Westlake, Donald E - NF 01 (27 page)

London
Evening Standard
,
March 19, 1969

What if they had killed that boy?

He had merely
considered him a humbug in a Pickwickian point of view.

—Charles Dickens,
The
Pickwick Papers

The world's press was not kind.
"
What a Laughing
Stock
" was the headline on the
London
Daily Mail's
story announcing that the invasion was about to start. And on
the very day of the landings,
The New York Times
was running an
editorial titled "No Case for Invasion," which began,
"Developments on
Anguilla
have been bizarre and
baffling but they do not justify a British military seizure of the tiny eastern
Caribbean
island. Frigates loaded with paratroopers are
en route to the island, but an outright order to invade would reflect no credit
on British arms or judgment."

The London
Times
, under the
heading "A
Caribbean
Tragi-comedy
," wrote, "In the near future, perhaps today, we
shall possibly be treated to the rather absurd spectacle of British
paratroopers descending on the rebel' island of Anguilla, like a re-run of a
jerky-film of colonial times." And continued, "What has happened so
far has drifted from inattention to muddle and to farce; it should be pulled
back from the brink of tragedy."

The next day
The New York Times
remarked, "The British lion has subdued the Anguillan mouse that roared,
without spilling any blood. That is one of the few credit marks earned by any
of the parties . . ." And, "Skeptical outsiders will expect early
evidence to support the notion that the real enemy here is some mafioso
descendant of Captain Kidd."

Nabil Zaki, a columnist in
Cairo
's
Al-Akhbar,
c
alled the invasion "a bloody comedy
reminiscent of the age of gunboat diplomacy," and the
Nairobi
Daily Nation
said, "The prospect of British might deployed against the
tiny
Caribbean
island
of
Anguilla
is more than faintly
ridiculous. The situation is a cartoonist's dream."

African newspapers generally
compared the British reaction in
Anguilla
to the British
reaction in
Rhodesia
,
and were not amused. In
Lagos
,
Nigeria
,
which has problems of its own, the
Daily Sketch
said, "
Britain
could be rightly accused of using double standards as long as it suits her
interests to do so. Is the world now to understand that
Britain
is not opposed to the use of force so far as
Anguilla
is
concerned, while it still insists that force cannot be used in the case of the
Rhode-sians?" And in
Kampala
,
Uganda
,
The People
, the ruling party's official newspaper, said, "When a
handful of white racists in
Rhodesia
defied
Britain
and set up a racist regime to rule the black millions,
Britain
stepped aside like the toothless bulldog she was said to be."

Great
Britain
had after all been faced with just
the two UDI's (shorthand for Unilateral Declaration of Independence, which in
turn is longhand for revolt) in the nineteen-sixties, and they were
Anguilla
and
Rhodesia
.
Comparisons were inevitable.

Other comparisons were more
vicious. The
Chicago
Tribune
observed, "British valor has, at one stroke, wiped out the stain of
Dunkirk
,
Singapore
and other
debacles of British arms of recent memory."

"Brute Farce and Ignorance
" was a headline
in the
London
Sunday Times
,
and the
London
Evening News
headlined its invasion story "
This 'Wag the Flag and Flog the Wog'

Farce
." (In this story, by Stephen
Claypole, reference was made to Whitlock's Mafia: "From the way Mr.
Whitlock spoke I expected to find the island crawling with dark-jowled mobsters
prowling the island with violin cases under their arms.")

Time
magazine's headline on
its invasion piece was "
Britain's
Bay of Piglets
," and
Newsweek's
was "
The Lion That Meowed."

New Statesman
: "High Wind in
Anguilla
."
Spectator:
"War of Whitlock's
Ear."

But this wasn't the only reaction.
Like a man adjusting his tie in an avalanche, there were reporters prepared to
behave as though
Anguilla
were simply another sensible
action in a calm and rational world. Two days after the invasion, Charles
Douglas-Home, Defence Correspondent for the
London
Times,
wrote a piece on
Anguilla
from the standpoint
of military medicine, titled "
Actions That Save Lives
." In it he wrote, "Our
natural relief at the bloodlessness of Operation Sheepskin might lead us to
forget one of the most important officers in the
Anguilla
expedition—the medical officer. The fact that he has not had to tend battle
wounds may be welcome both to him and to us, but there are many other most important
aspects of his role in the operation which seldom receive recognition."
The article then went blithely on to count the angels on the head of the pin.

