Anguilla was first settled
in the year 1650 by runaway indentured servants from Barbados; and small
farmers, their servants, and slaves from St Kitts, escaping the heavy tobacco
taxes, imposed there to pay for the defence of that island against French invasion.
In 1666,
some sixteen years later, the leading figures among them formed themselves into
a self-appointed Executive Council and elected their own deputy governor.[1] For many years, this Council acted as an
informal legislature, judiciary, and executive for Anguilla. The power it exercised was not sanctioned by
any English, regional, or local statute or other law. By contrast, in every other Leeward Island,
Royal Patents were sent out from London for the appointment of a deputy
governor, an island Council to advise him, and an Assembly to make laws.
In
Anguilla, for some 175 years after the island’s settlement, there was no
lawfully constituted Assembly to make laws for the people. When in 1825 the first laws were passed
specifically for Anguilla, they were made by the Legislative Council of St
Kitts and Anguilla sitting in Basseterre in St Kitts. Such a degree of neglect by the colonial
authorities was unique in the West Indies.
The first legislature to be legally established in Anguilla, by which
the people’s representatives made laws for the island, came about as recently
as the year 1976, or 326 years after settlement.
The
earliest Anguilla Councils were self-appointed and were merely tolerated by the
colonial authorities in Antigua. In
later years, the Governor-in-Chief in Antigua invariably confirmed the local
appointees, and never interfered in the affairs of the Anguilla Council, as he
frequently did in the more prosperous and consequential colonies of Antigua, St
Kitts, Nevis, and Montserrat. He touched
on Anguillian affairs only when there was an appeal from a decision of the
Anguilla Council, which he would usually pass on to the Secretary of State in
London for a ruling, since he exercised very limited authority over the
Anguilla Council.
The result
was that, throughout this early period, the common Anguillian man and woman
endured the unregulated rule of their Council made up of local, invariably
white, planters, without the benefit of any real supervision by the colonial
authorities. There was no Assembly to
enact statutes under which the people could be governed. Under the colonial regime of the day, no law
enacted in one colony could apply in another.
The truth
is that Anguilla was too poor, and of no consequence to the colonial authorities
since it contributed nothing to the Crown to merit any expenditure of time or
money on its administration. The result
was that up until the year 1825, the Anguilla Council, in effect, acted as the
executive, legislative and judicial branches of the government of Anguilla,
without any formal constitutional or statutory authority.[2]
In the
absence of a legislature to enact laws for good government, a deputy governor
of Anguilla was obliged to rely for his authority on his personal standing in
the community, not to mention his physical prowess. An English historian, writing in 1707, nearly
sixty years after settlement began, described the settlers of Anguilla this
way,[3]
Their
business . . . was to plant corn, and breed tame cattle,[4]
for which purpose they brought stock with them.
They were poor and continue so to this day, being perhaps the laziest
creatures in the world. Some people have
gone from Barbados, and the other English Charibbee Islands, thither; and there
they live like the first race of men, without government or religion, having no
minister nor governor, no magistrates, no law, and no property worth
keeping. If a French author is to be
believed, . . . ’The island is not thought worth the trouble of defending or
cultivating it’.
Regular
periods of drought; frequent hurricanes; and a thin, poor, and unproductive
soil offered limited opportunities for growing the cash crops that flourished
in St Kitts and Antigua. The people were
further impoverished by the devastations brought by the wars between the English
and the French. Only the keeping of
small stock such as goats, and subsistence farming of such hardy crops as
maize, sweet potatoes, and pigeon peas, could ensure the survival of the
people. Fishing added some protein to
their diet. Goats were mainly sold for
cash in St Kitts and Antigua or were slaughtered on special occasions. The risky enterprises of privateering during
times of war, and the continuous smuggling among neighbouring islands, brought
into the island a limited amount of coin.
Laziness was no part of the hardy Anguillian nature. No one could prosper, far less grow rich, in
such adverse conditions.
As the
Governor-in-Chief said of the governor of Anguilla in a 1724 dispatch, “If his cudgel happens to be one whit less
than a sturdy subject’s, then good night, governor!” The result was that Anguillians lived, worked,
and died through the late seventeenth, the eighteenth, and the early nineteenth
centuries without the benefit of any legal system for their government.
In the
1730s, Anguilla’s reputation for lack of a judicial system and any form of
government was at its lowest point. In
1734, Governor-in-Chief William Mathew remarked on the lack of law and a
properly constituted method for its enforcement in Anguilla. He complained that he did not know what to do
with the inhabitants. “They live, he wrote, “like so many bandits, in open defiance of
the laws of God and men.”
