The power of the people rallying around their leaders was a significant contribution to the success of the 1967 Anguilla Revolution. As events continue to show, it will be the same power of the people that will help to guide and shape the future of our island and ensure their own rights and those of others among them.

Our Government representatives will need the power of the people behind them not just to keep them in office, but to assist them in carrying Anguilla forward to find its rightful niche in the affairs of a hostile and competitive world. It will be the power of the people which will conversely cast them out of office if they were to fail in the exercise of wise governance and to protect them by whose votes they were elected. Thus our Government leaders are simply the servants of the people. The Government must therefore be constantly aware of this and must not ever under-estimate the power of the people.

They can rise up when they think they have had enough. The power they exhibited over the past week as they stood in solidarity with the striking Indian construction workers has not been manifested before in recent times. It was obvious that while they supported the foreign workers in their claims for increased wages and better standards of living, they were at the same time ‘putting their beards in soak’ against that day when calamity and distress might overtake them at their job places. Their action to march with the Indians also brought attention to the fact that there are various social concerns in Anguilla and that it will take anything to touch off a crisis situation. Government has to be careful and address these social ills without delay.

In doing so, they would not be alone. The local lawyers and others, who came to the rescue – whether at the request of the Indians or on their own volition, must be highly commended and thanked for their intervention and the professional role they so ably and admirably performed. They have helped to save the day and to turn an untenable and potentially dangerous situation into one of acceptance and peace.

The lawyers, who did not draw any particular light to themselves, were careful and kind to say that the Government itself had stood steadfastly in support of the demands by the Indians for 100% increases in the various categories of pay. By doing so the lawyers sought also to soothe the anger of the people and to re-establish some confidence in their elected representatives who stood in the background as the lawyers addressed the people. It was in his capacity of Chief Minister and Minister of Labour that the Hon. Osbourne Fleming spoke briefly only to say that the Government were in support of the Indians and that he was happy that agreement had been reached. Even then he was heckled by the crowd. It was better therefore that the he had kept out of the addresses.

One Anguillian demonstrator, carrying a placard on her back, quoted Revelation Chapter 17 which states in part: The writing is on the wall. Let us hope that there will be no similar occurrences and that industrial peace will sweep across our fair land. If not, the power of the people may manifest itself again. The second situation may be worse than the first.

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