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Podcast Transcript
In 1967, the tiny Caribbean island of Anguilla launched one of the strangest revolutions in modern history.
Its people were not fighting to escape the British Empire, but to remain a part of it, rather than be governed from the neighboring island of St. Kitts.
What followed included the expulsion of police, a short-lived republic, an invasion by British troops, and a constitutional battle that lasted for several years.
Learn more about the odd story of the 1967 Anguilla Revolution on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
There is a very good chance that most of you have never heard of the Anguilla Revolution, and many of you probably don’t even know where Anguilla is or what it is.
Anguilla is a small island in the Caribbean. It is less than 7 kilometers or a bit more than four miles off the coast of the island of Saint Martin.
Years ago, I visited the island, and that is when I first heard about the Anguillian Revolution.
Before 1967, Anguilla was one of the poorer and most neglected islands in the British Caribbean. It was first inhabited by Indigenous peoples from South America long before European contact, with archaeological evidence on the island dating back many centuries. When Europeans discovered the island is uncertain, but English settlement began around 1650, mostly by settlers from the nearby island of St. Kitts.
Unlike islands such as Barbados, Antigua, or St. Kitts, Anguilla was dry, rocky, and poorly suited to large-scale sugar plantations. That shaped its history. It never became a major plantation colony and instead developed as a small, isolated society of farmers, fishers, sailors, and small landholders.
Because Anguilla was poor and strategically unimportant, Britain didn’t give it much attention. In the nineteenth century, it was increasingly administratively tied to St. Kitts, the closest British-controlled island.
In 1871, Anguilla was attached to St. Kitts within the British Leeward Islands system, and in 1882, St. Kitts and Nevis were merged into a single unit, with Anguilla effectively governed as a dependency.
The problem was not just pride or local identity. It was practical. Anguilla had few roads, limited public services, poor communications, and little investment. Many Anguillians had to leave the island for work, especially as sailors, laborers, and migrants elsewhere in the Caribbean.
Meanwhile, political power remained concentrated in St. Kitts, whose economy, population, and political leadership dominated the combined colony. A protest from that era asked whether laws meant for Anguilla could ever be enacted with any regard for its interests when they were passed by men living on a distant island with no connection to Anguilla whatsoever.
Over the course of more than a century, Anguilla saw almost no investment in roads, electricity, running water, health care, or education. The island was, in every practical sense, neglected.
A 1958 petition sought the dissolution of Anguilla’s political and administrative association with St. Kitts. It protested about the “dead hand of St Kitts” and warned that “a people cannot live without hope for long without erupting socially.”
The petition went unanswered.
The crisis came to a head in the mid-1960s. After the failure of the broader West Indies Federation in 1962, a topic which I covered in a previous episode, Britain decided it needed a new arrangement for its remaining small Caribbean territories.
Under the proposed arrangement, each state, including the combined St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, would be fully responsible for internal self-government, while Britain would retain responsibility only for external affairs and defense.
The Anguillian people decided they did not want to become part of a unitary state with St. Kitts and Nevis. They had protested enough about the lack of educational and health facilities, electricity, paved roads, running water, and economic activity for their people, and felt that after statehood, they would have no one left to protest to.
Put simply, they feared that once Britain handed over internal governance, St. Kitts would have free rein to continue ignoring Anguilla, except that now, they couldn’t even appeal to the British.
In 1966, a new constitution for the creation of the Associated State was discussed in London. One of the proposals was the establishment of local government in Anguilla.
The St. Kitts delegation agreed that the 1967 constitution should contain a provision for Anguilla to enjoy a degree of local government. The fear in Anguilla was that the St. Kitts government had never intended to permit Anguillians any real degree of internal self-government.
Key figures in Anguilla emerged to lead the resistance. Ronald Webster, Atlin Harrigan, and Peter Adams organized public opposition. In the months leading up to February 1967, British government experts were expelled, political rallies were sabotaged, and there was violent disruption at the State Queen Show, an event organized by the government of St. Kitts to celebrate the creation of the new state.
Despite the Anguillan objections, Britain went ahead regardless. On February 26, 1967, the colony of St. Kitts, Nevis, and Anguilla became an Associated State, with the constitution taking effect the following day.
Anguilla rejected the arrangement almost immediately. Protests, public meetings, anti-statehood demonstrations, and confrontations followed. The local Government House was burned in March, and the island’s warden fled to St. Kitts.
On May 29th, at a meeting on the island, the crowd voted by a show of hands to expel the St. Kitts policemen from the island. The crowd left the Park in procession and marched to Police Headquarters, where they ordered the police to leave Anguilla by 10:00 am the following day.
After the demands were made, 17 policemen from St. Kitts spent the next 24 hours searching for ships, planes, or anything that could take them on the 70-mile journey back home.
On May 30, the police were disarmed and flown out. The expulsion of the St. Kitts police marked the start of Anguilla’s effective separation from the associated state.
Everything was bloodless, but it was a significant event in the island’s history.
In June 1967, Anguilla’s leaders sent a delegation to St. Kitts seeking a peaceful settlement. Their position was not vague. They said Anguillians did not want to be part of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla and wanted separation and self-determination, ideally as a state associated with Britain.