The first
effort to create an Assembly for Anguilla to make laws for the island, then
classed among the Virgin Islands, was an initiative of Governor Mathew in
1734. As he wrote to the Committee for
Trade and Foreign Plantations, the people of Anguilla were in continuous
property disputes. In the absence of a court
system, he wrote, the stronger party always had the better title.[5] Some sort of Court was required for citizens
to have both a fair hearing and also a remedy against wrongs done to them. Additionally, there was no provision for the
trial of criminal cases. Offenders could
not be prosecuted. Governor Mathew gave
as an example a case of a person accused of murder and brought to St Kitts for
trial. There, he was tried and convicted
of murder. When he broke out of jail, he
could not be re-arrested as the Attorney-General advised that his trial in St
Kitts for an offence committed in the Virgin Islands was illegal. His effort at establishing both a court and a
legislature for Anguilla came to nothing.
For the
next seventy years until 1825, Anguilla continued to have no legally
established legislative or judicial system.
By the mid-eighteenth century, the Governor in Antigua appointed all
members of the Council as Justices of the Peace. A committee of them sat to hear petty complaints,
and imposed such penalties and fines and gave such decisions as seemed proper
to them. Appeals from such decisions of
the Council lay informally to the Governor in Antigua, but this right was
seldom exercised.
In the
year 1825, prolonged drought, regular hurricanes, and the long wars with the
USA and France, which ended only in 1815, combined to bring the Anguilla
planters to their knees. The British
blockade of trade with the enemy during the preceding 30 years devastated the
vital Anguillian privateering and smuggling industries, while the alternating periods
of droughts and hurricanes destroyed the small-stock, crops, and homes of the
islanders.
Their
economy having collapsed, the Anguillians submitted to pressure from London to
dissolve their Council and to be governed by St Kitts. London’s main interest in the union, as
evidenced in the correspondence of the Secretary of State with the
Governor-in-Chief in Antigua in the early part of the 19th century, was to have
some form of law-making power that would apply law to the Anguillians,
particularly the existing slavery amelioration laws and the coming Abolition
of Slavery Act.[6]
And, so, in
1825 the St Kitts Legislative Assembly passed the Anguilla Act to
provide for its laws to extend to Anguilla.[7] Anguillian planters who met the voting
qualification (ownership of 100 acres of land) elected one representative to
the St Kitts and Anguilla Assembly.[8] In this way, in the year 1834, the Slavery
Abolition Act of St Kitts was effective to bring an end to slavery in
Anguilla.
When the
Anguilla Revolution broke out in March 1967, Anguilla was a part of the
Associated State of St Kitts, Nevis and Anguilla. The legal system in effect at that moment was
the common law of England and the statutes of the Associated State. Anguilla in 1967 was not only an integral
part of the Associated State, but also shared institutions of the nine-country
Associated States, and the world-wide Commonwealth of Nations. Anguillians were fed up with rule from St
Kitts, and were afraid that associated statehoodship was a first step to
complete independence for the State. That
would permanently put them under the heel of the government of St Kitts. They preferred to be ruled directly from
Britain, and petitioned the FCO repeatedly to make this happen.
The
Anguilla Revolution was to fundamentally change Anguilla’s legal
framework. On 8 March 1967 rioters
allegedly burned Government House at Landsome Estate to the ground, and the St
Kitts-appointed Warden fled to Basseterre.
On 29 May, at a meeting in Burroughs Park,[9] the
crowd voted by a show of hands to expel the St Kitts policemen from the
island. They left the Park in
procession. They marched to Police
Headquarters and ordered the St Kitts police stationed in Anguilla to leave by
10:00 the following morning. On 30 May
the officers were advised that a ‘plane was ready to take them to St
Kitts. They were all disarmed and
expelled and sent back to St Kitts. From
that point on, all central government trappings were ended. The St Kitts Magistrate was no longer
permitted to visit Anguilla and to dispense justice in the Magistrate’s
Court. The High Court Judge from St
Kitts was no longer permitted to visit and to hold court in Anguilla as had
occurred every year since 1825, the year when Anguilla had submitted to rule
from St Kitts.[10] Only a limited number of laws passed by the
legislature in St Kitts were ever to be applied to Anguilla again.[11]
On 31 May
1967, the Anguillians established a Peace-keeping Committee to manage the
island’s affairs.[12] This Committee and its successor Councils
carried out all the executive functions of government. There was no attempt to set up a rival
legislature to the St Kitts House of Assembly.[13] The situation was not to change until the
British Parliament passed the Anguilla Act of 1971 and made provision
for the Commissioner to be able to make laws for the island. The result was that no substantive laws were
made in Anguilla until the year 1971.
