MIA > Archive > Tim Hector
Fan the Flame, Outlet, 22 November 1996, online here.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
This nation, Antigua and Barbuda, under Lester Bryant Bird, has reached a terrible stage.
That stage is this: State power is used by State officials to defend sleaze and scum-bags who commit every and any offence. In consequence, there is here and now, a total collapse of social order.
The State over the years has mobilised public funds and institutions, such as the police, to defend and support acts of criminality and the most sordid of acts. The State itself involved in criminal acts. The Police instead of pursuing criminals defending them. It did not begin yesterday, last weekend, last year. It began long ago. It has only worsened with time.
In 1977, when Space Research Corporation, headed by Americans Dr. Gerard Bull and Colonel Sanders Gregory, were in Antigua and Barbuda, booming loud their nuclear capacity guns, and in the process bringing apartheid’s top-brass military officials to see the tests of these weapons before sending them on to the terrible racist regime in South Africa under Botha, the State put on an elaborate programme to show and prove that these military tests were but “exercise in telemetry” or high-speed photography. The people were deliberately duped by their rulers, in foreign interests and the interest of blood money.
The State, with Lester Bryant Bird, in control of the exercise, allowed Apartheid’s military officials, representing the most reprehensible nation in the world, to come to Antigua from outlawed South Africa, without passing through Customs or Immigration, and using the V.I.P. lounge at the V.C. Bird International airport to pull this deadly scam. We were in the pits. No other State ever sank to such low depths, without being called to order. The State recognised it could do anything and everything without redress.
When it was revealed, by Outlet that the most deadly weapons were being sent from Antigua to racist South Africa – then under murderous apartheid rule – the State denied by an elaborate booklet, put out at public expense, if you please. The State used public funds to defend local and international criminality. The State was not accountable.
When Outlet refuted every single detail in the booklet as false from beginning to end, the State kept up its denials defying truth. Outlet was that persistent however, eventually the State to call ACLM and Outlet to a full Cabinet meeting on December 31, 1977.
When ACLM and Outlet, produced an eye witness, in the notable personage of the shipping agent himself, not a clerk, but the shipping agent himself, the late Mr. Vernon Edwards, who told Cabinet that as shipping agent he saw to the shipping of the big weapons systems from Antigua; and that in the process, a huge carton fell from a forklift, and its contents were small arms, all bound for South Africa, the facts were proven beyond all reasonable doubt.
Remember, Mr. Vernon Edwards was the shipping agent, he was known to be a supporter of the ruling ALP, he told Cabinet, to his eternal and immortal credit, what he saw with his own eyes; that military materiél, including the most deadly artillery in the world, the Howitzer 167, were put on board, here in Antigua, as well as a consignment of small arms, and all went on the SS Tugelaland to racist South Africa! The evidence, was eye-witness evidence, the shipping agent himself. Lester Bird responded in Cabinet that this eye-witness evidence, from the shipping agent in person, was “neither irresistible nor compelling.” Mr. Vernon Edwards’ evidence was supported in every detail, by waterfront workers present, when the S.S. Tugelaland, left Antigua bound for South Africa in August 1977. Again Lester Bird proclaimed, in Cabinet, that this eye-witness corroborative evidence was “neither irresistible nor compelling.” Even his father, V.C. Bird, then Premier, was shocked at Lester Bird’s flat denial of undeniable truth. The entire Cabinet was shocked at this wanton disregard of truth by Lester Bird. Lester Bird had no sense of right and wrong. He would do anything. Deny anything. He could get in bed with racist South Africa, arm apartheid against freedom, and still pretend to smell like a rose. He was in a nasty puddle in this waste land and still sitting in it.
The present writer, who led the ACLM delegation to the Cabinet Meeting did not speak to Lester Bird for 11 years, from Old Years Day 1977 till his first wife’s, Arah Hector’s cruel murder in May 1989, Lester Bird and Tim Hector did not exchange a word. They spoke from 89 to 90 throughout the guns to Colombia crisis, and the twain parted.
Nor did the guns-to-South Africa end there. It was in April 1978, that Lester Bird and his aides, put out an elaborate booklet, at the expense of the people, telling lie after lie that Space Research was in Antigua, to carry out “atmospheric tests”.
Nor did they stop there. In May 1978, the State organised its supporters in a mass demonstration, with Space Research Must Stay emblazoned on T-Shirts, supplied by the Ruling party. The State would do anything. It regarded the people as succours. They accept anything, however preposterous.
