Westlake, Donald E - NF 01 (32 page)

By the spring of 1971,
Anguilla
had been a British colony under direct British administration for two years.
The status hadn't been formalized and the word "colony" was never
used, but that's what it was. The British still acted on the assumption that
their own ground rules prohibited them from formalizing the change, since in
theory they had freed Anguilla back in 1967 and no longer had the legal power
to alter the island's status, and Bradshaw had made it abundantly clear that he
wouldn't willingly help legalize the new situation himself, but in fact
Anguilla had stopped being a part of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla on May 30, 1967,
and all the Queen's horses and all the Queen's men would never be able to put
that particular Humpty Dumpty together again.

This was all very uncomfortable for
the British Government, which has traditionally preferred to coat its actions
with the varnish of legality. And the sharpest thorn in the British side in the
whole mess, other than the Anguillans themselves, had been their own principal
ally, Colonel Bradshaw. His unwillingness to compromise, his tough line of
talk, and his eccentric behavior had contributed greatly to the British rout,
and Her Majesty's Government seemed prepared to do what it could to repay him
in kind.

The St. Kitts Constitution called
for general elections no later than September 1971. Colonel Bradshaw had
originally planned the
election for the spring, to
coincide with the opening of his new Government-owned television station. He
intended not only to campaign on the station, but also to present himself as
the man who had brought television to St. Kitts.

But there were problems. A British
company was doing the work and unfortunate delays arose. Bradshaw postponed the
election, but the unfortunate delays postponed the television station even
longer.

Bradshaw also made a rather serious
public-relations error. Just as he'd always been there with the timely
faux
pas
to help the Anguillans in their hours of need, he now seemed determined
to assist the British in their unstated attempt to replace him with Billy
Herbert.

Here's the situation: As
unemployment has skyrocketed on the islands (reaching 40 to 50 per cent on St.
Kitts, for instance), more and more men from British islands have become
illegal immigrants in the United States Virgin Islands, holding jobs without
work permits. American authorities, with that humanitarianism and subtlety that
have become the American trademark in the last decade, took to rounding up
these illegal workers and booting them off the island without giving them a
chance to pack, collect their wages, make a phone call or say good-bye to
anybody. Public outcry resulted in a visit to the American
island
of
St. Thomas
by the Prime
Ministers of half a dozen other islands. Bradshaw was among them, and started
badly. He'd chosen to travel in his field-combat uniform, including a .45
automatic in a holster at his waist; American authorities disarmed him at the
airport.

But it was his departure that got
the attention of the
Caribbean
press. The other Prime
Ministers released a group statement deploring American callousness, and
Bradshaw released a dissenting statement saying every nation had the right to
throw out foreign undesirables and he thought the Americans were doing just
fine. Since many of the ex-undesirables were adult Kittitians who were now back
on St. Kitts in plenty of time for the election, this was perhaps not the
cleverest statement of Bradshaw's political career.

Still, Bradshaw
is
a
politician, in a very rugged political arena, and hasn't survived all these
years through nothing but luck and braggadocio. A rumor current in the islands
that spring had it that the British intended to take Anguilla away from St.
Kitts just before the election, as a further swipe at Bradshaw's prestige; Bradshaw
certainly heard it. He could see the television station not being finished, and
he knew his popularity among the voters was waning.

Suddenly, on
May 1, 1971
, Bradshaw announced the election would
take place on May 10. And if that wasn't enough time for anybody else, too bad;
it was enough time for the Colonel.

The brief campaign was hardly ever
in doubt; Bradshaw was rough and ready and PAM was neither. Bradshaw threatened
to fire Civil Servants who campaigned or voted for PAM, and he weeded known PAM
supporters out of the voters' lists by every pretext he could find, including
disqualification for misspelling of names on the list. As to the disgruntled
unemployed back from the U.S. Virgin Islands, they discovered that their
temporary residence off St. Kitts had made them ineligible to vote. The Labour
Party romped to a victory.

Now Colonel Bradshaw came forth in
yet another uniform. The man who once listed his hobby in the Caribbean Who's
Who as "sartorial elegance" made his victory speech in faded bush jacket
and worn fatigue cap. He obviously knows which way the winds are blowing in
Caribbean
politics, and though he didn't manage to grow a beard, he did call his
followers "comrades," and told them, "The mandate is your call
for revolutionary change in this country." The old Bradshaw resurfaced
briefly when he shouted "
Vox populi, vox Dei!"
but when that
got nothing but baffled looks he followed up with a quick translation:
"Power to the people!"

