Westlake, Donald E - NF 01 (31 page)

The normal state of
Anguilla
is apoplectic. Very soon after the departure of Tony Lee,
Anguilla
returned to normal.

One of the first things the British
gave
Anguilla
after the invasion was a radio station,
and very soon Ronald Webster delivered a speech over it. His talk rambled a bit
but said in part, "We are not thinking of complete independence anymore,
but to work in association directly with the Commonwealth ... I am with you and
will remain with you until I am no longer required . . . Friends and fellow
Anguillans, have confidence in me. I have nothing to hide from you, so do not
sell your leader's birthright for a dish of porridge. Remember what Judas did
to Christ. So be wise, be fair-minded, be determined, be honest, be brave, be
true, be sincere, be calm and beware of false prophets and wolves in sheeps'
clothing." He also said, "Humility has been my lifetime companion."

The split between Ronald Webster
and Atlin Harrigan was by now complete. Barely an issue of the
Beacon
appeared without some criticism of Webster. For his own part Webster was trying
to unload Harrigan from the Council. That didn't work so he did the next best
thing; he doubled the Council size to fourteen members, with the additional
seven being mostly Webster supporters.

Things were getting rougher for
Harrigan, as his July 12 editorial shows:

I
have purposely refrained from printing many things that wo
uld
make some of us look like idiots . . . For this I am in the damnedest position;
being an editor, it is my duty to comment on anything I see fit. I do not claim
to be an expert, but rather far from it. But certainly I can see a pitfall . .
. Every time I attempt to recommend something that conflicts with Webster's
ideas, it is used as if I am the enemy and not Bradshaw . . . Someone other
than I would probably pack up the whole thing and leave the problem to the Hot
Heads. No consistency whatsoever.

Some days Webster felt like getting
along with the new Commissioner, John Cumber, and some days he didn't. Cumber
knew that Webster could chop his head off just as he'd chopped Lee's head
off—the Commissioner had the
responsibility
for keeping things quiet,
but only Webster had the choice whether quiet would reign or not—and it was no
real surprise when Cumber, on the twenty-fifth of July, resigned as
Commissioner. "At his own request for personal reasons," the official
announcement read.

Who would
Great
Britain
find to take Cumber's place? Who
would
want
a job like that?

The new man turned out to be
Willoughby H. Thompson, known as Tommy Thompson, who had been at one time
Administrator of the
Falkland Islands
and most recently
Acting Administrator of the
British Virgin Islands
. A
trim, tight, neat, controlled man of fifty, Tommy Thompson became the third
Commissioner of Anguilla in three months, and he lasted nearly two years. When
he left, in March of 1971, it was not as a result of pressure from any
direction at all; he'd finished his job there and that was that.

Tommy Thompson s job was to oversee
the belated development of the island, guide and guard the Anguillans as they
moved at last into the twentieth century, and keep things quiet on the island.
The way he did it—and the only way it could have been done—was by legitimizing
the actual leadership, which meant primarily Ronald Webster and Wallace Rey.

The effect of this was that the
pro-British faction on the island was undercut and betrayed by the British.
There was peace on the island, there was development, Ronald Webster didn't
chop Tommy Thompson's head off, and the whole crisis was, as the diplomats say,
defused. But in the process
Great Britain
broke faith with the only group on the island that had never broken faith with
her.

The last paratroops were removed
from the island on September 14, barely a month after Thompson's arrival.
"At least the cowboys-and-Indians stage is out," he told reporters.
And so it was; Ian Ball reported in the
Daily Telegraph
, "The farewells
will be handled with proper British official decorum, not the turbulent scenes
that usually take place whenever anything of a political nature occurs at
Anguilla
's
airport. The Royal Engineers have put up a wire-enclosed area beside the
terminal's hutment and hung on it a large sign reading: Waving base.'"

Thompson was obviously the right
man for
Anguilla
if he could get the islanders into a
Waving Base to wave bye-bye to the paratroops.

The defusing had worked in both
directions. In a flag-waving piece in the British Sunday newspaper
The
People
on August 31, there were these quotes: A policeman: "These
people are basically nice—really beautiful people. They are honest to a
fault." Colonel Norrie Giles, commander of Force Anguilla: "We're
making the best of our time by doing what
⁰
we can for the island.
We're delighted that our arms are kept in the armoury and not on men's
shoulders." Ronald Webster: "I realise that the troops and police are
protecting us rather than occupying us." Tommy Thompson: "My job here
is made somewhat easier than it might have been by tremendous cooperation from
the islanders." And the author of the piece, Trevor Aspinall, describes
this encounter with Ronald Webster: "As I left Mr. Webster, he dashed back
inside his bungalow for a cloth and returned to clean the windscreen of my car.
'My pleasure,' he said. 1 think you will find that all our people would do the
same.'"

Ronald Webster knows a great secret
of public relations: no matter what attitude you're going to show, it's impossible
to lay it on too thick.

