British MP In Anguilla On Holiday

British Member of Parliament, Anthony Baldry, who is holidaying on the island, was among the gathering at the Official Parade at the Webster Park on Anguilla Day, May 30. He also attended the special luncheon at Rumza, held mainly for the senior citizens.

Mr. Baldry, now a Conservative Party Back Bencher in the House of Commons, was in Anguilla ten years ago when he was a Minister in the Foreign Office with responsibility for the Overseas Territories.

“I am delighted to be back again and it is really good to see how Anguilla has developed over those ten years,” he told The Anguillian. “As the Governor and the Chief Minister said, however, the key question is to ensure that it is the right development and that the island does not get too over-developed otherwise it could ‘kill the goose that laid the golden egg.”

Anguilla’s Opposition Member, Hubert Hughes, who served as the island’s Chief Minister at the time when Mr. Baltry was a UK Minister, commented: “I thought that Mr. Anthony Baldry, whom we call Tony had a lot of interest in and concern for the true development of the Overseas Territories. He convened a conference in Montserrat in October 1994 …and I found him to be a very constructive and reasonable person.
“As a matter of I put him in a very embarrassing position on one occasion. In the presence of my own Governor, I asked him to move him [from Anguilla] and he conceded immediately. ‘I will move him’, he said. And this is something that hardly happens that a Minister will say, in the presence of a Governor, to a Chief Minister of an Overseas Territory: ‘I will move him.’ But he did move him.”
Mr. Baldry replied: “I remember that visit to Montserrat… and the Governor at that time.”