The
37-page paper a copy of which you have before you does not deal with the
important issue of political independence for Anguilla. It is not about the horror of a West Indian
people living under the abusive system of colonialism.
I entirely agree with those who say that
there is only one road for Anguilla. There is only one road for any community which
finds itself subject to the dictates of foreign, non-elected and unaccountable
people of a different culture. That is,
for the people to seize their inalienable right to self-government. The only justification for colonial rule is
racism, which is itself unjustifiable and universally condemned. The system of colonial rule is itself
inherently corrupt.
Let us now see a show of hands from all the
Anguilla United Movement supporters in this room who would be happy for the
Anguilla United Front to take us into independence. The answer is …?
Now, hands up from all the Anguilla United
Front supporters in this room who would be happy for the AUM to take us into
independence. The answer is …?
Do the results of this little poll mean that
there is no one in this room who is interested in achieving political independence
from the British Crown? The answer, I am
certain, is No. The silence my question
has received does not mean that. It just
means that we crave freedom itself more than we crave freedom from British
colonial rule.
So, what is my paper about? It is about the failure of the British
Government, and in particular that Department called the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office, up to the end of the first decade of the 21st century
to provide our colonial people with the constitutional framework that would
give us a chance to achieve full political independence with some certainty of
freedom from local tyranny. I argue that
unless there is a paradigm shift in the attitude and methods of the FCO, the
likelihood is that we shall grow increasingly weary of an apparently brutal and
arbitrary colonial rule. History has
shown that we shall then demand and be given political independence. History shows that we shall, shortly after the
euphoria of Uhuru has worn off, descend into an even more brutal period of
self-imposed, local tyranny.
The paper, a copy of which is before you, is
based on my experience. I am an old-age
pensioner now, having been born in St Kitts in 1946. I lived in Trinidad when it gained political
independence in 1961 under the tyrannical rule of Dr Eric Williams. His administration became so corrupt and
oppressive that there was an armed uprising which was put down only after CIA
and US State Department infiltration of the rebels. Eric Williams gave my St Vincent-born father
Trinidadian citizenship in gratitude for the role he played in supplying his
company’s aeroplanes to follow and observe the rebels from the air so that the
forces loyal to Dr Williams could defeat them.
I have lived through a Jamaica dominated in
the early 1970s by the charismatic but cruel and confiscatory reign of Michael
Manley. My father died in Jamaica in
1973. Prime Minister Michael Manley flew
in to attend his funeral in his army helicopter, frightening all the children
for miles around with the noise it made as it landed in the churchyard. All my life I have listened from close up to
the rhetoric of popularist West Indian politicians, and I have observed with an
intense sense of outrage their use and abuse of the power entrusted to them by
the people.
I have observed an Antigua and Barbuda
dominated in the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s by the oratory of a corrupt and venal
Vere Cornwall Bird. After he
died, his country continued to be run by kleptocratic politicians supported by
a corrupt police force whose main reason for its existence appears to have been
to supply and distribute cocaine throughout the country. That is, when their soldiers are not running
the whorehouses and local gambling dens from which they have made themselves
wealthy on for the past 50 years, as Tim Hector exposed so many years
ago before they burned down his printing press and shut him up. There are one or two retired police officers
I know of who have spent their entire career doing little else but carry brown
paper bags of money from one person to another.
I have been concerned about a St Vincent and
the Grenadines dominated by two political parties whose only purpose in life
appears to have been to enrich and empower their leaders at the expense of the
people. These political parties’ idea of
constitutional and electoral reform is to remove yet more of the freedoms of
the people and to hold them back in poverty and ignorance. My father was born in St Vincent, and I am
entitled to citizenship of that unfortunate country. I have lived and worked in it and speak from
personal knowledge.
I have lived through the era that saw the
rise and fall of Eric Gairy of Grenada, one of the most venal and
corrupt of West Indian political leaders. He flourished under the very same colonial
regime that we are subject to in Anguilla at this time. His wallet grew fat in stolen wealth, and his
reputation slimy from the many young women he debauched. I say that about Grenada even though my
father’s roots were in Grenada, and under the Grenada Constitution I am
entitled to apply for, and to hold, a Grenadian passport.
My paper argues for a paradigm shift in
colonial governance if we Anguillians are to enjoy a future where our system of
government will be strengthened by institutions that offer the people a way to
hold our leaders to account.
The term “paradigm shift” was coined by Thomas
Kuhn in his influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolution,
published in 1962. It describes a change
in the basic assumptions, or paradigms, within the ruling theory of science. Once a paradigm shift is complete, a scientist
can no longer, for example, reject the theory of evolution and revert to the
clerical theory of the divine creation of species. A doctor can no longer reject the germ theory
of disease and go back to the medieval theory that it is a “miasma” that causes
disease. In a non-scientific context the
term describes a profound change in a fundamental model or perception of
events. That is the sense in which I use
it in the paper before you.