The first
legal instrument of a sort to be passed in Anguilla after the Revolution began
was the referendum on secession from St Kitts adopted by the people at a public
meeting on 11 July 1967.[14] By this public act, Anguilla ceased for all time
to be administered as a part of the Associated State. A further step in legitimising the Revolution
was the adoption of a Constitution. The
Peace-keeping Committee recruited Professor Roger Fisher of Harvard University
to help with its drafting.[15] He produced an eleven-section Constitution
which provided for an Anguilla Council with full legislative and executive
powers. The members of the First
Anguilla Council were named in the in this Fisher Constitution.[16] They were to hold office until elections were
held not later than July 1968.
The
Peace-keeping Committee set about arranging the first elections under the new
Fisher Constitution. When nominations
closed on nomination day, 17 October 1967, five of Ronald Webster’s candidates
stood unopposed. They were declared to
be duly elected councillors.[17] They took their seats as the Second Anguilla
Council on 21 October.
In early
1968, the British sent an adviser, Tony Lee, to assist the Anguillians in
running the island’s affairs. He was to
remain for a period of one year. During
this time, the British government attempted to negotiate a settlement between
the Anguillian and St Kitts leaders that would preserve the integrity of the
Associate State. They failed to resolve
the crisis. The Anguillians were adamant
that they would accept nothing short of complete separation from St Kitts and a
reversion to colonial rule. The
Kittitians were equally adamant that the Revolution was illegal and that they
would accept nothing short of the agreement of the Anguillians to return to the
fold of the Associated State.
The
British government was caught in a quandary of its own making. The West Indies Act of the UK
Parliament of 1967 prohibited the UK government from imposing a solution.[18] The Act prohibited the UK from changing the
status of any part of an Associated State without the request and consent of
the State legislature. On 30 July new
elections were held for the Third Anguilla Council.[19] His year being up, Tony Lee left Anguilla on
6 January 1969. Up to this point, no
laws had been passed in or for Anguilla since the date of the commencement of
the Revolution.
The next “law”
to take effect in Anguilla was the 1969 Holcombe Constitution.[20] It was adopted by a show of hands in
Burroughs Park on 6 February 1969.[21] It provided for Anguilla to become an
independent Republic. There would be a
President and a Vice President elected nationally. There would also be an Assembly of nine
legislators, two from each of the three constituencies and five elected at
large. The date set for elections to the
legislature was 25 March 1969, while the President and Vice President were to
be elected on 3 April. When nominations
closed on 21 February, Ronald Webster was nominated unopposed and was declared
President of the Republic of Anguilla.[22] On nomination day only six candidates were
nominated, and they were similarly declared elected unopposed.[23]
On 11
March 1969, the British government envoy William Whitlock who had arrived in
Anguilla on a fact-finding mission was expelled. During the early hours of 19 March 1969 some
four hundred British paratroopers brought the Revolution to an end. Their invasion of the island was not opposed
by the Anguillians, and not a person was harmed. Tony Lee returned to govern the island as Commissioner
under a British Order in Council of 18 March.[24] The Holcombe Constitution was swept aside,
and the previous Third Anguilla Council was recognised as the duly elected
representatives of the people. This
invasion was made with the consent and at the invitation of the St Kitts
government, who expected the island to be returned to rule from Basseterre.
With the
change of government in London in 1971, the British administration gradually
became more sympathetic to the Anguillian cause. On 27 July 1971, the Anguilla Act of
the British Parliament came into effect.[25] It provided the framework under which the
British would administer the island.
Shortly after, on 4 August, the 1971 Constitution came into
effect.[26] It provided for a Legislative Council of
seven members and up to six nominated members.
No legislation was enacted in Anguilla during the year 1971.
In the
early part of 1972, the first laws for Anguilla made in Anguilla were enacted
under the provisions of the 1971 Constitution.
