Westlake, Donald E - NF 01

by Under An English Heaven (v1. 1)

  He also helped with cash, paying salaries for teachers and administrators whose wages had been cut off by St. Kitts, and also helping pay for other talent brought in after the rebellion.

  For instance, Roger Fisher had arranged for a young man named Frank McDonald to stay on the island and form a sort of liaison between Fisher and the Island Council, to give advice whenever any problem in Fishers domain might arise. Lutz paid a part of McDonald's salary and an American foundation paid the rest. (In a somewhat tactless move, all of McDonalds salary was sent to him on Anguilla. Since he was being paid according to American standards, his income was twice that of the Council members; this amount of money, to a young man fresh from his graduate studies and taking his first job, eventually caused some bad feeling on the island.)

  McDonald tells a story of one of Lutz's charities that gives the flavor both of the man and of Anguilla's circumstances at the time. The Island Council found they didn't have any cash to pay teachers' salaries for the month of December 1967 and sent McDonald to St. Thomas to ask Lutz if he could help. McDonald told Lutz the problem, and Lutz said, "How much?"

  "Ten thousand U.S."

  Lutz wrote a check, then and there, and drove McDonald to the nearest branch of his bank to cash it; but the branch didn't have ten thousand dollars in cash, so they had to go to the main bank, where the manager was startled but willing. Lutz and McDonald and the manager all stood around in a back room of the bank while a teller carefully counted out ten thousand dollars—not in one-dollar bills—and then McDonald stuffed it all in a money belt and took the next plane back to Anguilla; the money paid the teachers' salaries for two months.

  But McDonald did more things than go places and collect money. Shortly after his arrival on the island, the Great Esso Crisis took place, and his role : 1 that was to get on the phone to Roger Fisher. The St. Kitts Government had ordered Esso to stop delivering gasoline and fuel oil to Anguilla; if Esso were to refuse, St. Kitts would shift its own trade to Shell or some other competitor. Esso didn't refuse.

  The first the Island Council knew about any of this was a letter from Esso, saying it couldn't make deliveries anymore. The big storage tanks on Anguilla were Esso property, but they could stay on the island for the time being.

  Whatever electricity there is on the island—such as in the hospital—comes from gasoline generators. In places without electricity, like most private homes, light at night comes from lamps fueled by Esso kerosene. Esso deliveries were, in a lot of different ways, very important to the life of the island.

  Frank McDonald went over to St. Martin, called Roger Fisher in Boston and told him the situation. Fisher looked in his law books and found the proper legal justification for governmental expropriation of private property. He gave McDonald the references and told him to tell the Island Council to send somebody over to the Esso tanks and stencil on them "Property of the Government of Anguilla."

  Next, the Esso office on Puerto Rico was told its property had just been expropriated, and Fisher's legal references were cited. The Esso people were told the Anguillans would buy their petroleum products henceforth from the pirate tankers that work the Caribbean from bases in Venezuela.

  Esso management said, in effect, "Hey, wait a minute." A meeting was organized on St. Martin, with two representatives from Esso, plus Ronald Webster and McDonald. Every time the Esso people said something smooth and multisyllabic, McDonald got on the phone to Fisher up in Boston, and Fisher hit them long distance with his law books. Finally, the men from Esso surrendered. They agreed to resume deliveries; as for Colonel Bradshaw, they'd tell him the Anguillans had forced them into it. Which was, after all, simply the truth.

  Not long after this, Esso had an accident while making deliveries and spilled several thousand gallons of gasoline all over the ground. The ground of Anguilla is always thirsty; it drank up the gasoline in nothing flat. Esso chalked it up to profit and loss, but the Anguillans looked at the ground and thought about things. They thought about the fact that their island has a thin soil over a coral base, and that the coral is full of salt water, and that gasoline is lighter than water and therefore floats on top. If we dig down, they thought, we should come pretty quick to pure undiluted gasoline. And so they did, and so it happened, and for a while after that the Anguillans were digging gasoline out of their back yards. They may not have electricity, the Anguillans, but they're bright.

