Westlake, Donald E - NF 01 (29 page)

It
still
wasn't quite that
simple. "Well, they had one bad time when I was there," he told me,
"when they were rioting, when I was there. But it was accident as much as
anything else."

The day before Lord Caradon arrived
on the island, on Thursday the twenty-seventh, Tony Lee came up even with
Ronald Webster again; he too was "Man in the News." The report began,
"Perhaps the most nonchalant man on the
island
of
Anguilla
these days is the man
most under attack." The story called him "calm, matter of fact and
good-humored," "convivial and informal," and "extremely
moderate." However, the flavor of his anti-dynamism showed clearly in this
passage:

Mr.
Lee admits to feeling uncomfortable about the military display
Britain
put on for his latest return. When asked why it was
done, he answered laconically, "To install me, I suppose."

His
nonchalant, muddling-through, almost flippant air comes through in other
answers to newsmen's questions. Asked about a letter from Mr. Webster . . .
demanding an immediate referendum, he answered, "I really haven't read it
carefully." Asked to explain parts of the stringent local regulations, just
issued, that give him sweeping powers, he had difficulty making precise
references to them. "I really haven't done my homework," he
explained.

The "stringent
regulations" were defined more stringently by the
London
Times.
A paper not given to overstatement, it ran this headine: "
Dictator Role for Lee."

But if anybody is miscast in the
role of dictator, it is Tony Lee. The regulations did put him in about the same
position in
Anguilla
that Douglas MacArthur had in
Japan
in the late forties, but Tony Lee is not a man to throw his weight around. And
anyhow he hadn't done his homework and didn't know what his powers were.

Nevertheless, the
London
Times
pointed out that the Order in Council that had installed Tony Lee as
Commissioner "goes a very long way to putting the Commissioner outside the
law altogether. What has he in fact done so far? He has introduced several
hundred soldiers to the island, together with
two
score
policemen. He has instructed or permitted security officers
to arrest, hold and interrogate, apparently without warrant, citizens of the
Federation and citizens of the
United States
.
He has used powers of expulsion. He has instructed or permitted a general
search for arms, with all the patting of buttocks and covering with guns which
such searches involve."

But of course Tony Lee hadn't done
any of that, had he?
Tony Lee
didn't mount an invasion involving three
hundred fifteen paratroops, forty Marines, four helicopters, two warships,
seven transport planes and forty-nine
London
policemen; but Tony Lee was responsible. And
Tony Lee
certainly didn't
pat any buttocks; but Tony Lee was responsible.

Lee very early had tried to limit
his responsibility to things he had some control over. When a reporter asked
him where all the Mafiosi were, Lee replied, "Are you asking me to
substantiate something someone else said?"

But it was too late to protect
himself. Lee had been shoved into the pit with the alligators, and it was only
a question of time till they noticed him. Being very quiet might help delay
things, but it wouldn't alter them.

For instance. During one of the
scuffles that marked Lee's first week on the island, an Anguillan woman
complained to reporters that she'd stuck her arm in Lee's car and Lee had
bitten her. Among those who heard that story on the radio was Lee's wife,
Thelma, waiting on the nearby
island
of
Antigua
for
Anguilla
to quiet down enough to permit her to join her husband. "How silly,"
she thought. "Now they're saying Tony's biting people." That evening
at dinner with friends, the subject of Tony's biting people came up. The
hostess said, "You know, I've been thinking about that, and what I think
must have happened was, Tony was probably saying something to somebody and this
woman stuck her arm in the car, and her hand just went in his mouth."
Thelma Lee told me about this much later, and even then her laugh was still
uneasy. "Until that moment," she said, "it never occurred to me
anybody would
believe
Tony was biting people. But she
knew
Tony,
and she was an educated intelligent woman, and she was trying to find
explanations for how it had happened."

It was coming at Lee from every
side by now. The London
Times
was calling him a dictator,
The New
York Times
was calling him laconic, Anguillans were parading around with a
coffin with his name on it, the London
Times
was saying he was
responsible for people's buttocks being patted, an Anguillan woman was saying
he bit her on the arm, and Jack Holcomb claimed Lee had asked him for a job.

"Tony Lee asked me for a job
last year," Holcomb was quoted in the
Evening Standard
of March 22.
"He said he felt his work would be done by this January and as he would
like to stay on in
Anguilla
after they became
independent, he would have liked the chance to manage my proposed
basic-materials industry."

Tony Lee had argued against Holcomb
and his basic materials on Holcomb's first visit in 1968. He had enough
experience in the Foreign Service to know how much of a mess would be created
if he asked for a job in private industry while still in Government employ and
while his Government job was having an effect on that particular private
industry. He and Jack Holcomb had disliked each other from the minute they'd
first met. Holcomb was enraged by the very thought of Lee when he arrived in
the States, having been deported in an order signed by Lee. (It was Holcomb,
remember, who had typed the orders deporting the four British citizens the week
before.)

What I think must have happened
was, Lee was probably saying something to somebody and Jack Holcomb stuck his
arm in the car . . .

Webster arrived home on
Anguilla
on
Thursday, the twenty-seventh of
March, 1969
. The invasion was a week old and the protests were
beginning to wane. Like most people, Anguillans prefer to live their own lives.
They had done all they could about the British, so now they returned to their
own concerns. Only two hundred of them showed up to greet Webster at the
airport. Nothing terrible had been done to the Anguillans by the British in the
week since the invasion, so passions had cooled.

