The potential plight of the Falkland Islanders naturally provokes a passionate response in Grt Britain, yet strangely we seem to show no concern at all for the Chagos Islanders.
They were treated shamefully.

However, scaremongering helps both the government and the military. When military people claim our army would no longer be able to defend the Falklands, it sounds to me like a plea for more funding.

Yep, that’s exactly what it is. One thing that’s conveniently forgotten in such claims is that the Argentine military has barely upgraded its equipment since 1982, leaving a massive technology gap between their forces and ours. A single Type 45 destroyer such as HMS Dauntless could wipe out almost the entire Argentine Air Force in a morning.

From talking to various Falkland Islanders on Twitter, it seems clear to me that they just want to be left alone by their neighbour and be allowed to get on with their lives. I think that’s fair enough, though if they do strike oil riches then it would probably also be fair to ask them to subsidise the cost of defending the place.

2

Agreed

Perhaps we could pacify the Argentinians by offering the Shetlands as a quid pro quo.

Shetlanders don’t particularly want to be British (or Scottish).

Failing that the Isle of Mann?

What are we to take away from this, that we should cede the Falklands to Argentina because Argentinians, like, really care about them?

The islanders want to remain british. That is the beginning and the end of it.

Kirchner won convincingly in the last elections, but her relationship with the unions is cracking, whilst there are protests about the government’s attempts to reduce the use of US dollars.

That the hint to what the real story ought to be – Kirchner has run the economy into the ground. She is trying to jail people who report the real inflation rate. She is trying to make sure Argentinians have to stay with the increasingly worthless currency. And to distract people she is engaging in a little cheap populism over the Falklands. Rather like the British are doing over the banks.

It is cheap and cynical politics which will do nothing to stop Argentinia’s slide into the abyss.

I really don’t see why Jasper Cox has to ‘understand’ someone wanting him, and hundreds of other random people presumably, to die.

The point about the Chagos islands seems a fair one – but I agree with muqat.

Argentina has some ofthe best golf courses in the world. Surely Argentina could just fix the ‘Malvinas’ by err..buying the locals out or is commerce too alien a concept – everything has a price but instead of offering they invade or threaten to invade, muppets.

Typical colonial mentality

soon you will claim Diego Garcia is also ours.

How about you return the Chaggos Island’s to their rightful owners?

muqat @6:

“The islanders want to remain british. That is the beginning and the end of it.”

OK, I’ll buy that; but isn’t it the Big Idea of the age that “with rights come responsibilities (TM)”? If the Falklanders want the right to remain British (whatever that term may mean now), then they also have the responsibility to contribute to that status. I can’t see for the life of me how they can be said to be anything other than a drain on our ‘national’ resources at a time when, so we are told from every official orifice, “There isn’t aneh moneh!!!”.

Any discovery of oil in the region would, of course, drastically change the whole dynamic. Until then, it seems to be much as Borges described it, i.e. “two bald men fighting over a comb”. Meanwhile, the islands have become little more than a convenient totem for politicians and military on both sides to dance and chant around when they feel threatened. As such it’s very useful; it gets the red-tops and their readers onside, and provides an all-devouring distraction from what is going on far closer to home. Remember that Thatcher would almost certainly have been a one-term PM had the murderous idiots in Buenos Aires not made the decision they did (aided, of course, by the fact that a previous round of ‘austerity’ had removed the last effective defence from islands which the FCO had scarcely bothered to remember existed).

Barrie J @1:

I totally agree. The main reasons for the silence on the shameful treatment of the Chagossians are, a) that it happened much longer ago, b) no-one would have believed at the time or for many years afterwards that a British government would have acted in such a shabby fashion towards people to whom it owed a duty of protection, and c) that it’s easier for the British to get agitato over the plight of white conservatives (cf. Rhodesia/Zimbabwe) than over people whom those same British would dismiss as ‘w*gs’.

I can’t see for the life of me how they can be said to be anything other than a drain on our ‘national’ resources at a time when, so we are told from every official orifice, “There isn’t aneh moneh!!!”.

At present they’re economically self-sufficient for everything except defence, so not that much of a drain in the scheme of things. If the oil money comes I doubt they’ll mind paying a few quid to cover the costs of the Mount Pleasant garrison.

This is a good balanced post, Jasper, and I admire your courage in speaking up. The attitude on BOTH sides is essentially colonial – “the islands are ours” is territory-grabbing just as much when it said by an Argentinian president as when it is said by a British PM. Argentina and the UK should negotiate a solution taking into account the wishes and interests of the people most affected, namely the Falklanders themselves. To do anything else is to descend into 19th century colonialism.