  McDonald, to return to McDonald, also came in handy another way. The indefatigable Jerry Gumbs had come up with an idea for a "Bank of Anguilla," to be owned by himself, of course. The big thing with this bank, anytime Gumbs talked about it, was that it would have anonymous numbered accounts; why should Central American dictators send their loot all the way to Switzerland? The Island Council wasn't entirely sure this was proper, but they were willing to listen, particularly when Gumbs told them he had a bona fide American banker to set the thing up and run it for them.

  The bona fide banker was named A. Hunter Bowman, and McDonald met him with Gumbs in New York in October. Gumbs talked to McDonald about numbered accounts for a while and said that he and Bowman were on their way to Anguilla to present the idea to the Island Council. McDonald wished them well and went off to dinner with some friends, where he mentioned Bowman's name, at which someone else at the table said, "A. Hunter Bowman. Isn't he the one who was just indicted for embezzlement?"

  McDonald never did finish that dinner. He quickly looked into the background of A. Hunter Bowman, and there it was; only three months before, in July, Bowman had been indicted in New York City for embezzling nearly half a million dollars from the Rockefeller Center branch of the Marine Midland Trust, a major New York bank in which he had been a vice-president. Of course, Jerry Gumbs had already come up with the doctor in trouble with the American Medical Association, so it was probably inevitable that when he went out looking for a banker he would come back with A. Hunter Bowman.

  McDonald next phoned Fisher, told him about Gumbs and Bowman, and Fisher decided to take a trip to Anguilla. He and McDonald followed Gumbs and Bowman south, and the confrontation took place at the meeting with the Island Council. Bowman had brought along a lawyer and a tape recorder, and he very ostentatiously started both. What was read into the tape recorder's microphone, however, were the details of Bowman's indictment.

  Bowman and Gumbs responded with a rhetorical question: Shouldn't a man who has slipped once be given a chance to prove himself, to rebuild his shattered etc.? (In January of 1971, Bowman was still slipping; he appeared in court on a charge of violating probation.) Council members also say that Bowman claimed many ties with the Kennedy family, saying that Ethel Kennedy was paying his defense and the Joseph Kennedy Foundation was repaying the embezzled money; the Council waited for the pictures of Hubert Humphrey. They were not forthcoming, however, and eventually the Council bade good-bye to A. Hunter Bowman.

  Another American who showed up around the same time was a veterinarian from Chicago who was seeking a place that was quieter and warmer than his home city; most places are, but he picked Anguilla. There was then no regular channel Anguilla could go through in buying weapons, so Ronald Webster was looking for something similar to the source found a few months earlier by St. Kitts. The veterinarian managed to make arrangements in Chicago, and Webster paid for the guns out of his own pocket.

  And so the year waned, a restful pause after the helter-skelter summer. On October 7, 1967, the Island Council announced that the first Anguillan election, for a new five-man Council, would take place on October 25; but on nomination day, the seventeenth, there turned out to be only five candidates, so there wasn't an election after all, just a declaration that the five had won. Ronald Webster was among them and was made Chairman again. According to the rules they'd set up ahead of time, the five then got together and appointed two more members, to bring the Council strength back up to seven.

  Anguilla dozed. The economic problems were chronic and occasionally acute. The Council was forced to accep
t loans of several thousand dollars each from both Ronald Webster and Jerry Gumbs. They knew they couldn't count on gifts and charity from outside forever, but there seemed nothing to be done about it.

  In Great Britain, some Anguillans and some of their English friends were still making local efforts to attract Whitehall's attention, but for a long time it seemed as though nothing was going to come of that, either.

  And then something did. Or did it?

  The Walrus and the Carpenter Were walking close at hand; They wept like anything to see Such quantities of sand; "If this were only cleared away," They said, "it would be grand!"

  —Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

  14

  Here come Fisher and Chapman, all things to all people.

  In the beginning of December it was announced in London that two Members of Parliament, Nigel Fisher and Donald Chapman, would be leaving very soon for the Caribbean to solve the Anguilla problem. The two M.P.'s had all the necessary qualifications; one was a Conservative, the other was Labour, and both were old friends of Colonel Bradshaw's.