The new Bradshaw is a complete
remodeling. The Rolls-Royce is gone now, replaced by an open Land Rover. The
cutaways and spats have been banished in favor of dirty khakis. He even talks
differently; he used to sound like an Englishman and now he sounds like a cane
cutter.

As William M. Tweed,
nineteenth-century political boss of
New York City
's
"Tweed Ring" once said, "As long as I count the votes, what are
you going to do about it?"

Colonies do not cease
to be colonies because they are independent.

—Benjamin Disraeli

The Wooding Report had been
delivered, and had solved nothing, and had sunk without a trace. The election
on St. Kitts had come and gone, and Robert Bradshaw was still in power. It
began to seem that nothing would get the British off the hook.

So they did it themselves, and to
hell with dignity. At the beginning of June, less than a month after Bradshaw's
re-elec-tion, Joseph Godber, Minister of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office, showed up in St. Kitts with new proposals that in effect altered the
legal status of
Anguilla
to a Crown Colony of Great
Britain without ever quite using that terminology. Bradshaw turned the
proposals down, as usual, and Godber carried them on to
Anguilla
,
where the Anguilla Council talked things over with its attorney and said Yes.

And so, on July 7, a bill concerning
Anguilla
received its First Reading in the British House
of Commons. Called the Anguilla Act of 1971, it said that "Her Majesty may
by Order in Council make such provision as Her Majesty thinks fit for securing
Peace, Order and Good Government in Anguilla" and went on to permit Her
Majesty to "appoint for Anguilla a Commissioner" and to "provide
a constitution for Anguilla." It further said that "this act shall
have effect notwithstanding anything in the West Indies Act 1967," which
was the Act that had made St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla an Associated State,
independent (as Lord Cara
don used to assure the U.N.
Committee on Colonialism) from the United Kingdom forever.

For justification, or something
that could look like justification in the dark with the light behind it, the
Anguilla Act 1971 announced that "in accordance with section 3 (2) of the
West Indies Act 1967 which provides for an Act of the Parliament of the United
Kingdom to extend in certain circumstances to an Associated State it is hereby
declared that this Act (A) extends to the Associated State of St. Christopher,
Nevis and Anguilla, and (B) is required so to extend in the interests of the
responsibilities of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom relating to
defence and external affairs."

Whether accepting
Anguilla
as a colony was a defense affair or an external affair the Act didn't spell
out.

But what about Bradshaw's
potential, as head of an
Associated
State
,
to declare his entire nation
totally
independent of
Great
Britain
? Wouldn't that whisk
Anguilla
out from under the Anguilla Act 1971? No, it wouldn't; the Act was ready for
that: "If at any time . . . there is introduced into the Legislature for
the Associated State of St. Christopher, Nevis and Anguilla a bill or a law
terminating the state of association of that State with the United Kingdom, Her
Majesty may . . . direct that Anguilla shall not any longer form part of the
territory of that State." In other words, Bradshaw could retain even
nominal control over
Anguilla
only if he made no waves.

Most
Caribbean
governments were very upset about all this. Not only was fragmentation
occurring before their very eyes, but the pleasant fiction of associated
statehood was being trampled in the mud. The final test of any independent government
is its ability to enforce its decisions, and the children were being reminded
that, however much they might play at independence, Mother was still in charge.

The least happy of the children was
St. Kitts. On July 12, the St. Kitts Legislature passed a motion condemning the
British action as "outrageous and illegal," which was perfectly
accurate, and calling on other Caribbean Governments for support. Moral support
was offered by
Jamaica
and
Trinidad
and the rest, and was as effective as it
usually is.

Toward the end of July, heads and
representatives of seven Caribbean Governments—Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, St.
Kitts, St. Lucia, Trinidad and St. Vincent—met in Grenada, primarily to worry
the bone of federation yet again, but also to consider the British action on
Anguilla. Their statement, called "The Declaration of Grenada,"
plumped for federation on the one side and deplored the Anguilla Act 1971 on
the other. Nobody paid much attention.

In
London
,
the Act moved gracefully through the legal quadrille required for it to become
law. The Anguilla Act 1971 was the enabling legislation that would permit an
Order in Council, which in turn would do the actual colonizing of
Anguilla
.
The Act became law with no trouble, the Order in Council was published on August
3, and
Anguilla
's two-year-old victory over the British
was finally acknowledged on August 6.

The
Beacon
reported the
famous victory under the headline "
Thousands of Anguillans Attend Swearing-In
Ceremony":

Thousands of Anguillans, dressed in
gay holiday attire, turned out on Friday morning to celebrate the first
"Anguilla Day" which was marked by special ceremonies at the Court
House for the swearing in of twelve members of the Council and the election of
a Leader of the Anguilla Council.