The next day the
London
Times
ran another editorial that counted angels in a different fashion. In
closely packed and utterly impenetrable reasoning, it dealt with the legal
justifications for the invasion, worrying them like
The People's
toothless bulldog gumming a bone. It began, "The Anguilla (Temporary
Provision) Order 1969 is likely to be discussed in the House of Commons on
Monday. There are indeed a number of points about its propriety and even its
legality on which the Foreign Secretary will no doubt wish to offer
elucidation."

The
Times
editorial also
said such crystalline things as:

In
law the Government are covered by the later clause 18 (1) which empowers the
Secretary of State to issue a certificate saying that in the Government's
opinion . . . Yet when one looks at clause 3 . . . though the question whether
an Order in Council goes beyond the power of the original Act is one the Courts
can consider . . . Parliament must examine whether the order is not illegal,
because ultra vires, as well as unjust, and should ask whether the original
action of the Government was not also illegal as well as absurd.

But deadpan reportage reached its
apex in the following item from the
Daily Telegraph
for March 20, the
day after the invasion: "It seems most unlikely that any campaign medal
will be issued for the operation in
Anguilla
."

The House of Peers, throughout
the war, Did nothing in particular,
Ancf
did it very well.

—W. S. Gilbert,
lolanthe

And what of Parliament, through all
this? What was going on in the House of Commons before, during and after the
invasion?

Before. On March 18, Michael
Stewart, the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, was asked
by various Conservative M.P.'s to tell the House what was going on, and explain
these invasion rumors in the newspapers, and he said, "I shall be making a
statement on Anguilla later this week." Since this was less than
thirty-six hours before the invasion—a fact he didn't mention—it was a pretty
safe bet he would be making a statement later that week, but a statement made
after
an invasion wasn't what his questioners had in mind.

M.P. Stanley Henig pointed this out
the next day, the nineteenth, very few hours before the invasion: "It
would be most unfortunate if
Britain
were involved in a military intervention overseas and the House of Commons
would only be presented after the event with a
fait accompli."

Other M.P.'s, both Conservative and
Labour, chimed in. Edward Heath said, "The House of Commons seems to be
the last place to be informed about this." George Brown, a onetime Foreign
Secretary himself, said, "I do not press the Foreign Secretary for a
statement; he should be the judge of when he should make it. But will he take
into account that both he and I over a period of some years have refused to
resort to what we scornfully called 'gunboat diplo
macy'
in issues which had much more interest for Britain than this."

During. Stewart at last made his
statement, in which he talked about what had happened to Whitlock. "After
this reception, an armed minority decided that the proposals must not be
further discussed with the people of the island."

Since nobody had been killed, and
since nobody knew yet whether Stewart was telling the truth or not, the
discussion mostly centered on the legality of the invasion. If St.
Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla was an independent nation, hadn't the
United
Kingdom
just invaded a friendly nation and
muscled into that nation's civil war?

The Mafia was mentioned, and
Stewart began to backpedal from that one. "As to the use of the word
'Mafia,' I think this is an exaggerated term. I draw attention to the phrase
which I used, 'disreputable characters.' They were disreputable characters, and
had arms."

Conservative M.P. Nigel Birch asked
Stewart, "Will you convey to the Prime Minister the congratulations of the
House on at last taking on somebody of his own size?"

Stewart said a remark like that
"illustrates the contrast between the greatness of the issues involved and
the littleness of the right honorable Gentleman."

Another M.P. suggested that Prime
Minister Harold Wilson was "a sheep in sheep's clothing."

It was left to George Brown to
mention
Rhodesia
,
indirectly, as he'd done the day before. Today he said, "How are we, on
the basis of the arguments you seem to use today, going at the United Nations
to answer those who demand that we should do exactly the same on exactly the
same grounds elsewhere?"

To which Stewart replied,
"Whenever you consider the use of armed force, you consider what the
results of it would be. An attempt to try to solve the
Rhodesia
question by force would have resulted in such a destruction of life and wealth,
and such bitterness throughout
Africa
, that the end we
all want in
Rhodesia
of a just regime for men of all colors would have been indefinitely
postponed."

