On February 22, the day following his ambivalent meeting with the Anguillans, Henry Hall went back to St. Kitts to talk things over with Bradshaw and some other people, and the day after that he went back to Anguilla with eight statements from the central Government. These statements narrow in on the Anguillans' specific complaints much more than anything that had happened before in the 317 years of British rule.
The first two were simple reassurances concerning local political structures, but the next four all referred to the island's development:
3. Projects for Anguilla had been included in the Development Plan, including road improvements and the construction of a jetty, and they would be carried out accordingly.
4. A consultant having advised that due to the wide dispersal of housing it would be uneconomic to set up an electricity undertaking in Anguilla, the law would be amended to permit any person to supply power to his neighbors, and the Government would give five to ten years' notice before withdrawing such permission if it should thereafter propose to provide a public supply. [Electricity wouldn't be profitable for the Government, so they'll turn it over to private industry!]
5. Work had already begun under contract with Cable and Wireless to provide a telephone service, but delay had been occasioned due solely to the United Kingdom equipment manufacturers failing to keep their promised delivery dates; every effort would however be made to speed up delivery.
6. Canadian aid had been sought and promised for providing a supply of pipe-borne water, but distribution problems remained to be resolved—again because of the wide dispersal of housing.
Number seven explained why St. Kitts couldn't afford to do any more for Anguilla financially, and Number Eight would be baffling if I weren't prepared to explain it, which I am:
8. Policy reasons did not permit applications for licenses under the Aliens Landholding Ordinance to be dealt with otherwise than by the State Government, but any such applications would be given prompt attention.
The Aliens Landholding Ordinance said, in effect, that Anguillans could sell their land to one another all they wanted, but if they wished to sell land to an off-islander—a retired American pilot, for instance, or an English hotel builder—they had to get approval from the central Government on St. Kitts. The idea of this was that the central Government would have a chance to keep "undesirable elements"—such as the Mafia— from buying land on any of the three islands. However, the Anguillans claimed the Kittitian Government stalled forever in making decisions about applications, and that Kittitians attempted to dissuade prospective buyers from their Anguillan choices in order to sell them Kittitian land instead. The result was that sales to rich foreigners of homesites were well below the Caribbean average. The Anguillans suffered a loss of revenue not only in the immediate sale but also in the ongoing process of having a rich foreigner build a house and then live in it. For an island that had damn little to sell foreigners except land, this was a source of irritation, about which the Bradshaw Government proposed to do nothing except speed up the red tape in the applications. (The phrase "policy reasons" leads me to believe that British insistence on the status quo was back of this one, and that British distrust and dislike and envy of Americans was back of the insistence.)
The day after Mr. Hall brought these eight statements to Anguilla, the Anguillans held another meeting. Thirty-five people showed up and they decided they didn't care for the eight proposals.
The same day, just three days from statehood, Mr. Arthur Bottomley, the British Minister for Overseas Development, arrived in St. Kitts to join in the independence festivities. Two days later, he and his party, plus Paul Southwell, Bradshaw's Deputy Premier, all went to visit Anguilla and have a big Statehood Day celebration there. Bottomley, like Hall before him and Johnston before him, went smiling to Anguilla, expecting happy islanders and a jolly celebration.
Bottomley was met by the usual demonstrators with the usual signs. Being British, he personally was cheered as he stepped from the plane. Southwell, however, was roundly booed. Bottomley took this ill, and took up a loud-hailer to tell the Anguillans he intended to tour the island. They cheered. He said he intended to tour the island with Paul Southwell. They booed. He said he was going to tour the island with Paul Southwell. They booed louder.
Bottomley and Southwell got into a car together and proceeded to tour the island, and a group of young men trotted along on both sides of the car, banging on the roof. Because years of British neglect and Kittitian animosity had resulted in incredibly potholed and unfinished roads, the chauffeur couldn't drive fast enough to get away from the young men—a charming incident of biter-bit. The car toured the entire island, accompanied throughout by young men thumping on the roof. As one group tired of trotting along, another group would take over. The tour ended at the airport. Bottomley and Southwell and party gathered their dignity about themselves and left Anguilla.
The next day was February 27—Statehood Day. At four in the morning, Vincent Byron, the Warden—the St. Kitts Government representative on Anguilla—raised the new state flag in secret at his house, guarded by police officers. He was wearing pajamas at the time, and after hoisting the flag he yawned and went into the house for breakfast.
Independence had arrived.
They never would hear,
But turn the deaf ear,
As a matter they had no concern in.
—Jonathan Swift, "Dingley and Brent"
4
Governor Sir Fred Phillips had received a report from the local-government expert, Peter Johnston, saying there had been no serious trouble on Anguilla. Mr. Henry Hall, sent to the colony by Mrs. Judith Hart two weeks later, where he was shouted at, shoved around and perhaps shot at, returned to England to claim there had been no disturbances. And now Mr. Arthur Bottomley, the British Minister for Overseas Development, having gone to Anguilla to help the islanders "celebrate" Statehood Day, and having received a variant on the same treatment as his predecessors, also returned home to insist that nothing had happened.
