UKIP’s Rise Casts Gibraltar’s Future into Question: Spanish “Reconquista” or a “Monaco of the Strait”?

The recent rise of the far-right United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), which wants the U.K. to leave the European Union (E.U.), has shaken up British politics.  Next month’s general election is not at all shaping up to be the usual American-style horse race between the left-of-center Labour Party and right-of-center Conservative Party, with the more lefty Liberal Democratic Party (currently in a coalition government with the Conservatives) as a side show.  In last year’s elections to the European Parliament, UKIP became the largest party in the U.K.’s delegation, but the UKIP phenomenon is far from being a flash in the pan, even though the largely toothless European Parliament attracts far more protest votes than the more consequential general elections do: UKIP is actually the third-largest party in the U.K. now.  And a further complication is the surge in support for the separatist Scottish National Party (S.N.P.) (at Labour’s expense) after last year’s narrowly defeated independence referendum in Scotland.  Next month’s election will have serious geopolitical consequences as no British election in recent memory has.

This means that Conservatives and Labour have to some extent resigned themselves to the groundswell of populist centrifugal forces likely to define the U.K.’s future.  Prime Minister David Cameron has already capitulated to UKIP by promising, if he is reelected, to hold a referendum on continued E.U. membership, and during the run-up to the Scottish referendum his government instituted a raft of new powers of self-government, for not only Scotland but Wales and Northern Ireland as well.  These developments are convergent: UKIP would also like a more decentralized Britain.  But Nigel Farage, UKIP’s bombastic leader, a self-described libertarian, has scoffed at the S.N.P.’s and the Scottish public’s overwhelming desire to stay in the E.U. but leave the U.K.  He has called Scottish nationalism a “fraud” which aspires merely to “swap your masters from Westminster to Brussels.”  (See article from this blog here and here on the question of whether Scotland could leave Britain but stay in the Union.)

Nigel Farage—now destroyer of empires, as well?

One unexpected reverberation of this political earthquake is policy toward the U.K.’s overseas territories.  In the past, Farage has called for a special Member of Parliament to represent colonies like Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands.  Presumably this would overlay the current self-government in those territories which fill the role an M.P. in London would for most areas of governance.  As Farage points out, citizens in the overseas territories have no say in those functions still reserved to Westminster: currency, defense, and foreign relations.  (This is similar to Puerto Rico’s relationship to the United States (as discussed earlier in this blog).)

The rethinking has already begun in Gibraltar: the territory’s Chief Minister, Fabian Picardo, said this week that in the event of a “Brexit”—as the media have dubbed UKIP’s hoped-for secession from the E.U.—Gibraltar would want to stay in the Union.  “The only existential threat to our economy,” Picardo told the conservative Daily Telegraph, “is one where we are pulled out of the European Union against our will and denied access to the single market.  I think everybody who is serious about the subject, even those whose views I don’t share, talk about retaining access to Europe as a member of the European economic area.  I know that there are many in the U.K. who advocate the U.K. moving out of the E.U. who consider themselves to be very good friends of Gibraltar, but they need to understand the economics of this.”  Gibraltar is the only overseas U.K. territory that is not in the E.U. (though some far-flung possessions of E.U. member states are in it, notably French Guiana and other French territories like Réunion and Mayotte in the Indian Ocean and Guadeloupe and Martinique in the Caribbean, as well as Spain’s special municipalities of Ceuta and Melilla and its Canary Islands, which are all geographically African).

Picardo’s words echo the position not only the S.N.P. in Scotland but of Plaid Cymru, the nationalist party in Wales: both demand that their countries be allowed binding local referenda on E.U. membership in the event of a U.K.-wide vote on the question.  The E.U. is only really unpopular in England, not in other parts of the U.K.  But in Gibraltar the statement represents a serious reversal of thinking on the status of “the Rock,” as locals call the two-and-a-half-square-mile peninsula jutting off Spain’s mainland.  Gibraltarians, after all, have never favored independence.  In a 2002 referendum on Gibraltar’s status, confirming a similar result in 1967, more than 98.97% of the 30,000 or so residents opposed any change in status.  This ranks among history’s most thunderously near-unanimous votes against changing the status of a territory, alongside similar polls in the Falkland Islands (where residents in 2013 backed the status quo 1,513 to 3) and the Cocos Islands (where, in 1983, only 9 out of 261 wanted independence from Australia).

These Gibraltar residents don’t care which flag flies over them.

But is Picardo thinking of what would amount to independence—continued membership in the E.U. on its own? (it would make it the Union’s tiniest member state, smaller by far even than Luxembourg or Malta)—or is he thinking of joining Spain?  Surely not the latter, since Spain’s ongoing claims on the territory are the chief source of Gibraltarian indignation that has energized opposition to change.

A quick history review: the Spanish claim go goes back to 1700, when the death of Spain’s childless King Carlos II, left him with no clear successor.  Carlos was a member of Austria’s Habsburg dynasty, so the Britain, Prussia, and Portugal wanted the crown to pass to the Austrian kaiser’s son, Archduke Karl—um, I mean, Carlos—while France and Bavaria backed a candidate from France’s royal family, the House of Bourbon.  Thus began the War of the Spanish Succession.  The Bourbons and their supporters prevailed: the prospective Carlos III stayed Karl and later became Holy Roman Emperor, and a Bourbon sits on the throne in Madrid even today.  But the end of the war in 1714 sorted out lots of outstanding territorial squabbles around the world among the European powers: France gave big chunks of Canada to Britain, for example, and Spain lost numerous colonies, including Sicily and what are now the Netherlands and Belgium.  Since the British and Spanish were in the midst of a long struggle for naval supremacy, Queen Anne of Great Britain negotiated hard, and successfully, for her consolation prize, Gibraltar, ownership of which meant theoretical control of trade through the narrow passage between the Mediterranean Sea and the open Atlantic.