  As Nigel Fisher said before leaving, "Our job is to try to find ways of reuniting Anguilla with St. Kitts." Of course, immediately after that remark he also said, "We have no intention of being seen to be taking sides."

  The Delegation was preceded by a small administrative team, containing a radio and a radio operator and a cipher clerk, and led by a man named Anthony Lee. Lee didn't know it but he was on his way to the worst mess of his life.

  But to begin with, Lee was merely running the administrative team for the Parliamentary Delegation. He was forty-four when he first landed on Anguilla. The son of an Anglican clergyman, he'd served in the Royal Navy in the Second World War, went to Cambridge, and afterward joined the Colonial Service, but always on a contract basis, never as permanent staff. After serving ten years in Africa, mostly in Tanganyika, he spent two years in private industry but apparently preferred working for the Government; he applied for a post with the Commonwealth Relations Office, got a new contract, and went off to Aden until the British had finished setting up their ghastly Southern Yemen federation. After his Aden tour he was offered the job as secretary to Fisher and Chapman's Parliamentary Delegation. It was suggested that an English administrator might be assigned to Anguilla for a period of time and that he might turn out to be the man.

  Anthony Lee is a gentle, soft-spoken man who prefers a simple life in which he can follow simple orders. He is six feet four inches tall, so that he towers over just about everybody else in the Anguilla story, but despite his height—or perhaps because of it—he is not at all a forceful personality. He moves with the tide, he follows orders competently and diligently, and in a normal circumstance he is probably the ideal representative of a far-off Authority: the unabrasive vessel through which Authority's desires are made manifest.

  Unfortunately, Anguilla never has been a normal circumstance.

  When Fisher and Chapman arrived, the Beacon ran a Delegation Special supplement that pretty well covered the events of their stay.

  The advance guard [said the paper] consisted of Mr. Tony Lee with radio operators and equipment to be in constant touch with London, and a team of secretaries, which shewed that they intended to do an efficient and comprehensive job. Prior to the arrival of the M.P.'s, Mr. Greatorex, the British Representative, and Mr. Lee inspected the island and were seen climbing down the Fountain, and nearly getting lost in the bush.

  And also:

  Along with the two parliamentarians came two others, Cecil Greatorex and Tony Lee, both astute figures in the British Foreign Service, ranking among the authorities in colonial affairs, both with colourful experiences in Africa, the Middle East and the West Indies. Mr. Greatorex we have already welcomed to our island before, and each time we have grown fonder of him. Mr. Lee we have just come to know, and find him a most charming and helpful diplomat.

  And what of the Parliamentary Delegation itself? The Beacon says:

  Our guests are Mr. Nigel Fisher and Mr. Donald Chapman, members of a parliamentary delegation sent to work out possible solutions to our political impasse with St. Kitts and the other world States represented in the United Nations. Mr. Fisher, 54, married and the father of two children, previously an Under-Secretary of State for the colonies, with a vast experience of West Indian affairs, is the President of the Delegation. Mr. Chapman, 44, unmarried, is Chairman of the Delegation, representing the present Labour Government, also with long experience in the Caribbean. These two men were specially chosen from the whole of Parliament as having the greatest understanding of our local problems.

  A two-man Delegation, and one of them is President and the other one is Chairman. If it had been a three-man Delegation, what would the third man have been? Emperor?

  And what did Fisher and Chapman think of the Anguillans, now that we have seen what the Anguillans thought of them? Novelist John Updike was staying at Jerry Gumbs's Rendezvous Hotel while Fisher and Chapman were there; in a piece he did later in The New Yorker, Updike writes, "One of the Englishmen in the Parliamentary mission referred to the Anguillans as 'the poor dears,' and another, as we lay on the beach, in answer to my question as to what St. Kitts was like, answered, with a wave that included the immaculate beach and the turquoise sea, 'Bout like this. A bloody 'ole.'"