The paper argues that the present
Westminster model Constitution we in the BOTs have inherited is inadequate to
provide the protections necessary for a colonial people on the verge of being
sent out into self-government and eventual independence. In the paper, I contend that the structure of
our present colonial Constitution is misshapen and unworkable in providing good
governance. Part of the explanation, I
posit, is that our 21st century fundamental rights and freedoms unevenly
overlie the skeleton of an 18 th century colonial structure of administration,
now reduced to writing. What we have as
a written Constitution is the unwritten British parliamentary model, but with
none of the institutions or structures that exist in Britain, whether inside or
outside of the legal framework, to ensure that the whole works smoothly and
evenly.
To give a few examples, typically Tenders
Boards are not established by our colonial Constitutions. In many territories they are not even governed
by legislation. They are generally ad
hoc committees appointed by a Minister or by the Governor. Public contracts are routinely awarded
on the basis of family and friendly relationships. Statutory Boards and government
committees are staffed with unsuitable political supporters on the basis of
“the winner takes all” after every general election. Land Development Planning Committees
and Building Boards have their policy-based decisions subject to
reversal by politicians. Immigration
Department orders and Work Permit decisions are made by politicians
on the basis of unpublished and unknown policies. In some cases in Anguilla, the local statute
specifically permits political interference in the administration of government
policy. The result is that, with a
Minister of Government on my side, I can safely ignore every regulation that
had originally been put in place presumably for the public good.
I argue that there is no integrity in a
system such as we have in Anguilla that permits a personal appeal to a Minister
to overrule the decision of a Board or of a public officer carrying out the
national policy. Victimisation and
discrimination are the inevitable result. And, indeed, that is precisely the system of
government that most of us labour under, supervised by the Governor and the
FCO. There are innumerable examples,
some of which I set out in my paper, of the mechanisms that have been put in
place by Commonwealth law-makers to ensure that the system is self-correcting,
and that corruption is winkled out and punished. Corruption will always exist, as it does in
British politics to this day, as we have seen in the Parliamentary expenses
scandal of last year. The question is do
we continue to shrug our shoulders at it as we do now? Or, do we do like the British and demand that
practical steps be taken to catch it and to nip it in the bud?
We, the citizens of the BOTs, do not accept
that our islands are too small for high standards similar to those that are
expected in the outside world to survive and work here. No matter how small our territories are, we
are entitled to expect that our governments will be of laws and not of men. The solution suggested in the paper before you
is for the FCO to establish in our Constitutions the necessary checks and
balances, to encourage us to pass the necessary enabling laws, and then to
assist us in formally educating the public and the leadership in the principles
of good governance. It seems desirable
that this constitutional reform occur, and time be given to permit it to show it
can work, before we turn over our lives and our freedoms to the unsupervised,
sticky fingers of our local political leaders.
In my paper I set out some of the
time-proven mechanisms that the FCO needs to give attention to, if they are
really serious about “good governance”. Most of these mechanisms have been introduced
into law in Britain itself. All of them
are to be found in one Commonwealth country or the other. I express in the paper regret that the FCO
seems to feel no urgency about introducing them into their remaining BOTs. They have not done so in Montserrat, nor do
they propose to do so for the TCI in the constitutional recommendations
published in 2010. So, why should we
expect them to think any differently of us in Anguilla?
I conclude my paper by voicing the fear and
concern that if the sleight of hand and trickery that was apparent in the
September 2010 process of constitutional reform in Montserrat, and that is
threatened for 2011 in the Turks and Caicos Islands, is perpetrated in Anguilla,
then there is no hope for us. We shall
be destined to reject colonial rule and to take our independence in due course,
burdened with the same defective constitutional and legal mechanisms as our
cousins in Trinidad, Jamaica, Barbados, Grenada, St Vincent, St Lucia,
Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda, and St Kitts and Nevis did.
Thank God I am too old to experience all
over again what that will mean in practice for the freedoms and liberties of
another one of our West Indian people. If what I fear should come to happen, I shall
observe it in silent desperation from the side-lines. I shall take no pleasure in repeating to
myself the maxim that, “If we do not know
where we are coming from, then most likely we will not know where we are going
to.”
An
oral presentation made at the University of the West Indies Anguilla Conference
held at the National Bank of Anguilla Conference Room on 28 April 2011 on the
circulation of a full-length paper with the title, “New Perspectives in Oppression: The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office
and the West Indian Colonies in 2011” which proved too lengthy to read.