You have to wonder why Argentina wants the islands so badly, as they are 300 miles from the Argentine coast, and were British possessions before Argentina even existed as a country.
No Argentines live on them, and it would be interesting to know how much they would want to interfere in the islanders lives if they did have as much as joint-sovereignty. Sharing the spoils of oil and fishing might be OK and the right thing to do, but Argentina would (I’m guessing) want Argentine people to be able to move to the Islands as Argentine citizens. And then you get into all kinds of potential situations like we have seen in dozens of other places where there are competing nationalisms and affiliations within the same territory.
Cyprus, Israel and Northern Ireland, to name just a few.

I spent 2 years in Argentina in the late 80′s.

I symphathised with the Argentina position- before the war these were forgotten neglected islands with absymal social services such as schools and health care. The islanders had been downgraded to 2nd class passport status not long before the war.

So I argued for a lease-back solution, such as 99 years, after which the islands become Argentine.

The fish lobby and and the oil lobby don’t want this, hence the referendum idea.

“Argentina and the UK should negotiate a solution taking into account the wishes and interests of the people most affected, namely the Falklanders themselves.” It seems quite clear what the Falklanders themselves want. Further negotiations would thus be superfluous. Invoking ‘colonialism’ is a bit misleading too. This is quite interesting on the topic:

http://thethirdestate.net/2011/12/theyre-a-legacy-of-colonialism-but-the-falkland-islands-should-stay-british/

@11 The Judge

“I can’t see for the life of me how they can be said to be anything other than a drain on our ‘national’ resources at a time when, so we are told from every official orifice, “There isn’t aneh moneh!!!”.”

By that logic why do we support the disabled, permanetly unemployed or the elderly? Shouldn’t they take responsibility for themselves?

The reported comment of Alan Walters, Mrs T’s personal economic adviser, at a dinner to celebrate the outcome of the Falkland’s war in 1982 was that it would have cost less overall to offer the settlers £1m each to go and settle somewhere else.

I suppose the answer to that is that what mattered is the principle – presumably, defending the settlers’ right of self-determination.

Precisely so. I was under the impression the principle was that you don’t abandon your own people in the face of violent, fascist bullying. We’ve seen where that leads before.

I don’t give a shit what the Argentinians think about the Falklands. I don’t really give a shit what the mainland British think either. This is a matter for the Falklanders, and if they define themselves as British that is good enough for me.

Guy goes on his holidays to Argentina; notices that the locals care more about the Falklands than the Brits do but caveats this by noting that the issue is dominated by political nonsense; counsels more a bit more chit-chat and mutual understanding than angry bullshit.

Seems fairly uncontroversial to me – not revelatory or even wildly interesting, but not exactly inflammatory stuff.

Quite why anyone feels the need to be so damn strident about it, as many clearly do, is anybody’s guess.

The Falklands were unocupied when the British settled there, unlike Argentina which the Spanish stole from the indigenous population, so the British have a better claim to the Falklands than the ‘Argentinians’ have to Argentina.

@ 9 Dick the Prick

“Surely Argentina could just fix the ‘Malvinas’ by err..buying the locals out or is commerce too alien a concept – everything has a price but instead of offering they invade or threaten to invade, muppets.”

I recall reading (but am having trouble finding a source) that Argentina did actually try to buy the islanders out by offering them a lump sum each if they agreed to become Argentinians, but they refused.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Falkland_Islands#cite_ref-0

Rational Wiki claims it. But it’s sourced from an offline article, and this is Rational Wiki we’re talking about, so it might be UK propaganda that evolved into an urban myth.

I recall reading (but am having trouble finding a source) that Argentina did actually try to buy the islanders out by offering them a lump sum each if they agreed to become Argentinians, but they refused.

What, sell my birthright for a mess of pottage?!

I don’t really get the basis of the Argentine claim to the islands. They complain that the Falklands are a product of colonialism (true) whilst ignoring that Argentina is also a product of colonialism.

The Falkland islanders are descended from colonial settlers who arrived there in the early 19th century. Most Argentines are descended from Spanish colonial settlers who arrived there between the 16th and 19th centuries. If the Falkland islanders do not have rights to self determination, then logically nor do Argentines, or for that matter any of the descendants of European settlers in the Americas or Australia, and lets not even get into the implications for Israel etc.

Interesting wikipedia article on the subject here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkland_Islands_sovereignty_dispute

I don’t really get the basis of the Argentine claim to the islands. They complain that the Falklands are a product of colonialism (true) whilst ignoring that Argentina is also a product of colonialism.

I’d have thought it was simple. The Argentinians – like ourselves and 99% of humans who have ever lived – are a bit of a bunch of jokers who are perfectly capable of believing hilariously several contradictory concepts simultaneously, provided it’s expedient to do so.

