When one stops to ponder what the significance of Anguilla Day really is, what should come to mind is the cause for which Anguillians were expediently forced to fight against the repressive, domineering “rule” of the pre-1967 St. Kitts regime.
Yes, the belligerent “rule” of the St. Kitts-led government, under the autocracy of the late Robert Lewelyn Bradshaw, had adversely marred the way of life for Anguilla’s people, resulting in unrelenting hardship and a dreary existence for a meek and mild population which, up until the 1960’s, had registered between some 5,000 and 6,000 residents.
Bradshaw’s aggressive rule upon the lowly affairs of this humble, underdeveloped people had caused Anguillians to be aggrieved over many successive years.
At this point, I would like to strike a contrast between the verbs “govern” and “rule”. Although the word “rule” and the word “govern” can be somewhat synonymous, technically, still there is a defining difference between the two. To “govern” implies the act of guiding national interests, administering national services fairly and accountably, and setting up systems that would oversee the functions of government at various levels or segments of society.
On the other hand, the act of “rule” brings to bear an awful, repressive kind of dominance that is, for the most part, self-serving to the ruler and victimizing to the ruled.
In context of the above definitions, it is evident that Robert Llewellyn Bradshaw was a “ruler” and not a “governor”. The many threats that he made against repressed Anguillians who had tried to call his attention to their dreary plight was more than repulsive. Although he had been a hard-core Labour Union president, he had no sense of sympathy for Anguillians’ dilemma. He just ruled with a heavy hand.
Bradshaw had threatened to turn our island into a desert; to put bones in our rice; and to put pepper in our soup – whatever all that meant. He had touted his power by declaring in glaring terms what would be considered today as political crimes against an already destitute people.
To say that Anguilla was taken advantage of by Bradshaw’s oppressive regime is an understatement. Prior to the 1967 Revolution, conditions under which Anguillian residents lived included, but were not limited to: rugged, rocky, dusty roads – a far cry from the paved roads of today; a lack of running water, limited only to a few stand-pipes in the central area of the island, the flow of which was often “on again, off again”.
The only electricity we ever knew was generated by a handful of well-off merchants who owned dilapidated diesel generators for their own domestic use; there were absolutely no communication services by telephone, nor no local radio information service – Anguilla’s only contact with the outer world was via air mail which took several days to reach recipients. Other than that, listening to AM radio broadcasts transmitted from a couple neighbouring islands was our means of contact with the world, a little bit beyond ours.
Our Wall Blake airport was, of course, a very far cry from the modern facility which we are blessed with today. Back then, in the 1960s and 1970s, the airport featured a backwater dirt strip for a runway, with just a small slither of pavement for an apron in front of a primitive terminal house that was no more than 40 by 30 feet.
Anguilla’s only thriving industry in the era of the 1960’s was the production of salt, mainly provided by the Sandy Ground Salt Pond. The salt was reaped manually by the weary hands of men and women, most of whom could not afford the basic conveniences of life. Upon harvesting, the salt was placed in huge heaps and eventually exported to Trinidad by locally built schooners to be used in the petroleum industry there.
For the most part, coming out of a slave society of the earlier eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, where most of the population was forced to work on sugar or cotton plantations, Anguillians in the 1960’s had remained in a state of abject poverty. Many men had to leave the island to migrate to places like the US Virgin Islands, St. Martin, Curacao, Aruba, the USA and the UK for meaningful employment, sending back home whatever subsistence they could to support their families.
Prior to the 1950s and 1960s, however, many young men sailed off to Santo Domingo, transported there by schooners, in order to find employment on sugar cane plantations in order to sustain their families.
But for the most part, Anguillians remained poor and desperate. Most children went to school bare foot, daily treading the stoney, dusty roads. Many of them experienced “crack toes” and other foot wounds due to walking on such rugged paths. As a result, some children spent just as much time at home healing as they spent in school learning.
Because there was no running water, Anguilla’s humble houses were built without bathrooms. Toilet facilities just featured a back yard pit latrine, or, short of that, people would “do their business” in backyard bushes – an unhygienic feature of our ‘ole time’ way of life.
To put it all in perspective, according to the writings of Colville Petty in his book Bless Our Forbears, “During the 1950s and 1960s, Anguilla remained relatively poor and undeveloped. It had a subsistence economy with agriculture – primarily mixed farming – being the largest sector.
