A headline in the London Evening Standard for March 14: "Gunpoint Island Puts Mr. Wilson on the Spot."
From the Daily Telegraph of March 14: "Officials are now inclined to believe reports that have been circulating in the Caribbean for several months that the American Mafia or associated crime interests are interested in Anguilla."
From the London Times, a headline on March 13: "Anguillans 'Ruled by Fear.' "
My personal favorite is from the Evening Standard on March 14: "There are about 6000 people on the island. Most of them are believed to have guns." If we remember that thirty-five hundred of the six thousand are children and two thousand of the remainder are women—if, in fact, we remember that British and Kittitian neglect have resulted in an island run by remittance, in which most able-bodied men must spend years in exile to send money home for their families to live on—that particular line becomes first funny and then merely stupid.
Desperate deeds of derring do.
—W. S. Gilbert, Ruddigore
21
On Anguilla the tough boys had been only nominally under Webster's control until the Whitlock incident. Once they'd managed to throw a British diplomat off the island there was no stopping them. They were in charge to whatever extent they wanted to be in charge.
Fortunately they had no program, no goals and no plans. They weren't Mafia or even Mafia-like; they were simply thirty overgrown brats with guns in their hands. Which meant that for the most part life on the island continued as before. The Provisional Government continued provisionally to govern, and the juvenile delinquents did much less damage than might have been expected.
Their worst act was reported in the Beacon, which under the circumstances deserves the right to describe it:
On Wednesday, March 12th, the day after Mr. William Whitlock was expelled from the island, eight men, some armed, walked into the premises of the Beacon and took away the Beacon press. Spokesman for the men said that they were sent for a press which belonged to the people of Anguilla. My wife and her mother, who were home at the time, did not argue with the intruders, who took the press away. On hearing this, I approached Mr. Webster, who said that he had no knowledge of what had happened. Mr. Webster returned the press the following day, with an excuse for the men. It said, "The press was taken by citizens who believed that the Beacon printed news that was treasonable." The press was out of order when it was returned. Thanks to two persons a new roller was brought in from Boston on Saturday, 29th March. The Beacon holds no ill feelings against these men. We feel that the press was taken as a result of a meeting held at Sandy Hill's Government Building the night before, by some Government officials. Mr. Jack Holcomb and Mr. Jeremiah Gumps were also present at the meeting.
When the foeman bares his steel, Tarantara, tarantara! We uncomfortable feel, Tarantara.
—W. S. Gilbert, The Pirates of Penzance
22
In the outside world, the Mafia story had begun to spring some leaks. Jerry Gumbs carried to the United Nations a letter from Ronald Webster asking for a fact-finding mission from the U.N. to come see for itself if there were any gamblers on Anguilla. When the Committee on Colonialism agreed to give Gumbs another hearing, the British delegation walked out. But the walkout failed to keep Jerry Gumbs from being news again. The New York Times quoted him as saying, "The Anguillans are a Christian, churchgoing people who do not want gambling casinos." And the London Daily Telegraph also quoted him: "A United Nations mission can see for themselves that there is no Mafia there. The people of Anguilla are not going to have gambling on the island. Nobody that I know of is attempting to introduce gambling there."
Reporters had descended on Anguilla the instant the Whitlock story broke, and their reports were significantly free of news about the Mafia. The vagueness of the Whitlock remarks on the subject began to be more noticeable as the first excitement faded, and within four days a certain skepticism had entered the news reports. No one in the press had as yet come out with the flat statement that Whitlock was wrong. But when another member of the Whitlock party announced that the island's leaders had met Whitlock in "a Black Power type of dress," and it turned out he meant morning coats and white gloves, the absurdity was out in the open.
