The story of our people’s relationship with the
early colonial authorities in the years after settlement in 1650 resemble
nothing more than that of a child ignored and abandoned by a cold and unfeeling
stepmother. The island’s hand-over to St
Kitts in 1825 did not improve our relationship with the new administering power. The resulting psychological trauma imposed on
the national consciousness by this abandonment has lasted down to the present
time. Anguillians have learned to be a
wily and contrary people, nimble to discover our advantage and to seize it,
especially when dealing with outsiders.
Unique among West Indians, Anguillians have always insisted on doing
things our own way. We don’t take advice
or direction easily especially in matters of governance. The authorities in London must occasionally
realise that they have met their match in dealing with us. It is not likely that they understand some of
the strange and unreasonable stands that we take, or the sometimes-perverse directions
that we select for ourselves. The Anguillian
way of doing things must be baffling to most outsiders.
Examples of our perverse
attitude to governance are everywhere. The
modern-day Anguilla House of Assembly has been known to pass a law apparently for
the sole purpose of quieting the debate on a public concern. There is no intention of having the law
enforced or to improve the situation being dealt with. Some of our taxes are best described as
voluntary or optional taxes. Little or
no effort being made to enforce payment by imposing the penalty. Typically, an enactment is passed in the
Assembly to appear to meet a crisis that has arisen. It is then allowed to fall dormant when the
controversy has quieted down. It has
been so from the earliest times. Two
recent examples illustrate the process at work.
A few years ago, two babies were
mauled to death by pit bull terriers. There
was a public outcry against pit bulls. Well-intentioned
people demanded to know why such dangerous dogs were not banned. Under pressure from politicians, the
Attorney-General’s Chambers sprang into action.
Within days a Dogs Bill was before the House of Assembly. A few days later the House of Assembly met
and unanimously passed the Act.[1] It became a serious offence to keep either a pit
bull or a Rottweiler without a special licence from the Dogs Inspector. All such dogs were required to be immediately
neutered under penalty of a fine or imprisonment. It was a worse offence to breed them. Yet, pit bulls and Rottweilers continue to
this day to be kept and to be bred. They
are unlicensed, and not a single prosecution has been brought.
One must dig deep to find a possible
explanation for the authorities overlooking the law in this way. Consider the amount of money involved in the
breeding and keeping of pit bulls for dog fighting. Few such animals are treated as pets or watch
dogs. They are kept for the main part as
fighting dogs. The dog owners are very
important persons in the community.
Large sums of money change hands at semi-clandestine dog pits. It can cost many thousands of dollars just to
put your dog in the pit. That is before
the betting starts. Many tens of
thousands of dollars change hands on the outcome of the ensuing dog fight. Gambling in public and cruelty to animals are
both serious criminal offences. Yet, not
a single person has ever been charged far less convicted in Anguilla for public
gambling over a dog fight.
The Act provides that a prosecution
can only be brought by the Dogs Inspector.
In the absence of a Dogs Inspector, the law can never be enforced. No Dogs Inspector has ever been appointed
under the law. We can say the law has
become dormant. During the debate on the
Bill, politicians took the opportunity to utter pious remarks about the
sanctity of the family and the need to safeguard the little ones. Merely passing the law enabled government to
show it was responsive to public pressure.
Omitting to enforce the law met with no public disapproval since the
omission was hardly noticed. No possibly
unpopular prosecution of any important person took place.
This treatment of animals has
long been associated with psychologically adverse effects on both the
participants in the fight and its witnesses.
Never mind the inherent cruelty and the damage to the dogs. Dog fighting remains a popular sporting
activity among a certain sector of the community, particularly young males. The average man on the street in Anguilla
will assure you that he finds nothing reprehensible in attending and betting on
dog fights. No person has ever been
charged with the offence of animal cruelty over an organised dog fight. If deputy governors Abraham Howell, Arthur
Hodge and Benjamin Gumbs came to visit the Anguilla of today, they would feel
perfectly at home. For much of our
population, little has changed in our culture and aesthetics from their day.
There are other examples of a
law falling dormant in Anguilla.
