“The secret that real power lies not with the oppressors, but with the oppressed,” (Marquis de Condorcet, 1795).
With Anguilla approaching its semi-centennial, it becomes ironic to go back and re-read some of the stories that were written about us back then. And I must say that as a very young 20 year old, none of it made any sense at the time. The only thing that mattered was that we were finally away from Robert Bradshaw and his ilk. The ramifications of our actions, though at the time were well intentioned, would as we are now seeing, have a much farther reaching affect.
It was no secret that we turned the clock back and we did it in spades. I can still remember some of the headlines of the major newspapers. “Anguilla turns back the clock,” said one. It was as if everything that we had fought for was just negated, for at a time when England was jettisoning her former colonies, with statehood or independence, here we were moving back into the master’s house. In a sense, we became the laughingstock of the world, for we had the support of those very same people who now were very disappointed in what we did.
When reading a book or seeing a movie for the first time, one rarely gets every nuance so, in a sense, we can argue that we found ourselves on a stage that we were totally unprepared for. Here we were, the orchestra played the overture, the lights were dimmed and the spot hit us and we froze. Whose fault was that, you ask? Short of blaming anyone, let’s look at the facts. In fact I don’t have to even list them for they are well documented.
In his book, “A Crowded Barracoon,” V.S.Naipaul refers to us as a ‘shipwrecked community,’ for we have been isolated and forgotten for so long that in order for us to survive we had to reinvent ourselves. We had the misfortune of being paired up with St. Kitts and Nevis which themselves, had their own struggles – struggles that were well documented in Robert Bradshaw’s biography, by Whitman T. Browne, entitled “From Commoner to King.”
As a result of being a shipwrecked community we, as a people, learned to fend for ourselves, for no matter how loudly or how often we complained, it was to no avail. And believe me, we did complain, the last time of which was 1958 when we categorically stated that: “a people cannot live without hope for long without erupting socially.” That petition was sent to the Governor of the Leeward Islands, for we were living under sub-human conditions of every category.
So was it any wonder then that we would finally rise up and take action? So here we are some 58 years later and we have made that fateful day, when we became re-colonized by Great Britain, seem like child’s play, for now we’re in a worse situation than we were ever in with Bradshaw for, when we fought Bradshaw, we knew who our adversary was, for it was a declared battle and each party knew where the lines were.
But now, we’re in an undeclared war and we are being attacked from several fronts, one of which is our own government, the very same people who we overwhelmingly elected a little more than a year ago. So the big question that should be on almost everyone’s mind, I say almost everyone’s mind, because there are those who think that our Chief Minister can do no wrong and they will follow him to the ends of the earth, for, “if he says so tis so.”
Dr. Johnson famously said: “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” and I’m afraid we have many patriots who are more than happy to stand back and let the rest of us drown in the surf without so much as lending a hand to get us to safety. So the question becomes, what do we do?
It is obvious that we have no one to turn to, for those whom we elected to represent us have failed, and while I don’t want to blame the British, they cannot walk away from this train wreck with clean hands. As I’ve said many times before, they have maintained a hands off policy inasmuch as they have let successive governments, from our inception to the present day, make a bunch of dunderhead decisions all of which have cost us dearly. So now they watch and wait till we finally self-destruct, at which time they will come in and takeover.
Anyone worth his or her salt, upon researching our history cannot come away without concluding that this destruction of our homeland is deliberate. Look at what has happened! We are at a point now from which there will be no return. We are being gradually displaced, and the hurtful part is that it is being done methodically with the help of our own people. Talk about a Trojan Horse.
Anguilla has been governed by the same 25 people for the last thirty or forty years. The chosen 25, I will call them, have had unfettered access to all of our resources – resources I might add, that they used to enhance the lifestyles of their friends and families, while the rest of us struggled to get by. That was not what my father, Walter Hodge, and the others fought for. They fought for an Anguilla that would be there for all and that is not what has happened.
Getting back to Mr. Naipaul’s assertion of us being a shipwrecked community, forced us to be inventive, and inventive we were so much so that we became the gold standard in the Caribbean. Other Caribbean nations were looking at what we were doing. We had our own airlines, our own shipping, our own financial services and our own hospitality which was second to none. So how did we get to this place?
It can be traced back to that fateful day in 1967 when a people, at their wits end, finally decided that enough was enough and so, to save what little dignity we had left, we took a stand, the reverberations of which are still being felt all over.
