inclination would be to release the information at this
time." In my response, I said, "You say British agents are still
trying to acquire certain information about
Anguilla
; of
course, I won't try to get you to tell me the answers they're looking for, but
would you feel it possible to tell me the questions they're asking?" He
never replied.)

In the fall of 1968, Holcomb
presented the Island Council with a spiral binder containing "A Proposal
to the Government of Anguilla for Basic Building Materials by Jack N. Holcomb,
P.O.
Box 23130
,
Oakland Park
,
Florida
."
Complete with maps and illustrations, the binder started with a suggestion
about the manufacture of concrete blocks, but soon began to spiral upward.

First, Holcomb wanted a guarantee
that he would be the sole supplier of all building materials on the island for
twenty-five years. Second, he wanted it tax-free. Third, he had some other
ideas in addition to building materials. "Fantastic growth and development
possibilities exist," the proposal said. "In the investment capital
market of the world, nothing appears as attractive as complete and total tax
exemptions." Anguilla could set herself up as a flag of convenience for
shippers (the pseudo-Onassis offer again); she could offer incorporation for
international holding companies and give them "exemption from special
taxes, corporation taxes, personal income tax, customs duties and
tariffs." Land deals could be worked, money deals (numbered accounts?),
all sorts of deals.

There could be Anguillan
"participation" in all this, but the "stockholders in all
companies would principally consist of
United
States
citizens interested in this type of
operation." And Holcomb himself would be in charge and exert "direct
control."

For all of which the Anguillan
Government would be paid a total of five hundred dollars a year.

The Island Council decided not to
accept Holcomb's proposal, but he did have several supporters on the island.
Jerry Gumbs was unhappy at the turndown: "He was gonna invest plenty. He
wasn't gonna make money for four years.
Then
you'll let someone
else
in? These people don't understand economics. If Webster could worry he'd be
worried. He was gonna build that road, open up that whole area. Put value on
people's property. Houses going up alongside the road. But these people don't
understand."

Jerry Gumbs understood. So did
Wallace Rey, and so did a few others.

So the Interim Agreement Year wound
down, with nothing accomplished. Things must grow or rot; that's a fact of
life, in everything from flowers to love affairs, from brains to nations. In 1968,
in the political life of
Anguilla
, nothing grew.

On January 8, the Interim Agreement
on
Anguilla
came to an end. With it, British
aid—technical and economic—also ended. On January 16, Tony Lee left the island.

The next two months got a little
rough on
Anguilla
. Anguillans have always fought among
themselves as boisterously as any people on earth—it took someone like Colonel
Bradshaw to make them all stand together, even briefly—and now that they were
alone, with neither a goal nor a way to get to it, the factions began to split
like the ground over an awakening volcano.

There was no longer any question
about whether or not to separate from St. Kitts; they'd done that, they'd made
it stick for almost two years, and they'd amply demonstrated that neither
Bradshaw nor anybody else could get them back with St. Kitts again. Now the
question was what to do next, and it boiled down to two choices. Either
really
declare independence and try to survive alone, or go on struggling
to make the connection with Mother Britain.

The Island Council was split down
the middle on the

issue. Wallace Rey and two others
favored independence, while Atlin Harrigan and another two wanted to stay in
the Commonwealth and go on trying to attract
Great
Britain
's attention.

The tie-splitting vote was held by
the Chairman, Ronald Webster, and Webster was spending most of his time with
four men: three Americans and an Americanized Anguillan. They were Lewis Hask
ins, the Reverend Freeman Goodge, Jack Holcomb and Jerry
Gumbs. All four preached independence, and that was the way Ronald Webster
went.

So there was another independence
referendum. This one was tied in with a new Constitution that had been written
to replace the one Roger Fisher had tapped out on his portable typewriter in
July of 1967. Most of the new document was a rehash of the American
Constitution, but a couple of parts rang echoes from Jack Holcomb's
"Proposal" of the preceding fall.

The anti-independence faction on
the island was also anti this Constitution and was by this time very anti Jack
Holcomb. However, the phrasing of the referendum stacked the deck in such a way
that the pro-British group had no way to announce itself. The voter was given a
choice between an A statement and a B statement as follows:

A: Affirm declaration and approve
Constitution Government of the people of
Anguilla
;

B: Reject declaration Constitution
return to St. Kitts.

