Michael Binyon, The Times, November 3rd, 2009
Once they were vital strategic assets in Britain’s domination of the globe. We cannot treat them as an embarrassment now
What should be done with the remnants of Empire? A series of pinpricks across the globe, 14 islands and territories still remain British and fiercely loyal to the Crown. But almost every one is deeply unhappy at today’s treatment by the mother country. They feel abandoned, forgotten, former strategic assets that are now seen in Whitehall as costly liabilities. Should they be written off and forced into independence? Or does Britain still owe them a responsibility?
More than a generation ago, Britain gave independence to huge tracts of land that were once coloured pink on the map and contained a quarter of the globe’s population. It was left, however, with these 14 islands and enclaves that were too small, too remote or too threatened by neighbours to go it alone.
Their names are echoes from history: St. Helena, Gibraltar, Bermuda, the Falkland Islands, Ascension, Anguilla and Pitcairn. Most have a population of only a few thousand. On Pitcairn, the remote Pacific haven for the Bounty mutineers, there are no more than 51 souls. Most have been British since the birth of the Empire: Bermuda was one of the first colonies and boasts the oldest Anglican church in the New World; St Mary’s church in St. Helena, the gateway to southern Africa and India, once included in its congregation the captains and crews of more than a thousand ships that used to anchor each year in the seas off the little capital of Jamestown.
Apart from Bermuda, almost none of these tiny colonies, now officially classified as British Overseas Territories, is politically or economically viable. And almost every one has been in the news for the wrong reasons.
Gibraltar and the Falklands face hostility from neighbours that claim their territory. Montserrat was almost destroyed by a volcano and rescue has been costly. The Cayman Islands are accused of offering tax havens for the world’s billionaires looking to hide their wealth. The former inhabitants of the British Indian Islands territory are fighting court battles against their wholesale expulsion to make way for a US airbase on Diego Garcia. Corruption and drugs forced Britain to suspend the Prime Minister and Government of the Turks & Caicos islands and impose direct rule by the Governor.
The problem for most of them is not bad government, but the wrong government. Unlike France, Britain has not incorporated these territories into its domestic political structure and made them equal to the metropolitan mainland. Instead, it has tried to offer as much self-government as possible while retaining an arm’s-length responsibility. The trappings of the colonial era have been dropped: governors no longer wear plumed hats; the territories can largely decide their own domestic affairs; and, after a disgraceful 20 years of second-class status when Margaret Thatcher denied them full British citizenship, their rights have been restored.
But there is no department in Whitehall properly tasked with their management. The Colonial Office was abolished 40 years ago. The Foreign Office sees its focus as diplomatic relations with the outside world. And the Department for International Development’s job is to use aid money to alleviate poverty among the teeming masses of the world’s poorest countries.
Yet it is DfID that now also has responsibility for the overseas territories. It is a far from happy relationship. There is, for a start, a clash of ethos: upholding the rights, pensions and privileges of British citizenship among peoples who are far from starving, is hardly compatible with flood relief in Bangladesh. How can the costs be compared? It costs far more to look after 2,300 people in the Falklands or 3,900 in St. Helena than it does to bring relief to millions in Africa.
Britain would do better to allow these far-flung territories a real voice. Why should they not, as in France, have a vote and a voice in the motherland’s Parliament? What about regional groupings for the Caribbean or the South Atlantic?
Nowhere is the relationship more strained than on St. Helena, an island of spectacular beauty and variety, from which I have just returned.
This volcanic outcrop, more than 1,000 miles from Africa, was settled long before Britain gained a toehold in southern Africa. It was the only refuelling stop on the route to and from the East; without it, Britain may never have conquered India. It played a crucial role in patrolling the African coast to end slavery. And it held Napoleon far enough away from any attempted rescue.
Yet even when ruled by the East India Company, it was never self-sufficient without access to the outside world. Nowadays that access has been reduced to a single supply ship. The answer to viability in a global age is an airport. But DfID, when confronted with the bill - £300 million for construction and initial running costs - got cold feet and pulled the plug. It is a small sum compared with just a few miles of motorway construction. It is little when compared with the cost of isolated communities in mainland Britain. But it seemed a lot compared with the relief of global poverty.
Without better access, St. Helena will slowly die. The young are emigrating at a rapid rate. Wages are extremely low, often less than £5,000 a year, but even minimal social services costs will rise as an ageing population needs pensions and care compatible with British citizenship.
Should Britain instead close St. Helena, shipping out the population as St Kilda was evacuated? It would be grotesque, worse than the eviction of the Chagos Islands. An island-wide consultation this summer found that a mere 1 per cent agreed with the DfID option of a "pause" on the airport. Yet that is Britain’s answer to its historic responsibilities. It is a shabby way to treat these former outposts of Britain’s global role. It is a shameful legacy of empire.
A comment filed on the above article and published on The Times Online
Viney Chander Bhutani wrote:
The author of this article and most of the commenters seem to be working on the basis of Britain’s ‘moral’ responsibility to the remaining colonies which Britain ruled when the empire was still around and which served as strategic assets in the defence of the empire and perhaps also in the making of that empire. A lot can be said by way of a ‘running commentary’ on several instances mentioned here but that will be mere polemics. We need to remember that in this day and age it is impossible and outlandish - not to use stronger words - to think in terms of what in the French experience used to be called ‘overseas departments’. It is wholly unpractical to imagine now that the remaining ‘colonies’ shall attain to greater distinction and better life if they were able to send representatives to the house of commons sitting in Westminster. (Can you allow 53 souls to send an MP?) In practice the inhabitants of these colonies may not care much for such ‘connection’ with Britain. It is strange to think in terms of defending any of these colonies in the manner Falkland was defended in Mrs Thatcher’s time. Perhaps the exercise may be repeated - with similar results, perhaps. But would you, for instance, launch a similar defence of Hong Kong? Britain dare not think in those terms because it could not hope to run a war half a world away with PRC able to just walk in with its tanks and aircraft - which Britain could not hope to match. Britain therefore made virtue of a necessity and handed back Hong Kong at the expire of a ‘lease’, which, to be sure, was euphemism for conquest and annexation as late as the 1890s (which was long past the high noon of the empire).The answer does not lie in bringing these colonies to a stage of graduation where they can send MPs to Westminster but in enabling these colonies and their inhabitants to find accommodation with their neighbours on as good terms as can be devised. Each case shall be governed by its onw considerations.
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