On June 7, The BVI Beacon turned 40. To celebrate, it is re-publishing some of the biggest stories from its archives over the past four decades. The article below was written by Susanna Henighan and originally ran Nov. 25, 1999.
Buried amidst notices about the Virgin Gorda harvest festival and the addition of four new officers to the police force, the September 1949 edition of The Torch included a brief note headed, Political Movement: “Messrs. R. Faulkner and G. Fonseca have been giving a series of political lectures. A petition for constitutional reform is now being circulated for signatures.”
The Torch was a short-lived newsletter, mimeographed and distributed by a group of young leaders called the Social Welfare Council. The paper’s understated note described the growing political unrest here in the fall of 1949.
This unrest eventually led to a pivotal moment in the territory’s history: the Nov. 24, 1949 public demonstration in Road Town, which marked its 50th anniversary yesterday.
Peaceful event
It was afternoon on Nov. 24 when 1,500 or so marchers gathered at the Old Recreation Grounds to make their way along Main Street to Government House, where Commissioner J.A.C. “Ian” Cruikshank was waiting to meet them.
Mr. Cruikshank was the highest-ranking UK official here at the time. He, along with four nominated local leaders, formed the Executive Council, which made decisions for the territory.
The mass of people marched slowly along Main Street wearing placards with slogans like: “Away with one man rule” and “Down with Cruikshank.”
The three men who had organized the march, Theodolph Faulkner, Glanville Fonseca and Carlton deCastro, wore sashes with Leader No. 1, Leader No. 2 and Leader No. 3, respectively, across their chests.
Retired businessman J.R. O’Neal watched the march from above his pharmacy on Main Street. “It was just people marching; there was no noise,” he remembered. “It was peaceful.”
The crowd made its way to Government House, where Messrs. Faulkner, Fonseca and deCastro presented a statement of the crowd’s demands.
“Our history since the beginning of this century has been one long tale of political oppression,” they read.
It went on: “We refuse any longer to be virtual slaves of a government in which a few officials call the tune while we, the taxpayers, pay the piper. … We are imbued with a desire to decide our local affairs our own selves.”
The speech was eloquent. It criticized the “official clique” that made decisions for the territory.
“We are ashamed and indignant over the matter, that, though the people of the British Virgin Islands belong to a democratic British Empire, we are, in fact, afflicted and saddled with a form of government akin to dictatorship,” the statement read.
Cruikshank was also presented with two petitions, one demanding his removal, and one demanding an elected Legislative Council.
It was the first time so many people in the BVI had so forcefully expressed their political opinion openly. “The march was the first of its kind,” Mr. O’Neal recalled.
It wouldn’t be until the 1960s and the Positive Action Movement that the BVI would see anything like it again.
Discontent with the government had been growing for some time, and several earlier efforts had been made for constitutional change.
As far back as 1938, an organization called the Civic League had petitioned for the reconstitution of an elected Legislative Council. The British Secretary of State of the time denied the petition, however.
Later, in 1947, Howard Penn, then an appointed member of Executive Council, presented a resolution to the UK government that would have created an elected Legislative Council in the BVI.
Although the Secretary of State accepted the resolution, Mr. Cruikshank did not implement it. According to Mr. Penn’s memoirs, Mr. Cruikshank said he would prefer if the territory started out with Village Councils, that would in turn elect representatives to a Legislative Council.
Two years passed, and general grumbling about the government slowly turned to flat out criticism. Mr. O’Neal recalls two controversies that caught the public’s attention. At the time there was a budget of $100,000 for public water projects and $48,000 for public construction, he said, and Mr. Cruikshank had used half of each amount to refurbish and bring water to Government House.
Recently married to a young American woman, Mr. Cruikshank reportedly wanted to make the house comfortable for her.
Speak-outs begin
The first citizen to speak out about the conditions here was Mr. Faulkner, an Anegadian. The fisherman came to Tortola with his ill wife when the territory’s one doctor, a good friend of Mr. Cruikshank and his wife, did not come to Anegada to care for her.
Angered by this perceived neglect, Mr. Faulkner began speaking nightly at what is now the Sir Olva Plaza, deriding the government’s shortcomings.