The vote was 1,739 A's and 4 B's; I
don't know which member of the Lloyd family didn't vote that time. The
referendum was held on February 6, and the next day Ronald Webster went into
Ronald Webster's Park and read out a new Declaration of Independence.

But this one didn't fool around;
when this one said independence, it meant
independence.
"When the
political ties of one people have deteriorated with another," it started,
"and the common bonds of their future no longer exist, it becomes necessary
to separate and assume their own destiny among the nations of the world."

Meanwhile, there was another
Conference going on, only peripherally involved with
Anguilla
.
This was the Fifth Conference of Heads of Government of Commonwealth Caribbean
Countries, and it was held in Port-of-Spain,
Trinidad
,
from
February 3 to 6, 1969
.
While Ronald Webster was publishing his Declaration of Independence, this
Conference was publishing a statement that included the following: "The
Conference called upon the Government of the
United
Kingdom
to take all necessary steps in
collaboration with the Government of the State to confirm the territorial
integrity of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla."

Which was a lot tougher than they'd
been a year and a half earlier, when Lord Shepherd had asked for just this kind
of statement to support a landing of British troops on the island. What made
the big change?

Primarily, it was the simple fact
that a year and a half had gone by without a solution.
Anguilla
was a continuing aggravation and worry in everybody else's back yard, and the
anticipated British handling of the problem hadn't worked out. Also, there was
the usual terror of fragmentation. Colonel Bradshaw had been sending telegrams
all over the
Caribbean
for a year and a half warning everybody
about fragmentation, claiming that a successfully independent
Anguilla
would cause other subcolonies to act the same way, and it was actually
beginning to happen. Though whether the discontent was caused by the example of
Anguilla
or more personal problems at home is another
question.

Still, at the very time the Heads
of Government Conference was going on, there were stirrings and trouble in
three places besides
Anguilla
. First there was
Nevis
,
which was also starting to give Colonel Bradshaw a bad time; when
Nevis
had gotten its Local Council at long last, PAM had run candidates for five of
the six seats and all five PAM men had won, a result that was sure to cause
friction between the Nevis Local

Council and the St. Kitts
Government just about any time they'd meet.

Then there was
Barbuda
.
A smaller island than
Anguilla
, with a population of
around two thousand, it was governed from
Antigua
,
thirty miles away, and had much the same stepsister complaint about
Antigua
that
Anguilla
had about St. Kitts. Rumblings of
discontent had become louder from
Barbuda
since
Anguilla
's
successful secession.

On the South American mainland,
there was
Guyana
's
trouble with the people of its own hinterland. While the Heads of Government
Conference was going on, Guyanese troops were operating in the interior,
breaking up a "Republic of Ru-pununi" that had been set up by some
dissident ranchers there.

At the moment,
Trinidad
wasn't having trouble with
Tobago
, nor was
Grenada
having trouble with Carriacou, but who knew when it might start? No, the best
thing was to ignore the details of the
Anguilla
situation, look upon it not as six thousand people struggling against petty
repression but as a "disturbance" having an "effect," and
give the British the okay to go on in there and clean it up.

Which the British didn't do.
Instead, they announced in the middle of February that William Whitlock—whom
Webster and Bradshaw had talked to separately in London last October —would be
making a tour of the Caribbean at the end of the month and would hope to be
able to produce some new proposals for both sides. As an editorial in the
Beacon
of February 15 said:

It is a pity that this announcement
came after Anguillans had gone to the polls and voted to be independent of the
Crown and Commonwealth. Any talks that Mr. Whitlock can venture upon, would
only serve a purpose, if he is prepared to start at a level where
Anguilla
's
secession from St. Kitts is acknowledged. Although it is said that Mr. Whitlock
will be visiting St. Kitts, no question is raised as to a possible visit to
Anguilla
.
In 1967 when Mr. Lord Shepherd came to
Barbados
to try a settlement to the dispute, he was invited to
Anguilla
,
to see the island first hand for himself, and he refused. This is no doubt why
H. M. G. has continually misunderstood the whole situation.

In the same issue of the
Beacon,
the further deterioration of Anguilla's domestic scene was shown in an angry
reply by Atlin Harrigan to an attack against him by Ronald Webster, which had
appeared both in the
Windward Islands Observer
over in St. Martin and in
the
Anguilla Observer
, a short-lived newspaper competing with the
Beacon
and supported by the anti-British faction.

