His Royal Highness Roy Bates, Prince of Sealand (1921-2012), Father of Micronation and Seasteading Movements

Maj. Paddy Roy Bates, an English former pirate radio broadcaster in the North Sea who turned a crumbling Second World War derrick off the East Anglian coast into a self-proclaimed principality called Sealand, died in a nursing home in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, England, on October 9th at the age of 91.  He is indisputably the father of the modern “micronations” movement and of the futuristic concept of “seasteading” which utopians from across the political spectrum are eyeing as a way to remake society in the 21st century.  As Prince Roy, he handed the reigns of his monarchy to his son, Prince Michael as “Prince Regent as Sovereign pro tempore” in 1999.

Prince Roy and Princess Joan

Despite its name, Sealand, though it is in the sea, has no land, and thus falls between the cracks of the understanding of what “territory” is in international law (an ambiguity which seasteading aims to exploit).  It is a 550-square-meter (5,920-square-foot) floating pontoon originally called the H. M. Fort Roughs, ten kilometers off the coast of Suffolk, in southeastern England.  In the 1960s, Bates, a former fisherman and World War II veteran, with several others started up a pirate radio station on the structure, but a dispute between factions in the tiny, cramped community required the intervention of the Royal Marines in 1967.  To Bates’s surprise, a British court the following year found him immune to prosecution because the Fort Roughs was on the high seas, was disused (not “flagged”), and thus outside all legal jurisdictions.  This got him thinking, and soon he named himself Prince Roy and named the derrick the Principality of Sealand.

The flag of Sealand

While generally hosting only a skeleton crew of residents, thousands worldwide have Sealandic passports, and the nation produces currency and stamps.  No nations other than similarly unrecognized micronations grant it diplomatic recognition.

Sealand’s coat-of-arms

However, the United Kingdom has made a tacit policy of not interfering with its sovereignty, such as it is.  And Prince Roy regarded the outcome of a messy coup d’état in 1978 as a kind of de facto recognition by foreign powers.  In that series of events, the Sealandic prime minister, A. G. Achenbach, briefly took power while Prince Roy was away on the British mainland.  Achenbach and a gang of German and Dutch soldiers of fortune took Prince Michael hostage before Roy mustered a rescue squad of speedboats and helicopters (including one chopper, the rumor goes, piloted by a former James Bond body double).  Roy had Achenbach and his conspirators tried for treason on Sealand.  The Federal Republic of Germany (then merely West Germany) and the Kingdom of the Netherlands sent diplomats to London to negotiate their citizens’ release, but the Crown wanted nothing to do with it: Sealand wasn’t in the U.K.  So Bonn and Amsterdam had to negotiate directly with Prince Roy—a fact which he regarded as his own coup of sorts.

The royal couple

Furthermore, in 1987 the U.K. extended its territorial waters from 3 miles offshore to 10 miles offshore, putting Sealand technically within its territorial waters.  The fact that the U.K. still does not press a claim on Sealand is another kind of de facto recognition.

Sealand has come on the radar of this blog in the past, most notably in February of this year when it was reported that Julian Assange was thinking of relocating WikiLeaks’ servers there.  (See the article “WikiLeaks Mulls Moving Its Servers to Sealand to Dodge National Laws,” from this blog.)  That did not end up happening—possibly because Roy realized this might prompt the U.K. to finally make moves against Sealand.  Also, legal experts say that prosecutions under laws forbidding activities such as Assange’s leaks of information and violations of privacy can’t be dodged simply by virtue of where one’s servers are located.  (Currently, Assange is holed up in another not-quite-British scrap of British territory, the Republic of Ecuador’s embassy in London.)

A coin of the realm

This blog has also reported on Sealand’s exhibition football (soccer) matches against teams from the Chagos Islands’ diaspora community and against Alderney (an island in the U.K.’s autonomous Bailiwick of Guernsey, just around the bend in the English Channel).  The Sealandic team typically features the television comedian Ralf Little, an avocational footballer and a passport-holding Sealander.