St. Kitts responded by declaring a state of emergency and appealing for regional help to suppress the rebellion.
Fearing an invasion from St. Kitts in retaliation, the revolutionary leaders decided on an unusual pre-emptive move. Anguillans took the initiative and devised a ham fisted attack on St. Kitts.
On the morning of June 10, 1967, they embarked upon what must be one of the most naïve failures in the history of military aggressions, and yet, fortuitously, the mission achieved its goals.
The attack did little military damage, but it demonstrated that Anguillans were serious and willing to act, and it rattled the St. Kitts government enough to pause any retaliatory plans.
Here, I should note that in 1967, Anguilla had a population of about 6,000, while St. Kitts had about 36,000.
After the expulsion of the St. Kitts police, Anguilla effectively governed itself. Elections were held, an Anguilla Council was formed, and the island sought international attention.
Anguillian leaders appealed to the United Nations for assistance, arguing that their situation was a colonial problem. Britain resisted UN involvement, arguing that Anguilla was part of an associated state and therefore not a matter for the UN’s colonial committee.
Britain attempted a compromise in January 1968 by sending Tony Lee, a senior British official, during an interim period. This was meant to calm the crisis while negotiations continued. It did not solve the underlying issue.
Anguillians were adamant that they would accept nothing short of full separation from St. Kitts. Britain, however, maintained that under the West Indies Act of 1967, it could not simply detach Anguilla from the associated state without the consent of St. Kitts.
When the interim period ended in early 1969 and Britain refused to extend it, Anguilla’s leaders moved toward unilateral independence. In February 1969, Anguilla held a referendum.
The result was overwhelming: 1,739 votes in favor and only 4 against. Ronald Webster was declared president of the Republic of Anguilla. This republic was never internationally recognized, but it represented Anguilla’s clearest declaration that it would not return to rule from St. Kitts.
In March 1969, Britain sent William Whitlock, a Foreign Office minister, to Anguilla with a proposal for renewed British administration through a commissioner. Anguillian leaders rejected the proposal, and Whitlock was expelled from the island. This embarrassed the British government and convinced London that it needed to reassert control.
On March 19, 1969, British paratroopers, Royal Engineers, and London police landed on Anguilla in what was called Operation Sheepskin. The operation became famous partly because of its absurdity: Britain was invading a tiny island whose people largely wanted to remain linked to Britain, just not through St. Kitts.
There was no real battle. The local defense force had already given up its weapons because resistance would have been futile and might have caused bloodshed. The rebellion was ended without a shot being fired.
The British troops ended the Republic of Anguilla, but they did not restore control of Anguilla to St. Kitts. This is the key point.
Militarily, Britain crushed the rebellion, but politically, Anguilla won the central argument. British leaflets reportedly assured residents that Britain did not intend to force them back under a St. Kitts administration they did not want. Soon afterward, Britain installed a commissioner and began direct administration of Anguilla.
After the invasion, Anguilla did not quietly accept direct British rule either. There were demonstrations demanding the withdrawal of British forces, and Anguillian leaders initially refused to cooperate.
Britain sent Lord Caradon to negotiate, producing the Caradon Declaration, which promised that Anguilla’s administration would be carried out in consultation with the island’s elected representatives. Ronald Webster was recognized as the leader of the Anguilla Council.
The next several years were a period of constitutional experimentation. Britain appointed the Wooding Commission to seek a durable solution, but its recommendations were rejected by Anguillians because they still did not provide the complete break from St. Kitts that the island demanded.
By 1971, Britain concluded that the dispute was irreconcilable and passed the Anguilla Act, which allowed it to administer Anguilla directly. The arrangement was technically awkward because Anguilla still remained part of the associated state on paper, but in practice, it was now separately administered.
Formal separation finally came in 1980. By then, the leader of St. Kitts, Robert Bradshaw, had died, and the political climate had changed. The Anguilla Act 1980 empowered the Crown to separate Anguilla, and on December 19, 1980, Anguilla officially ceased to have anything to do with St. Kitts.
St. Kitts and Nevis later became independent in 1983. Anguilla did not join them. Instead, it remained under Britain, eventually becoming a British Overseas Territory, which remains Anguilla’s status today.
For the most part, Anguilla has been content with its current status as a British Overseas Territory. They are largely autonomous, with democratically elected representatives who make decisions for all internal affairs on the island. The British, however, are responsible for foreign affairs and defense.
The British have stated they will neither force independence nor stand in the way. The general consensus on Anguilla is that independence is a long-term aspiration, but not an immediate priority. Most people think that they are not yet ready for independence. If they did become independent, with a population under 16,000, they would be the third-smallest country in the world, just ahead of Nauru and Tuvalu in the Pacific.
May 30th, the day the St. Kitts police were removed, is celebrated as Anguilla Day. The leader of the revolution, Ronald Webster, has been recognized as “The Father of the Nation.”
The Anguillan Revolution remains one of the oddest revolutions in history. No one was killed, although there were two minor injuries. Unlike other revolutions, this wasn’t about breaking away from a colonial power; it was about remaining a British territory just because they didn’t want to be ruled by a nearby island.
