New Anguillian Morality

 

Anguilla is about to enter upon the year 2023 with government legalising casinos.  They are doing so with the usual caveats that it will be restricted only to “high-end” players.  Locals will not be permitted to use the facilities.  So, there will be no negative social impact on Anguilla.

The Premier has publicly said that this activity, once licensed, will provide much-needed revenue to support Anguilla’s social programmes.  He sees no problem with it.  The government has published that it expects to raise EC$5 million from this activity.  So, this APM administration is all on board with the idea of developing Anguilla as a casino-friendly destination.

This is not the first time that this initiative has emerged in Anguilla.  But it is the first time with the support of the island’s government.  When in the early 1980s a Sicilian hotel developer from St Maarten met with the then Chief Minister and put a proposal to him to cut off the western quarter of the island and turn it into a resort area to be occupied by his hotels and casinos, the Chief Minister called on the Chief of Police to take the developer to Blowing Point Port and to put him on a boat with instructions never to return to Anguilla.  The diorama he produced to illustrate his proposal still hangs on the wall in the Land Registry.

A few years later, in the 1990s, the US entertainment magnate, Robert “Bob” Johnson of television’s BET Network, made another casino proposal.  He wanted to dredge the Road Pond and construct a casino and condominium apartments.  Government put it out for public discussion and the mood was overwhelmingly one of opposition.  When it emerged that the western end of the Pond consisted of an estimated forty feet of rock salt that would have to be removed by blasting, the project died.

In 2020, the first year of this Administration’s term, there was another proposal to put a casino in a marina in the Road Pond.  The leader of the opposition party in the House of Assembly has admitted that the outgoing Administration first approved of this project.  She was on radio supporting the proposal on the ground that it would bring much-needed development to the island.  However, the proposal met with almost universal public disapproval, and appears to have been quietly dropped.

Back in April 2019, the AUF administration issued a press release that they hired consultants to write a report about casinos for Anguilla.  So, it was not surprising, in the last week or two, to hear one of the young, male elected members of the opposition AUF party in the House of Assembly adding his voice to those in support of this proposal.  He gave a serious and studied argument why Anguilla had to enter the modern era, casinos and all, and why the resulting revenue would be good for the Treasury.  He has obviously not read any of the hundreds of studies on the social damage caused by casinos.

We do not know who has now approached our new government with a renewed proposal to put casinos in Anguilla.  It may have been some of the bigger foreign-owned hotel owners who come from places where it is normal for hotels to have casinos.  It may have come from some rather more unsavoury types.  The gaming and brothel businesses in nearby St Maarten are reputed to be owned and run by local politicians and their Sicilian mafia bosses.  In Curacao, it is the New Jersey mafia who, together with the local political bosses, are reported to control the industry.  You just need to Google the terms.

In previous years, before the casinos of St Maarten came under unified management, it was not unusual to see that on a change of casino management, the old crew left the island with their arms in slings and the bullet holes well-bandaged.  The new bosses entered with bulges under their arms.  Unless the mafia takes immediate control of any casinos that are licensed in Anguilla, similar exciting events can be expected for a while until ownership issues get sorted out.

I was not surprised to read an article in support of casinos in a recent issue of The Anguillian Newspaper written by the youthful past Minister of Economic Development.  It must have been his Ministry that put up the proposal to include legalizing of casinos.  He is young, impetuous, and inexperienced in the world.  So, he can be expected to rise in support of the proposal now that it has come to be questioned.

The most surprising thing of all was to hear a Baptist preacher on radio a few days ago giving a passionate speech in favour not only of legalizing casinos and lotteries but also brothels (or whorehouses, or bordellos, or however you call houses of ill repute).  He called them by the Anguillian euphemism, “houses of entertainment”.  It was a stunning reversal for a preacher of morality.  Maybe he was just being sarcastic and is not really in favour.

I have been thinking of what these developments mean for Anguilla and her people’s future.  There must be some good explanation for this new evolution in morality.  All three of these young men share certain characteristics that may explain their positions.

They are young and naïve.  They have no experience or learning of the history of casinos.  They have never made any kind of study of the damage the casino environment does to the lives of its habitués and their families.  They have never read any of the hundreds of reports on the societal evils of casino gambling.  They are innocents.  They can’t really be blamed.

They enjoy the over-confidence of youth.  They believe that they can control the heartbreak and crime that casinos will inevitably bring to our families.  They believe they can keep Anguillians out of the temptations and addictions of casino gambling.  They sincerely believe that Anguillians’ past opposition to casinos was mistaken and misguided.

