Of course I have some views about the recent issues that have been raising the collective temperature of most Anguillians, viz. the Physical Planning Bill, the Labour Code and violence in school.

To take the last one first, while I understand the feelings of the students who are doing well socially and academically, I would like to encourage Anguillians to appreciate that the students who are not doing well on those fronts are still our children. Society’s responses should not result in an “us and them” scenario that promotes first class and second class citizenship or we would all have failed. The words of Haile Selassie I, popularized by Bob Marley in War, make it clear that until there are no longer first class and second class citizens of any nation, there will be war. At the end of the day, strategies of isolation and exclusion, and even the wall, may therefore be counterproductive.

To introduce my views on the Bills, I will refer to a remark made by the Honourable Hubert Hughes at the public consultation in The Valley that must surely have made it to Mr. Petty’s list of quotable quotes. The comment from Mr. Hughes was this: “I am not elected because I am qualified,” he said. “I am elected because I am popular.”

Over the years my views have tended to be popular with neither lawyers nor politicians nor landowners and I am definitely not seeking election to any office at all, so it is out of human decency and respect that I try not to be offensive but I certainly do not mind having views that are unpopular. Sometimes though, I wonder if I come from a different planet because what often seems obvious to me does not even make it as a “mentioned in passing” in the context of popular debate. When I first wrote this I thought I was going to be one of the small voices in the Anguillian wilderness ,one more time, pointing to colonialism as the underlying cause of many of the ills with which we grapple. However, after hearing Haydn Hughes and Nakishma Rogers on Kool FM last week, I do not feel so alone anymore and maybe, just maybe, Anguillians, in the quest for self-determination will increasingly see the value of supporting an independence movement, setting an agenda for political independence and planning for integration in the Caribbean Region.

First of all, I want to commend the Anguillian lawyers for reviewing the Bills in the kind of depth that laypersons could not, and then for taking considerable time and resources to guide us through the most unacceptable parts of them. Personally, I am glad for the heightened awareness but I do not know that I would have put so much effort into bothering with one aspect of the Bill that is so clearly unworkable. As someone who lives in an unfinished house that will remain unfinished for an undeterminable number of years, that aspect made me laugh at first. I quickly realised it was no laughing matter when I thought of the wastage of resources that must result from the creation of legislation so un-Anguillian that it is intrinsically unenforceable. I do, however, have a concern and it is one for which landowners in Anguilla need to take greatest responsibility. It is the matter of environmental protection.

Given Anguilla’s size and shape, the entire island can be thought of as a coastal zone. Yet, our track record, as evidenced by past and current development projects has not, to my mind, shown that we have been careful enough in protecting the very land that we love, in a manner that will enable future generations of Anguillians to enjoy the sustained benefits of our natural resources. That aspect seems to have been lost among the issues that were necessarily highlighted in the discussion of the Physical Planning Bill. I heard the word environment mentioned but overshadowing that was the general agreement that no law should step rough shod over the rights of landowners. That is why, no matter what replaces the offending Bill, there must be some mechanism by which landowners themselves will ensure the sustainability of their plans for the development of their lands. I also hope that someone will dig up and dust off an old recommendation of mine, that foreign investors should be required to purchase additional lands at fair market prices to allow some scope for both conservation and development. This requirement would be taken into consideration by any foreign investor who intends to come knocking on Anguilla’s door.

With respect to the Labour Bill, my concern is whether at this critical time, Anguilla sees the necessity to ready our labour market for integration into Caribbean Regional processes to bolster us from the storms of globalization. I say this even though I believe that it is a limited view to stop at the recognition that the word “nationality” seems to be a way of facilitating the “reciprocity” that we still need clear assurances about from our administering power. If we are indeed concerned about cultural differences, then we need to understand that we have more in common with the rest of the Caribbean than we do with Europe. Anguillians, like most other Caribbean people, were also captured, dragged aboard and arrived by the same slave ship. We do not even seem interested in educating ourselves so as to take advantage of any benefits that may be derived from the CSME but we, and our Labour Code, need to address that reality. That to me is short sighted.

Finally, on the basis of his remarks made via the media on the day of the march, I want to challenge Mitchell Lake’s thinking that democracy is to be pitted against socialism and communism because democracy has not shown itself to be synonymous with capitalism at all. What is clear to me is that in our political context, rights that are bound to foreign cultures can be imposed upon us as a colonized people.

We can therefore shout, and we can march, but it is colonialism that is inimical to the meaningful practice of democracy. Now, when are we going to tackle that?

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