Consider the history of the Litter Abatement Act.[2] Some years ago, the tourism sector complained
about the amount of litter visible on the sides of our public roads. Styrofoam fast-food containers, beer bottles
and soda tins were routinely disposed of out of car windows. They lobbied for something to be done about
the young culprits. It was agreed that one
solution was to make such littering illegal.
The Litter Abatement Act sailed through the House of Assembly
with unanimous support. It became an
offence to throw litter out of one’s car window onto the side of the road. The public uproar diminished at this
demonstration by Anguilla’s political elite of their social conscience.
The problem was that the Act said
that it could be enforced only by Litter Wardens. By neglecting to make any provision in the
budget for the appointment and payment of Litter Wardens, prosecutions under
the Act were and are impossible. The
administration collected the kudos for taking swift legislative action, while
ensuring that there would be no political backlash from the prosecution of the
young men of our society, each of whom has a vote and family members who might
be upset. As one political leader
remarked when questioned about this hypocrisy, “We can’t go about making criminals of innocent young Anguillians!”
Eventually, provision was made
in the budget to appoint road cleaners whose job it is periodically to walk the
streets bagging the litter that has accumulated. In this way useful employment is given to
persons who might otherwise be unemployable.
Further kudos to government flowed.
The Litter Abatement Act like the Dogs Act has been in deep
hibernation since the day it was passed into law. Those two examples should suffice, so that I
do not need to go into the Sound Amplification (Restriction) Act,[3] or
the Roads Act,[4] or
any of the other many examples of dormant laws of Anguilla.
The Anguilla of today may
fairly be described as a frontier society.
The long absence of any of the institutions of government, the ingrained
disrespect for law and authority, have resulted in the Anguillian of today,
averse to the acceptance of all laws and regulations. A modern Planning Act has proven
difficult to introduce because Anguillians take the maxim, “A person’s house is his castle” to the
extreme. We vigorously object every time
an effort is made to introduce zoning or other land use regulations. A century and a half of sheltering our smugglers
from the St Kitts customs and excise authorities have made modern smuggling and
the non-payment of taxes endemic. A
villager would die of shame before he would report criminal activity by his
neighbour to any authority, forgetting that the authority is ours today. This history also explains the low standard
of ethics or propriety shown by those in public life. The junior civil servant caught with her hands
in the cookie jar is sent away to obtain a doctorate and returns to a high and
lucrative position in the public service.
A social or cultural
anthropologist knowing something of Anguilla can explain some of the reasons
why the Anguillian society of today may be structured as it is. Anthropologists recognise at least four
categories of human society. In an
ascending order of social development, there is the band, the tribe, the
chiefdom, and the state. It may be instructive
to look at each of them and consider where Anguilla fits.
The band was the earliest and
tiniest society known to humankind. The
band consisted typically of less than 100 people, mostly related by birth or
marriage. It lacked a permanent, single
place of residence. All able-bodied
persons in the band foraged for food.
There were no laws, police or treaties.
With all members of the band related to both of any two quarrelling
individuals, any fight was soon ended by the mediation of concerned onlookers.
In time, the band evolved into
the tribe. The tribe differed from the
band mainly in being larger. It
typically consisted of hundreds rather than mere dozens of people. Like the band, the tribe usually had no fixed
place of settlement. It lacked a
bureaucracy, police force, and taxes.
Every able-bodied adult in the tribe, including the ‘big man’,
participated in growing, gathering or hunting for food. Full-time craft specialists were lacking. While they were not all closely related to
each other, they shared a system of beliefs, practices and loyalties.
The
third stage of human political, social and cultural development is the
chiefdom. Chiefdoms first emerged in in
the Middle East about 5,500 BCE. The
chiefdom consisted typically of several thousand people. One person, the head-chief, exercised a
monopoly on the right to use force within the community. The food surplus generated by the commoners
went to feed the chief, various sub-chiefs, their families, bureaucrats and the
craft specialists who made the canoes or adzes or worked as bird-catchers or
tattooists. While tribes and bands
relied on reciprocal exchanges of gifts, chiefdoms developed a redistributive
economy. The head-chief would receive
surplus food from every farmer, and then he would either throw a feast for
everybody, or else give it out again gradually in the months between
harvests. Most chiefdoms have now
evolved into the modern state. A twisted
version of the chiefdom persists where there is a dictatorship. Anguillians can sometimes be fooled by our
leaders, but we would not tolerate a dictatorship.