Prince Michael commented to the media this week about his father, “He was an extremely intelligent and active man and he developed Alzheimer’s, which he would have absolutely hated, and he barely recognized his family over the last few years.  My father will always be remembered for shaking up the establishment with pirate radio, declaring Sealand’s independence and confronting the Royal Navy and other foreign governments.”

His Royal Highness is survived by the Prince Regent Michael (now Prince Sovereign), his widow Princess Joan, a daughter Penny, and four grandchildren.

Prince Michael.  The prince is dead.  Long live the prince.

[You can read more about Sealand and other separatist and new-nation movements, both famous and obscure, in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this special announcement for more information on the book.]

Separatist Football Update: Carnage at a Dagestan-Netherlands Match, Alderney vs. Sealand, Barotseland’s National Team

Dagestan football matches are almost as dangerous as Dagestan

Dagestan–Netherlands Football Match in Moscow Leads to Brawling, over 100 Arrests.  The Russian Federation’s Republic of Dagestan, in the North Caucasus region, is called by some the most dangerous place in the world, plagued as it is by daily brutal violence from organized crime, Islamic militancy, clan warfare, and a Salafist separatist Caucasus Emirate movement.  Nonetheless, its collective nose was put seriously out of joint by a June 30th ruling (reported on at the time in this blog) by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) that  Dagestan is too unsafe to play host to games featuring the Dagestani team, Anzhi Makhachkala.  Although Anzhi is ranked fifth in its league, it must still find a new stadium for “home” games.

Thus, it did not really advance Dagestan’s attempt to overcome its branding problem—its association in the public mind with mindless violence—when an August 23rd match in Moscow between Anzhi and the Alkmaar Zaanstreek (A.Z.) team from the Netherlands led to an eruption of ethnonationalist violence.  First, on the day before the match, Anzhi fans brawled with supporters of the Zenit St. Petersburg football club in front of a McDonald’s restaurant in St. Petersburg.  Seven Russians were arrested in that incident, and three Dagestanis were injured.  As the Moscow Times described the mêlée, “Dozens of youths with faces hidden under hoods broke into the veranda of McDonald’s restaurant screaming and sweeping all before themselves.  The terrified visitors ran in panic inside the restaurant .... Those who did not manage to escape were beaten indiscriminately.  The perpetrators were beating one man from Dagestan on the veranda and then dragged him onto the street, where they continued the execution. Two passers-by tried to stand up for the victim, but the assaulters said that the immigrants ‘rape our women.’”

Then, 80 fans were arrested during the match itself for shouting vulgarities and national slurs at players and for throwing lighted flares onto the field.  Later, after the game, brawling in the Moscow metro between Dagestanis and ethnic Russians led to 40 arrests.  Meanwhile, in Dagestan on the day of the match, things were relatively peaceful.  A gang of Islamist terrorists attacked a military checkpoint, killing one soldier and injuring three policemen.  For Dagestan, that’s a quiet day.  (I almost forgot: Anzhi beat A.Z. 1-0.)

BFF Forever! Lozi Found Barotseland Football Team with National Aims.  Football organizers in Zambia’s Western Province have founded the Barotseland Football Federation (B.F.F.), with aspirations eventually to join the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) as a full-fledged national member.  The Barotse, also known as the Lozi, have long been seeking to secede from Zambia, thus restoring a boundary between what were separate colonies in the days of British rule.

Alderney Footballers to Face Sealand in North Sea Micronation Grudge Match.  The Alderney F.A. football (soccer) team is preparing for an August 25th exhibition match against Sealand F.A., the team for the unrecognized Principality of Sealand, a crumbling sea derrick off the coast of Essex, England, which has been de facto independent since 1967, though recognized by no state.  As in Sealand’s May 5, 2012, exhibition match against the indigenous people of the Chagos Islands (reported on at the time in this blog), the Sealand squad will include the television comedian Ralf Little, star of The Royle Family and Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps.  Alderney is the third-largest of the Channel Islands between England and France and is the second-largest in the Bailiwick of Guernsey, a United Kingdom Crown Dependency.  Alderney, which is three square miles in area, is a vast supercontinent compared to Sealand, which is a mere 6,000 square feet and, technically, does not meet the international legal definition of a “territory.”

[Also, for those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it in spring 2013.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]