They are misinformed.  They believe that opposition to casinos come only from “white people”.  I have heard them saying on radio that they believe that these white people are hell-bent on keeping our Anguillians back from developing ourselves.  We can do this apparently by emerging into the modern world of casinos and houses of prostitution.  This xenophobia and race blaming is very effective in Anguilla when you want to rile up public sentiment against something or someone.

The preacher who spoke so passionately in favour of casinos and houses of male entertainment was also in favour of lotteries.  He thought casinos were a sign that Anguilla was modernising.  He pointed to the fact that there are several “madrokas” or Dominican Republic lottery outlets operating in Anguilla.  Madroka Anguilla Lottery Ltd was in fact licensed three or four years ago to run lotteries in Anguilla.

It is a fraud on the revenue for lottery tickets to be sold without government collecting the 10% fee on each ticket.  We can’t collect revenue on illegal tickets.  Yet, illegal lottery ticket sellers openly operate in Anguilla today.  The police very occasionally shut one down, but they soon reopen without any difficulty.

There are scores of brothels operating openly in Anguilla.  They front as sports bars and other houses of entertainment.  It is a serious offence to operate a house of prostitution.  The police occasionally shut one down, but it soon reopens.  No one seems to care that these facilities are illegal and not medically inspected.  It is not surprising to learn that sexually transmitted diseases are on the increase.

I have a modest, Swiftian proposal to add to these suggestions for increasing government revenue.  It should fit in well with Anguilla’s modern public morality.  My proposal will also prevent the children of poor people in Anguilla from being a burden to their parents or to the country.  “A young healthy child under a year of age is a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled.  I have no doubt it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.” (Johnathan Swift).  I propose that of the 200-odd babies born in Anguilla each year, a nominal 25% be butchered and the best cuts sold in supermarkets.  At the price of veal, the resulting increase in GST revenue will greatly benefit the Treasury.

Given the lack of any apparent public opposition to the proposals for legalising casinos, lotteries, and bordellos, there should be no objection from the churches to the idea of selling baby meat.  The silence from church and community leaders serves to reinforce the acceptability of casinos and brothels.  Today’s churchmen will be so busy raising revenue by holding revivalist meetings that they will not object to this modest proposal of mine.  It will be a benefit to the poor and the public and increase government revenue.  It should be a runaway success all round.

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NOTE:  Anguilla as a country is less than 70 years old.  Anguillians have no literary heritage.  Indeed, only within the last 50 years has any Anguillian writing of any kind been published.  Thus, save for a few exceptions, doggerel takes the place of poetry.

Unsurprisingly, we have no understanding of, nor appreciation for, irony, satire, sarcasm, mockery, or parody.  Most Anguillians don’t recognize sarcasm or satire.  Everything said or written is interpreted literally.

As a result, the last two paragraphs of the above essay, based on Johnathan Swift’s famous satirical essay “A Modest Proposal” were taken literally.  The proposal to sell and eat baby meat was read literally and considered offensive, even by English language teachers who read the essay.  It was politely rejected by the local newspaper.  

Casinos Soon Coming to Anguilla?

Casinos and most forms of public gambling are illegal in Anguilla.  So, I felt a slap in the face when I heard on yesterday’s Radio Anguilla news that government is working on drafting a new Casino Policy and a new Gaming Act for Anguilla.  According to the news, casinos hold great potential for revenue generation.  They will be introduced, the release said, early next year, 2023.  I only heard about it yesterday, but the proposal must have been in the works for some time.  I know we Anguillians are said to be hypocrites, but I did not think that we would allow things to go so far without making a great noise.

Anguillians are already addicted to small-time gambling.  We have gambled our little fortunes away for hundreds of years.  On boat racing days, men traditionally gather on the beaches at Sandy Ground and Maids Bay shouting and gesticulating as they encourage their favourite boat to outwit the competition.  Large sums of money change hands.  Fights and brawls over these unregulated bets are a common sight.  Perhaps because it happens so infrequently, no one comments on it or complains.

Since time immemorial, cock pits have lined the roads of our villages.  I remember forty years ago when every village had at least one, even if it was only the shell of a barely started house.  The men gathered around late in the evening cheering on their champion cocks.  These leapt and cut at each other with their sharpened spurs.  Even larger sums of money changed hands.  Gaming with cocks is still a popular if vulgar Anguillian social activity.  In certain supermarkets, bags of pig food, rich in muscle-building protein, are regularly imported for sale to fighting-cock owners.  Yet, no one has ever been prosecuted for the offence of gaming in public.

