Rev. Menes Hodge
“We cannot stand the battle of politics as we have it today. It is destructive – plainly destructive – whether it is Anguilla, St Kitts, Nevis, Montserrat or Trinidad and Tobago,” the Reverend Dr Wycherley Gumbs asserted.
He was at the time delivering the sermon at a Thanksgiving Ecumenical Service at St Mary’s Anglican Church on Sunday, May 25. The event was part of a series of activities in the run-up to the celebration of the 47th Anniversary of the Anguilla Revolution and Anguilla Day on Friday, May 30.
“We are battling for a little pie that cannot be shared in the battle,” he continued. “We need in all our islands, and Anguilla, a Government of National Unity. What we are having is not working for the people. It is working for some of us. Not for all of us. A Government of National Unity is no longer about party. It is about people. It is about us and building for all else. This is hard to do because the culture tells us there must be a winner and a loser. That is colonial thinking.
“My positive argument is that we can build on the whole, for the whole, and for all. How can we do this? We can do so by building on the consensus of village communities…Building on them, a group of seven or five chosen by the people, and building from that we go on to an assembly of the people of village communities, with its leaders and elders, so that the people become a part of the process.”
The Anguilla Methodist Circuit Superintendent Minister stressed that “the treasures of our islands are too small to stand the test of guerrilla warfare.” He went on: “In fact, in our islands, that is what it has come to: guerrilla warfare. And so our people wait for a new form of leadership…and for our politicians, and all of us, to strip ourselves of the powers that we have – and give them back to the people…It can happen tomorrow when we sit at the table of sisterhood and brotherhood; when we sit at that collective table and hammer out a new way for all of us and for Anguilla; when we can see bridges of communication, and all as participants in the process so that we can build, not as enemies, but as collective friends; when we can build not for ourselves, or for our party, but for Anguilla.”
The Minister emphasised that there was a need “to build to see a better today and a better tomorrow when our energies are not spent on the destruction of each other.” He insisted that “we must be able to sit, argue, discuss and then say Anguilla first.” He was of the view that this was the challenge of the 47th Anniversary the Anguilla Revolution now being celebrated on the island.
“If we dare to chart a new destiny, when all Anguillians can be participants, and all of us are Anguillians for Anguilla, then the day will come when the young shall praise us when we are long gone to the dust,” he told his listeners. “They shall say, ‘let us praise great and famous men and women and the ancestors who begat us.”’
Rev Dr Gumbs cautioned that as the people of Anguilla face the anguish of the current political campaign, they should ask themselves: ‘“Are we building for ourselves, the future and our children yet unborn?’ If you are building for yourselves, then keep on doing what you are doing. But if you are building for Anguilla and Anguillians for generations to come, you must chart a new destiny.”
His concluding advice was: “At this 47th year [of the Anguilla Revolution], let us commit ourselves to new beginnings. The Right Hand is writing. Let us be a part of that writing.”
The Ecumenical Service was attended by officials of the Governor’s Office, the Anguilla Government, members of the House of Assembly; and Ministers and their congregations from various churches. Rev Menes Hodge and Rev Samuel Knight of the Anglican Church, along with Rev Dr Gumbs, were the main officiating clergymen. Other participating ministers were Rev Joseph Lloyd, Supernumerary Methodist Minister and Pastor Philip Gumbs of the Church of God (Holiness).