Thus, can a bunch of descendants of European colonials, living in a state constructed upon European colonies, get all humpty about European colonialism, if it suits them to get all humpty about it.

Similarly, you can bet that our supposedly fierce commitment to national self-determination could be similarly overlooked, if it was more useful to us to overlook it.

As in domestic politics, so in international politics – everybody’s lying and propagandising and everybody knows it all the time, except on those occasions when it suits people to pretend that they aren’t.

@ 25 Tim J

“What, sell my birthright for a mess of pottage?!”

That was more or less the response, from what I read. According to Rational Wiki’s admittedly horribly one-sided article, Argentina first tried sending over literature explaining how wonderful their country was, on the assumption that the Falklanders would convert on the stop.

If true, I can’t help putting it into my category of Embarrassingly Goofy Countries That Believed Their Own Bullshit, like when Belgium (I think) sent soliders into WW1 armed only with bayonets because they apparently assumed that the enemy would flee before them, what with Belgium being so awesome and everything.

Regarding the monetary offer to the Falklanders, the Argies offered them all a million quid each if they’d become Argentinian, which they refused. Meanwhile, noticing this offer, one wag asked the inhabitants of a run-down former mining town in Wales if they’d like to become Argentinian for a million quid each, to which they all said yes. Even decked the town out in Argentinian colours in ready welcome.
Alas, the Argentinians passed on this chance to have territory within mainland Britain…

@ 29

It was a MILLION POUNDS? I’d totally go Argentine for that.

If true, I can’t help putting it into my category of Embarrassingly Goofy Countries That Believed Their Own Bullshit, like when Belgium (I think) sent soliders into WW1 armed only with bayonets because they apparently assumed that the enemy would flee before them, what with Belgium being so awesome and everything.

When the British invaded China in the 1860s (First Opium War? Something like that), the Chinese generals apparently informed their armies that when the front rank of British soldiers knelt, they were kow-towing to the Emperor. Boy were they surprised…

My source for that is George Macdonald Fraser, but I’ve learnt not to be sniffy – Flashman got me a first in one of my finals papers.

It was a MILLION POUNDS? I’d totally go Argentine for that.

Clearly you’re not as patriotic as the Falklanders then…

It was so astonishingly high because the population of the Falklands is a bit of the low side, you could fit them all in the now closed Syndicate Nightclub Blackpool and still let another 500+ people in on the door. Plus it was still cheaper than another war.

Err. I don’t think there is much issue over this. We should not simply give up the Falklands simply because more Argentinians care about the issue.

The reason I say it is a none issue is that the vast majority of people on the Falklands want to be part of England, not Argentina. End of the story and road I’m afraid. Unless you suggest that dictatorial style take over is a good route.

As the author of this post, I’ve read the comments across the sites this was published on, and written a further piece where I respond. It’s here: http://leoleoleoblog.wordpress.com/2012/07/11/who-has-to-right-to-own-the-falklands-las-malvinas-a-response-to-responses/

@34 Jasper Cox

On your blog you state:

I don’t we should be swayed too much by a historical perspective. The idea that what your dead ancestors did, over which you had no control, should determine your right or lack thereof to land is ridiculous. Yet that is what some commenters suggested: that because Argentineans are largely descendants of European colonists, Argentina perhaps loses its right over the Falklands. On the other side, it was suggested that the Falklanders’ have no right to self determination because they are simply descendants of British colonisers, so they do not have the same rights to the land on which they live as if they were an indigenous people. I find both arguments irrelevant.

Unfortunately that is exactly the position of the Argentine government. If you read the wikipedia article on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkland_Islands_sovereignty_dispute#Argentina

They argue (without any apparent irony) That the principle of self-determination is not applicable since the current inhabitants are not aboriginal and were brought to replace the Argentine population.

Of course coming from a country who’s inhabitants are not aboriginal and were brought in to replace the indigenous population, this takes quite a spectacular quantity of bare faced cheek!

A phrase springs to mind about pots, kettles and the colour black!

And to top it off, the Falklands didn’t even have any indigenous population. Just a handful of half assed attempts at colonisation by various European settlers!

Graham, I agree. It’s a nonsensical argument, and clearly hypocritical. The sovereignty of the islands should not be decided by circular argument about who was on the Falklands first, or for that matter whether or not Argentines’ ancestors were colonisers.

Graham, I agree. It’s a nonsensical argument. I don’t think sovereignty should be decided based on a ‘who was there first’ competition. Nor, for that matter, should whether or not Argentinians’ ancestors were colonisers.