There were twenty-six laws in all, covering such matters as financial
administration,[27]
police,[28] council
elections,[29]
marriages,[30]
courts,[31] and
taxes.[32] These laws were made by the Commissioner “after consultation with the Anguilla Council”
but were not introduced into and debated in any legislative council in the
normal way. This was not a satisfactory situation,
and this early period was marked by disputes between the members of the
Anguilla Council and the British Commissioner.[33]
The first
general elections under the new Constitution were held on 24 July 1972. The Fourth Anguilla Council that resulted
found itself completely without any power.
Laws continued to be made by the Commissioner without reference to any
Legislative Assembly. From 1973, they
were made by the Commissioner “after
consultation with the Anguilla Council”.[34] The situation remained unchanged during 1974
and 1975. The Anguilla Council was
continually unhappy with the arrangement that gave the Commissioner total power
and control. The result was a series of
strikes and other civil unrest.
The
turbulence was not to be calmed until the British government agreed to
constitutional reform, and the 1976 Anguilla Constitution was made on 19
January and came into effect on 10 February 1976.[35] Anguilla was still legally part of the
Associated State of St Kitts Nevis and Anguilla but administered from
London. This Constitution provided for
the first time for laws to be made by the Commissioner “with the advice and
consent of the Assembly”. Laws were
to be introduced into the Legislative Assembly and assented to by the
Commissioner. These are laws as properly
so understood. They would truly have
been made with the consent of the representatives of the people.
The first
such “proper” law to be made by a legislative assembly turned out to be a
humble and insignificant one, now long forgotten. The Anguilla Fund and Financial
Administration (Repeal) Ordinance, No 1 of 1976 did nothing more than bring
back the old St Kitts Finance and Audit Ordinance of 1965 with such
modifications as were necessary to bring it into conformity with the
Constitution of Anguilla. It was passed
by the Legislative Assembly on 13 May 1976.
It commences with, what for a lawyer, are the magical words, “Enacted by the Legislature of Anguilla”.
Modern constitutional government had at
last come to Anguilla.
The
1976 Associated State-type Constitution was replaced in 1982 by Order in
Council by a fully-fledged colonial-style Constitution made under the
provisions of the Anguilla Act of the United Kingdom Parliament.[36]
This 1980 Act was passed when the UK government agreed with the governments of
St Kitts, Nevis, and of Anguilla that the Associated State would be ended. St Kitts-Nevis would go into independence as
the Federation of St Kitts and Nevis. Anguilla
would temporarily revert to colonial rule until such time as her people may
decide to go into independence. This is
the present Constitution, with subsequent amendments, under which Anguilla is
governed.[37]
6 April 2023
– Notes for a presentation to the UK Overseas Territories Speakers Conference,
Anguilla, 3 to7 April 2023, extracted from two earlier essays:
1
March 2007, “Law and the Anguilla Revolution” and
8
June 2018, “History and Evolution of the Court System of Anguilla”
[1] Abraham
Howell, Anguilla’s first deputy governor, in a patent preserved in the Anguilla
Archives stored at the Courthouse, describes himself as having been elected as
deputy governor in the year 1666.
[2] Anguilla
Council Minutes, 1819-1841, previously cited.
[3] John
Oldmixon, The British Empire in America (1708), Vol 2, p.264.
[4] The
term ‘cattle’ at the time included pigs, sheep and goats. It was probably this last which the settlers
brought to the island.
[5] CO
152/21: Mathew to the Committee.
[6] See
for example the various correspondence and dispatches at CO.407/1 between Lord
Bathurst and Governor-in-Chief Maxwell on the need for Anguilla to have laws.
[7] CO.240/16,
at folio 315: Act No 198. An Act to Authorise the Freeholders of the Island
of Anguilla to Send a Representative to the House of Assembly in the Island of
St Kitts (usually referred to as the “Anguilla Act”.
[8] In
Anguilla and the Leeward Islands, the property qualification was removed, and the
universal franchise was introduced by the Elections Ordinance of 1951.
[9] Later
renamed the “Ronald Webster Park”.
[10] From
sometime in the 1930s the Assizes ceased to be held in Anguilla and serious
Anguillian crimes were tried in St Kitts until the Anguilla Revolution: Per Dame Bernice Lake QC in a private
communication to the author.
[11] The Anguilla (Administration)
Order 1971, SI 1971 No 1235, section 15, provided that the statutes of the
Associated State made prior to its commencement date of 4 August 1971 should
have effect as laws of Anguilla. From
that date, any relevant and useful laws made in St Kitts after the date of the
Revolution and prior to the commencement date were adopted with any necessary
modifications as part of the law of Anguilla.
