Prior to the year 1825, when Anguilla joined with St Kitts and
came under the jurisdiction of the St Kitts judicial system, Anguilla had no
legally established Court. A committee
of the Anguilla Council served as Justices of the Peace and imposed such penalties
and fines as seemed proper to them.
Appeals lay informally to the Governor in Antigua, but this right was
seldom exercised.
This was unusual in the West Indies at the time. All of the other colonies had legally
constituted courts, some of them since the first half of the seventeenth
century. By the time of the General
Assembly of the Leeward Islands of 1705, when the common law of England was
formally adopted by an Act, all of the islands except Anguilla had legally
established courts. The explanation for
Anguilla’s lack of a properly constituted court lies in the poverty of the soil
and the extremes of drought that the island regularly suffered.
The plantation economy never flourished in Anguilla. The sugar industry made a brief appearance in
the 1740s, but was extinguished by the American Revolution of 1776 and the
ensuing blockade of trade with the rebelling colonies that was enforced by the
Royal Navy. Even the deputy governor of
Anguilla functioned without a formal patent.
Every other governor and deputy governor was appointed by royal
patent. The leading planters of the
island always appointed the governor of Anguilla. As he would inevitably be the most powerful
planter in the island, he was in effect self-appointed. As one governor in Antigua reported to the
Committee of Trade and Foreign Plantations in London in late eighteenth
century, “If the cudgel of the governor of Anguilla be one whit lesser than one
of his subject’s, then ‘good night governor!’”
From the year 1825 the Chief Justice of St Kitts visited Anguilla
on board his sloop to conduct the Assizes periodically. Sitting with him on the bench were two local
JPs who assisted him as his assessors. Anguilla’s
judicial system changed with the judicial system of St Kitts to which it was
joined. By the year 1967 the colonies of
the Leeward and Windward Islands, after the break-up of the West Indies
Federation, were headed to independence like their elder brothers and sisters
in Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, and Barbados. They entered into the intermediate status of Associated States with Great Britain.
Associated Statehoodship
brought with it the West Indies Associated States Supreme Court. It had a short life in Anguilla. Within two years Anguilla was in rebellion
against its enforced marriage with St Kitts and Nevis. The Anguilla Revolution of 1967 was the first
successful armed revolt in the British West Indies. The thirteen members of the St Kitts police
force manning the police station were packed onto a LIAT airplane still dressed
in their pyjamas. The St Kitts judge was
jeered out of his courthouse and chased down the runway until he boarded a
waiting flight to take him back to St Kitts.
As is well known, the social welfare officer, Raphael Lake, was
appointed Magistrate by the Anguilla Council and functioned in that office
until he was replaced by the British administration after their invasion of the
island in 1969.
In 1971 the British Parliament passed the Anguilla Act,
which permitted Britain to separately administer that part of the Associated
State of St Kitts, Nevis and Anguilla.
Britain selected and paid for a Magistrate, a High Court Judge, and
three Judges of the Court of Appeal.
These were rubber stamped by the Judicial and Legal Services Commission
of the West Indies Associated States.
Appeal lay to the Privy Council, and at least one appeal went all the
way before Anguilla re-joined the West Indian judicial family. Several West Indians, most of them retired
judges, were appointed from time to time to act as Magistrates and High Court
judges in Anguilla in this way. They
included the late Elwyn St Bernard and Frank Field. Don Mitchell of St Kitts and Anguilla, Ena
Woodstock of Jamaica, and Patricia Mark of Grenada were among those appointed
as Magistrate. Long-serving clerks of
the court at this time included Mary Richardson, who on occasion in later years
was appointed JP and acted as Magistrate in emergencies, and Marge Connor,
still well known in the community.
By 1980, the People’s Action Movement party in St Kitts had
gained power by defeating the Labour Party in general elections. The administration of the new St Kitts-Nevis
premier, Dr Kennedy Simmons, negotiated with Britain for independence. The British agreed, on condition that
Sombrero was transferred to Anguilla from which they could more easily control
the light-house island and the sea approaches to the Panama Canal, and on
condition that St Kitts let Anguilla go.
By the year 1982, the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court, to give
recognition to the demise of the Associated States and their replacement by
independent Commonwealth Caribbean countries, had replaced the West Indies
Associated States Supreme Court throughout the region. The Anguilla Assembly passed the Eastern
Caribbean Supreme Court Act, and re-entered the fold of the regional
judiciary. From that time the
Magistrates and Judges of Anguilla have been appointed by the Judicial and
Legal Services Commission, and not just been rubber-stamped.
Prior to the Hurricane of 1955, the courthouse was situated on
the top of Crocus Hill in what was probably Governor Gumbs’ old home. The wooden structure was blown off, but the
masonry basement, including the cell, can still be seen alongside the large
ugly water storage tank in its yard. It
was only in 1964 that the Bradshaw administration replaced the lost
courthouse. One of the first buildings
that Wallace Rey built after he retired from the US base in Antigua where he
had worked since the War, was the new court house. Its magnificent reinforced concrete beams
that reach up from the foundations and arch up and over the roof to descend on
the other side made it one of the most imposing structures at the time on the
island. That courtroom served as the home
for the Anguilla Assembly, the Court of Appeal, the High Court, the Magistrates
Court, and the Juvenile Court. They all
shared the one-room premises without difficulty. Until recently, the Magistrates court sat on Thursday
mornings, the Juvenile Court on one Friday morning per month, if there was a
case to be heard. The High Court judge
visited from another island no more than once or twice a year for a month at
most. The Court of Appeal sat for a day
or two as needed.
By the late 1990s the old courthouse was no longer adequate to
serve as a multi-purpose building. The
tourism industry had fuelled an enormous growth in the economy, and crime and
other litigation had mushroomed. With
British financial assistance, a new building was constructed in the
administration grounds. It now consists
of the present three rooms we know. They
are the Magistrate’s Court, the High Court, and the House of Assembly. These will serve Anguilla for the foreseeable
future, but inevitably, in time, will come to seem in their turn to be
out-dated and in need of replacement. We
can but hope that that will be a long time coming. As we in turn achieve independence as our
neighbours have done, it will be time for us to make the funds for its
replacement available so that future generations will have the structures they
will require.
8 January 2004.
