Beyond The Revolution

Imagine Anguillian men and women who are 40 years old today, know nothing about the 1967 Revolution, the 36th Anniversary of which we are now celebrating. They were far too young to understand or retain anything about the political event.

The annual official observance of the occasion is mainly aimed at educating the youth and young adults with respect to one of the significant highlights of our history, but beyond that, how much does it tell or demand from them? The sparsely-attended thanksgiving service at St. Mary’s Anglican Church and the absence of some of the key leaders of the revolution and their offs-springs show that if we are not careful, the memory of the event could easily fade into disinterest and insignificance.

The fact is that the revolution has indeed enabled Anguilla and its people to achieve something – an element of self-determination and a level of economic achievement which many would readily say could not have been possible under the old regime in St. Kitts. During the UN Caribbean Seminar on the island, a secondary school mathematics teacher publicly stated that he could not understand why Anguilla had seceded from an Associated State only to become a colony again. He was probably thinking that the time was ripe for some type of constitutional advancement although he did not seem to support outright independence given some of the expected challenges to which he alluded.

While the revolution has served us well, we must now look beyond our present circumstances to see how much further we can progress along a path of self-determination. Pastor Jerome Harrigan put it across well when he said at the thanksgiving service that there was a need for a second revolution where a new band of workers would rise up, rebuild the broken-down walls and fences (referring to the besetting socio-economic and political ills) and carry the island forward. Indeed, while we reflect on from whence we came, we must carefully consider where we are now going, what methods we can carve out to get there and how quickly we can arrive.