Westlake, Donald E - NF 01 (25 page)

On
Anguilla
the tough boys had been only nominally under Webster's control until the
Whitlock incident. Once they'd managed to throw a British diplomat off the island
there was no stopping them. They were in charge to whatever extent they wanted
to be in charge.

Fortunately they had no program, no
goals and no plans. They weren't Mafia or even Mafia-like; they were simply
thirty overgrown brats with guns in their hands. Which meant that for the most
part life on the island continued as before. The Provisional Government
continued provisionally to govern, and the juvenile delinquents did much less
damage than might have been expected.

Their worst act was reported in the
Beacon
, which under the circumstances deserves the right to describe it:

On
Wednesday, March 12th, the day after Mr. William Whitlock was expelled from the
island, eight men, some armed, walked into the premises of the
Beacon
and took away the
Beacon
press. Spokesman for the men said that they
were sent for a press which belonged to the people of
Anguilla
. My wife and her mother, who were home at the time, did not argue with
the intruders, who took the press away. On hearing this, I approached Mr.
Webster, who said that he had no knowledge of what had happened. Mr. Webster
returned the press the following day, with an excuse for the men. It said,
"The press was taken by citizens who believed that the
Beacon
printed n
ews that was treasonable." The press was
out of order when it was returned. Thanks to two persons a new roller was
brought in from
Boston
on Saturday, 29th March. The
Beacon
holds no
ill feelings against these men. We feel that the press was taken as a result of
a meeting held at Sandy Hill's
Government
Building
the night before, by some Government officials. Mr.
Jack Holcomb and Mr. Jeremiah Gumps were also present at the meeting.

When the foeman bares
his steel, Tarantara, tarantara! We uncomfortable feel, Tarantara.

—W. S. Gilbert,
The
Pirates of
Penzance

In the outside world, the Mafia
story had begun to spring some leaks. Jerry Gumbs carried to the United Nations
a letter from Ronald Webster asking for a fact-finding mission from the U.N. to
come see for itself if there were any gamblers on
Anguilla
.
When the Committee on Colonialism agreed to give Gumbs another hearing, the
British delegation walked out. But the walkout failed to keep Jerry Gumbs from
being news again.
The New York Times
quoted him as saying, "The
Anguillans are a Christian, churchgoing people who do not want gambling
casinos." And the
London
Daily Telegraph
also quoted him: "A United Nations mission can see for
themselves that there is no Mafia there. The people of
Anguilla
are not going to have gambling on the island. Nobody that I know of is
attempting to introduce gambling there."

Reporters had descended on
Anguilla
the instant the Whitlock story broke, and their reports were significantly free
of news about the Mafia. The vagueness of the Whitlock remarks on the subject
began to be more noticeable as the first excitement faded, and within four days
a certain skepticism had entered the news reports. No one in the press had as
yet come out with the flat statement that Whitlock was wrong. But when another
member of the Whitlock party announced that the island's leaders had met
Whitlock in "a Black Power type of dress," and it turned out he meant
morning coats a
nd white gloves, the absurdity was out in
the open.

Now the reporters began to get more
specific. The
Telegraph's
Ian Ball wrote, "The oblique reference to
the Mafia, first made by Mr. Whitlock . . . may turn out to be a particularly
embarrassing one for the Government. Those of us who have tried to find
substantiation for the charge are still looking." And Andrew McEwen of the
Daily Mail
reported, "The nearest thing to A1 Capone and
Miami
thuggery is a bunch of schoolboy hoodlums who play soldiers and carry
guns." And in
The Guardian
, Adam Raphael calmly said, "The
Americans in
Anguilla
may not for the most part be very
likeable, but they are hardly sinister characters and the extent of their
influence seems to have been to encourage the islanders to break away both from
St. Kitts and
Britain
."

But that was all in the newspapers,
not in the halls of Government.

The British Government made its
first official response to the Whitlock ouster three days after it happened. In
Barbados
the
Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Overseas Development announced that
Great
Britain
was scrapping all financial aid to
Anguilla
.
What the
Trinidad Guardian
had in 1967 called "the most empty
diplomatic threat in history" had now become a reality. Two months after
British economic aid to
Anguilla
had stopped because of
the end of the Interim Agreement, the British decided to stop all economic aid.

Unfortunately, the British
Government was also making other decisions, less empty in their threatening
aspect. As the weekend of March 15-16 approached, it became increasingly
obvious from newspaper reports that the British were planning a military
invasion of
Anguilla
. On Friday the fourteenth, Ronald
Webster told his people the British were probably going to invade and said it
would surely lead to bloodshed. "If they take our land they must take our
life first," he told them, and said they should "be calm and do not
despair, as God is with us through these troubled times."

Webster tried the same bluffing
tactics against the British that had worked so well against Bradshaw. In an
interview with
Daily Telegraph
reporter Ian Ball, he started talking again
about his military preparedness. Ball writes:

I questioned Mr. Webster at length
about the weapons his "Anguillan defence force," a Home Guard type of
army, had at its disposal. When I asked him exactly what firepower his regime
could muster he threw his arms wide in a gesture of mock surprise.

"Oh, please! . . . How do you
expect me to answer that? All I can say is'that they are up-to-date weapons,
very destructive."

Were they obtained legally?
"They came in legally to me, yes. I can say they did not come from the
States, but I cannot tell you the source."

I asked him what he would do if the
British Government dispatched the frigate
Minerva
, 2,860 tons, now in
Antigua
a few
hours' steaming distance away, to deal with his revolt.