In between, in September 1977, ACLM organised a picket outside Government Headquarters, where the OECS, now is. The picket was peaceful. The police moved in, arrested Tim Hector, Jerome Bleau, Conrad Luke, Vincent Michael, and Ricardo Mapp. The police shackled the ACLM pickets, walked them shackled to a police vehicle and locked them in cells reeking with urine and faeces. The Police was thus brought in by the State to conceal the wrong of the State, to humiliate and punish the exposers of official wrong-doing. The natural order was reversed.
Nor did the matter end there. Throughout September 1977, ACLM applied for public meeting after public meeting. Antigua was peaceful. Yet the police denied every application for a public meeting by ACLM. The State had to silence its exposers. If not by death, then by arbitrary use of the law, the police collaborating in this dreadful exercise, in every detail.
That same month, Space Research Corporation guilty of sending arms to South Africa, in violation of a U.N. embargo, sued Outlet for libel. The Bird government trumpeted the libel suit against Outlet, night after night, on ABS Radio and TV. Simultaneously, Antigua Printing and Publishing with Minister of Education the late Reuben Harris as Chairman of the Board, refused to print Outlet. Outlet was silenced for three years. Nothing further was heard of the libel suit against Outlet. A prestigious legal firm allowed itself to be used for this charade. Legal luminaries, Police and State in a bond to protect and serve apartheid!
In October 1977, ACLM applied for a public meeting. Again the Police denied permission. Again the police, an institution to protect against wrong-doing, was in open collaboration with the State to suppress the revealers of official wrong-doing. ACLM went ahead with its public meeting, to expose a tape recording it had, where Space Research officials admitted sending arms to racist South Africa. The police came out in full force at the ACLM public meeting, proceeded to fire tear gas at the assembled crowd, without a word having been spoken. ACLM leaders, with courage undaunted, then led the crowd in a spontaneous march through the streets of St. John’s. It was an historic moment. But again it is clear, the police were prepared to use not just power, but actual force, in order to allow the state to suppress the truth of official wrong-doing and criminality.
From this account, it is evident that the State would lie, and lie openly, the state would use public funds in defence of criminality, the State would use the police to suppress, the state would use prestigious law firms to bring law suits against Outlet. Outlet, though would have to spend thousands of dollars, retaining lawyers to enter appearances on these sham libel-suits brought by the State or its criminal agents.
The same occurred when Outlet, revealed the payment by Space Research to Lester Bird’s aides. Likewise was the case when Outlet revealed that the notorious Vesco was here shielded and covered by Officialdom and permitted to escape legal authorities by Officialdom. The same occurred when Outlet revealed that a group, including gangsters, wanted to buy half of Barbuda to set up a principality to be known as the Sovereign Order of New Aragon. Public Radio and TV was provided to the hustlers to declare and proclaim their suit against Outlet.
The same pattern was in evidence when Outlet revealed that Italians were going to jail in Italy for abuse of funds destined for the Royal Antigua Hotel and Heritage Quay. While the key people here were on cloud nine, enjoying the pomp and circumstance of power, above the law, doing wrong with impunity.
The same occurred when Outlet revealed that Cotton money disappeared, and Minister Humphreys was paid by Roydan to sign promissory notes up to $4 million for the notorious Maurice Sarfati.
The same occurred when Outlet again revealed that Minister Yearwood had unlawfully signed promissory notes for unlawful expenditure. And so on, and on, and on.
The State would coerce public institutions, the Police in the main, or other agencies, to lie, to bear false witness, to misrepresent facts to the public, to twist, to distort. Law firms local and foreign would lend themselves to the State, for money, to bring these sham libel suits against Outlet. Outlet would have to spend thousands and thousands of dollars to get lawyers to enter appearances in these sham lawsuits. Through it all Outlet persevered.
In one instance, Ivor Bird, son of the Prime Minister brought a libel suit against Outlet. When hearing began Ivor Bird abandoned the case, as he was faced with the undeniable truth of his own malfeasance. The Court did not even get an opportunity to award Outlet its costs. The case was just abandoned.
Lester Bird himself abandoned three law suits against Outlet. As a face-saving device he insisted on a statement by Outlet. So as not to incur further costs Outlet obliged with the statement.
All through these charades, Outlet has borne inordinate costs and legal fees, in this legal charade. But the cost to society as a whole has been unseen, unpaid, but more costly. After all, this was a place where V.C. Bird as Prime Minister, could take them, house them, bed them and open the State’s coffers to his child-mistress and the Church, Established or Evangelical would say nary a word.
