"HAPPY IN LUNDY"

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 73, 23 September 1922, Page 12

"HAPPY IN LUNDY"

NO RATES OR INCOME TAX,;

Lundy is even more fortunate than tho Isle of Man or the Channel Isles, for its inhabitants pay not a penny rates or income tax. The present member for Barnstaple, of which constituency Lundy forms part, paid a visit two years ago to' his island electors—eight in number. "Everyone was happy in Lundy," he told a "Manchester Guardian" journalist on his return. "When I asked if there were 'any complaints,' the answer was decidedly in the negative. There is complete social, political, and industrial peace. Well fed and comfortably housed —most of the buildings 'are of local granite,—the islanders appear to be a healthy, well-satisfied little community. They grow their own wheat and raise their own cattle. They get letters and newspapers once a week, weather permitting."

Lundy, however, has not always been happy. The island has twice been captured, first by Turkish pirates and then by French privateers, while for a time it served as a convict station. This was owing to the machinations of an earlier member for Barnstaple—Ralph Benson, —who secured a Government contract for the transport of convicts to Virginia. As he was the Owner of Lundy, it occurred to him that he might save money by dumping the convicts there and setting them to improve his estate. He did so, and for a while all went well, the Government winking at the fraud. Then it was discovered that the ingenious Benson employed his convicts, not only as labourers, but as smugglers. Preventive men found huge stores of tobacco which had not paid duty hidden' in the caves of Lundy. Suitable measures having ' een taken, the member for Barnstaple fled to Portugal.