Ken and the BVI

Some of you may have seen this (monster read) before, but for those that haven't, a story from a couple of months ago...

1968: Ken Bates, Noel Lloyd, and the Fate of a Caribbean Island

‘That morning, when we hit the road, a lady came up by the name of Louella Harrigan and she said, "Regardless, we got to take back our country from Kenneth Bates, and whatever we’re going to do we’re going to march this morning, and we are going to take our country back! This lease must be revoked, and Kenneth Bates must go!”’ – George Malone in ‘A Patriotic Man’.

I must admit to getting a smile out of Ken Bates’ column in the Hull City programme in August. Not at the infamous ‘foreplay’ metaphor, mind – that just made me want to heave. But a bit further up the page, in the midst of a rant about illegal immigrants, asylum seekers, and single mothers, Ken made a reference to his own early life:

Since leaving school I have had an interesting life and if you haven’t got caught up in political unrest in the Caribbean, you haven’t lived.

Well, quite so, Kenneth. And I had to smile, because the research I was doing at the time, for an article in the new issue of The Square Ball that goes on sale this Sunday, was hinting strongly that Ken had not just “got caught up” in political unrest in the British Virgin Islands at the end of the sixties; he had caused it.

About six months ago I got an email from Wayne from The Beaten Generation, who had been chatting to a Leeds fan called Jock, and he passed a link on to me about a campaign in the BVIs to declare December 3rd ‘Noel Lloyd Day.’ A documentary had been made about this Noel Lloyd, too, and there was a statue to him in Roadtown, the capital of Tortola.

What I read had my eyebrows tickling the ceiling:

The Afrikan Studies Klub would like to recognize the birthday of Noel Lloyd, one of the BVI’s greatest heroes. Noel Lloyd led the Positive Action Movement of 1968, which fought against the Bates Hill development that would have alienated Wickhams Cay and the island of Anegada for 199 years.

This development was not in the best interest of the people of the BVI, and if Noel Lloyd and the Positive Action Movement did not rise up, the BVI would have been a much different place. Today, many BVIslanders have thriving businesses on Wickham’s Cay, which is in stark contrast to the Bates Hill vision where BVIslanders could not even set foot on Wickham’s Cay and Anegada unless they were workers. Noel Lloyd represents empowerment of local people, and his vision is needed now more than ever.

The ‘Bates’ in Bates Hill was, of course, Ken Bates.

Ken’s links to the Caribbean aren’t unknown; for one thing, the companies through which Bates owns Leeds United are based in Nevis; and the failed developments in Tortola and Anegada get a few pages in Tom Bower’s famous chapter about Bates in Broken Dreams. But none of that explained why, more than forty years later, the BVI people should be seeking to name a day, after already erecting a statue, and naming a park, after some bloke who somehow stopped it from happening.

That set me working, and the further I looked into the story, the more fascinating it became. I tracked down books; I trawled newspaper archives; Fax Man took several trips to the British Library to copy letters Bates wrote to the Financial Times. Because Bates wasn’t just proposing a couple of hotels and a swimming pool back in 1967.

The Anegada Agreement granted Ken Bates 85% of an unspoilt island the size of Manhattan. The Tortola Agreement gave him the right to reclaim sixty acres of shorefront and develop it as he saw fit. The rent Bates would pay for over 8,000 acres of prime Caribbean real estate was to be just $30,000 a year. The tax he would pay on profit, income and capital would be zero. The length of the lease was 199 years. Bates stood to make $300million in today’s money. The native islanders would get nothing.

An article published by the University of the West Indies in 1971 pulled no punches, comparing the leases to:

…the first grant of the island to the Earl of Carlysle; a concept which Baltimore and Penn successfully used on the primitives tribes of America – an attempt to apply in the reign of Elizabeth II a concept more applicable to the reign of Elizabeth I … The unprecedented period of 199 years ignores a simple truth that the USA is not yet two hundred years old, and if Washington could return he would immediately drop dead again when he saw the development that had taken place in the nation he helped to found.

Ken Bates didn’t just have a rental agreement: he had ownership of a small country for six generations for a nominal rent. A photo taken around the time of the agreements reinforces this view of Bates as a late – very late – colonialist: in 1967, he took Oldham Athletic on a summer tour of the illegal state of Rhodesia, and had his photograph taken with Prime Minister Ian Smith, whose attempt to preserve rule by what the United Nations called “a racist minority” had brought worldwide condemnation and economic sanctions. The photo appeared in Oldham’s Boundary Bulletin ‘Courtesy of Rhodesia Ministry of Information.’