The Commonwealth European and Overseas Review, a publication of the Conservative Party, stated in July 1967, "Mr. Bottomley went to the islands for the Independence celebrations, and perhaps unwisely visited Anguilla where he was booed and jostled by a large crowd, but on his return to London refused to admit there was any trouble."
Driving around an island accompanied by relays of young men thumping on the roof of the car doesn't constitute trouble.
There is an old story about a man who owned a very stubborn donkey, and who was told that in a nearby town there lived a famous donkey trainer whose work was guaranteed. The owner got in touch with the donkey trainer, who arrived the next day at the owners farm, took a baseball bat from the trunk of his car, stepped in front of the donkey, and began to lambaste the animal backward and forward about the head. "For God's sake, stop!" the owner cried. "You'll kill him! What are you trying to do?"
"I am trying," the donkey trainer said, "to attract his attention."
On February 27, 1967, statehood had come to the former colony of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, and on Anguilla the new state flag had been raised in a guarded secret ceremony by the Warden, Vincent Byron, in his pajamas. He was in his pajamas once more on the night of March 8 when his official residence burned to the ground and he leaped out an upstairs window just in the nick of time. He left Anguilla the next day, and things were fairly quiet until the night of March 20, when shots were fired into the police station, manned as usual by the police from St. Kitts.
On the twenty-first of March, in London, Mr. George Thomas, speaking as Minister of State at the Commonwealth Office, and replying in the House of Commons to questions raised by the Conservative Opposition, said, "I am not aware that any difficulties have arisen since the inauguration of statehood."
He was perhaps also not aware of difficulties that had arisen shortly before the inauguration of statehood, when Robert Bradshaw had cut off Anguilla's mail and medical supplies in an effort to sof
ten the islanders' resistance. The mail, containing so much of the islanders' income, was a serious enough problem, but holding back medical supplies was even worse.
On the twenty-fifth of March, the police station on Anguilla was fired at again. And on the eleventh of April somebody shot at it a third time.
According to the Commonwealth European and Overseas Review, "Between February and the end of May, the Conservative Opposition asked a number of Questions in the House of Commons and Mr. Wood, the Conservative Front Bench spokesman, wrote a number of letters to Mrs. Hart. The Government refused to admit that there was any tension on the island."
On the fifteenth of April, Peter Adams wrote a letter to Robert Bradshaw, which said:
Sir,
It is with regret that I have to bring to you a matter which is of prime importance and not without some justification:
(1) People of Anguilla have no confidence in the Government of St. Kitts,-
(2) Anguilla is treated like a very distant poor relation and is in effect a neglected Colony of St. Kitts;
(3) Anguilla has not been given proper Local Government to suit her geographical position seventy miles away from St. Kitts with several French and Dutch territories between them;
(4) The Constitution is not being followed in the letter nor in the spirit;
(5) Complaints to the Government of St. Kitts and to the Government of Britain have not improved conditions and divorce seems imminent.
The majority of Anguillans think that the only course open now is to work towards secession from St. Kitts for it appears that Nature herself did not design them to be together; they want to be able to decide their own future.
Will you please take some action to rectify these matters?
I have the honour to be, Sir,
Your obedient servant, P. E. Adams, J P,
Member of Council for Anguilla
No response.
On April 20, six shots were fired at the small hotel owned by Mr. David Lloyd, one of the half dozen or so statehood supporters on the island. As the Wooding Report describes him, "Mr. Lloyd is a member of the St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla Labour Party and was once the elected member for Anguilla in the Legislative Council and later a member for the State with Mr. Bradshaw in The West Indies Federal Parliament."
Throughout April and May, gunfire was sporadic over the island, including another attack on the police station, and culminating on the twenty-seventh of May when more than fifty rounds of ammunition were fired into Mr. Lloyd's hotel. An Acting Warden, replacing Mr. Vincent Byron, was staying in the hotel that night, but the next morning he left and went back to St. Kitts.
Meanwhile, no medicine was getting through. The only doctor on the island, a Welshman, Dr. Jeffrey Hyde, wrote to the St. Kitts Government repeatedly throughout the winter and spring of 1967, warning of dwindling medical supplies and asking for the new shipment, and never got either the medicine or an answer. The only message he had from St. Kitts was a brisk note demanding to know why he was serving white sugar in the little local hospital instead of less expensive brown sugar. He wrote back and said he could buy white sugar cheaper in Puerto Rico than brown sugar in St. Kitts, and where are the medical supplies? No answer.
Things were obviously building to a climax. Obvious in Anguilla, that is; not so obvious in London, where the Government was still pleased to report that everything was just fine. Hundreds of shots had been fired but—possibly because no one had been killed—the British Government hadn't heard a one of them. How would Anguilla manage to fire her shot heard round the world?
The boom came on May 29. After the customs building was shot up, Peter Adams called a meeting at which it was decided to order the Kittitian police off the island.
It seems not to have occurred to anybody at this point-passions were high—that in throwing the police off the island they were doing anything more than throwing the police off the island; that is, that they were mounting a rebellion. They were still operating from the donkey-trainer theory: something is going to attract the British Government's attention.
