United Kingdom is Nation Building in the British West Indies - Turks and Caicos, a Cautionary Tale

By: AG Karn

Most of the world is caught in a quagmire of political ignorance when it comes to British dealings in the West Indies [Caribbean]. The lines have been confused with well publicized stories of political corruption in these nation's governments contrasted with a new movement of British saviourship.

In the case of Turks and Caicos, we have such a case of confusion. Bridging the gap of national solidarity between the local people is a difficult task when there remains a disconnect concerning national solidarity and the British governance system. The British passport system for example catches one off guard, and travel is not the problem. Atop the passport of British Nationals are the words inscribed, "Nationals of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland for the purposes of Community Law". This inscription is unique to British National's passports, it distinguishes rights and benefits from the passports belonging to those of the British Overseas Territories. Though both passports are issued by the British government, there are clear distinctions of partiality and lack of rights to those with British Overseas Territory passports. Citizenship, rights and benefits are clearly not awarded by a passport issued by the British government.

The long-lived historic intention of the colonial relationship between the British and the West Indies was trade and nothing more. Under British colonial economic policies after 1870 the British government did not extend any imperial credit or loans to their colonies. Very little credit was extended at all barring exceptional circumstances such as hurricanes. This policy was enacted by the British to distance their duties and obligations to their overseas territories and has only changed in very recent history.

In the past, the economics of the overseas territories was left to the ambition of the local governments whose success was defined by the movers and shakers in a sink or swim contest. The territories were largely abandoned by Westminster who scolded the territories to "figure it out" with requests of financial needs or services. These days, there is no real trade relationship with the British. Many overseas territories rely very little on trade and much on creating foreign business relationships for tourism to generate revenue. Since the territories were on their own financially, the mentality “if you got, use it” worked. The Turks and Caicos Islands was quite successful with that plan, they had tourism potential and they used it to earn an almost unheard of revenue that eventually caught the eye of the British government. The movers and shakers making these deals were exposed to unknown pitfalls of inherent grey areas as prescribed but not defined by the British government. Ultimately, Westminster at its whim accused Turks and Caicos government of corruption involving business deals with foreign resort developers.

Because of the blurry boundaries and evolving relationships between Westminster and the British Overseas Territories, the risk of political turmoil in these regions became great as nations in the region were unaware of Westminster's new "devotion" to them.

Since 2006, nation building has become the new political charge of the British in the Overseas Territories. What was once a trade exploitation relationship with the colonies has recently evolved into true imperialism with empire ambition to take back its territories as the British see advantageous. At the nucleus of this ambition is British desire for wealth and world power.

Such political instability and uncertainty in the West Indies caused by the British is no accident. Keeping the British Overseas Territories in a state of uncertainty as to their citizenship, allegiance and financial security has assisted the new British empire ambition. This confusion caused British Overseas Territories to fail to bond as nations and has left the door wide open for the British to interfere and create political rivalries as needed for political goals.

We now find that the British are nation building in Turks and Caicos Islands after they seized the islands back in 2009. The British excuse their encroachment on the Turks and Caicos islands as correcting poor governance and punishing local corruption. Turning a blind eye to true government abuse is wrong when there is a dire necessity to intervene when cruelty or brutality is involved. The Turks and Caicos government had no such circumstance when the British unilaterally decided to burden their will there. The British will have a difficult time overcoming their legacy of colonialism.

One might say that the movers and shakers of the Turks and Caicos government were mistaken in their assumption that they had authority to make business deals even when Westminster was half-heartedly supervising. The British established no policies to keep British overseas governments from crossing British policies, as artificial as they might have been. In fact, local laws supporting Turks and Caicos government actions that the British now call corrupt were in place.

The fact that Westminster had the authority to warn, counsel or enact a “no confidence ruling” against the Turks and Caicos government has no bearing on its explanation to bypass all remedies and forge head-on in appropriating the Turks and Caicos government. In fact, there was little need for any kind of impedance by the British at all, yet they took the dramatic and unnecessary leap of seizing and misappropriating government powers from the people of the islands.

I earlier expressed my views that the British re-presence in the West Indies and Turks and Caicos is based on greed, power and empire building. Now that the British are less concerned with trade in the West Indies they have shifted their focus to benefiting from foreign developers with enormous wealth. In this way the British have in a sense created an extortion relationship with the foreign investors of Turks and Caicos by forcing them to be shackled in punitive financial and legal obligations to the British government. In turn, this has opened the door for British developers who share a close political relationship with the British government. British developers are almost an extension of the British government enjoying multitudes of shared foreign contracts, subsidies and tax breaks; the British government can now profit from development in their own territories instead of handing over the spoils to foreign developers.

The final nail in the coffin is the new constitution in Turks and Caicos which will solidify Westminster's motives. I suspect that other British Overseas Territories are next on the list. Entities such as CARICOM were created to act as a proxy representative of the nations in the region. British Overseas Territories would be well advised to form a coalition either separately or with CARICOM to assist one another in these modern colonial times.