To which Brown replied, "Are
we going to say we can do it where there is only a rusty gun?"

After. The tone the House would
take, once its surprise and relief were over and the Members had time to think
about things, was pretty well established by Mr. Goodhart, Conservative for
Beckenham, who said on the twenty-first, as reported in the London
Times
,
that "all M.P.'s were anxious that British forces on Anguilla should draw
every penny to which they were entitled. There was, for instance, two shillings
six pence a day payable for other ranks for
Arctic
or
tropical experiments. Clearly the
Anguilla
expedition
was a tropical one and in the nature of an experiment. He suspected the lesson
to be drawn from it was that it was far less expensive in blood and treasure to
invade one's friends than to get into serious conflict with one's enemies.
Would the troops on
Anguilla
be entitled to an
entertainment allowance?"

On the twenty-fourth, nearly a week
after the invasion,
Anguilla
was shoehorned into a
debate on the general subject of British foreign policy. The M.P.'s began by
questioning Whitlock about his experiences, and not showing much sympathy for
him. Mr. Martin: "What evidence has the honorable Gentleman actually
adduced which has been corroborated by other sources of these undesirable
elements before sending over two hundred parachutists to deal with them?"
Mr. Rose: "Will my honorable Friend in due course give an undertaking to
let the House have full details of these Mafia-like elements in
Anguilla
. . . ?"

Whitlock: "There will be a
debate on foreign affairs at a later stage today, and no doubt all those points
will come out during the debate."

Edward Heath, Opposition Leader,
said, "So far, however much we may have disagreed with some aspects of
policy or the implementation of policy, they can be fitted into a pattern, but
I think the imagination boggles at the task of doing that with the recent
operation in Anguilla." He then proceeded to raise six questions about the
handling of the
Anguilla
affair, covering the past, the
present and the future. Stewart replied with a quick gloss on the past, a
spirited defense of the present, and a promise of joy and contentment and
universal understanding in the future.

Several M.P.'s felt there were more
questions to ask. They included Sir Dingle Foot, the brother of Lord Caradon
(Hugh Foot) and uncle of
Private Eye's
Paul Foot. Sir Dingle Foot spent
most of his time arguing against federations—no two Foots seem to have the same
attitude about things—and concluded with a suggestion that a Commission of
Inquiry be put to work to sort the whole mess out.

Mr. John Hynd spoke mostly about
the imperfections of associated statehood, and said, among other things,
"This problem is one of the many Imperial chickens coming home to
roost."

Sir Cyril Osborne followed Hynd and
said, "In the earlier part of the rather long speech of the hon. Member
for
Sheffield
, Attercliffe (Mr. John Hynd)-"

"It was no longer than any of
the others," Hynd said.

Sir Cyril Osborne: "It lasted
twenty-five minutes."

Sir Cyril wanted to talk about
Rhodesia
and other matters. The debate ranged around the world for a while, to be
brought back to
Anguilla
by Viscount Lambton, who said,
"I think it is worth digressing for a moment upon the personality of Mr.
Bradshaw. This, again, is something which has been ignored. When I saw this
Prime Minister he struck me as being a man who was in very bad health indeed,
to put it mildly. He had the strangest delusions: he always supposed he was
about to be poisoned. He dressed up in fancy dress clothes; he parades around
the island; and he is served by men who really are not fit to be in any
Government in any country in the world."

The House of Commons would get the
range better a little later, but in this first long debate little was
accomplished. In fact, the whole day was best summed up early on, in the middle
of Mr. Heath's opening statement:

Mr. Heath
: There was no sign of the
Government's endeavoring to tackle what they must have realized to be very
fundamental difficulties in the relationships between
Anguilla
and St. Kitts.

Mr. Roy Roebuck
(
Harrow
,
East): On a point of order. Is it in order for the hon. Member for
Walsall
,
South (Sir H. d'Avigdor-Goldsmid) to be asleep during the speech by the right
hon. Gentleman his leader?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker
: That is a frivolous-point
of order.

Every hero becomes a bore at last.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Representative Men