Now the reporters began to get more specific. The Telegraph's Ian Ball wrote, "The oblique reference to the Mafia, first made by Mr. Whitlock . . . may turn out to be a particularly embarrassing one for the Government. Those of us who have tried to find substantiation for the charge are still looking." And Andrew McEwen of the Daily Mail reported, "The nearest thing to A1 Capone and Miami thuggery is a bunch of schoolboy hoodlums who play soldiers and carry guns." And in The Guardian, Adam Raphael calmly said, "The Americans in Anguilla may not for the most part be very likeable, but they are hardly sinister characters and the extent of their influence seems to have been to encourage the islanders to break away both from St. Kitts and Britain."
But that was all in the newspapers, not in the halls of Government.
The British Government made its first official response to the Whitlock ouster three days after it happened. In Barbados the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Overseas Development announced that Great Britain was scrapping all financial aid to Anguilla. What the Trinidad Guardian had in 1967 called "the most empty diplomatic threat in history" had now become a reality. Two months after British economic aid to Anguilla had stopped because of the end of the Interim Agreement, the British decided to stop all economic aid.
Unfortunately, the British Government was also making other decisions, less empty in their threatening aspect. As the weekend of March 15-16 approached, it became increasingly obvious from newspaper reports that the British were planning a military invasion of Anguilla. On Friday the fourteenth, Ronald Webster told his people the British were probably going to invade and said it would surely lead to bloodshed. "If they take our land they must take our life first," he told them, and said they should "be calm and do not despair, as God is with us through these troubled times."
Webster tried the same bluffing tactics against the British that had worked so well against Bradshaw. In an interview with Daily Telegraph reporter Ian Ball, he started talking again about his military preparedness. Ball writes:
I questioned Mr. Webster at length about the weapons his "Anguillan defence force," a Home Guard type of army, had at its disposal. When I asked him exactly what firepower his regime could muster he threw his arms wide in a gesture of mock surprise.
"Oh, please! . . . How do you expect me to answer that? All I can say is'that they are up-to-date weapons, very destructive."
Were they obtained legally? "They came in legally to me, yes. I can say they did not come from the States, but I cannot tell you the source."
I asked him what he would do if the British Government dispatched the frigate Minerva, 2,860 tons, now in Antigua a few hours' steaming distance away, to deal with his revolt.
He boasted that his Defence Force could handle "one British frigate. Two boats, I might have to resort to something else. But one frigate I can handle."
This fairy tale was believed by the British Government just as thoroughly as its predecessors had been believed by Bradshaw. The difference was that it didn't make the British change their minds about invading; it simply made them increase the size of their invasion force.
On Sunday the sixteenth, Webster tried another tactic to forestall the invasion. There were four Britons on the island-two nurses, a teacher and Canon Carleton, cofounder of the Beacon—and Webster informed them they would have to leave, temporarily. They would be welcome back, "as soon as the threat of an invasion is past," he said, and explained he was afraid the British Government would claim it had to invade Anguilla to protect its citizens there. To rob London of the excuse, he was asking the British citizens to go somewhere else until calm returned. Jack Holcomb typed the deportation orders.
That same Sunday, Jerry Gumbs went back to the United Nations, claimed that two British frigates were on the
ir way to Anguilla, and asked the U.N. to intervene and help avoid bloodshed. A British "spokesman" denied that frigates were heading toward Anguilla, which was technically true. They weren't; not yet.
By Monday the seventeenth, the Anguillans were getting very nervous. Their tough-talking bluff had worked, but not the way they'd wanted it to; instead of scaring the British off, it had made them decide to get tougher.
It was St. Patrick's Day, but the Irish in the Anguillan blood wasn't being stirred at the thought of a donnybrook with the British. Webster grew less talkative with reporters. He traveled everywhere with Jack Holcomb at his side and more often than not deferred to Holcomb to answer the questions put to him. Ian Ball once again defined Webster's mood: "I asked Webster whether his defence force would fight British paratroops and police and perhaps a naval and marine force. 1 am prepared,' he said somberly."
