Setting the record straight

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The 1980 Santo rebellion: Setting the record straight

The Santo Rebellion: An Im perial Reckoning. By John Beasant. Published by Heine mann, Melbourne, and Univer sity of Hawaii Press, Honolulu,

1984. 163 Pp. Isbn O 85859

356 4. price $A19.95.

That the latter stages of the transition from the Anglo- French Condominium of the New Hebrides to the indepen dent Republic of Vanuatu were not proceeding at all smoothly became apparent to many people outside the archipelago when the Santo rebellion of May-August 1980 was head lined widely by the media as “The Coconut War” and “The Bow and Arrow War”, and was presented as an attempt at secession from the not yet quite existent republic by a bunch of primitive tribesmen on exotic Espiritu Santo led by a former bulldozer driver and supported by some local French planters and an odd and unexplained assortment of American na tionals.

Very little of the true com plexity of the situation, a com plexity rooted in the very nature of the joint colonial presence, and very few of the facts about the often deviously self-in terested machinations of the two colonial powers, and of the various local and expatriate components of the rebel coali tion, were presented by the media.

In The Santo Rebellion John Beasant sets the record straight.

He was ideally and uniquely placed to do so. During the rebellion he was the official press secretary in Fort Vila of Father Walter Lini, prime minis ter of the already-elected gov ernment of the prospective re public. After independence he remained as press and private

secretary to the prime minister until 1982. He has produced a book which, despite its relative brevity (a quality not of his own choosing, since his original manuscript was much longer than the published version), provides for the first time a detailed, accurate and informed account of the background to,

and the course of, what was, in effect, an attempt to prevent Vanuatu from becoming genu inely and viably independent.

After perceptively sketching in chapter 1, “The Land of the Holy Ghost,” the respective natures of the Melanesian and European presences in Vanuatu, and tracing the often

complex history of their interac tion, Beasant focuses, in chap ters 2 and 3 “The Rising Tide,” and “Landsharks and Libertarians” on the back ground to, and the factors which produced, the rebellion.

In so doing he makes compre hensible, for the first time in print, the seemingly most un likely amalgam of diverse in terests and personalities which came together under the rebel banner.

The first element was Nag riamel, a nativistic quasi-millen ary indigenous movement directed against land alienation by (mainly French) expatriates.

Nagriamel was led by the char ismatic figure of Jimmy Stevens, a man whose primarily Melanesian values values had been crucially influenced by contact with the massive Amer ican logistic presence at Santo during World War 11. Nagriamel drew its support primarily from south-east Espiritu Santo but also from several other north ern and central islands. Stevens thought that he could use both the French planters and the Americans to his and Nag riamel’s advantage.

The second element com prised the predictably chauvinistic French planters of Espiritu Santo, Malekula and some of the other northern islands a group who were opposed to Nagriamel until they thought they could use it to their advantage. This group had strong links with like minded colons in New Caledo nia, and was to some extent influenced by attitudes that had been shaped in Algeria and Indo-China.

The third element was by far the most unlikely a group in which hard-nosed American real estate speculators partially

Awaiting sentence outside the post-rebellion trial at Port-Vila courthouse: Jimmy Stevens (right), with his defence counsel, the Noumea-based French barrister Jean Leder, and an interpreter.

Stevens is still in jail in Port-Vila.

overlapped with American so called “Libertarians”, with these latter being so far to the oddball Right of the political spectrum that they probably thought the John Birch Society was a commie plot. These people thought that they could use both Nagriamel and the colons to further their own ends of making a financial killing and/or setting up the ideal polity one in which the Melanesians would certainly have been the losers.

Chapter 5, “A Banquet of Consequences”, recounts events during the period be tween the election of Father Lini’s government in November 1979 and the outbreak of open rebellion in May 1980. The decisiveness of the Vanuaaku Party’s victory in the election was unexpected by both Nag riamel and the French adminis trators and planters. Very soon the French Resident Commis sioner, presumably acting pri marily on instructions from his superiors in Paris, began to act

— as described for example on pp. 75-76 and p. 90 in a way which could only promote de stabilisation during the run down to formal independence, which was scheduled for July 30, 1980.

Chapters 6 and 7, “Rebel lion” and “This Intolerable Farce”, describe in compelling detail the sordid double game which France was playing in the hope of getting either inde pendence on terms which would ensure a dominant con tinuing French presence in Vanuatu, or of delaying inde pendence indefinitely on the grounds of political instability.

At the same time Britain was acting with calculated in effectuality presumably in order not to offend the French in connection with financial negotiations in the European Economic Community context.

Eventually both powers de ployed troops in Vila and San to, but, acting on orders from Paris and London, these forces did precisely nothing towards

suppressing the rebellion.

From quite different motiva tions, both France and Britain left Vanuatu on the threshold of independence without the means to enforce internal security. Into this vacuum there came, at the request of the Vanuatu government, a military force from Papua New Guinea which did what Britain and France had deliberately failed to do it put down the rebellion responsibly, rapidly and effectively, as is described in Chapter 7, “The Beginning of the End”.

I began this review with men tion of the sensational and superficial way in which the media had presented the Santo rebellion. Yet, as Beasant right ly points out (p. 149), if it had not been for the media’s focus ing of world opinion sufficiently on events in Vanuatu during May-August 1980 to influence governments in Paris and Lon don, Father Lini’s government “may well have been subjected to crushing pressure to make political and constitutional con

cessions that would, in effect, have sanctified the rebellion” (p. 149). The only positive response which would have been left to that government in the face of such pressure would have been a Unilateral Declara tion of Independence. That this was envisaged is attested by the title of Beasant’s “Conclusion ‘A Free and Independent State’,” a title taken “from the Declaration of Independence which would have been proc laimed had France and Britain reneged on their assurance that Independence would take place on July the 30th 1980” (p. 149).

This book, despite its all too frequent typographic and edito rial errors, is by far the most significant publication on the events surrounding the Santo rebellion yet to appear it has my strongest recommendation.

I understand that it is already out of print I sincerely trust that the publishers will see fit to proceed with a second printing

forthwith.

David Walsh.