The ones that were not required were specifically repealed at various
times in the following years.
[12] The first members
consisted of Walter Hodge as chairman, Peter Adams, Atlin Harrigan, Alfred
Webster, James Baird, John Rogers, Clifford Rogers, Ronald Webster, Wallace
Rey, Camile Connor, Phillip Lloyd, Charles Fleming, Wallace Richardson, Mac
Connor, and Emile Gumbs.
[13] Ronald
Webster’s explanation was that the members of the Committee were convinced that
any laws passed by it would be illegal and unenforceable. They functioned by persuasion, so that, for
example, the customs officers at the ports agreed to collect duties at the
revised rate of one half of the prescribed amounts. The result was that there was no attempt to
amend the customs duties law or any other law during the time of the Republic
and until the Anguilla (Administration) Order of 1971 made provision for the
Commissioner to make laws for Anguilla:
Per Ronald Webster in a private communication to the author.
[14] Passed 1,813 to 5 in
favour of secession.
[15] Professor
Fisher’s involvement grew out of his connection with Professor Leopold Kohr
(1909-2004) who at the time was a lecturer at the University of Puerto Rico and
who started a ‘state founding action’ to draw the world’s attention to the
Anguilla crisis.
[16] They were Rev Leonard
Carty, Ronald Webster, John Rogers, Peter Adams, Walter Hodge, Emile Gumbs, and
John Hodge.
[17] They were Ronald
Webster, Wallace Rey, Hugo Rey, Collins Hodge, and John Hodge.
[18] The
West Indies Act, 1967 (1967 c. 4).
[19] This consisted of
Ronald Webster, Atlin Harrigan, Kenneth Hazel, Collins Hodge, John Hodge,
Wallace Rey, and Emile Gumbs.
[20] Jack Holcomb was a CIA
agent and something of a conman. He was
stationed at the time in Anguilla and at Mr Webster’s invitation advised the
Council.
[21] By
a margin of 1,739 to 4 votes.
[22] He chose as his Vice President
Campbell Fleming. His Cabinet was to
include John Webster, a former Secretary of Defence, as Secretary of State for
Domestic Affairs, while Jeremiah Gumbs was Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs.
[23] They were Winston
Harrigan, Lucas Wilson, Uriel Sasso, James Woods, Charles Fleming, and Mac
Connor.
[24] The
Anguilla (Temporary Provision) Order 1969, SI 1969 No 371.
[25] The Anguilla Act 1971,
(1971 c. 63).
[26] The Anguilla (Administration)
Order, 1971, SI 1971 No 1235.
[27] The
Anguilla
Fund and Financial Administration Ordinance, No 1 of 1972.
[28] The
Anguilla
Police Ordinance, No 3 of 1972.
[29] The
Anguilla Council Elections, No 4 of 1972.
[30] The
Marriage Validation Ordinance, No 8 of 1972.
[31] The
Court of
Appeal (Special Provisions) Ordinance, No 10 of 1972; and the Supreme Court
(Amendment) Ordinance, No 26 of 1972.
[32] The
Rum Duty
(Anguilla) (Amendment) Ordinance, No 13 of 1972; Boat Licensing (Amendment)
Ordinance, No 14 of 1972; Liquor Licensing (Amendment) Ordinance, No 15 of
1972; Export Duty (Amendment) Ordinance, No 16 of 1972; Stamp Act (Amendment)
Ordinance, No 18 of 1972; Vehicles and Road Traffic (Amendment) Ordinance, No
19 of 1972; Firearms (Amendment) Ordinance, No 20 of 1972; Public Pounds
(Amendment) Ordinance, No 21 of 1972; Anguilla Airport (Embarkation) Tax
Ordinance, No 24 of 1972.
[33] First Tony Lee, who had
to be replaced, then John Cumber, AC Watson, William Wallace, and later still
in David Le Breton, who remained in place until after the 1976 Constitution
came into effect.
[34] There were eight such
laws in all, including the Anguilla Roads Ordinance, No 5 of 1973; the Anguilla
Local Constables Ordinance, No 6 of 1973; the Accommodation Tax Ordinance, No 7
of 1973; and the Telecommunication Ordinance, No 8 of 1973.
[35] The Anguilla
(Constitution) Order 1976, (SI 1976 No 50).
[36] The Anguilla Act 1980,
c 67.
[37] The Anguilla
Constitution Order 1982, SI 1982 No 334.