Wallace Rey was Chairman of the
Public Works Committee again, and the day after Tommy Thompson was sworn in as
Commissioner there was a road-opening ceremony for a mile-long stretch of paved
road just completed by the Royal Engineers, with local help. Wallace Rey cut
the white ribbon and made the first speech; he'd never been so respectable in
his life. Thompson made the second speech, in which he called Rey a
"distinguished guest," and said, "It is his day-he is our Public
Works man." He also said, "As I stand here with Mr. Webster this
afternoon, we represent Her Majesty and
Anguilla
and we
at this very moment are rather at the heart of things." He spoke of the
value of teamwork and finished, "I know, Mr. Webster, you agree with that,
don't you?" Mr. Webster did.

With the British having allied
themselves with the opposition, Atlin Harrigan and his
Beacon
were
finding the pressure increasingly stiff. A Webster supporter, Clive Smith, had
presented a petition from Harrigan's constituency requesting Harrigan's removal
from the Council, but when it was charged that Smith had signed a lot of the
names himself—including Harrigan's brother's name—that attack subsided.

Lord Shepherd visited
Anguilla
in November, and the
Beacons
comment on the visit was in the form of an
imaginary dialogue between two Webster supporters:

Ted:
What do you think of L. S. visit?

Fred:
I can hardly say. Remember he did not think very much of R. W. in
Barbados
in 1967? And still they were all good friends on L.
S. visit?

Ted:
Yes, I agree, even brought out their wives, too.

Fred:
One thing got me kind of worried-

Ted:
What is it?

Fred:
You know L. S. saw our leader privately and after all L. S. has now sent in the
Magistrate who was- held up in
Antigua
for some three weeks.

Ted:
What's wrong with that?

Fred:
Remember that R. W. did not want the Magistrate that would be appointed under
the West Indies Act of 1967?

Ted:
Yes, I see your point now. They kept the Magistrate in
Antigua
while L. S. got our R. W. to agree, then sent him here.

Fred:
Now, you are thinking, old boy. But how will R. W. now explain this to the
people?

Ted:
He don't have to explain it.

Fred:
Ah! But if he doesn't the people will start grumbling, and with the Beacon
taking up every little thing it is bound to get out.

Ted:
A pity they carried back the Beacon's press when they took it last March.

Fred:
I hear they are making moves to close it down again but can't get no support on
it.

Ted:
They should be very careful about who they tell these things to . . .

Fred:
The other thing is that R. W. should be very careful; some of his keen
supporters are now grumbling, too . . . Then again, he is buying up all this
land from the poor people all over the island instead of giving them good
advice not to sell, because someday their children will have to buy it back at
exuberant prices.

Ted:
Come to think of it, I agree with you . . .

Fred:
Have you noticed this commissioner is very nice to our R. W.? He keeps him
informed about everything and our R. W. is very happy.

Ted:
He will have to keep his eye open, though. These British boys are smart . . .

Fred:
What do you think about the Civil Servants planning to strike?

Ted:
That is something that has to be watched very carefully ... It is good our R.
W. tried pushing them around, but he has to be careful and not overdo it . . .

Fred:
Good thing about it is, how they supported the British when they came in, and
now we and the British are hands and gloves with each other.

In January of 1971, when the
announcement was made that Thompson would be replaced, the
Beacons
editorial comment was: "Mr. Thompson as Commissioner has done the job he
was instructed to do and should be credited for so doing; that is to say, he
has been able to keep the island quiet, he has been able to work with the more
militant of the Council Mer-bers without many problems, though many times to
the dissatisfaction of others and good government . . . We are not criticizing
the Commissioner for the lack of proper administration, for we firmly believe
that he is capable of administering if given the opportunity. The stumbling
block in his way was due to the gross misunderstanding of some Anguillan
leaders and the need to win their loyalty."

I talked with Tommy Thompson on
Anguilla
in March of 1971, just before his departure, and he gave it as his opinion that
Ronald Webster would soon be starting a newspaper of his own and that then the
Beacon
would wither and die. He smiled when he said it.

Advice:
the smallest current coin.

—Ambrose Bierce

A month after the invasion, the
Conservative leadership in the House of Commons attempted to censure the
Government for its recent actions in
Anguilla
. On
April 23, 1969
, Sir Alec Douglas-Home
made the motion: "That this House deplored the inept handling by Her
Majesty's Government of the situation in
Anguilla
."

The Opposition had by now marshaled
its facts and was ready to follow Government spokesmen through entire groves of
inaccuracy and vagueness. The debate didn't precisely rage, but feathers were
ruffled, and at the end the motion was only narrowly defeated: 286 to 239. Not
a comfortable margin for a Government in power.

Sir Dingle Foot had suggested a
Commission of Inquiry and one was formed at the end of May. Michael Stewart
announced its formation to Parliament and gave the terms of reference the
Commission would be starting with. It may be hard to believe, but the terms of
reference
began
by saying, "Recognizing the fact that the
island
of
Anguilla
is part of the unitary
State of
St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla
. . ."