This is a willful attempt [Harrigan
wrote] to whip up anti-feelings against the
Beacon
and its Editor, in the eyes of the public . . . Will Mr.
Webster level his reputation to that of Mr. Wallace Rey? After saying all this,
it is expected that people will size the Editor (Atlin Harrigan) and Mr.
Webster, as the two persons who started the revolution, now pulling apart. We
may not share each other's ideas, but that does not give anyone the right to
say one hand is working for the enemy . . . Our aim we felt would have taken us
to the same destiny (
Independence
)
but envisaged it taking longer, but on a sound basis. Mr. Webster's course was
the short way,
Independence
immediately. The people accepted it, and we all must now make the best of it.

They were also making the worst of
it. The following week's
Beacon
contained this notice, without editorial
comment:

This is to certify that Mr. Jack N.
Holcomb has been duly licensed as an Attorney to engage in the practice of Law,
in the
Republic
of
Anguilla
,
having been approved by the Government on
18th February, 1969
. All privileges of Legal Practice are
conferred hereby. This is to further attest that the
Republic
of
Anguilla
has certified Mr.
Holcomb with the Courts to enjoy all Rights of Representation and confidence as
an Officer thereof. 19th. February 1969

Ronald
Webster

Chief Executive Gov't.
Republic
of
Anguilla

Holcomb's relationship with
Anguilla
had altered quite a bit since the Island Council had turned down his spiral
binder the preceding fall. Holcomb was now claiming that he represented five
big-money investors in
Florida
,
two of them "in heavy equipment and the construction industry with
Government contracts for air bases and things/' two in electronic
manufacturing, and one "widely represented in insurance." He also
said, according to Emile Gumbs, that he "had inside information from the
White House that the
United States
would recognize
Anguilla
within ten days after the
island's Declaration of Independence."

As to the second, it didn't happen.
As to the first, those five investors that Holcomb never stopped talking about
but never named, there's this exchange between
London
Daily Express
reporter Henry Lowrie and Holcomb's wife, Dorothy Jean, at
the Holcomb home near
Fort Lauderdale
:

What about her husband's link with
Webster? "Oh, no. My husband is strictly on his own."

Was he acting for a group of
investors? "Well, if he did find something worth developing, I suppose he
could bring in some investors who would back him."

Mrs. Holcomb was asked by another
reporter if she had a profession: "'No,' she said wistfully. 'Unless you
could call tidying up after Jack a profession. I'm his sort of
secretary.'"

Asked to respond to a British
official's charge that her husband was an "evil genius," she said,
"He may be a genius, but he is certainly not evil." And as to his
having been declared the first lawyer in the
Republic
of
Anguilla
, she explained that he
had "an extensive law library."

Having a lawyer of its own,
regardless of the extent of his law library, didn't solve much for
Anguilla
.
Trouble was starting on the island again. The guns were coming back out, and
this time the enemy wasn't a callous but unreachable Government seventy miles
away on another island; this time it was the neighbor next door. The sides were
moving steadily farther apart, and the threat of Colonel Bradshaw was no longer
real enough to keep the factions united.

Anguillan individualism has one
unfortunate side effect; Anguillans make lousy team members. "The common
good" is a phrase that doesn't make any real sense to Anguillans. Once the
immediate problem of Bradshaw was solved—political settlement or no political
settlement, they were no longer being governed from Sc. Kitts—they were free to
return to their natural state, and the natural state of Anguillans is to be
independent
from one another.
If a public official wants to take the
opportunity to work some private hustles, the majority of Anguillans couldn't
care less; they have their own lives to think about. If their leaders want to
make odd business deals with passing Americans, why not? If Webster and
Harrigan, whose agitation had started the secession in the first place, want to
squabble in public, the majority of Anguillans won t bother to take sides,
they'll just enjoy the spectacle.

The trouble with this kind of
attitude is that things can be allowed tb get completely out of hand before
anybody starts to worry. In the days when a Bradshaw invasion had seemed a
possibility, Webster had imported some guns and had assembled the boys and
young men of the island into a Defence Force. Elements of this Defence Force
had now become a kind of teen-age gang, roaming the island and looking for
action. The most justifiable action they could think of was to roust the
opponents of Ronald Webster, and that's what they started to do. It's unlikely
that Webster gave them any orders, or that anything he could have told them
would have made any difference. They were dumb kids looking for adventure and
finding it right at home.