Westlake, Donald E - NF 01 by Under An English Heaven (v1.1)

Beowulf: "The plan/' he was writing, "involved
the killing of the Premier, Deputy Premier, Attorney General and the Minister
for Education, Health and Welfare, as well as the mutilation of the Head of the
Civil Service, Mr. Ira Walwyn, and the Cabinet Secretary, Mr. Pro-byn Inniss,
by chopping off their hands."
    To save the hands of the Head of
the Civil Service from being chopped off at the hands of the heads of the plot,
Colonel Bradshaw had been reluctantly forced to take action. The action had
included pushing those Emergency Regulations through the legislature, detaining
the twenty-two detainees, and deporting some other people.
    One such deportee was Miss Diana
Prior-Palmer, British-born but a naturalized American citizen. Miss
Prior-Palmer was arrested at the same time as the twenty-two men, her property
was searched, and her diary was confiscated. After two days she was deported,
but Colonel Bradshaw kept her diary. Over ZIZ he announced several times that
the diary was "juicy" and that it would play a key role in the
upcoming trials of the twenty-two detainees. He also gave private readings in
his office to journalists of passages he claimed to be excerpts from the diary.
If Colonel Bradshaw is to be believed, Miss Prior-Palmer was a diarist in the
modern manner; however, there's no way to be sure since the promised
publication of the diary during the trials never did take place.
    Other deportations followed. The
manager of the local Coca-Cola bottling plant was deported to his birthplace, Barbados .
Other West Indians were deported to their birthplaces, including one man who'd
lived on St. Kitts since the age of four. A couple of Englishmen were deported,
one unsuccessfully. Peter Keller, his name is; he was deported to Sint Maarten
(the Dutch half of St. Martin ), and the Dutch wouldn't
accept delivery and sent him back.
    Meanwhile, the detainees sat in
jail. Stuart Roberts, the chief representative of Great
Britain on St. Kitts, visited the prison
almost every day because one of the detainees, James Milnes Gaskell, was a
British subject. Milnes Gaskell gradually got the idea that the British
Government preferred him to remain in detention, since it gave Roberts an
excuse to come in, count heads and make sure nothing really drastic was being
done to any of the detainees; Milnes Gaskell's attitude about this was,
understandably, ambivalent.
    There is a story that at one point
in the course of the summer Colonel Bradshaw told Stuart Roberts that he would
release Milnes Gaskell if Milnes Gaskell would promise not to make any
statements to the press. Roberts brought this offer to Milnes Gaskell,
according to the story, and Milnes Gaskell refused, which appeared to both
please and relieve Roberts. However, when Milnes Gaskell asked Roberts, a year
later, to verify that offer in writing, Roberts said he would have to check
with the British Government first, and then returned to say that Milnes Gaskell
must be mistaken about his facts, the offer was never made, none of it ever
happened . . .
    The Emergency Regulations under
which the detainees had been detained required that they be told the reason for
their detention within two weeks, and that they appear before a magistrate for
review within one month. The reasons appeared within the time period and were
very broad-ranging. One young attorney was charged with having written two
published letters critical of the Government.
    On the twenty-eighth of June, ten
of the detainees appeared in Supreme Court on habeas corpus proceedings; but
they had barely gotten started when they were adjourned, without explanation.
When they resumed again several days later, the chief defense attorney, a
Dominican, told the judge that his work permit for St. Kitts was up that day
and the Government wouldn't renew it, which meant he couldn't defend his
clients, which in turn meant they were being denied counsel of their choice.
The judge responded with another adjournment.
    Finally, on July 3,