He boasted that his Defence Force
could handle "one British frigate. Two boats, I might have to resort to
something else. But one frigate I can handle."

This fairy tale was believed by the
British Government just as thoroughly as its predecessors had been believed by
Bradshaw. The difference was that it didn't make the British change their minds
about invading; it simply made them increase the size of their invasion force.

On Sunday the sixteenth, Webster
tried another tactic to forestall the invasion. There were four Britons on the
island-two nurses, a teacher and Canon Carleton, cofounder of the
Beacon—
and
Webster informed them they would have to leave, temporarily. They would be
welcome back, "as soon as the threat of an invasion is past," he
said, and explained he was afraid the British Government would claim it had to
invade
Anguilla
to protect its citizens there. To rob
London
of the excuse, he was asking the British citizens to go somewhere else until
calm returned. Jack Holcomb typed the deportation orders.

That same Sunday, Jerry Gumbs went
back to the United Nations, claimed that two British frigates were on their way
to
Anguilla
, and asked the U.N. to intervene and help
avoid bloodshed. A British "spokesman" denied that frigates were
heading toward
Anguilla
, which was technically true.
They weren't; not yet.

By Monday the seventeenth, the
Anguillans were getting very nervous. Their tough-talking bluff had worked, but
not the way they'd wanted it to; instead of scaring the British off, it had
made them decide to get tougher.

It was St. Patrick's Day, but the
Irish in the Anguillan blood wasn't being stirred at the thought of a
donnybrook with the British. Webster grew less talkative with reporters. He
traveled everywhere with Jack Holcomb at his side and more often than not
deferred to Holcomb to answer the questions put to him. Ian Ball once again
defined Webster's mood: "I asked Webster whether his defence force would
fight British paratroops and police and perhaps a naval and marine force. 1 am
prepared,' he said somberly."

His preparations included moving a
motorboat he owned, which had always been docked around on the north side of
the island, over to Sandy Hill Bay, near his home, and hiding it there under
some brush, so that if the British actually did invade, he and his family could
escape to St. Martin. Unfortunately some Defence Force boys who lived in the
area stumbled across the hidden motorboat, which they didn't recognize as
belonging to this bay. Thinking it might have been left there by an assassin
from St. Kitts, they took their rifle butts and smashed it to kindling. As it
turned out, Webster didn't try to leave the island when the British landed, so
it was several days before he discovered what had happened to his boat.

On Monday Jerry Gumbs showed up at
the U.N. once more, and by now the bluff was almost completely out of him. He
wanted the U.N. to stop the British from invading; he wanted it very badly.
"It would be a mass murder—a bunch of gorillas rushing into an orphanage/'
he said. "Don't they know that if you use force you get murder, rape and
kidnaping? They are going to go to this island of ours, which has no murder, no
rapes, no crime at all, and murder our people." And, "Mr. Webster and
I could sit down with Lord Caradon and sort out the whole situation with very
little difficulty, if we were just given the chance."

But on the island itself there were
those who wanted the British to invade. The guns had come out and they hadn't
liked it; no matter how troubled they might be at the thought of invasion,
uncontrolled juvenile delinquents troubled them even more. Cabdriver John
Rogers told the
Daily Mail,
"I hope
Britain
will send in a force as soon as possible. And it must be a massive force,
otherwise the defence force will resist." And Canon Carleton, before
leaving the island, told Ivor Key of the
Sun,
"The only solution is
for
Britain
to
invade. Somewhere along the way, Webster has gone wrong, and, with American
influence, he now wants complete independence. The whole trouble stems from
when Holcomb came in July last year and now it seems the island is under his
influence."

Ian Ball talks of meeting Wallace
Rey and being shouted at, and adds, "The encounter with Mr. Rey in which
pro and anti-rebel Anguillans standing nearby almost came to blows, was indicative
of the brittle tensions on the island."

The situation on
Anguilla
was becoming more complex by the hour. Here was fragmentation with a vengeance.
The range of opinion on the island now from David Lloyd through to Wallace Rey
included someone who defended just about every possible shade. Men who had been
rebel leaders for two years were now asking the British to invade. Ronald
Webster was talking about "blood on the beaches" while the man who
was supposedly representing him in New York, Jeremiah Gumbs, was claiming the
whole mess could be resolved by a simple discussion with Lord Caradon. The
brats on the Defence Force had stopped intimidating other people now that they
had been intimidated themselves; reports were getting out that the Defence
Force was losing membership.

On Tuesday the eighteenth, Webster
made an about-face; the bluff wasn't doing what it was supposed to so he
switched tactics. He called a news conference and said his people weren't going
to fight after all. "There is no sense in making ourselves martyrs on the
battlefield," he said. "We are not a bloodthirsty or trigger-happy
lot. We are just defending our island for independence."

Perfectly reasonable. "I am
willing to negotiate now," he said. "We could not withstand a heavy
bombardment from warships. We could not expect to fight against trained men
from
Britain
and I think the world would look down on
Britain
as a big baby if it tried to bully
Anguilla
back to St.
Kitts."

Sweet reason now lights all the
dark corners. The Webster change of mind didn't untangle the whole mess, but it
did simplify things to the point where forward motion could be made again.

However, the British—the big
baby—had already determined on a move that simplifies all situations, no matter
how complicated. Nothing in this world strips away the complexities like a good
rousing war.

Something may come of
this. I hope it mayn't be human gore.

—Charles Dickens,
Barnaby Rudge