Only eighty-five hundred people live on only six of those islands. Almost as many more are in the Bahamas, Britain, the United States, or somewhere else they can find jobs.
Every spring in the Turks and Caicos there’s a hatch of handsome black handspan-sized Erebus moths. They’re called “money bats.” If they land on you it’s said they bring fortune. Obviously they don’t bring much. The locals work at conch diving, lobster fishing, a few tourism jobs—there’s not a lot to do for a living. In fact, there’s not a lot to do.
I interviewed the British governor, the opposition leader, and (the arrested people having politely resigned) the new chief minister and the new minister of commerce, development, and tourism.
Nobody had a bad word, or even an enlightening one, to say about former chief minister Norman Saunders. He’s personable, generous, easy to work with. He’s handsome and a tasteful dresser as well. On his home island of South Caicos he commands special affection. His picture is all over the place above a political slogan that sounds like rejected name ideas from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves”: “Firm, Frank, Friendly, Faithful.” I was counting on an earful from opposition leader Clement Howell. But they’ve only had party politics in the Turks and Caicos since 1975, and as yet they seem politely confused about what to do with them. Howell is head of the slightly more populist PDM (Popular Democratic Movement). Saunders was or is head of the slightly more business-oriented PNP (People’s National Party). “Sort of like Democrats and Republicans?” I ventured to Howell.
He pondered that. “What’s the difference between Democrats and Republicans?”
“The Republicans won.”
“Exactly,” he said. Was this, I thought, the “whole new political system” the Sunday Telegraph had warned about?
Saunders seems to have founded the PNP because another fellow, the late “JAGS” McCartney, had founded the PDM. The PDM was founded because the Turks and Caicos were engaged in what may be history’s most halfhearted struggle against British colonialism. This culminated in the “Junkanoo Club incident.” In 1975 the British were recruiting Turks and Caicos policemen from other Caribbean islands. JAGS and fellow natives booed the off-island police officers. Some of those officers were, contrary to local custom, wearing guns, and they fired into the air. JAGS and his friends barricaded themselves in the Junkanoo Club and fired into the air back. Hostages were held. Demands were made. (Actually there’s some doubt about the hostages. A local newspaper publisher and two other non-PDM characters were in the club, but they were being given unlimited free drinks and may not have known they were hostage.) The principal demand during the Junkanoo Club incident was that a commission be appointed to investigate the Junkanoo Club incident. After an all-night standoff the demand was met. The next year JAGS McCartney was elected the first native chief minister. The struggle for independence ended shortly thereafter when the Thatcher administration told the Turks and Caicos that they were going to be independent whether they liked it or not.
I got ahold of a British Foreign and Commonwealth Office document stamped “RESTRICTED” (though it had been marked down to “Confidential”). This detailed several meetings in London between JAGS and British minister of state Nicholas Ridley. Ridley offered the Turks and Caicos £12 million to become an independent country. JAGS said they wouldn’t do it for less than £40 million. Secretary of State Lord Carrington popped in on the conference and “expressed surprise” that the Turks and Caicos were turning down such a generous offer as £12 million “and wondered that the Treasury had agreed to it.” JAGS hung tough. The meeting ended on a testy note. “Mr. Ridley . . . offered them a deal, which they could either take or leave. Mr. McCartney said that he would not accept that. Britain was, he said, the captain of the boat and should pay the crew. Mr. Ridley pointed out that we might reduce the crew’s wages.” JAGS “retorted that in that case, we might have a mutiny. . . . Mr. Ridley made it clear . . . that the problem could be solved by starting again with new people.”
In the end the islands got their £12 million and didn’t have to be independent either. I asked the British governor what had happened. “It’s the post-Falklands era,” he sighed.
Anyway, the political system in the Ts and Cs—whether created by narcotics money, crabby twits in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, or plain old vote-grabbing—is certainly different from ours. Ariel Misick, the minister of commerce, development, and tourism, wanted to talk about commerce, development, and tourism. Imagine a system of governance so unsophisticated that the head of a department knows what his department does. Misick (a distant relation to busted ex-minister Missick-with-two-s’s) said there are two hundred square miles of empty Crown Lands in the Turks and Caicos. Two of the largest islands are uninhabited. There is half a mile of beach for every hotel room. The Ts and Cs are a last frontier for commercial development in the Caribbean.