Opposition Member in the Anguilla House Assembly, Hubert Hughes, visited the offices of The Anguillian Newspaper on Tuesday, April 10, and gave an interview on the crime situation now facing the island.

Hon. Hubert Hughes

Following is that interview:
The Anguillian: Mr. Hughes, there is growing concern about the crime situation affecting the island. What are your thoughts?

Hughes: There is this antiquated idea that you must clean up after the mess has been done instead of preventing it from happening. We are not properly policed, first of all. The sensitive areas of Anguilla are not being policed. For instance, you go to places like Cul de Sac, you go West End in the tourism belt and you do not see a police presence. I don’t mind the police wearing their uniform because if you know the uniform man is there, you are going to keep away. We want to prevent crime.

That is one aspect of it. There are a lot of other things we need to do, and that’s why it is important for the Government of the day to behave responsibly. If Government members do not behave responsibly, the calypsonians will carry adverse stories and the boys who listen to them will say ‘if John Brown who is a politician can do that, why can’t I.’ So politicians have to be role models generally in a small society.

We have to be careful about the type of investment we accommodate because our job is to create stability and we must always have people coming out of school and having the jobs which Anguilla can afford, available to them. We have to watch the situation with us bringing in hundreds of workers from South-east Asia, out of the region, out of our culture. We have to watch the situation where financiers and investment companies are coming in with super finance and thus upsetting the balance in our society.

The Anguillian: But what has that to do with crime?

Hughes: It has a lot to do with crime because we have to have a situation which we can control and regulate and the situation is unnecessarily too big; we can’t control it and we can’t regulate it.

The Anguillian: Is there a need to give more teeth to the law to deal with crime?

Hughes: Of course, if you have an unusual situation developing where crime is becoming rampant and the legal system is not strong enough, it may be necessary to strengthen the legal system to give the police more authority and to hold people for longer periods for interrogation and so forth. The children who get into crime these days put themselves in a position to get into crime. Those who stay out of particular areas of crime are not apprehended by police; so if you put yourself in a situation where police must apprehend you, you should be prepared for longer periods of apprehension and interrogation.

The Anguillian: Why is it that a developing territory, such as Anguilla, is being stalked by rising crime?

Hughes: Anguilla is a small territory. Small territories are very vulnerable to being overrun. One of the things you must understand is that an investor is a capitalist. A capitalist’s concept of investment is profit-making. He is not responsible for the containment of crime and the stability of the society. He sees things in terms of whether his entity can be profitable to him.

It is our responsibility, as the political leaders of this island, to ensure that there is stability because we should understand all the vulnerabilities better than anyone else who come here to ensure that we can control our development.

The Anguillian: What hope do you see for Anguilla in the fight against crime?

Hughes: I wouldn’t say there is no come back but we are fast heading in that direction and you need a complete national approach. Our party political structure is like an exclusive club and it prevents people who can make a valid contribution to the stability of the society from doing so. That is because they are barred from being in the inner courts of the party. Anguilla can’t afford it. It is a luxury that we can’t afford: the luxury of party politics.

The Anguillian: What can other branches of the society, like the churches, do to prevent crime?

Hughes: The churches need to preach the Bible. Our churches no longer preach the Bible. When I go back to my old English history, I realise that our church leaders today remind me of those church leaders before the Reformation in that they condone wrong-doing because they want to be in on the act.
I am very disenchanted because our church leaders are no longer preaching God. They are preaching money – most of them; and the whole idea is: ‘Am I on the right side of privileges and favours?’ They are not preaching God and the Bible any more. There might be one or two you might pick out – but the vast majority of our church leaders have let down Christianity in Anguilla.

The Anguillian: Are you suggesting that there is a need to return to yester-year when Anguilla was a more God-fearing society with cherished family values and love?

Hughes: This is what we promoted in the early days while trying to encourage tourism in Anguilla: that we were a God-fearing Christian society and we were stable because of that. Which organisation can create stability better than the church because you volunteer to be good?

The police can’t do it. The church is the largest force. When I was in Government, I did everything for the churches. I gave them land to build churches on; I gave them concessions but some of the people involved have obviously let me down. They deceived by far the mission they set out to promote.

There is a need for all of us to come together to fight this ugly spectre of rising crime in our society.

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