“I did not say they will not come, Sir. I said they will not come by boat.”
>> the Gibraltarians (and the Falklanders) are trying to maintain the status quo, not trying to secede
jjimm, So what? The status quo changes, and is changed, daily. Every law enacted, every treaty signed, changes the statu quo. It is up to the entire British people to decide whether to maintain or to change the statu quo. It is not up to a small minority to decide this issue.
>> the wishes of the majority are not, have never been and cannot be paramount in every possible situation
Crusoe, I know what you mean but I think you have worded it wrong. The people of Gibraltar are not the “majority”, they are a very small minority of the British people. While the wishes of minorities should be taken into account, they cannot override the will of the majority.
What the people of Gibraltar are doing is not (as some seem to believe) voting on their auto determination, what they are wanting to do is impose their will on the rest of the British people which is very different. They are voting that the rest of the British people defend the interests of Gibraltar even if those interests are contrary to the interests of the British people as a whole. And the Brits as a whole have every right to say “no thanks” if they wish. Gibraltar is voting that the British people commit their military and diplomacy to defend and maintain activities in Gibraltar which are contrary to the interests of the British people. The British people are not interested in supporting money laundering or drug and arms trafficking in Gibraltar and they have a right to refuse to do it no matter what the people of Gibraltar think. If the people of the UK as a whole decide it is in their interests to cede Gibraltar back to Spain, then the few people of Gibraltar should not be allowed to hijack this decision.
Personally, I do not care much whether Gibraltar remains British or is returned to Spain or some intermediate solution is found. I am just not buying the argument of the people of Gibraltar when they say they are exercising their right to self-determination. Nope. What they are trying to do is deny the rest of the UK their right to self determination.
Hong Kong, Northern Ireland, Gibraltar, Taiwan, etc. are all very different cases which have to be analised individually and each will have a different solution. Northern Ireland is totally different from Gibraltar in so many ways that I am not even going to begin. Gibraltar does not resemble Northern Ireland in history nor in geographical size or situation nor in population numbers or composition.
The case in Gibraltar is that the British and Spanish governments are holding talks in a calm and mature fashion and not making this a matter of honor or face-saving, which is how things should be done.
Thanks sailor, you’re absolutely right (and I haven’t put my thoughts across very clearly in this thread). My phrasing wasn’t wonderfully accurate; I should have said “people theoretically with the most at stake” rather than “majority”, perhaps. I think I might bow out before I shoot myself in the foot again!
To add perspective: The population of Gibraltar is 30,000 and British residents in Spain are about 100,000, (number second only to Moroccans).
Poor analogy. A better analogy would be that the citizens of California, a territory taken in war from Mexico, should not have the power to prevent the return of California to Mexico. Should Californians be able to veto such a move - even if the majority of Americans want to say goodbye to California?
Well, that’s not what the Gibrlatarans are doing. They are exercising their right to remain in the country they are currently in. And that right is guaranteed by Gibraltar’s constitution.
Because the right to veto was not in Hong Kong’s Constitution. It is in Gibraltar’s.
::Sigh:: The experience of Hong Kong is so poorly understood. Hong Kong was not returned because it was considered to be in the “better interests” of both sides. Hong Kong was transferred to China because the British had no choice.
Ya see, Hong Kong island was ceded to Britain in perpetuity, as was, later (IIRC) Kowloon. The New Territories - the mainland portion of Hong Kong - was not ceded in perpetuity, however. It was leased to GB in 1898 for 99 years.
That 99 year lease came up in 1997, and the Chinese made clear that they were not going to renew it. The New Territories provided Hong Kong with, among other things, its drinking water supply.
China, driven by nationalistic domestic concerns, effectively told GB, “return Hong Kong, or try to run a city of millions on rainwater.” GB returned Hong Kong.
In the case of Gibraltar, blackmail won’t work.
Sua
And to add to that, very few of these 30,000 are British. I think it’s a few thousand. Mostly cops and military. And they don’t reside permanently, not being ex-pats.
The population living there are a mix, much like the Maltese.
Gib is indeed a dive. It’s dirty, boring, shabby - not a piece of England at all. The only reasons to ever go there is to either pick up tax free stuff (alcohol, smokes, home electronics) or in some more or less illegal activity. To put this in perspective:
North America has Nafta, but it’s my understanding that the border controll with Mexico is still very strict, as compared with the Canadian border. How would people in the US react if Tijuana was a semi independent enclave of Panama, with no taxes, large drug problems, dirt cheap booze and smokes, cars sold witout any taxes and known big moneylaundering operations going on. Off shore companies, and arms trafficking. Now, if these people in Tijuana wanted to have the borders completely open, with no interference from either it’s homecountry, Mexico or the US. No controll, but US marines to protect them, without being able to check on what’s going on in banks and all these offshore companies…
My guess is that the administration would say Hell no!
