The prisoners of St Kitts

JUSTICE DIANA PRIOR-PALMER

St Kitts is one of the chain of small islands that form the western boundary of the Carib- bean Sea. Three miles away, across the straight, is Nevis; sixty miles to the north-west is Anguilla. Together they make up one of the five West Indian states in association with Great Britain. Like Nevis and Anguilla, St Kitts is unbelievably beautiful; unlike them, it is extra- ordinarily green. Neat sugar plantations sweep up from the coast to the ridge of high ground that runs across the centre of the island. Its capital, Basseterre, is everything that a Carib- bean town should be: the buildings are eighteenth century West Indian—white clap- board houses with long balconies ('galleries' they call them) running along their fronts, cascading bougainvillea. Behind, and over- shadowing the town, is a 4,000-foot mountain. It is called Mount Misery.

The name is not inapt. To the people of the three-island 'state' of St Kitts, Nevis, and (until it declared urn) Anguilla, misery is endemic. Most of the islanders are poor, living at bare subsistence level. Poverty is tolerable; they are used to it. But political coercion and protection rackets are facts of life that are harder to bear. At the foot of Mount Misery, in Basseterre, twenty-two men have been held in a stifling hot prison since early June. In August, the West Indies associated states appeal court found against the St Kitts govern- tient for imprisoning them and they were released. The Chief Minister promptly rammed new legislation through his packed parliament and six of the detainees were re-arrested, charged with conspiracy to overthrow the law- ful government of the state. It is said that six Anguillans, who were never released at all, are still in prison with them. On Monday the St Kitts prisoners came up for trial.

I last went to Nevis in February to con- valesce after a major operation. It was the quietest place I knew and I had many friends in the islands. Four months later I was arrested, imprisoned for forty-eight hours with- out being charged, and finally deported. I gather it was a case of guilt by association: many of my friends were among the twenty- two men who are now in Basseterre jail.

The events that led up to their—and in- cidentally to my—arrest were hardly in accord with textbook democracy, but then, Mr Robert Lewellyn Bradshaw, the Chief Minister, is hardly a textbook democrat. Mr Bradshaw (who has a very large, very bristling moustache, which he brushes with a golden brush) became prominent in the St Kitts Labour party in 1948. As leader of the only union on the island, he led a sugar workers' strike that cul- minated in sixteen weeks of rioting and had repercussions throughout the Caribbean. It was an august beginning. He went on to become minister of trade and production in 1952, and served as finance minister in the short-lived federal government of the West Indies. Now be drives around in a yellow, armour-plated Rolls-Royce. On special occasions he wears a wing collar and a powdered wig.

For over sixteen years prior to statehood, Robert L. Bradshaw was virtually unopposed.

Occasional opposition candidates emerged at election time and subsequently disappeared; no firmly based opposition party was ever formed.

This was the state of affairs until Dr William V. Herbert, LLB, PhD, returned from London University and the Institute for Ad- vanced Legal Studies in the early 'sixties. The young lawyer offered his services to the Bradshaw Labour government but was turned down, probably because of an old vendetta betwetin Bradshaw and his father, who was a highly respected union mediator. Billy Herbert formed an opposition party, the People's Action Movement. Despite the usual connota- tions of 'people's' parties, the PAm is in fact a moderate movement which appeals to the emerging 'brown' professional class in the islands. In the 1966 elections the PAM won 39 per cent of the votes to Bradshaw's 44 per cent. Not a single vote was cast for Labour in either Nevis or Anguilla.

In the weeks following independence in February of this year everything pointed to the young state's becoming a miniature Haiti. It was plain that Bradshaw was not going to tolerate the PAM any longer than was necessary. Its members were forbidden to hold any politi- cal meetings without permission of the chief of police—which portfolio lies, conveniently, with Mr Bradshaw—but they nevertheless held public meetings whenever they saw fit, only to be hauled up before the courts.

The opportunity to crush the PAM'S oppo- sition came all too soon with the secession of Anguilla in May. The Chief Minister declared a state of emergency throughout the islands, although ;here had been no hint of disturbance on either Nevis or St Kitts. He armed his defence force to the teeth, and on 6 June ominously cleared the Basseterre jail-house. Four days later, on the pretext of a shooting in- cident widely believed to have been 'staged,' plain-clothes police—the 'breadfruit-tree boys' —swooped and made their arrests.

It is now impossible to believe that Dr

Herbert and the other prisoners will get a fair trial. Earlier this month, a member of the Inter- national Commission of Jurists was shot at while visiting the state. A magistrate has openly stated in court that he was threatened with his life should he grant bail to the prisoners. A local leading counsel is able to remain in St Kitts for one week only at a time, and, it seems, his work permit is always revoked the day before there is going to be a hearing. The prisoners and others have already been tried and condemned publicly on the government- controlled radio.

The present trial may well turn out to be a political and judicial cause célèbre in the West Indies. Certain unpleasant characteristics of the situation might well prove infectious. It is perhaps for this reason that over a dozen mem- bers of the West Indian Bar have offered their services to the defence of the St Kitts prisoners and, that the Caribbean governments and press, with the possible exception of Guyana and Antigua, have expressed their strong disap- proval of the Bradshaw regime and sympathy with Anguilla's UD1.

The root of all these troubles, and of Anguilla's rebellion, lies ultimately in the endemic poverty of the area, exacerbated by economic mismanagement on the part of the Chief Minister. The islands are over-populated for their resources, and severe unemployment is only partly mitigated by emigration; they were long neglected prior to independence, and now depend for economic survival on inade- quate subsidies from Britain. These subsidies have never been properly apportioned by St Kitts to the other two islands.

Anguilla's rebellion occurred in May. It had never wanted to be part of the three-island state, despite the promise of an executive coun- cil of its own. One of the reasons for its secession was that this promise was never ful- filled. Officially the Commonwealth Office could not intervene—Britain has no authority over the internal affairs of an associated state—but Lord Shepherd, Minister of State at the Com- monwealth Office, finally managed to draw up a settlement at the Barbados conference.

The settlement was rejected by Anguilla, and the four Caribbean states (Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados and Guyana) appointed to see it through have declined to proceed—not un- naturally, in the light of Mr Bradshaw's recent behaviour. Once again there is deadlock. Brad- shaw wants Britain to re-establish constitu- tional rule in Anguilla—if necessary by force. But could the British government seriously contemplate such a measure?

There is the additional factor that were Anguilla to set a fashion for secession in the Caribbean, the us could be faced with a serious defence problem. But morally there can be no argument about it—if Britain intervenes it must be to help Anguilla not Bradshaw. The Anguil- lans never trusted Bradshaw and never chose to be ruled by him. The imprisonment of his opponents in St Kitts is just one of the reasons why they were right not to do so.

It is understandable that Britain should hesitate to use financial blackmail in an area so desperately poor. But if the good Lord Shep- herd would like to see Anguilla back in the fold he must, by using any means available, ensure a fair trial for the St Kitts prisoners, followed by free elections and a prompt return to democratic government. I am quite sure that the Anguillans will never agree to be governed by St Kitts as long as Bradshaw rules un- opposed. And who could blame them?