Bradshaw couldn’t get into Anguilla so he fabricated a story so that the British would have no choice but to come in, and that’s exactly what they did. Never mind that Ian Smith in Rhodesia was far more guilty than we were, Britain chose to beat up on 6000 black people, whom they had neglected for over 300 years, instead of going after the lilywhite Rhodesians. Maybe they thought that we’d be wearing loincloths and using bows and arrows – they hadn’t a clue what to expect.
Now it has come down to this. Anguilla is the last bastion of prosperity in the region and we have what they want: land. So how do you get the land? Simple. You create a system whereby the natives use the land as collateral for bank loans, and while you could say that the crash of 2008 was unintentional, it played into the grand scheme of things like it was just what the doctor ordered. But that’s just the beginning. You let the government flounder, the economy has disappeared and people can’t pay their mortgages and so on and, consequently, the banks begin to suffer. You invite a Central Bank which is about as incompetent as the banks it is supposed to monitor and you give it three years to come up with a solution.
Remember I said our revolution had farreaching ramifications. There are those who remember what happened, those whose fathers were embarrassed, those who are now in power and it is time for a little payback, those in St. Kitts who remember the attack on the police station, those who remember the warden’s home being burnt to the ground, those who now run the Central Bank and, because of our incompetent politicians, will possibly get their hands on Anguilla’s vast real estate holdings which they themselves will benefit from.
Victor and Bunton both signed the agreement to amalgamate Anguilla’s indigenous banks, an act that was illegal and not discussed with the people. Victor has repeatedly done things without the knowledge of the people because he was ordained to do so. The British are still smarting from 67, and to them those upstart Anguillians need to be put in their place once and for all. Is that what’s really happening here?
We have been given a ministerial system of government which is really a joke, for it lacks the necessary checks and balances to be effective. The place is rotten to the core and until the rot is surgically removed we will continue to rot, so the question that keeps rearing its ugly head is what do we do? The party system is corrupt. Both political parties are corrupt – no one knows what he/she is doing. We have now become a colony of a Central Bank and we are about to cede our lands to it? Has everyone gone crazy? Can I ask: Are there none among us who can see what’s being done to us?
Whether or not that question will be answered anytime soon remains to be seen. There is much work to be done. We are still not satisfied to see our indigenous banks blow away like dust in the wind. We are still waiting for our Chief Minister to come to us and explain exactly what went wrong. We have waited for three years to be told what went wrong, and this is how we will fix it. We simply want our government to be straightforward and honest with us. If the banks were a case of incompetence or just recklessness, we want to know. If it was a case of the banks outgrowing the bankers, we want to know why then did they not catch up? If it was a case of a weak regulatory body, which failed in its fiduciary duties, we want to know.
As shareholders we are entitled to know what happened to our money. These were not government banks for the government to come in and close them down. These were banks founded by Anguillians, and if problems arose it was up to the Anguillians to fix them – not the Kittitians for they had nothing to do with our banks. Our banks failed pure and simple because the rules were not adhered to, and those tasked with overseeing them did a poor job.
We have to put all of this behind us. After all, life is all about choices and if we are to move forward we then must forget about party affiliation and become one again in the spirit of 67 for, if we don’t, we don’t stand a chance. Everyone is gunning for us right now. Our people are suffering and our government whose job it is to look after its people is preoccupied with saving its own skin. We have been sold a bill of goods, the likes of which we are yet to receive. The prognosis for going forward does not bode well for us. Our economy has collapsed. We are being taxed while our politicians live on easy street. They have wrecked our country while they collect their exorbitant pensions. Maybe it’s time to take a page out of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s playbook and cut the exorbitant pensions of those who got us to this place and baled on us.
One thing that is for sure is this that we can’t, and will not let the Central Bank get its hands on our lands. These were Anguillian banks, with an Anguillian problem which therefore requires an Anguillian solution. We should not allow anyone in St. Kitts or anywhere else for that matter, to determine our fate. We fought too hard for what we have. Again, we need to remember from whence we came in order to know where we are going. None of those smart lawyers in St. Kitts who are salivating at the thought of getting their hands on Anguilla’s lands ought to have a say in determining our destiny. That’s our call, – not anyone in St.Kitts and, least of all, the Central Bank. We fought that fight once before and if we have to do it again, then so be it. So till next time. May God bless us all and may God bless Anguilla.