Or re make Cuba, and let’s have it controlled by the cartells of Medellin or certain allegedly criminal, Italian-American Families…
A serious question: is Gibraltar’s constitution relevant? I only ask because I understood an overriding principle of British politics to be that no decision is binding on future parliaments; how does the Gibraltarian legal system (if there is such a thing) fit in to British politics?
Sua, I am surprised that a you of all people should display such lack of understanding of the legal aspects of this case.
>> Well, that’s not what the Gibrlatarans are doing. They are exercising their right to remain in the country they are currently in.
Their right to remain UK citizens is not being questioned and their right to live on any particular piece of soil is non existent. The UK could tomorrow declare the entire place a military base and displace every civilian who lives there. You are claiming rights which are non existent. In any case, the people of Gibraltar could remain in Gibraltar and retain their UK citizenship. Only sovereignty would be transferred and the residents of Gibraltar have zero legal veto power over this issue.
The US or any of the several states can declare any piece of land a national Park or a military area and the people who live there have to move out and have no inherent right to remain there. The US cannot relieve you of your citizenship but they sure can say they will return Guantanamo to Cuba in spite of the opposition of any Americans who may live there. They can continue to live there as a US citizen or move elsewhere.
>> And that right is guaranteed by Gibraltar’s constitution.
Oh gimme a break. The constitution of Gibraltar can unilaterally impose obligations on the UK? I don’t think so. It would have to be in the (non-existent) UK constitution. The UK can freely renounce their sovereignty over Gibraltar tomorrow with no impediment.
>> ::Sigh:: The experience of Hong Kong is so poorly understood. Hong Kong was not returned because it was considered to be in the “better interests” of both sides. Hong Kong was transferred to China because the British had no choice.
>> China, driven by nationalistic domestic concerns, effectively told GB, “return Hong Kong, or try to run a city of millions on rainwater.” GB returned Hong Kong.
:: Double sigh:: If the UK had enough interest in HK, they could have built desalinization plants or brought water by sea just like is done in Saudi Arabia and other desertic countries. The UK just decided it was not worth the cost. In other words, it was not in their best interests. If instead of the UK it had been the US they probably would have retained HK. It was mostly a matter of cost. It was not impossible. The UK could have just rationed water and raised the price to the point where much of the native Chinese population would have returned to China. Keeping HK was not “impossible”, it was merely not cost-efficient which is a very different thing. I doubt Gibraltar is self-sufficient in any sense and pretty much everything is imported. If keeping Gibraltar turns out to be not cost efficient then you have pretty much the same situation except that the population of Gibraltar is much smaller.
What the UK is weighing continually is whether the value of Gibraltar as a military base and keeping the people of Gibraltar happy is worth the cost of straining relations with Spain. Increasingly the answer seems to be “no”. The UK has much more to lose by pissing off Spain than by pissing off the people of Gibraltar. The UK is less and less inclined to defend a situation which is based on money laundering, drug trafficking and other unsavory activities.
I did some research on the “constitution” of Gibraltar. Gibraltar is a Crown Colony so the people of Gibraltar do not have the power to give themselves a constitution and this “constitution” is not a charter the people of Gibraltar gave themselves but rather a charter given them by the UK parliament. The only mention is a non-dispositive paragraph in the introduction which is just a vague reassurance with no practical effect:
Clearly the parliament of the UK has absolute power and freedom to renounce British sovereignty over Gibraltar. The British parliament can do anything it wants as it is not bound by precedent or constitution.
Furthermore, it seems the people of Gibraltar do not have full British citizenship and are not citizens of the EU. They are not represented in Westminster. In short: the British parliament can tell them to get stuffed at any time it wants to.
Oh, one more thing I forgot to mention: The UN General Assembly has repeatedly declared the colonial situation of Gibraltar should be ended and called on the UK to hold talks with Spain in order to end this colonial situation. The UK has to hold talks with Spain or it will be in breach of UN resolutions (which it was in the past). Of course, the British giovernment can “hold talks” which conveniently achieve nothing. It is not only Saddam Hussein who can play such games. The British government has been doing this for decades with Gibraltar.
UN resolutions 2429 (XXIII) of 18 December 1968 and 2353 (XXII) of 19 December 1967, urged the UK to terminate the colonial situation in Gibraltar and reaffirmed that the continuation of the situation is incompatible with the Charter of the United Nations.
Every year the UN renews its calls for the UK and Spain to resolve the issue but decades of conversations between the two countries have gone nowhere (Guess who’s stalling). The following page has links (PDF) to some UN papers on the issue. Scroll down near the bottom:
http://www.un.org/Depts/dpi/decolonization/docs.htm
Again, for reference, Gibraltar has an area of 2.7 square miles, a population of about 30,000 of which about 1/10th are British nationals and the rest hold GBZ passports and are mostly of Spanish descent and language.