His preparations included moving a motorboat he owned, which had always been docked around on the north side of the island, over to Sandy Hill Bay, near his home, and hiding it there under some brush, so that if the British actually did invade, he and his family could escape to St. Martin. Unfortunately some Defence Force boys who lived in the area stumbled across the hidden motorboat, which they didn't recognize as belonging to this bay. Thinking it might have been left there by an assassin from St. Kitts, they took their rifle butts and smashed it to kindling. As it turned out, Webster didn't try to leave the island when the British landed, so it was several days before he discovered what had happened to his boat.
On Monday Jerry Gumbs showed up at the U.N. once more, and by now the bluff was almost completely out of him. He wanted the U.N. to stop the British from invading; he wanted it very badly. "It would be a mass murder—a bunch of gorillas rushing into an orphanage/' he said. "Don't they know that if you use force you get murder, rape and kidnaping? They are going to go to this island of ours, which has no murder, no rapes, no crime at all, and murder our people." And, "Mr. Webster and I could sit down with Lord Caradon and sort out the whole situation with very little difficulty, if we were just given the chance."
But on the island itself there were those who wanted the British to invade. The guns had come out and they hadn't liked it; no matter how troubled they might be at the thought of invasion, uncontrolled juvenile delinquents troubled them even more. Cabdriver John Rogers told the Daily Mail, "I hope Britain will send in a force as soon as possible. And it must be a massive force, otherwise the defence force will resist." And Canon Carleton, before leaving the island, told Ivor Key of the Sun, "The only solution is for Britain to invade. Somewhere along the way, Webster has gone wrong, and, with American influence, he now wants complete independence. The whole trouble stems from when Holcomb came in July last year and now it seems the island is under his influence."
Ian Ball talks of meeting Wallace Rey and being shouted at, and adds, "The encounter with Mr. Rey in which pro and anti-rebel Anguillans standing nearby almost came to blows, was indicative of the brittle tensions on the island."
The situation on Anguilla was becoming more complex by the hour. Here was fragmentation with a vengeance. The range of opinion on the island now from David Lloyd through to Wallace Rey included someone who defended just about every possible shade. Men who had been rebel leaders for two years were now asking the British to invade. Ronald Webster was talking about "blood on the beaches" while the man who was supposedly representing him in New York, Jeremiah Gumbs, was claiming the whole mess could be resolved by a simple discussion with Lord Caradon. The brats on the Defence Force had stopped intimidating other people now that they had been intimidated themselves; reports were getting out that the Defence Force was losing membership.
On Tuesday the eighteenth, Webster made an about-face; the bluff wasn't doing what it was supposed to so he switched tactics. He called a news conference and said his people weren't going to fight after all. "There is no sense in making ourselves martyrs on the battlefield," he said. "We are not a bloodthirsty or trigger-happy lot. We are just defending our island for independence."
Perfectly reasonable. "I am willing to negotiate now," he said. "We could not withstand a heavy bombardment from warships. We could not expect to fight against trained men from Britain and I think the world would look down on Britain as a big baby if it tried to bully Anguilla back to St. Kitts."
Sweet reason now lights all the dark corners. The Webster change of mind didn't untangle the whole mess, but it did simplify things to the point where forward motion could be made again.
However, the British—the big baby—had already determined on a move that simplifies all situations, no matter how complicated. Nothing in this world strips away the complexities like a good rousing war.
Something may come of this. I hope it mayn't be human gore.
—Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge
23
The frigate Minerva, 2,860 tons, steamed northward through the sultry night, approaching her rendezvous with destiny. At her side moved her sister ship in Great Britain's Royal Navy, the anti-submarine frigate Rothesay, 2,600 tons.
The date was March 19, 1969. Belowdecks within the two ships waited the sleepless troops, checking their weapons, their buttons, their cigarettes, covering their insignia with black tape. In addition to the twenty Royal Marines normally carried by each frigate there were now 315 Red Devils aboard, men of the Second Parachute Battalion of the Sixteenth Parachute Brigade of the Parachute Regiment. They would enter battle today not by parachute but by rubber boats.
All British paratroops are called Red Devils because they wear red berets. Or perhaps they wear red berets because they're called Red Devils.