  Fisher and Chapman arrived at the bloody hole and were greeted by the poor dears. Ronald Webster made a speech: "Mr. Greatorex, Honourable Gentlemen of Parliament, Mr. Lee. On behalf of the Council and the people of Anguilla we wish to express our warm welcome to you, especially at this time. We are indeed grateful for having you here, and may your stay be an unforgettable one. I can assure you that there is law and order in our beautiful island, and I am asking you while you are here to guarantee our safety from any attacks, and I am sure that you will have a wonderful stay in Anguilla. Anguillans are peaceful, loving and law-abiding people. Our desire for freedom is still as resolute as on the eleventh day of July 1967. It is our firm desire to negotiate and achieve some amicable solution. Now you are free to go from home to home and get the views of the people, have a nice lunch, a sea bath, visit anywhere in our island, and judge for yourself. Friends, I thank you."

  This was on Monday. According to the Beacon:

  On Tuesday the 5th the Delegation visited the Valley Schools, and were really shocked at the overcrowding there, and said it was the worst they had ever seen. They also visited the hospital and saw the improvements there effected since the secession.

  In the evening there was an official party at the house of the Medical Officer to meet the Anguillan notabilities informally. Unfortunately, there was no room to invite the wives. . . .

  Fisher and Chapman met with as many Anguillans as they could during the next few days, impressed the local citizens with their apparent desire to listen and understand, and wound up with a social event nicely reported by the Beacon:

  On the Thursday evening, our visitors were invited to attend a Cantata at St. Andrews Church East End, which had been arranged some time before it was known they were coming. In getting there they experienced most of the hazards of Anguilla—running out of petrol, the rocky roads, and the dust. Mr. Ronald Webster welcomed them to the Cantata, and gave them the opportunity to introduce themselves to the crowd there.

  Mr, Webster himself took part in the singing of a trio with two young ladies, and revealed that he has a very good tenor voice. The Rector announced that he would have loved to say that the next item was a duet by Mr. Fisher and Mr. Chapman, but had to pass on to the next item of the full programme.

  It's a pity they didn't get to do their duet, but as the Delegation Special supplement of the Beacon says in its windup:

  It is obvious that we cannot expect any pronouncement from the Delegation while they are on this island. The real battle has got to be fought in St. Kitts. Anything may happen there, as the people of St. Kitts are getting very restive, and the Anguillan problem is part of a bigger problem invo
lving St. Kitts and Nevis. We are grateful for having had two men of such great friendliness and understanding, and while we are standing firm to our legitimate demands, we realize the very difficult task that lies ahead of them when they land in St. Kitts. Perhaps they may pay us another visit before they return to Britain.

  The prayers of all Anguillans go with them, that they may find a solution acceptable not only to us, but to the other islands.

  Good-bye. God be with you.

  Fisher and Chapman next went to St. Kitts to see Colonel Bradshaw. There was no published account of that meeting, but appafently it didn't run very smoothly. "The distrust on both sides was very great," Nigel Fisher said later. "On a small scale, it was quite a difficult negotiation, because neither side would meet the other, and we had frequently to go to and from Anguilla and St. Kitts to get agreement."

  About two weeks were spent traveling back and forth between the two islands. Almost from the beginning Fisher and Chapman realized the best they could hope for was a temporary agreement; the distrust on both sides was so great that no permanent solution was likely to be worked out in the short time they had available. So they aimed at the idea of leaving Tony Lee on Anguilla for an interim period of about a year, to give some semblance of legality to the island while a more permanent arrangement could be hammered out.

  But even an interim arrangement was difficult to achieve. Neither side wanted to seem to be giving in on any of its positions. The British accepted Bradshaw's dominion over Anguilla, and therefore had to have his permission to assign Tony Lee there. They also, for more obvious and fundamental reasons, had to have the Anguillans' permission before leaving him there. In order to get it all accomplished, Fisher and Chapman apparently had to behave rather like insurance salesmen; a lot of vague promises were spoken, most of which had faded like morning mist when it came time to write things down.