Westlake, Donald E - NF 01 (5 page)

Atlin Harrigan, young, slender and
serious, left school at fourteen to earn his way in the world. He was a tailor,
a fisherman, a carpenter and a deck hand before leaving home, in the
traditional way of Anguillans, to seek greener pastures elsewhere. He lived in
England
fpr a while but didn't like the English winters and returned to the
West
Indies
, where he became a skilled electrician on the American
island
of
St. Thomas
. When trouble flared
up at home, Harrigan went back to
Anguilla
and has lived
there ever since, frequently in the forefront of resistance to St. Kitts. He
speaks mildly, with a combination of humor and despair best summed up in his
remark at a public meeting in 1968: "If I told half what I know, the
British would never give us self-government."

With the local Anglican minister,
an Englishman named Canon Guy Carleton, Harrigan founded
The Beacon
,
Anguil-la's only newspaper, a weekly, in September of 1967. The editorial in
the first issue, over Harrigan's signature, began:

For
the first time in the history of
Anguilla
, we have found it possible to publish a newspaper,
THE BEACON, whereby the people of
Anguilla
and the world
outside
Anguilla
can learn what is happening on the island, and
whereby they can voice their opinions.

A little later in the same
editorial he explained the new papers name:

I
have chosen the name THE BEACON, because all the big ships passing to the north
of
Anguilla
are grateful to
Anguilla
for her beacon at
Sombrero
to guide them to their destination. So, too, many
people all over the world are grateful to
Anguilla
for the stand she has made for freedom and democracy. Like the BEACON
may this paper be a help to guide Anguillans to pick out the good from the bad,
so that they may have nothing less than the best.

Ronald Webster, not quite forty-one
years of age at the point he enters our story, was born on
Anguilla
March 2, 1926
, the son of a
fisherman. He had an elementary school education and then emigrated to the
nearby
island
of
St.
Martin
, where he spent his youth as gardener and
then farm foreman for a Dutch couple who were so taken with him they later
named him prominently in their will, leaving him money and land sufficient to
make him the richest of all Anguillans. Returning home, he opened a general
store and bought some land, gradually increasing his wealth. Although he is
probably not a millionaire, he likely doesn't miss by much.

A short and slender man, with
long-fingered hands, Ronald Webster gives an impression of wiry strength under
rigid control. In photographs he looks mild and meek, and some interviewers
have come away describing him as shy; neither the photographs nor the
interviewers are wrong, but they are incomplete. Webster
is
mild, with a
soft-speaking voice and a
sudden
gentle
laugh, and some manners of personal shyness, but there is an element in him
that photographs never seem to catch. He seldom looks directly at the person
he's talking to —that's the shyness, not guile—but when he does, everything
changes. His eyes are deep-set and intense and very dark, and they gleam out
like unwinking black stars. He has a thin face, the milk-chocolate skin taut
over prominent bones, and what rays out from that face is an absolute and total
sense of conviction. Ronald Webster is altogether certain of his own destiny.

A part of this is ordinary
self-assurance, but another part is tied in with Webster's religious beliefs.
He has changed his religion twice, most recently becoming a Seventh-Day
Ad-ventist at the age of thirty-four, conversions that suggest a restless yet
thoughtful mind, and he has embraced each of his religions in turn with the
same intensity. Throughout the An-guillan rebellion he was to read from his
Bible every day and continue to do no work from sundown Friday till sundown
Saturday.

Webster had spent his first four
decades as a silent, personal man, concerned only with his religion, his
business, his family—he had a wife and five children—but he would soon find a
more public use for his qualities of self-conviction and intensity.

In the meetings led by Webster and
Harrigan and one or two other Anguillans on
January 26, 1967
(the day before the local-government
expert, Peter Johnston, was due to visit the island), a broad vista of
complaint was gradually winnowed into nine sections, as given in the 1970
Wooding Report:

(1)
Between 1948 and 1967 membership of the Legislative Council had increased from
3 to 7 for St. Kitts, from 1 to 2 for Nevis, but for Anguilla it had remained
at 1: [Seats on the Legislative Council were apportioned by population, and the
population of Anguilla remains fairly constant at around 6,000, with the excess
leaving to find work and advancement in other parts of the world. It has been
said that
Anguilla
's principal export is Anguillans; since most of the
expatriates send money back to help support their relations at home, John
Updike has written, "Fundamentally the economy runs by remittance."]

(2) St.
Kitts had made progress—she had a radio station, a cigarette factory and a
"beer factory," but
Anguilla
still had one doctor and a Warden-Magistrate;'

(3) Kittitians
did not like Anguillans, so affiliation with them would be to invite oppression
and bloodshed;

(4) The
Government in St. Kitts was restricting the free entry of foreigners, and this
was already affecting Anguillans abroad; [The Anguillans feared that Kittitian
restrictions against noncitizens traveling into the state would lead to
reprisals by other islands against citizens of St. Christopher-Nevis-Anguilla.
Anguillans, more than any other islanders in the area, travel and work in
foreign lands; impose travel restrictions and what would happen to the
remittances?]

(5) 
Anguilla
was ignored generally—her name did not even appear on the number
plates of vehicles; by contrast the term "Electricity Department of St.
Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla" was a misnomer, since there was no public
electricity in
Anguilla
; [There
is
no electricity on
Anguilla
. The Kittitian Government studied the problem at one time and decided
it wasn't feasible to give
Anguilla
electricity because the houses were too far apart—no
slums—to run an electric company at a profit. A government that refuses to
furnish its citizens electricity unless it can do so at a profit is a strange
government indeed.]