People here, like Lester Bird, believe that morality in public affairs has no value. They believe that the State can lie, that the State can corrupt public institutions and persons, and it has no economic cost. To them it is just a ‘spin’. And so they hire spin-doctors to put a “spin” on all their misdeeds. Complete, when necessary with legal charade. The law is undermined. And if the law is undermined, so is the public conscience. A nation without a conscience is a nation without social order. A nation in disarray. In short, in social disorder.
The upshot of this is that State officials have no sense of wrong-doing. Even when caught red-handed. To this day disgraced Minister of Finance Molwyn Joseph, still maintains his “innocence” and proclaims “innocence” in the Rolls Royce affair, though he with others, “caused government to be deprived of revenue legally due to it on the importation of the Rolls Royce,” as the Solicitor General found in his official report. Still disgraced Finance Minister Molwyn Joseph insists he is innocent.
Humphreys too said he was innocent on the Promissory Notes. First he said it was not his signature. Then the signature, verified by the Bank, mark you, as his, had to be further verified by hand-writing experts, who found it to be his. After that Humphreys shut up and the State covered up, and prevented the prosecution of Humphreys. A prosecution ordered in a Report which the State itself had paid US$450,000 to prepare. Nothing matters here. The State can do anything, and get away with it. The electorate itself holds nothing sacred, and State officials can violate every known precept and virtue and be elected and re-elected. Be it the well-heeded in Crosbies or the down-and-out in Willikies, both elements accept that the worst form of public misbehaviour in public office is good enough.
And it is not just the price we pay for Reports and the cover-ups which hurt society. Society is hurt at its very core, by the State bending institutions and individuals to its will, to cover-up its wrong doing. The society itself is bent out of shape.
Karl Polanyi, a fine 20th century thinker in The Livelihood of Man, ed. H.W. Pearson, London 1977, went to great lengths to show and prove that “truth, trust, honesty, courage, solidarity and skill are necessary features of viable economies.”
Polanyi, went further yet, to show that “a good society” defined as a society capable of competitively producing goods “requires the capacity to curtail greed through public constraints which punish corruption and official wrong-doing.” There is no such public constraints here. Abuse, political and social is therefore the norm.
Alasdair MacIntyre, the closest America has got to a philosopher [1], in his work After Virtue was to show, that the State in market economy, when it determines to violate morality in public affairs, imposes instead a model on society which “eliminates ethics from the economy” and leaves no other motivation, other than “narrow self-interest”. Cooperation, truth, fairness, the earnest carrying out of work, are all eliminated from society.
I chose to paraphrase rather than quote at length these important thinkers, because reality here confirms the thesis beyond any kind of doubt.
For example, there is not a single worker you can find here in the tourist industry, the main industry, who will not tell you that he or she is not killing themselves to work because the Hotel Management is cheating them on service charge. Conversely, there is hardly a hotel manager, who will not tell you that the workers, collectively, have “the wrong or bad attitudes.” And such attitudes, reinforced everyday results in declining productivity. In a society where cheating has been institutionalised by the State, goods cannot be produced competitively, because the virtues, of trust in authority, truth as spoken by authority, courage to face difficult situations and tell the truth to the governed, have all been sacrificed on the altar of bad governance, and the maintenance of power at all costs.
There is here not a businessman who will not tell you that government allowed several businessmen, to under-invoice for years. Honest businessmen had no choice but to do likewise, or go down like Dews, unable to compete against the cheats. Officially sanctioned cheating spread and became the norm. The World Bank estimated that more than two-thirds of customs duties legally due to the government went uncollected. A system collapsed.
Now the government desperate for money, to finance loans, on which loans the government itself cheated with massive cost-over-runs, kick-backs and the like, must now clamp down on all businessmen demanding high duties. At the very same time demand needs to be stimulated, it is at the same time that demand is being throttled, by government, through government’s insistence on high customs duties, through a so-called tax compliance unit! The commercial sector reels. Government by permitting cheating, has produced this nightmare of confusion in the economy. The cost of corruption is extremely high. In the end it undermines an economy, the law, the law enforcement agencies, be they Police or Customs officers and the entire social order cracks and shatters.
There is here, no public servant, high or low, from Permanent Secretary to gutter-sweeper, whatever his or her political affiliation, including those who profess no affiliation, who will not tell you that the authorities, do what they like, where they like, not if, but whenever they like, without rules or regulations, and so every public servant’s output is adversely affected by this total absence of morality in public affairs. The result is, Antigua and Barbuda is not competitive with other similar societies, in the production of government services, tourist services, commercial services, be it at Port or Airport. Official corruption has destroyed the social order. Chief culprit: Lester Bryant Bird.
1. Alasdair MacIntyre is actually Scottish, although he spent many years working teaching philosophy at American universities
Last updated on 9 February 2022