The entire crowd of three hundred people from the meeting in the park went over in a body to the police station to tell the police their services were no longer required. They found Acting Assistant Superintendent Edgings, the officer in charge, and told him their decision. Edgings, understandably edgy, said anything that was all right with the Anguillans was all right with him. They gave him till ten in the morning to vacate the premises. Fine, he said. Fine.
By seven the next morning, a lot of Anguillans were waiting outside the police station to wish the Kittitians a brisk farewell. Nothing happened, no policemen emerged, and after a while two or three Anguillans began to take pot shots at the wall of the station.
At nine-fifteen, Acting Assistant Superintendent Edgings emerged to talk things over with Peter Adams and Ronald Webster. He told them he was waiting for a plane to land from St. Kitts to take himself and his sixteen men away. The Anguillans, not wanting to be disturbed by any more police from St. Kitts while getting rid of the ones they already had, said No to that. They'd already blocked the airport's one runway by parking cars and oil drums on it.
A plane was at that time circling the island, trying to land. It contained Kittitian policemen, but it is no longer possible to say for sure how many or exactly who they were. One report stated it was a "planeload" of policemen, intended as reinforcements. Another said there was only one policeman, John Lynch-Wade, the Kittitian chief of police, who had decided to come up by himself to find out what was going on.
The plane never got to land. Instead, Ronald Webster went to the airport and more or less commandeered a small plane to take the policemen off the island. Over the rest of the daylight hours, the police departed in dribs and drabs.
Leaving their weapons. They had originally planned on taking their armament with them, but the Anguillans told them, "No guns at all, they belong to us." As the Wooding Report puts it, "The policemen were surrounded by armed men who took away all the arms and ammunition, including an automatic rifle, and forced them to enter the plane under duress."
All the police eventually left, but not before dismantling the radio at the police station. This radio was not only An-guilla's only means of contacting the outside world, but was also the outside world's only means of contacting Anguilla. It was also the only means of contacting the lighthouse up on Sombrero Island. Under the circumstances, the reasoning of the Kittitian police seems obscure.
Now the Anguillans had the island to themselves. A group of them who had formed a Peacekeeping Committee put Ronald Webster in charge of island defense, since he had at one time been a corporal in the Netherlands Antilles Army. Webster posted guards at the airport, where the runway was blocked by cars and oil drums and grazing goats, and also set guards to patrolling the coast at night. Most of them were armed with conch shells with which to sound a warning if necessary; conch shells have been used for this purpose on Anguilla since the earliest settlement. A few of the guards also had walkie-talkies, of the kind found in toy stores, with which to make contact directly with Ronald Webster at his command post in the police station.
With the Kittitians gone and guards posted, the Anguillans settled back to see what would happen next. This was the same day, May 30, 1967, that Biafra declared her own independence from the Federation of Nigeria.
The following day, Robert Bradshaw sent telegrams to the Prime Ministers of Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and Trini-dad-Tobago asking for the loan of armed forces—and ships to transport them in—so he could put down the insurrection on Anguilla. He also made the same request of Great Britain. Everyone regretfully refused to take part in the affair.
But Bradshaw's actions weren't confined to asking everybody else for help; he also counterattacked. Mail delivery to Anguilla had virtually ceased back at the beginning of the year, but now Bradshaw ordered that all mail of any kind addressed to Anguilla should be held in the Basseterre Post Office. He froze all Anguillan
accounts in St. Kitts banks and declared an embargo on all financial transactions with Anguillans—no selling, no buying, no lending.
Finally—all this on the thirtieth of May—Bradshaw declared a state of emergency; not on Anguilla, on St. Kitts. The declaration gave him many extraordinary powers, the most unusual of which permitted burial without inquest or autopsy of anyone dying during the time of the emergency, which is to say, during the period that the Emergency Regulations were in force. All the Emergency Regulations would be found useful by the St. Kitts Government in the days ahead—including this one. •
Meanwhile, the Anguillans were gradually beginning to understand that the last swing of the bat had killed the donkey. Throwing the Kittitian police off the island had not after all been a simple difference in degree from shooting up the police station; it was a difference in kind. Bradshaw's actions of May 30 demonstrated this in Anguillan eyes much more than their own actions of the day before.
Anguilla, without thinking about it or planning it, had stumbled into open revolt.
But in spite of all temptations To belong to other nations, He remains an Englishman!
—W. S. Gilbert, H.M.S. Pinafore
5
The day after the Anguillans realized they'd rebelled—which is to say, two days after the rebellion-Peter Adams sent a telegram to U Thant at the United Nations. It outlined the problem and asked the "United Nations and men of goodwill everywhere for help."
Never has a rebellion turned so consistently to authority rather than from it. The rebel flag, flying at the airport and all over the island, was Great Britain's flag, the Union Jack.
Adams followed his message to U Thant with a personal visit, at the head of a delegation of four, to Robert Bradshaw. They met with Bradshaw, Paul Southwell and Eugene Walwyn, Bradshaw's Nevisian supporter who was now the Kittitian Attorney General. Adams handed over a memorandum stating the current Anguillan position—it said, among other things, "Anguillans are not prepared to accept NO for an answer"—after which he and his delegation went back home.
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