Westlake, Donald E - NF 01

by Under An English Heaven (v1. 1)

  Two things had led him to this impression. The first was a London Times report that "Britain was determined not to negotiate with Mr. Webster." It went on: "What is more, sources close to both Mr. Kerr and Mr. Cecil Greatorex, another senior British official in the area, said that every effort will be made to discredit Mr. Webster in the eyes of his people."

  Just after reading that, Webster was told Commissioner Way was looking for him. He didn't wait to find out what Way wanted. In fact nobody seems to know what Way wanted.

  Webster spent six days in the wilderness of Manhattan. During that time the Anguillans never ceased to bedevil Tony Lee. When he tried to enter his office on the day after Webster's flight, a crowd of demonstrators blocked his path. The New York Times reported:

  Several hundred angry Anguillans prevented the British Commissioner, Anthony Lee, from entering his office here today . . . The tall phlegmatic representative of the British Crown beat a quick retreat after receiving several blows. But he refused to force the issue . . . This morning, about 400 persons gathered in front of the building with signs demanding that Mr. Lee leave the island . . . Although warned of the crowd, Mr. Lee appeared an hour later in a green Volkswagen. The only security forces present were unarmed London policemen who could not prevent the crowd from surrounding the car.

  Mr. Lee received some roughing up, but was uninjured. His car, however, was dented on the hood and roof. Two policemen received slight injuries. One was hurt in the hand when he attempted to wrest a bicycle pump from a woman who was beating him with it.

  Mr. Lee went back to his little white house overlooking the sea ... He acknowledged that the situation had deteriorated. Asked what he would do if the situation did not calm down, Mr. Lee answered, "That of course is the obvious question."

  Another obvious question, considering Lee's background with the island and the events of the preceding three days, was how he could go on to what he said next: "Mr. Lee insisted that the demonstrators did not represent majority opinion on the island and that they had been goaded into action by a small group with extreme views."

  By Monday, Lee was getting snappish. Ronald Webster and Jerry Gumbs had been getting a great deal of publicity and sympathy at the United Nations, and on Monday Ronald Webster became the second Anguillan in history to be "Man in the News" in The New York Times. The same paper also reported that back on Anguilla, "Mr. Lee said he had seen 'with my own eyes' young men going around exhorting people to demonstrate against him. He described them as hoodlums."

  And the same paper quoted a "vehement" young Anguillan woman as saying, of Tony Lee, "He just has to go. We won't eat him or shoot him. We have nothing to shoot him with."

  In New York, Ronald Webster was saying, "We are depending on the United Nations as a young child on its mother."

  The next day, Tuesday, Lee took a page from Ronald Webster's book and reversed his field. "I consider Mr. Webster has done a great service for Anguilla," he announced. "He has put the island on the map. He has given Anguillans dignity. If people make enough noise something will happen."

  Much will happen. Suddenly Lord Caradon announced that he would go to Anguilla at once to "make an assessment of the situation."

  "I'm sure he will help us," Ronald Webster said.

  Lord Caradon later described his involvement with Anguilla to me this way: "I'm the only Permanent Representative of the United Nations who is not an ambassador. I am a Minister of my Government, so I can go in that capacity. So I went down there, and we had a couple of noisy days, and wrote out an agreement together after a long discussion. And it was a perfectly sound agreement, the terms of it are well known, and it's been an agreement which has in fact been worked since then. What's the answer? That we should—the British and the Anguillans should—work together; why not? And we want a period of constructive cooperation. Oh, yeah? Okay. Well, then it went bad a bit after that, because very shortly after that Mr. Ronald Webster denounced the agreement. I had to go down a third time and we had these discussions with him and his remarkable gathering of his committee, all of them men of outstanding—character. And we had worked out together over these three meetings, as far as I'm concerned, an understanding. That's all."

  Actually, it was a bit more complicated than that. But Lord Caradon's skill is to smooth complications, which is why he was the one going down there in the first place. He told me, "The great quality of the West Indians whom I know—I'm more of a West Indian than an Englishman really, I spent about ten years of my life in Jamaica, I was there as what they call Colonial Secretary, acted as Governor, then went back for seven years as Governor of Jamaica—the great quality of the West Indians is their individuality. You sit down with those fifteen or twenty members of that committee, every one of them is a highly developed personality. Each different. There's no uniformity amongst these chaps. They've got a fascinating capacity to express themselves. I fell in love with the people of Anguilla. I do it naturally, because I fell in love with any West Indians."

  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."

  From Puerto Rico, Webster went on to New York to confront Lord Caradon, who agreed to go back to Anguilla later that week. But before he got there, things on the island took —incredible though it may seem—a turn for the worse.

  The British suddenly decided to deport Dr. Spector, since he was an osteopath and osteopathy is not an adequate medical credential under British law. Why the British decided to throw a burning stick on that particular sheet of gunpowder at that particular moment defies, like everything else in British behavior toward Anguilla, rational analysis.

  It was also defied by the Anguillans. They met Dr. Spec-tor and his deporters at the airport, took the doctor away with them, and hid him elsewhere on the island. This was not done without scuffling, and during the scuffle Commissioner Way knocked a microphone out of the hand of BBC correspondent Barry Sayles and ordered him to leave the island. Sayles declined and lodged a formal complaint against Commissioner Way. So now everybody was fighting with everybody.