The
final stage of development, the state, began to arise about 3,700 BCE in
Mesopotamia. In West Africa the date was
about 1,000 BCE, while in Mesoamerica it was about 300 BCE. Typically, the population of a state exceeds
50,000 persons. Initially, the paramount
chief’s location became the state’s capital city. A city differs from a village in its
monumental public works, palaces, and government buildings, accumulation of
capital from tribute or taxes paid, and concentrations of people other than
food-gatherers. Economic specialization
is more extreme in the state. Food is
produced by specialist groups of farmers, herdsmen, fishermen, and gardeners,
instead of by generalists as in bands and tribes.
Even
small states have more complex bureaucracies than large chiefdoms. In a state, internal conflict resolution is
formalized by the establishment of laws, a judiciary, and police. With such a large population, the onlookers
to a quarrel or fight are unlikely to be related to both parties. They are, therefore, unlikely to mediate to
prevent violence. Binding rules of
conduct, or laws, were developed to settle disputes. In a state, the laws are written down. Many early states had literate societies. In both Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica writing
was developed at about the same time as the formation of states. By contrast, no chiefdom developed
writing. The state is organised on
political and territorial lines. Bands,
tribes and simple chiefdoms are defined by kinship, not politics or territory. State bureaucrats by contrast are selected at
least partly based on training and merit, not on kinship, as in a chiefdom.
Applying
the above analysis, we note that in Anguilla almost everyone is related. A second-generation US- or UK-born of
Anguillian ancestry is welcomed back as “one
of us”. The highest compliment that
can be paid to one of us is to call us a son or daughter of the soil. An unrelated resident, no matter how long he or
she has lived in Anguilla, will always be a foreigner. Kinship, not citizenship, is the determinant
for acceptance into the Anguillian community and for appointment to and
promotion in the public service.
The
ability to read, write and be numerate are not important achievements among the
Anguillians of today. Outside of the
several families that make up the social and political elite, few of our big-chiefs
or even sub-chiefs complete a secondary education and qualify to be called literate. Few public servants below the level of
permanent secretary can write a sentence without making mistakes of grammar,
spelling and punctuation. One previous
Chief Minister half-jokingly jibed about our level of literacy, “If you want to keep something secret from an
Anguillian, all you need do is write it down and place the paper in front of
him. He’ll never read it.” A Bill may be debated for days in the House
of Assembly despite few of the members having read the document. Anguillians are good at talking but weak at
developing the skills of reading and writing, far less of independent thinking. This is behaviour typical of a tribe, but not
of a modern state.
The
laws and regulations, characteristic of a modern state, are regularly ignored
by us, even if strictly enforced on the foreigner living among us. Building regulations and planning rules are
applied selectively, and mainly to foreigners.
If planning laws and regulations are seldom imposed on the common Anguillian,
they never are on the chief. If you
should see a large concrete building illegally going up less than the
prescribed minimum distance from the main road in Cedar Village, it is probably
owned by an official in the Planning Department. If you were to request of the Building Board a
copy of the 30-year old Building Code, you would notice that it is still
marked “Draft”. It may not be enforced against a local
person, but it is binding on the helpless foreigner. These are the characteristics of a tribe or
band, not of a modern state claiming to be governed by the rule of law.
Hunter-gathering
is characteristic of a band or a tribe.
Until recently Anguillians at home depended on the remittances of bands
of Anguillian relatives pursuing hunter-gathering-type activities in the modern-day
version of the forests and savannahs of Perth Amboy, New Jersey; and Slough, Bucks,
England for a few years prior to their returning home. Hunter-gathering persists today as an
important source of domestic revenue. A few
years ago a foreign hotelier discovered a member of his kitchen staff stealing
a ham. He immediately dismissed her. His problem was that she lived in the same
village as the then Chief Minister and was one of his supporters. This Chief lost no time in visiting the hotel
and explaining to management the need for annual renewal of work-permits for
the essential foreign staff needed to run a five-star hotel. The employee was soon back on the job, and,
to general hilarity amongst many of us Anguillians, in receipt of a fulsome
apology for the misunderstanding. We see
hunter-gathering activities are carried out in the freezers and storerooms of
foreign-owned restaurants and hotels.
