Anguilla anti-colonial struggle
Posted: Monday, December 17, 2001
By Tonya Carter
WHERE HAVE ALL THE LEADERS GONE?
Independence must be first conceived. As Anguillians stand now, there is an unconscious deep-rooted psychological dependence.
It is my belief that "Independence begins in the mind!" Many of us who make a business out of predicting the future are guilty of one common error. According to Warren Bennis, "a futurists should never let himself be tempted into premature optimism."
Where have all the leaders gone?
All around the world desperate societies are asking this very same question and Anguilla is definitely no exception. Leaders are lacking important qualities and this is why there is something dangerously wrong in Anguilla today. These qualities were evaluated in Warren's book 'THE UNCONSCIOUS CONSPIRACY' and are as follows:
1) INTEGRITY - standards of morals and intellectual honesty on which we base our individual conduct and from which we cannot swerve without a sense of betraying and cheapening our better selves. This can only be restored by each of us asserting our own. By the very existence, people of integrity lend new hope to our society.
2) DEDICATION - finding something to believe in with passionate conviction and intensity. We must remain committed to our brethren, our institutions, and our ideas. 'Labour is in a real sense its own reward'.
3) MAGNANIMITY - to be noble of mind and heart; generous in forgiving, above revenge or resentment. This is very important especially in Anguilla and the wider Caribbean where victimization is carried out.
4) HUMILITY - learning not to confuse your own ego and pride and self-importance with the true issue at stake. It is the ability to learn from the mistakes rather than having mistakes pointed out. This quality is very important as was indicated my Mr. V. A Vanterpool in his articles that highlighted the prerequisites for independence and agreed upon by the AIM.
5) OPENESS - the willingness to listen to any new idea or suggestion and also involve the openness to change. The leaders of Anguilla must be open minded when dealing with the issue of independence and any other issues. This also leads me to the state the paradox - confidentiality is good, secrecy is bad. There is a difference between confidentiality and secrecy. There must be transparency and accountability but everything that goes on within Government cannot be discussed with the public.
6) CREATIVITY - This is something that most of us seem to lose as we leave childhood. A publisher defines genius as 'someone who sees things very clearly but sees them with the eyes of a child'. To rediscover creativity, we must find ways of recreating our sense of wonder, of heightening, even altering our consciousness. 'The more our work makes us specialists, the more we must strive to become generalists in other matters, to avoid becoming lopsided'. If there is to be a change in the mentality of Anguillians about the much talked about political Independence from Britain, it must rely on three things - participation of the people involved in the change; trust in the people who are the basic proponents, advocates or leaders of the change and thirdly, clarity about the change.
One cannot really overemphasize the fact that we are living in an era where human resource development is paramount to economic, social and political development. 'Where have all our leaders gone' is not directly aimed at those in 'leadership positions’ as such but rather to us ALL. We should all be leaders rather than followers. And to those brave Anguillians who took the stand in 1967, they were indeed leaders and not followers. I applaud them and I join them in the celebration of Separation Day.
I hope that the readers of this article do not misunderstand my article. I see great things happening for Anguilla but we must first obtain those chief qualities that I mention, namely: humility, creativity, magnanimity, integrity, dedication and openness. Not just for our elected officials but for all of Anguilla.
Come let us reason together and in the mean time...let us continue striving to educate the people about the future of Anguilla!
Tonya Carter
Student~Anguilla
British West Indies
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