Westlake, Donald E - NF 01 Read Free Page B

No reason why not.
    Princess Margaret officiated at the
first session of the West Indies Parliament on April 22, 1958 . It was planned that for the next four
years the new nation would be half-free and half-colony, with Mother Britain
keeping one hand on the reins while the boys got used to running things
themselves. As of May 31, 1962 ,
the West Indies Federation would be a completely
independent nation, and Great Britain would have rid itself of ten colonies at one fell swoop.
    But it didn't turn out that way.
The first thing that happened, there was trouble about the capital.
Chaguaramas, the site on Trinidad they'd finally chosen,
was leased to the United States for a naval base and the United States wouldn't vacate. So after all that bickering about the capital, and finally
coming to a decision, everybody had to go back and start all over again.
    Then, on September 19, 1961 , Jamaica had a referendum; should it stay in the Federation or get out? The decision was
strongly to get out, which Jamaica promptly did. The first island in became the first island out.
    Trinidad was
the second, early in 1962. And on May
31, 1962 , the date originally planned as Independence Day, the West
Indies Federation was dissolved.
    And they never did find a site for
the capital.
    The West Indies
Federation wasn't a total loss, however. The practice had been
good for the bigger islands, and in August of 1962 both Jamaica and Trinidad-Tobago became independent. So the British had at least managed to
cut their colonial responsibilities by two.
    But that was a far cry from the ten
they'd been trying for, so the British came right back in again, with a new idea— a federation.
    This time the federation would be
composed of the "Little Eight"— Antigua , Barbados , Dominica , Grenada ,
Montser-rat, St. Christopher-Nevis-Anguilla , St.
Lucia and St. Vincent .
Conferences were held, of course, both on Barbados and in London , and on November 1, 1964 , a cheerful
announcement was made that a new improved West Indies Federation would appear some time in 1965. It didn't, though, and on November 30, 1966 , Barbados went off by itself and became an independent nation, and then there were seven.
    Back in 1960, during the half-life
of the West Indies Federation , the Anguillans had asked
through their elected member of the St. Kitts Legislative Council if they could
please be separated from St. Kitts; they were ignored. On January 22, 1965 , while the "Little
Eight" conferences were going on, seventeen leading citizens of Anguilla signed a request that their island "remain outside the proposed Federation
of the Eastern Caribbean and be administered from the
Colonial Office"; they were ignored.
    The requests from Anguilla for political separation from St. Kitts had never stopped since 1822, but from
1958 on they became ever more frequent, more urgent and more plaintive. General
independence was in the air, and the Anguillans knew it and did not want
independence from Great Britain if it meant they would remain under the authority of St. Kitts. And the reason
for that was mostly a man named Robert Llewellyn Bradshaw.
    Robert Bradshaw is a Kittitian,
born in 1916 and destined to be a cane cutter on the plantations like the
generations before him. In a special report on the Leeward and Windward
islands in October of 1968, the London Times gave the background that altered Robert Bradshaw s destiny:
    A
fairly consistent pattern can be seen in the islands. Political awareness began
in the late 1930s, when depression in world commodity prices, particularly
sugar, hit the whole West
Indies hard. With the help
of the British Labour Party and trade unions the workers came together. For the
first time there was a basis for popular power. Mr. Bradshaw, of St. Kitts—the
doyen of island politicians—and Mr. Bird, of Antigua , rose in this manner. They were union organizers and spoke for
labour—the cane cutters, the dock workers and public employees. This