. . . The other elected member of
the Council, Mr. Wallace Rey, did not take the oath, but was seen among the
crowd as the ceremony took place.

Following the impressive ceremony,
Anguillans in their thousands formed a procession and, headed by Council
members and a
steel band, marched to Ronald
Webster Park. There an "Anguilla Day" service of praise and
thanksgiving was held with Mr. Campbell Fleming as chairman. Mr. Ronald Webster
spoke briefly to thank all concerned for their help over the past fifty months
in bringing about the achievement of direct relationship with
Great Britain
; especially H. M. Government and succeeding
Commissioners Mr. Cumber, Mr. Thompson and Mr. Watson.

. .
. Friday was a public holiday and Anguillans were in a mood to celebrate a new
era. Scores of private parties and public dances were being held, and on Sunday
the Churches of Anguilla will hold special thanksgiving services.

A
special address by H. M. Commissioner and Mr. Ronald Webster, followed by a
recording of the proceedings at the swearing-in ceremony and the Thanksgiving
service in the park, will be broadcast by Radio Anguilla at
4 o'clock
on Sunday afternoon.

Even in victory, of course, the
Anguillans can t show a united front; there's Wallace Rey lurking around in the
crowd instead of being up on stage getting sworn in as a Council member. But
two weeks later the
Beacon
could report another happy ending:

Mr.
Wallace Rey Takes Oaths

The
thirteenth member of the Anguilla Council, Mr. Wallace Rey, who refused to be
sworn in at the special meeting of the Council on 6th August, was sworn in on
Tuesday August 17th. Mr. Wallace Rey took and subscribed the oaths of
allegiance and office before H. M. Commissioner as prescribed by the Anguilla
Order in Council. Mr. Rey did not take the oaths on August 6th when all the
other members were ceremoniously sworn in, his reason being that he did not
know what "law" he was swearing to.

And so the last piece clicked into
place, and the Anguillan rebellion ended as it had begun—in confusion. The
legal status of the island remained as baffling as ever, but all parties had
agreed to ignore the legalities and simply get the job done. Anguilla remains
technically one-third of the nation of St. Christopher-Nevis-Anguilla, but does
not vote in that nation's elections, is not represented in that nation's
Legislature, does not pay taxes to or receive funding from that nation, does
not fly that nation's flag, does not feel itself bound by that nations laws,
and is not connected to that nations Civil Service, Police Department or
judiciary.
Anguilla
is definitely not a colony of
Great
Britain
, but is governed by a British
Commissioner appointed by the Queen.

In the two and a half years
following the British invasion of
Anguilla
, the Royal
Engineers worked like soldier ants across the island, building schools, paving
roads, starting an electrification program, studying the water table, and
generally tidying up the effects of the previous three hundred years of
neglect. When they left, on
September
14, 1971
, they were technically the same invading army that had
swept ashore on
March 19, 1969
,
but never has an invading army been given a farewell to equal that written by
Atlin Harrigan in the
Beacon:

Farewell
Royal Engineers

Anguillans
have learned with real regret of plans for the departure from our
island
of
Royal
Engineers
.
Their work is done and they are required elsewhere.

Since
March
19, 1969
, when the British
Forces landed on the island, the presence of these friendly visitors has been
increasingly welcomed. They came to prevent trouble and as a protection from
our sister island of
St.
Kitts. Not only are they soldiers of the Queen, but
they are experienced and capable engineers, electricians, mechanics, builders
and development planners. They have put their time to good use, and the
numerous additions, (in every development area) to the
Anguilla
scene are evidence of their ability along peaceful lines and their
wish to serve another Commonwealth island.

The
various buildings and other facilities built by the Royal Engineers during the
last 30 months have been mentioned before, but their greatest contribution to
Anguilla
and the people of the island has been, perhaps, their friendly and
cooperative attitude to the people, who will miss them and their ever-ready
help.

Many
Anguillans have made lasting friends of Royal Engineers' personnel.

The
Beacon would like to pay tribute on behalf of all Anguillans, to the capable
commanders of the British Forces on the island over the past two and a half
years: Col. Norrie Giles, Col. John Waymark, Col. Robin Jukes-Hughes, Col.
Bruce Brown, M.B.E. and last but certainly not least the present commander,
Major Leslie J. Kennedy, R.E., and all their men.

The
Royal Engineers came in peace and they go in peace. We thank them for their
help and their friendships and we wish every member of the British Forces who
has been on the island Godspeed and good fortune as the last contingent
departs.