A Hong Kong Model for Falklands

Matthew Parris, The Times February 27, 2010

Many people remember where they were on the Saturday morning in March, 1982, when the House of Commons met to hear Margaret Thatcher signal war on Argentina. But I remember where I wasn’t. I wasn’t in the House of Commons. I was honouring a commitment in my Derbyshire constituency. That misjudgment will remain for the rest of my life a small but significant regret.

As the task force set sail and battle commenced, I was to learn a lesson. The English are a surprisingly bellicose people. When it comes to a fight that we think we can win, calculations of rational self-interest are cast aside. Forget this, and you will miss your country’s mood and end up spitting into the wind.

All through that conflict I spat into the wind. I supported the war without a second’s hesitation, and will always believe it was right that we stood up for our people and our property as we did; but I disliked the tally-ho atmosphere and believed we should not close our minds to thoughts of a negotiated settlement, if Argentina would climb down and talk.

That possibility never arose. And so we find ourselves 28 years later, with our position for the moment secure but with the dispute still unresolved. We have invested much pride, some blood and tremendous sums of money on these lonely, windswept and precious islands. We ought to be thinking about how best to realise that huge investment in a way that balances sentiment with self-interest.

So here I’ll go again, spitting into the wind. Britain needs to take a long, hard look at its South Atlantic possessions — the Falklands and South Georgia; St Helena, Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha — and review, too, its oceanic possession on the other side of Africa, the Chagos Islands (often referred to as Diego Garcia). Each case is different.

Our right to St Helena is indisputable in law and undisputed in fact. We have rather overlooked its people, and seem likely to renege on an undertaking we made to build an airfield there. The undertaking should be honoured. The possession is only a minor drain on the Exchequer, easily affordable, and (to put the case at its most prosaic) worth hanging on to, for who knows when it might come in handy? Less prosaically, it’s a matter of pride to maintain Britain’s historic association with St Helena, a beautiful island and home for centuries to stalwart people who depend on us. The same is true of Tristan da Cunha with its sadder history.

Ascension Island (like Tristan, administratively associated with St Helena) is more newsworthy. The Americans built an airstrip there during the Second World War and for more than half a century have kept a base, Wideawake airfield, where they rule the roost, though in fact they only have an annually renewable lease, for which they do not pay. We pay them to land commercial aircraft. It is known in the recesses of Whitehall (though it has never really impinged on Westminster and beyond) that at the start of the Falklands conflict Washington at first refused Britain permission to use our own island for refuelling jets. Only after Mrs Thatcher intervened with Ronald Reagan did the Americans reluctantly concede.

British tenure of Ascension is undisputed but I don’t believe it is entirely secure. If the Americans needed it in a conflict where we were not with them, I think they would just take it. If we needed it in a conflict where the Americans were not with us, we should not feel confident of their co-operation. We should talk with Washington about their and our status on this important rock-built mid-Atlantic aircraft carrier. They should, for a start, pay us properly for its use, and acknowledge fully the rights of the islanders to a political identity that they still do not properly have.

Diego Garcia we should reluctantly sell. We are already almost strangers in the territory, which America has used as it pleases — not least for extraordinary rendition flights. It is unimaginable we could make any use of their “Footprint of Freedom” base except alongside them. A creeping transfer of ownership is taking place, and in humiliating deference to Washington we have betrayed the rights of the islanders who once lived there, and now squat in Mauritius.

The whole story brings shame on us, as we surely know. But it is too late to reassert ourselves. The 50-year agreement with America (it pays nothing) expires in six years. We should decline to renew it while offering to cede the territory to the United States, for a colossal sum. It’s worth billions to the Pentagon. Otherwise, sooner or later, it’ll just take it, as we would have done from a smaller power a century ago.

Which brings us to the Falkland Islands, which we did grab in that manner. Neither side’s claim — Britain’s or Argentina’s — is incontestable. But possession is nine points of the law, and we have possession.

Argentina, however, has the ability, in concert with most of the rest of Latin America, to harry and frustrate attempts to exploit hydrocarbon reserves beneath the islands’ territorial waters. We can (expensively) guard prospectors against any eccentric attempt to take a pop at them, but if winnable reserves are found, will big oil companies risk their business elsewhere on the South American continent and perhaps beyond?

Buenos Aires can easily get a hostile resolution through the UN General Assembly, and may. In the Security Council, meanwhile, the Americans wouldn’t support us, but simply abstain, leaving us to use our veto, perhaps alone. The US has huge interests, political, commercial and military, in Latin America. Washington’s official position as regards our claim to colonial sovereignty is neutral. I invite you to guess what President Obama’s private instincts are.

For 99 years Britain occupied and administered Hong Kong, and flew the Union Jack there, on the basis of a lease from China of the New Territories, land on which the island itself depended. Is it really unthinkable that Argentine pride might be assuaged, British administration secured, the islanders’ way of life guaranteed, and the economic spoils divided, on the basis of something similar? Such were the discussions Tory ministers were discreetly pursuing with Argentina in the early 1980s, before they were rumbled by a few stupid young backbenchers like me. Now we are all, in Britain and Argentina, older and wiser, isn’t it time to return to those ideas?

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Matthew Parris

Matthew Parris joined The Times as parliamentary sketchwriter in 1988, a role he held until 2001. He had formerly worked for the Foreign Office and been a Conservative MP from 1979-86. He has published many books on travel and politics and an autobiography, Chance Witness. In 2005 he won the Orwell Prize for Journalism. His diary appears in The Times on Thursdays, and his Opinion column on Saturdays

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