Last Tuesday in the Brighton Conference Hall waiting
for Ed Miliband to give his speech I found myself sitting next to a Labour
Councillor from Waltham Forest.
We exchanged the usual greetings and on hearing I was
from Gibraltar we chatted about the Rock. He’d seen in the media the reports on
our long hot summer so we discussed that. He was very keen to take a holiday
here and so we talked about the various options and so on and so forth.
He then caught me by surprise and asked did the
Foreign Office still want to give Gibraltar back to Spain? If it did, how would
that pan out? Curiously phrased questions as if Gibraltar belonged to the FO
which of course it doesn’t nor has it ever.
My first response was that if given the chance the FO
would have handed Gibraltar over to the Spanish many years ago. However I
explained that the world had changed and it was a previous Labour Government
that had put the locks in place to ensure that Gibraltarians self-determined
their own future – as is their right under international law.
Now the Foreign Office would have hardly featured in
the summer reporting of the latest crisis with Spain. The headlines were
dominated by Cameron staunchly defending Gibraltar and promising to stand by us
which he has done. Hague, who is the Foreign Secretary, was equally robust with
his counterpart Margallo. The Deputy Prime Minister and Lib-Dem leader, Nick
Clegg, is totally onside despite having a Spanish wife and the Labour Party has
made it known that if they were in power Gibraltar could count on the same
strong support as the Coalition is giving. So where did the Foreign Office
spring up from?
Of course the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as it is
now known is no more than a ministry staffed by civil servants albeit they
believe themselves to be elite ones. It is their job to carry out the wishes
and policies of the government of the day. Their power comes from their elected
representatives and in theory they advise on but do not create policy.
The Foreign Office, had it had the power and the
chance years ago, would certainly have sold Gibraltar out to Spain. However I
am not convinced that this policy was driven by a dislike for Gibraltarians but
rather for the desire for an ordered world. Gibraltar would always be a
stumbling block in relations between London and Madrid. If it was given away
the red on the international map would hardly have lessened and the British and
Spanish Governments could have got on with wider matters of mutual interest.
Of course the days when people or bits of Rock could
be traded for the benefit of the past colonial power are long gone but the
sentiments may still linger in certain offices in Whitehall especially the
Foreign Office. I have read reports of Gibraltarians in the past having being
talked of in disparaging terms in the corridors of power and of some of our
Governors having been accused of going native. Certainly a number of past
Governors are good friends of Gibraltar to this day. However in 2013 it is the
UK’s and our own Government that holds sway and relations between elected politicians
of all parties are good. It is the Government that rules and not the Foreign
Office.
Yet it is intriguing that a councillor from a London
Borough should believe that Gibraltar is a chattel of the Foreign Office. What
is even more astonishing is that he should believe that if its Mandarins
determined our future was with Spain that would be set in stone with
Gibraltarians having no say in the matter.
It was a conversation out of a bygone age.