(6) Mr.
Bradshaw the Chief Minister had threatened that Anguillans would have to eat
one another's bones and that he would turn
Anguilla
into a desert;

(7) Anguilla
would be subject to heavy taxation if she went into Statehood with St. Kitts;
Anguilla should seek to join Mont-serrat or Tortola and remain with England as
a Crown Colony; England would be bound to keep Anguilla as a colony since
Anguilla was unwilling to associate with St. Kitts in Statehood: [The first
part of this is a little ingenuous, since taxation in Anguilla is mostly import
duties and Anguillans are known to be the premier smugglers of the Caribbean,
practically nobody ever paying import duty for anything. The second part is the
beginning of what would become a long string of alternate suggestions for
Anguilla
's future; Anguillans don't particularly crave association with either
Mont-serrat or
Tortola
, but just about anything seemed better than Mr.
Bradshaw's St. Kitts. As to the final clause, about
England
being bound to keep
Anguilla
since
Anguilla
didn't want to associate with St. Kitts, this was at
least naive and showed an appalling lack of historical awareness;
Anguilla
hadn't wanted to associate with St. Kitts since 1822 and
England
had never given a damn at all.]

(8) The
signing of the Report of the Constitutional Conference by Mr. Peter Adams did
not indicate agreement with Statehood, but only gave members of the delegation
"permission to negotiate for Statehood";

(9) The
Chief Minister had held a committee meeting secretly for the purpose of
negotiating local government with Mr. Johnston. [In other words, before the
local-government expert ever even arrived in the
Caribbean
, the St. Kitts Government had managed to compromise him and condemn
him to ineffectiveness by holding its committee meeting behind Peter Adams'
back. This ineptitude is the Kittitian Government's only saving grace and has
been the Anguillans' secret weapon from the very beginning.]

On
January 27, 1967
, Peter Johnston arrived in
Anguilla
,
innocently expecting to talk about local government. They met him with
everything but a rope.

Foui; hundred people were at the
airport—a dirt strip with a shack to one side—and most of them were carrying
signs. "We want no Statehood," one sign read, getting right down to
business, and another one amplified, "We don't want Bradshaw and his
Statehood." A long sign amplified the amplification: "Could we be
united with Bradshaw who said he will turn
Anguilla
into
a desert?" And another one, with simple but all-encompassing dignity,
said, "No association with St. Kitts."

Johnston
had a lot to read while getting off the plane. "No Trinity No Premier No
Statehood," for instance.

Well, if they didn't want statehood
or Bradshaw or the Trinity of St. Christopher-Nevis-Anguilla, what
did
they want? Other signs were glad you asked that question: "We want to be
free," one of them said. "We don't want Statehood we want
England
,"
another said, and this was seconded by a sign reading, "No statehood for
Anguilla
seeking care of
England
."
"God save the Queen," said yet another, to reassure Johnston that
things were still all right between
Anguilla
on the one
hand and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland on the other.
"We will continue to be united Trinity with our Mother Country,
England
,"
announced another, using the word "Trinity" in a way I don't entirely
understand; but the one that made the ultimate summation of the situation went
as follows:
"Seeking the choice of Mothers care ."

Upon arrival, Peter Johnston, the
inadvertent representative of Mother, went first to Government House and then
on to the Court House, where it was his intention to meet with the people—most
of whom were following him, waving their signs—and talk about local government.
"There," says the Wooding Report, "a group of Anguillans who
acted as spokesmen showed a total disinclination to discuss local government.
Instead, they took the opportunity to express views against Statehood." A
dozen troublemakers took the lead in this, including Ronald Webster and Atlin
Harrigan.

But Peter Johnston wasn't the man
to talk to, as he tried to explain. However, he was the only one available, so
they kept at him until finally he left, with dissatisfaction on both sides. He
had not managed to communicate to them effectively about local government, and
they had not managed to communicate to him effectively about their growing fear
of the local Government at St. Kitts.

Four days later, on January 31,
some people from PAM came to
Anguilla
to make speeches
praising the Anguillans for their anti-statehood stand. Billy Herbert came and
so did two of his party's executives. They held meetings at three spots on the
island and were very enthusiastically received. The Anguillans had decided on
their path already, but they found it nice to hear there was somebody else on
their side.

Though not exactly. PAM and the
Anguillans were united in opposition to Bradshaw, but the Anguillans had
already gone a giant step beyond PAM, as those signs had demonstrated a week
before. PAM wanted a broader range of local government in the separate units of
the state;
Anguilla
wanted to get out of the state
entirely. In fact, the only thing all Anguillans have ever agreed on, agree on
now, or are likely to agree on in the future, is that they want nothing to do
with Robert Bradshaw or the state he leads.

Well, almost all. Peter Adams, the
only Anguillan actually plugged in to the Government in St. Kitts, continued to
believe much longer than most other Anguillans that some sort of compromise
could be worked out. PAM and Peter Adams were the moderates in this dispute,
with Bradshaw and the St. Kitts Government and the British Government the
extremists frozen on the one side and the mass of the Anguillan people the
extremists frozen on the other side. As in most situations where passions
really run high, it was ultimately the moderates who got the worst of it.