Webster announced to the little
crowd that Lord Caradon was coming to the island the next day, as "my
guest," and that negotiations would start then, but no real negotiating
could be done until the British soldiers left. "We cannot negotiate looking
down the barrels of guns."

When Lord Caradon did arrive, the
political split in
Anguilla
was reflected for the first
time in a demonstration. The usual five hundred demonstrators with their signs
greeted Lord Caradon at the airport, but this time they formed two opposing
factions, one pro-British and one anti. Four hundred fifty anti and fifty pro.
The antis almost all carried posters declaring their support of Ronald Webster.
The pros, who included Peter Adams, supported Great
Britain
rather than Tony Lee.

Lord Caradon began by buttering his
hosts. "I should be sitting in the Security Council on the
Middle
East
, but I'd much rather be here," he said. He also promised
"talk, talk and more talk until we get this thing sorted out."

The talks took three days, during
which Lord Caradon showed himself as agile at recognizing public opinion as
Ronald Webster. He tacitly accepted Webster as the island's leader and for most
of the talks Tony Lee wasn't invited to attend.

In the end, Lord Caradon and Ronald
Webster published a joint declaration, which described how the island would be
governed for the next period of time, though it later turned out Webster hadn't
understood it: "The administration of the island shall be conducted by Her
Majesty's representative in full consultation and cooperation with
representatives of the people of
Anguilla
. The members
of the 1968 Council will be recognised as elected representatives of the people
and will serve as members of a Council to be set up for the above
purposes."

Her Majesty's representative would
be boss. That was the part Ronald Webster didn't understand.

Webster told his people,
"Today is a happy day for
Anguilla
.
Anguilla
and
Britain
are
working side by side. Now that
Britain
is willing to work with us, let us forget quarrels and work together for the
target."

The
London
Times
said, "
Anguilla
's national revolution
appeared to have petered out today in a web of peaceable vagueness spun by Lord
Caradon."

Seeing Lord Caradon off at the
airport, Ronald Webster gave him an Anguillan flag.

The next day, the
Beacon
reappeared. This first post-invasion issue said, "At this point we feel
that all the past differences that caused a split among the people of Anguilla
should be forgotten," though editor Harrigan apparently hadn't forgotten
them, since his paper also said, "The intervention of the British at this
stage is well welcomed, though a bit late, and we hate to comment on the way in
which they became involved as we cannot totally agree that all was well in
Anguilk at the time."

The
Beacon
also included a
letter to Lord Caradon from Ronald Webster that said, "We would like to
confirm some things we told you but which you asked to be excluded from the
Declaration we signed yesterday." It made it clear that Webster still
thought he was running things.

This was going to cause trouble,
but not yet. The immediate trouble would be caused by something else in the
Beacon
of the same date.

This was twelve days after the
invasion. The situation had altered heavily in those twelve days, but the
"dictator" regulations were still in force and this was the
Beacons
first opportunity to announce them. Which, of course, it had to do.

Mr.
Tony Lee, Her Majesty's Commissioner in
Anguilla
, has put into effect as from
19th March 1969
, two regulations for the island. Regulation No. 1
gives any member of the Police, or of Her Majesty's Naval, Military or Air
Force, the power to enter and search premises and make arrests without
warrants. It also allows them to search and control persons, control arms,
weapons and explosives. Appropriating and requisitioning of property, to deport
undesirable aliens, restriction of planes and boats from calling at any
unrecognized port. And it also imposes penalties for violators. Regulation No.
2 sets out the powers of the Anguilla Police Unit, and makes provision for a
Chief Immigration Officer.

The timing of this announcement
was, well, Anguillan. The island had been living under the regulations for
nearly two weeks, but since the day of the invasion itself there had been none
of the searching and appropriating and deporting and restricting they allowed.
When the Anguillans saw the notice in the same issue of the
Beacon
as
the agreement signed with Lord Caradon, they thought these regulations were
about to start
now.
There was trouble.

But not immediately. It took a few
days for the impact to be felt. In the meantime, Ronald Webster found out what
had actually been on Lord Caradon s mind when they'd signed that Declaration in
perfect mutual understanding. He found out at the first meeting between Tony
Lee and the Island Council.

What happened that day was best
described by the
Spectator:
"It now appears that Mr. Ronald Webster
has been upset because the British commissioner, Mr. Tony Lee, insisted upon
taking the chair at the first council meeting of the new regime. Mr. Webster
thought that he ought to be the chairman . . . It is embarrassing to think that
the British Empire has dwindled to this—a nursery struggle with a thin-skinned
island politician for the best chair."

Webster now made another dash from
the island. It wasn't musical chairs he complained about though, but the
regulations announced in the
Beacon.
He went to
Puerto Rico
and claimed that Tony Lee had declared martial law
after
the Lord
Caradon visit. He also charged that Lee had dissolved the Council and had
increased the number of British troops on the island.

The dissolving of the Council, when
the dust settled, turned out to be the game of musical chairs. (The
"Island Council," of which Webster had been Chairman, had been turned
into an "Advisory Council" with the exact same membership, but
without a chairman.) As to the increase in British troops, the Red Devils were
in the process of being withdrawn, a few at a time, while Army engineers were
coming in to start some development work.

"I don't care if they do call
themselves engineers," Webster said. "The British are taking out ten
men and returning fifteen armed men."

In
London
,
Sir Con O'Neill, former Deputy Under-Secretary of State in the Foreign Office,
was saying on the BBC, "
Anguilla
? Well, I don't
know much about it. It has hardly involved diplomacy."