According to Mr. Penn’s memoirs, members of the public would talk to Mr. Faulkner about their grievances during the day, and at night he would give speeches about all the “dreams” he had had about problems in the territory.
According to an article in The Torch at the time, Mr. Faulkner was later joined by Mr. Fonseca, a businessman, and the two began lecturing at Parish Hall.
“Messrs. Faulkner and Fonseca have been packing St. George’s Parish Hall night after night with great numbers,” the article reads, “to present a case for constitutional reform.”
Historians Norwell Harrigan and Pearl Varlack write in their book, The Virgin Islands Story, that this was an important turning point for the BVI people.
“Others who had been waiting for this ‘psychological moment,’ or who had noted that [Mr. Faulkner] was not arrested, came forward,” they wrote.
After the lectures and public debate, Messrs. Fonseca and Faulkner, joined by Mr. deCastro, a boat captain, decided to organise the march for Nov. 24.
At the time of the march, Eugenie Todman-Smith was teaching school at Cane Garden Bay.
Although she didn’t attend the demonstration, she remembers the time. “I heard the big noise [leading up to the demonstration], but I didn’t actually see it,” she said.
The event didn’t surprise Ms. Todman-Smith because of all Messrs. Faulkner, deCastro and Fonseca’s work leading up to it.
“They felt we were missing something,” she said, “that we were being deprived of something.”
Generating change
The march had a tremendous effect. It was reported in the Virgin Islands Daily News, and news of it spread to Antigua where the UK’s colonial government was centred at the time.
In February 1950, a committee was assembled to write a new constitution for the territory, one that would include an elected Legislative Council. Although members of the committee were more familiar with the American system of government, the group decided on a British ministerial system. In fact, they modeled the constitution closely after Montserrat’s.
Later in 1950, the Legislative Council of the Virgin Islands was reconstituted. It consisted of two official members, two nominated unofficial members and four elected “at-large” members.
Deputy Governor Elton Georges noted that while it is certain the council would have been restored at some point, the 1949 demonstration clearly moved things along.
“This demonstration was a seminal event,” Mr. Georges said. “It hastened the restoration of the Legislative Council. I’m sure that the Legislative Council would have been restored sometime in the 1950s, but this hastened it. The demonstration made it clear to the powers in charge that the people were restless and wanted change.”
Ironically, while march organisers and demonstrators made Mr. Cruikshank out to be a colonial villain, many historians and those who worked with him remember him as a conscientious administrator.
Ms. Varlack and Mr. Harrigan write in their account: “[Mr. Cruikshank’s] foibles apart, he recognized that there were many things that needed to be done and proceeded to liquidate the surplus revenues, which had accumulated while the island went without public utilities and social services.”
Mr. O’Neal, despite resigning from Executive Council in the months before the march because of his growing dissatisfaction with the government’s actions, noted that Mr. Cruikshank was well-intentioned.
In Mr. Penn’s memoirs, he describes Mr. Cruikshank as “one of the brighter heads of government to come to the BVI.”
According to the report in the Daily News on Nov. 25, Mr. Cruikshank was sympathetic to the protesters’ demands, and promised quick action — which came — the following year. He put the demonstration down to impatience, according to the report.
Looking back
Today, it is hard to imagines a mass of people marching slowly down Main Street demanding better government, and many wonder how many people truly understand the BVI of 50 years ago.
“The younger generation doesn’t understand the significance of this event,” Mr. O’Neal said.
Mr. Georges and Ms. Todman-Smith both agree, saying there is not enough understanding of the history of the BVI being passed on to youth.
And could it happen again. “If people feel strongly enough and have some determined leaders, it could,” Ms. Todman-Smith said.
Mr. Georges wonders what could motivate the public to put on such a display. “We are fairly prosperous and well off now,” he said. “It would be interesting to know what kind of situation would lead to something like this again.”
Besides interviews, information for this article came from the following sources: The Daily News, Nov. 25, 1949; The Virgin Islands Story, by Norwell Harrigan and Pearl Varlack; The Torch, September, October and November 1949; and “Notes on BVI History” by H. R. Penn.