Pitbull terriers are prohibited by law in Anguilla.  It is a serious offence to own one, far less to put it in the ring.   This has been so since the tragedy of mauled babies down in The Forest a few years ago.  Yet, dog-fighting continues to this day to be a favourite sport in certain sectors.  Thousands of dollars change hands as their dogs maul each other to death.  The ante for putting your dog in the ring is said to start at US$10,000.00.  The fate of a losing dog is a sad one.  It is not given a burial.  The body of a deceased loser is thrown on the side of the road to show contempt for it.  Protein-rich dogfood is imported and sold solely for the purpose of building up the muscles of these fighting dogs.  I need hardly add that no one in Anguilla has ever been prosecuted for keeping fighting dogs or for putting them in the ring.  None of the statutory prohibitions of cruelty to animals nor illegal gambling is an enforced offence in Anguilla.

And now, as has happened elsewhere, we will experience hard-working gambling addicts spending their week’s wages in casinos.  Efforts will, of course, initially be made to exclude Anguillians from casinos.  There will be solemn promises to this effect.  We remember when foreign-owned casinos were first allowed in St Maarten, and they were prohibited from letting in local St Maarteners.  That did not last long, maybe a decade.  It won’t last long here either.

Initially, casinos will be limited to hotels.  Inevitably, pressure will be brought to permit slot machines and other gambling furniture in restaurants and shopping malls.  The easy availability of opportunities to gamble will attract increasing members of the public, including children.

While occasional gambling may not be harmful, it is now well-known that the pleasure-causing endorphins and serotonins released in the brain by the thrill of the chance can cause gambling to become a habit and then an addiction.  Those who love gambling, inevitably become addicted to it.  People who can ill afford it will continue to play even after losing high stakes, in the hope of winning back what they have lost.  The resulting debt-trap will cause relationships to break down, families to be impoverished, and the gamblers resorting to crime to recover the amounts lost.

Once casinos are introduced into Anguilla, the crime rate will likely begin to rise, as it seems it has everywhere else where public gambling is made legal.  Robberies can be expected to go up, auto theft will probably increase, burglaries will probably soar, and even murders may go up.  Gambling is a target of crime because of the large amounts of money associated with it.

Anguilla has set its target on attracting high quality tourists.  Our hotels are mainly high-end, and we are advertised as up-market.  Gambling tourism is at the opposite end of Anguilla’s long touted objective.  Gambling tourism brings a low quality of visitors to what was formerly an up-market tourism community.

Until the island’s gaming industry is taken over by one of the big mafia families, it will be essentially unregulated and subject to violent administrative incidents.  We all remember that before St Maarten was reportedly taken over and managed by the Sicilian mafia, management changes were usually made by the previous owners departing with their arms in slings on the same aeroplane that brought in the new management.

The large profits that accrue to casino owners inevitably impact the political life of the island.  Politicians in Anguilla may be hard-pressed to resist the huge gifts that will be offered in exchange for a licence, support for a monopoly, or preferential treatment of one kind or another.  Our public life already garners suspicion, and it is frightening to contemplate what it will be like after casino gambling is introduced.

Only three decades ago, the US entertainment entrepreneur Bob Johnson offered to dredge the Road Pond and turn it into a marina.  His one condition was that the law be changed to permit him to construct a casino in the marina.  Public opinion on the island was unanimously against the casino proposal, and Mr Johnson went away.

When the Caribbean Lottery was introduced into the island several years ago, we waited to object too late.  Important local forces were behind it.  Government ignored the warnings and concerns of the public and made it legal anyway.  Now, illegal Santo Domingo Lotto outlets proliferate all over the island.  The police make ineffective and sporadic efforts to close them down.  But there is so much money in them that they soon burst back out into the open, even if illegal.

If we are so anxious to follow St Maarten’s example and raise revenue from every type of immoral activity, perhaps it will not be long before we legalise brothels to provide the services of foreign women in Anguilla.  I understand we can raise substantial taxes from this business.  Never mind that this means of living off the immoral earnings of desperate foreign women, is not only illegal but a quite disgusting form of human trafficking.  Think of all the needed public revenue it could bring in.  Shut your eyes and keep quiet!

Can somebody explain what has changed?  Is it that we are confident that we are so big and strong that we can regulate, manage, and control the evils of the casino industry?

Or is it that we have become so careless and complacent, that we no longer mind what our political leaders are doing that corrupt our life and society?

What are our church leaders doing to oppose this obscene and immoral proposal to license casinos?

Are our church groups discussing and debating the impact this proposal will have on community life if it goes into effect?

What are our women’s groups doing to confront this social evil which will result in so many of our poorer working families finding themselves at the end of the week with no wages or income to put food on the table?

What are our men’s groups doing to protect their brothers and sons from this habit-forming temptation?

What are our social workers and counsellors doing to bring awareness to our community about the threat this proposal to legalise casinos poses to our already fragile mental health?

Why is the Chamber of Commerce silent in the face of this invidious threat to our economy and society?

Is it still true that in Anguilla those who care don’t count, and those who count don’t care?