Public
procurement contracts in Anguilla offer a rich field for foraging and hunter-gathering. A building contractor explaining the secret
of his success revealed he had a “mole”
on the Tenders Board. Once he kept his
mole happy, he landed the contracts he wanted.
A
retired government procurement officer related the advice he received when he
took up office. His outgoing senior counselled
him, “Young man, this is your time. Remember the cow must feed where she is tied.” With that instruction to follow the previous
practice of adding a personal commission to every contract for public materials
or services ringing in his ears, he assumed office. Fortunately, he was cut from a different
cloth than his predecessor and did not follow the advice. From these instances it is evident that
Governor Benjamin Gumbs with his forged bills of lading and privateering
letters of marque issued to his son in law has sunk his DNA deep into
Anguillian genes.
There
are other signs of the island being a chieftainship rather than a modern state. The small size of the population at around
13,000 souls makes it difficult for us to aspire to be a state. In such a small community, the big-chief
syndrome replaces the rule of law.
Decisions of the Executive Council, the Courts and the Legislature are
frustrated with impunity by the will of any strong sub-chief. To obtain a licence, obeisance must be paid,
and tribute laid at the feet of one or more sub-chiefs, to personally placate
him and acknowledge his authority. Gifts
for licences and permits ensure their swift processing.
Until
recent years, the work permit for every foreign employee was personally approved
by an elected Minister. Work permits were
not granted based on any regulation, principle or policy, but arbitrarily, based
on the Minister’s favour and personal whim.
Once granted, the permit must be renewed annually through a solicitation
procedure that debased and degraded the less-fortunate applicant. Rules and regulations are applied not based
on law or principle but on kinship and personal relationship with the relevant
chief. Certificates that should be
issued as of right are inexplicably held up until word comes from above, perhaps
after a suitable gift has been made.
These
sad tales of Anguillian contempt for the principles of public service remind us
of the story of Arthur Hodge and the powder money. Where he led, we follow. They also demonstrate the power of the kith
and kin relationship characteristic of a band or tribe, as compared to the laws
and regulations, code of ethics, and attention to high standards of conduct
required in a state.
For hundreds of years until the
Anguilla Revolution of 1967 introduced self-government, Anguillians survived
with none of the normal institutions of government. We banded together based on kinship and
friendship to ensure we survived any attempt to impose laws and regulations on
our activities. This essentially lawless
nature of Anguillian society can be dated back to the abandonment of the
islanders by the colonial power. The piratical
blood of Abraham Howell, George Leonard, Arthur Hodge and Benjamin Gumbs runs
barely diluted in the veins and arteries of the Anguillians of today. The result is that we may fairly be described
as a tribal society or chiefdom rather than a modern state.
On the other hand, hundreds of
years of self-reliance have ensured that the modern Anguillian is noted for his
and her resilience in the face of adversity.
When a hurricane strikes with catastrophic force doing immeasurable
damage to private homes and public infrastructure, the shell-shocked men and
women of Anguilla get up, dust themselves off, and within days begin the task
of rebuilding their island. It may take
time and a great deal of money, but our economy and our homes are rebuilt long
before any of our neighbouring islands that were hit by the same
hurricane. The strong and healthy among
us voluntarily assist the elderly neighbour to repair and rebuild with no
expectation of remuneration. Abraham
Howell and George Leonard did not wait for assistance from outside to fight off
the marauders of their day. Nor do today’s
Anguillians. That self-reliance is a
positive aspect of the genetic inheritance of the first four generations of
Anguillians passed down to the Anguillians of today.
The
End
[1] The Dogs Act, RSA, D036.
[3] The Sound Amplification (Restriction)
Act, RSA, S050.
[4] The Roads Act, RSA, R065.