Is it necessary to know any more
about the terms of reference? One can already guess, sixteen words in, the only
recommendation the Commission can possibly come up with at the end of its
inquiry. But just to drive the point home, the second of the three terms of
reference read, "Having regard to the resolution concerning Anguilla
adopted unanimously at the meeting
of Commonwealth
Caribbean Heads of Government . . ." Which was the resolution calling on
Great Britain "to confirm the territorial integrity of St.
Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla."

The third term of reference?
"Bearing in mind the problems and consequences that might arise from
further fragmentation in the
Caribbean
. . ."

Given those terms of reference, the
truculence of Colonel Bradshaw, and the explosiveness of the Anguillans, it's
no surprise that it took six months to find somebody to head the Commission. At
last a man with the right credentials agreed to take on the job. His name was
Sir Hugh Wooding and he was a former Chief Justice of Trinidad-Tobago.

Having a Chairman, the Commission
now quickly assembled the rest of its panel, none of them British, and they
prepared to begin their inquiry.

The Commission's terms of reference
caused immediate trouble on
Anguilla
. Webster announced
that the agreement with Lord Caradon had been breached and that he would refuse
to cooperate with either the Wooding Commission or Tommy Thompson. Thompson
soon soothed him, assuring him that the British had no intention of reneging on
any of their most recent promises, and after the Island Council had hired a
lawyer from
Barbados
to advise them, Webster sulkily settled down again.

Atlin Harrigan was also troubled by
the Commission. In an editorial in the
Beacon
of January 31, 1970, he
wrote, "If the hands of the Commission are tied within the terms of
reference as agreed between H. M. G. and Bradshaw, then we do not see how these
Vise men' will come up with a solution."

They didn't. The Commission spent
the spring of 1970 taking testimony on
Anguilla
, on St.
Kitts, in the
United States
,
in
Great Britain
,
and anywhere else that anybody wanted to tell them anything, and then retired
to consider what they'd been told. The Report was at first scheduled to be
released in August but there was a delay, and it gradually became apparent that
the Commission had conscientiously done what the terms of reference had
required, which was to recommend that
Anguilla
go back
with St. Kitts. The British held off the storm as long as possible but finally
released the Report on
November 6,
1970
.

The Wooding Report is in two parts.
The first part describes the situation in
Anguilla
and
the history of the rebellion, and while it tends to smooth over the rough spots
it's basically *a sound and sensible recital of the facts. The second part considers
the potential solutions and opts for the return of
Anguilla
to St. Kitts, sugar-coated by thick icings of British aid and an extensive
Local Council.

The Anguillan response was obvious
and swift. The
Beacon's
editorial, titled "Wooding Report—A Waste,"
began, "It is with a feeling of utter disbelief and a sense of having been
badly let down that Anguillans at long last receive the news of the Commission
report."

Ronald Webster issued a statement
to his people that said, in part, "My only comment is—these proposals are
nothing to worry about! We've been assured that the British Government are not
going to force us to accept any administration we do not want ... In the
meantime, I call on everyone to continue to cooperate with H. M. Commissioner,
and the British Personnel. They are our friends . . . Please be calm, do not
get excited . . . May God bless your dear hearts and keep your spirit primed
and matured." And the Anguilla Council formally rejected the proposals.

As Atlin Harrigan wrote in the
Beacon
, "Any recommendation that means a return of
Anguilla
to the State of
St. Kitts-Nevis
would only go into effect with the vast majority of Anguillans wiped off the
face of this earth."

Great
Britain
never formally rejected the Wooding
Report. But she never tried to do anything with it either. By the time the
Report was published, there had been an election in
Great
Britain
, Government had changed from Labour
to Conservative, and the entire British cast had changed.

Luckily, the new people weren't
going to start the mess all over from the beginning. Immediately after
publication of the Report, M.P. Neil Marten (author of
Theirs Not to Reason
Why
) asked for reassurance "that any settlement of this problem must
be acceptable to the Anguillans." Mr. Joseph God-ber, Minister of State
for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, replied: "Yes. I am happy to give
that assurance. It is our intention to seek to get agreement for the solution
of this problem ... we would not seek to impose a solution in any way, but
would seek to get one by agreement."

Which meant Colonel Bradshaw. He
was invited to
London
in November
of 1970 to talk things over, but of course he was the one party involved who
liked
the Wooding Report.

The talks between the British
Government and the Colonel eventually broke down, as they had to. At the finish
the Colonel put in one more request for arms, but once again the British turned
him down, even though he'd explained he needed the rocket launchers and armored
trucks for "internal defence."

Before leaving
London
,
Bradshaw spoke to reporters and assured them it was untrue that he had
threatened to make the Anguillans accept the Wooding Report by starving them
out until they surrendered. All he had to offer the Anguillans, he said, was
"love and amity."

But what about the rocket
launchers? What about the armored trucks? Well, he really needed them. As he
told the reporters, "All sorts of funny things are happening in the
Caribbean
."

Reason and judgment
are the qualities of a leader.

—Tacitus