Can't We Be Americans?

Anguilla is hardly the proper setting for revolution. A 34-sq.-mi. coral dot in the Leeward Islands east of Puerto Rico, the island has rested languidly for 300 years under British rule. Without electricity or telephones, the 5,000 Anguillans earn a meager living from fishing, working a salt pond and occasional smuggling. In February, Britain tried to loosen its ties with this poor dependency by linking Anguilla with two larger and more prosperous islands to form the St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla federation, retaining control only of foreign affairs and defense.

To Anguillans, however, the end of colonialism did not mean the end of outside domination. They bristled when Prime Minister Robert Bradshaw, sitting in St. Kitts, refused to allow them to set up local governing councils, and they decided to hit back. In March, they chased out the island's chief administrator. Two months later, armed Anguillans ousted the 15-man police force and rolled out oil drums on the little Anguilla airstrip to make sure that they did not return. As occasional shooting continued to flare up in the torpid Caribbean nights, Bradshaw appealed to Britain to help quell the insurrection, but the foreign office said it was an internal matter. Last week the Anguillans tried a new tack: they declared their independence of Britain and asked to be put under U.S. rule. Hardly eager to field that small but hot potato, a State Department officer said that any request for a change in Anguilla's status would have to come from its mother country, Britain.

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