That photo alone is one of the main reasons why, on principle, I hate the fact that Ken Bates is Chairman of Leeds United. Whenever someone suggests to me that his way of doing business might be good for Leeds, or that a slight adjustment to the wage structure would make him likable again, or that a big signing would smooth over the ‘sickpots’ comments, I get to thinking about that photo of Ken, handing a football programme to a man who was actively oppressing four million black Africans. Let’s just say that Ken Bates isn’t my kind of man.

And now let’s talk about Noel Lloyd, who certainly is.

A Patriotic Man is a ninety minute documentary, made by two BVI filmmakers – Andrea and Amanda Wilson – together with Jahphix TV and the BVI Social Development Department – which tells the story of Noel Lloyd’s life through interviews with Noel himself, and the supporters, friends and family who remember the central part Noel played in stopping the Batehill developments.

Noel Lloyd’s life story has a lot in common with Ken’s. They were both born into poverty in the thirties, they both strove to better themselves, they were both charismatic and confident men who had travelled extensively. But it seems that Noel had learned rather different lessons about life on his travels through the USA, Canada, Britain and Africa; lessons that meant, when Ken Bates emerged as a threat to the islands he loved, Noel Lloyd could only act in one way: a positive one.

Noel Lloyd learned of the Batehill scheme amidst the turbulence of spring 1968, and it was the assassination of Martin Luther King that motivated Lloyd to lead the resistance against Bates. As Noel says himself in A Patriotic Man:

It was Positive Action Movement. I didn’t get a group of people, and we discuss and form a movement. I took positive action and I moved. And as I moved, people followed.

Noel marched in Roadtown; at first alone, but the next day he marched with the people behind him. The next two weeks were filled with frantic action. Noel led peaceful marches to demand answers from officials; he arrested the police force while they slept and threw them in jail; jailed himself, he was poisoned amidst a plot to portray him as insane.

Noel sacrificed his health and put himself in danger to save his home, and the process of finally defeating Bates was slow; but once he had formed, with his first defiant steps, the Positive Action Movement – its executive members all remembered in a monument in Noel Lloyd’s Positive Action Movement Park today – there could only be one result.

In the years afterwards, Noel Lloyd’s story became as faint to the people of the British Virgin Islands as it is to us who are just hearing of him for the first time; but some stories are meant to be told, and Noel’s is one. Andrea and Amanda Wilson’s film has helped to restore Noel’s rightful place in BVI history. Noel Lloyd was given the BVI Badge of Honour by the government before his death in 2008, and a statue now stands in Roadtown, but no honour can be so great to Noel than for people to remember his life and his achievements. A Patriotic Man meets this task perfectly; it is an affectionate, exciting and, by the end, quite moving account of a singular and inspiring man.

I can only hope that my article in this weekend’s issue of The Square Ball does a similar service to Noel’s story, and helps to bring it to a new audience; this blog post, by the way, barely scratches the surface. I think Noel Lloyd’s story is an important one, especially to Leeds United fans, and especially right now. First of all, it sheds light on a previously well-hidden part of our current chairman’s past. Secondly, it reminds us that people like Ken Bates are not invincible. Bates has money, he has a contract that says he owns Leeds United, and he has contempt for long-time fans who disagree with him; and it’s that combination that allows him to run Leeds how he likes. But in 1968 Bates had money, he had a contract that said he owned Anegada, and he had contempt for the native residents who opposed him. But all Noel Lloyd had to do was take positive action, and move. Ken Bates was beaten, and all it took was Noel Lloyd’s Positive Action Movement.

 

I saw it the other day, very interesting, we need a Noel Lloyd to get bates out of Leeds, Maybe Nigel Martyn or Dom Matteo someone with a big influence on LUFC

 

You heard about the march before the Brighton game?

 

Brighton? thought it was southampton? or both?

 

Possibly both, but there's almost def gonna be one before Brighton, starting from the town centre.

There's a meeting with the police to discuss this Wednesday.

 

RCDM is this the 1st account you had on here?

 

On Not 606 yeah.

I used to be on the Beeb many moons ago.

 

I remember pal welcome the MAC has divided from here and JA606 but im sure you will recognise some from this site

 

I've been noseying for a while at both, and this seems the better of the 2 to me ;-)

 

RCDM Welcome to not 606 mate and a great eye opening post!

I read about all that on Crafty Kens Wikki page, how the guys not been locked up I will never know!

 

Cheers Bucks!

You're not wrong mate, he should have been locked up a long long time ago.

 

It seems he tried turning a country into a village and when he realised that was above him he moved on to football clubs dirty vermin twat