These particular Red Devils were normally stationed in barracks at Aldershot, near London, but a group of them had been moved, day before yesterday, to transit barracks at Devizes. From Devizes yesterday morning, before dawn, they had been loaded onto four Army trucks on which all markings had been masked over with black tape. They still looked like Army trucks, but no one could be sure which Army trucks. They had been driven via roundabout country lanes to the troop-ferrying center at the airfield at Lyneham. Tight military security was maintained by floodlighting the airport and chasing reporters away with guard dogs and jeeps; taking a page from the St. Kitts Secrecy Manual, apparently. The troops boarded two transport planes of the Royal Air Force Support Command, one Britannia and one Hercules.
Meanwhile, their places back at Aldershot had been partially taken by some forty-odd London policemen from Scotland Yard's Special Patrol Group, commanded by Assistant Commissioner Andrew Way. Way had originally been an officer in the mounted police, but as his weight had risen above three hundred pounds it was thought best he not ride horses anymore. He and his forty constables, three sergeants, two inspectors and one superintendent had arrived at Aldershot the night before to be given kit bags and military clothing suitable for the tropics. Unfortunately they didn't have anything in Commissioner Way's size, so he had to go along in blue serge.
Now these policemen, plus the rest of the Red Devil invasion force, were also on the move. Riding in two private fifty-seat buses marked "Wilts & Dorset," they were driven at ostentatiously high speed to the RAF airfield at Brize Norton and on through the ostentatiously heavily guarded Gate Number 2. What later that day the London Evening News was to call "Britain's worst-kept security secret," what the military authorities had designated "Operation Sheepskin," had begun to unroll. (The tightness of the security can be judged by a headline in the London Daily Express a day and a half before the actual landing on the island: "Invasion Plan: Frigates to Land Paratroops and London Bobbies on Island." )
Unfortunately, a slight hitch now developed; it was too foggy at both airfields for the planes to take off. The two at Lyneham and the five at Brize Norton, filled with Red Devils, London bobbies, guns, jeeps, leaflets, trucks, radios, bullets, medical supplies, clothing, forms to be filled out, parachutes, gasoline, loud-hailers and all, sat on the taxiways and waited for the fog t
o lift. When at last it did, so did they.
Ten hours later, the whole farrago landed again in Antigua. The Premier of Antigua was a man named Vere Bird, whose background was similar to Robert Bradshaw's—labor organizer, union leader, and now Premier with working-class backing. The British, stumbling around in the Caribbean like a—well, it was like a bull in a china shop—merely stopped off in Antigua on their way to "help" Robert Bradshaw but in so doing bumped into Vere Bird and helped knock him off his shelf. Most ordinary Antiguan citizens had taken the Anguillan side in the dispute and were annoyed with Bird for helping the British. Bird had been in political trouble anyway, but every little bit helps; in his next bid for re-election, he was defeated.
Having helped bump Bird, the troops and policemen and equipment traveled by truck from the airport to the deepwater harbor at St. John's, the Antiguan capital city. Along the way they passed unfriendly natives who shouted "Shame!" and political slogans, none of which made too much sense to the men in the trucks, who really didn't know what was going on. All they knew was what they read in the papers.
"There are about 6000 people on the island. Most of them are believed to have guns."
Minerva and Rothesay were waiting in the harbor, and the men and equipment boarded at once.
Now the two-frigate fleet, under the command of Commodore Martin N. Lucey, the Senior British Naval Officer for the West Indies (the same SNOWI to whom William Whitlock had written the week before), steamed north to do battle with an enemy so clever and shifty that nobody even knew exactly who he was. The enemy might be the Mafia, formerly Sicilian but more recently American, armed with machine guns, possibly in violin cases. Or the enemy might be the Black Panthers, also American in origin, armed with God alone knew what—possibly blackjacks. Or the enemy might simply be bloodthirsty Wogs indigenous to the Caribbean. Or all three, combined together.
Westlake, Donald E - NF 01 Page 19