“According to the 1960 census,” Petty says, “approximately 41% of the employed labour force was engaged in agriculture compared to 18% in services such as teaching, administration and health. There was 12% of the working class in construction; 12% in sea transportation; 5% in fishing; and another 5% in commerce, which was mainly the wholesale and retail of commodities.
Mr. Petty further noted that a few people were employed in the reaping of salt, during the months of July to September each year, at the Road Pond in Sandy Ground as well as the Long Pond and the West End Pond. He stressed that the 1960 census also showed that some 57% of the total labor force was unemployed.
In general, poverty had characterized the population. Through Bradshaw’s tyrannic rule, Anguilla was deprived of the basics for a decent economy. Bradshaw had engaged local agents who travelled throughout the length and breadth of the island, compelling people to pay the taxes which they hardly had. These were poor folk, indeed, who did not have the means of paying directly into the treasury, and consequently they resented being harassed by the loyal tax collectors.
Whether it was house tax, bicycle license fees, vehicle license fees, liquor license fees, or dog licenses, all had to be paid and funneled into the treasury in St. Kitts.
Then, all the monies which the tax agents gathered would be stacked in a securely locked wooden box and taken to the Forest Bay port under heavy security guard to be transported by boat to St. Kitts, twice every month. Bradshaw would then divide the proceeds between St. Kitts and Nevis and send back a meager pittance to Anguilla. This nominal amount was used for paying civil servants such as teachers, customs officers, nurses, policemen, etc.
An imminent freedom from the oppression of St. Kitts was a longed-for relief for which Anguillians had yearned over many years, but one which they knew not how to pursue. The socio-political and economic stifling that our forefathers endured triggered within them the longing and willingness to be released from the chains of bitter hardship and mundane misery, but they did not possess the ability to fight against Bradshaw’s ruthless regime.
Then came the potential of bringing on more “poverty on distress” (as the older folks put it) when the public learnt that plans were afoot for having Anguilla to actually join with St. Kitts and Nevis to become one associated state which would be known as St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla. Bradshaw had set out to pull a neglected Anguilla into submission, and had even devised an anthem song for the “trinity of islands”.
It was not until 1967 when James Ronald Webster rose up with a passionate flare of boldness that Bradshaw noticed how futile his efforts could be. Webster had become a thorn in Bradshaw’s flesh, and Bradshaw for several weeks had been commanding his policemen to capture him and arrest him, but the stealthy Ronald Webster had been evading them all the time.
Webster would be holding strategic meetings with his cohorts and making tactical plans for an overthrow of Bradshaw’s plot, but as far as those Anguilla-stationed Kittitian police were concerned, they could never find him.
Eventually, it suddenly happened. Webster was joined by a large number of Anguilla’s oppressed masses, all declaring with one voice that “enough was enough”. It was May 30th, 1967. This was the opportunity – the moment of truth. The time for deliverance had come – a breakthrough to freedom was here. After all, we had nothing to lose.
That day, Webster, his loyal armed foot-soldiers, and the crowds of Anguillians who rallied behind them initiated a massive rebellion against St. Kitts’ presence in Anguilla – the Kittitian Police Force. The police could not resist as a throng of revolutionists stormed the Police Headquarters in the Valley, and ambushed the policemen, taking them by surprise.
With a fierce and determined resolve, Webster and his allies, now turned militant supporters, compelled the helpless cops to leave Anguilla at once. It was a chaotic Tuesday morning in The Valley in May. Anguilla was about to change – a defining moment in Anguilla’s history.
Anguillians, under the command of James Ronald Webster, had been successful in evicting the St. Kitts police who were rounded up and forced to vacate the island. Two plane loads of aggressive officers, now humbled by Anguilla’s resolute masses, were flown out to St. Kitts by Anguilla’s renowned pioneer pilot, Captain Clayton J. Lloyd, aboard his Piper Aztec aircraft.
As legend would have it, Anguilla had become “the little mouse that roared”. And the world stood to listen. Since that day, Anguilla opted for self determination directly under British governance, void of any political affiliation with St. Kitts or Nevis.
God had seen Anguilla’s dreadful plight, and like the people of Israel, he had heard our plaintive cry over many generations. It was He who had been guiding the plans and strategies that Webster and his men had formulated to launch that notorious attack upon Police Headquarters on that memorable Tuesday morning, May 30, 1967.
The attack upon Police Headquarters was that kind of necessary action taken to mark the bloodless beginning of a Revolution that initiated the course of Anguilla’s freedom, paving the way for our nation’s future development.
May God continue to favour and bless Anguilla, and I wish a Happy Anguilla Day to all.