No Mediterranean climes for Archduke Karl; he had to settle for this measly job.

The Spanish have never gotten over this, even now that shared membership in the E.U. means the border between Gibraltar and the Spanish mainland amounts to very little (though Spain routinely tests British patience by imposing punitive border controls from time to time).  Spanish political candidates thunder on about taking back the Rock whenever patriotism needs to be whipped up before an election.  The Spanish royal family even boycotted Queen Elizabeth II’s diamond jubilee in 2012 over the issue (as reported on at the time in this blog)—which in terms of historical memory and emotional maturity is sort of equivalent to what it would be like if David Cameron refused to shake hands with Barack Obama because he was still pouting over mean things said about King George III during the Boston Tea Party.

Cars lined up during one of Spain’s capriciously imposed border delays

On the Spanish side, nationalists have been eyeing Gibraltar hungrily in the wake of UKIP’s rise as well.  Professor Alejandro del Valle Gálvez, a Gibraltar expert at Spain’s University of Cádiz, says the time is ripe for Madrid to pursue “the democratic control of the British base, a modus vivendi agreed on legal and finance issues whilst negotiations take place for a definitive international status for Gibraltar that is accepted by all parties.”  In other words, they want to push and push until Gibraltarians give in and resort to Spanish rule.  Del Valle envisions the current British territory and the “Campo de Gibraltar”—the adjacent administrative district in Spain’s autonomous Andalusia region—to merge as a city-state that could become a “Monaco of the Strait.”  (A big difference, of course, would be that the Principality of Monaco allows citizens to choose who governs them, in conformity to international norms.)

Brits and Spaniards stare each other down across one of the world’s shortest land borders.

There is another reason that Gibraltar will never choose Spain over independence or leaving the E.U.: Spain itself is among the Union’s economic basket cases, and it is not inconceivable that a “Spexit” could be in the works, too, leaving the Rock with the worst of both worlds.  But Spain’s relationship to the E.U. and the financial crisis that began in 2008 is as complex as Britain’s: in particular, Spain’s most economically successful region, Catalonia, has been pushing as hard for independence recently as Scotland has (though so far against deal-killing pushback from the mother country).  Catalan separatists are eager to avoid the punitive effects of economic mismanagement that they believe Spain—along with the fellow member states Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, and Italy—have brought upon themselves.  If Catalonia were independent, it would never be forced to quit the euro or leave the Union, though what was left of Spain, without its wealthiest region, would be more likely to do either.

So, in my opinion, the solution is obvious: Gibraltar can avoid both UKIP’s economically suicidal policies and Spain’s, and stay in the E.U. as well, by joining an independent Catalonia.  The two entities do not border each other, but Barcelona is certainly nearer Gibraltar than London is.  Catalonia is already a playground for hordes of vacationing Britons.  And there is a deep historical tie: the then quasi-independent Catalonia sided with Britain, not the Spanish, in the War of the Spanish Succession.  In 1704, over 300 Catalans defended the Rock from the Habsburgs; a local beach is named in their honor.  And the king-making Republican Left of Catalonia (Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, or E.R.C.) party in Catalonia’s separatist ruling coalition scandalizes mainstream opinion in Spain by refusing to side with Madrid on Gibraltar (as discussed in an article in this blog).  (Basque separatists, by contrast, want Spain to reclaim Gibraltar, making them more than a bit hypocritical on the question of whether a referendum on being or not being part of Spain should be binding.)

Gibraltar’s flag

On the other hand, if Spain’s King Felipe VI would really and truly like to undo the Treaty of Utrecht, he is perfectly free to step aside and let 54-year-old Karl von Habsburg, a private citizen living in Salzburg, to take over the throne in Madrid.

For use in case of reconquista: outgoing King Juan Carlos places the sash of Captain General
of Spain’s royal armed forces on his son and successor, King Felipe VI.

[You can read more about Gibraltar, Scotland, Catalonia, UKIP, and other 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.]

Dragons, Doubts, and Devils Dog Welsh Identity as Scottish Referendum Looms

Opinion polls predict that the September 18th referendum on Scotland’s secession from the United Kingdom will fail, with polls giving somewhere between 46% and 47% intending to vote for continued union with England (and Wales and Northern Ireland) and only about 35% to 40% intending to opt for independence.  With just about four months to go before polling day, a lot could change.  But if the outcome is not 100% assured, one thing is: the truism that in the event of a “yes” result for Scottish independence, or even, as looks likely, a relatively close (non-landslide) “no,” the other constituent parts of the U.K.—England, Northern Ireland, and Wales are going to experience something of an identity crisis.

Wales, in particular, in the event of a Scottish split, would probably be carried along to independence itself like a rudderless ship in Scotland’s wake—much in the way that in the 1990s Serbia, the Czech Republic, and Belarus became independent states not from any desire to separate themselves but because of the dissolutions of their larger federations driven by centrifugal forces generated elsewhere.  After all, the U.K. is the United Kingdom because of the early-18th-century merger of the kingdoms of England and Scotland; without that constitutional basis, a rethinking of the rest of the union is in order.

Some of this anxiety is expressed as kerfuffles over flags.  Wales, were it to be independent, would suddenly become the European country with the most striking, remarkable, and dramatic national flag, featuring a rampant red dragon on a horizontal white-and-green bicolor (see above).  That prospect has attracted the superstitious nervousness of a fringe group called the Welsh Christian Party.  (Unlike more primitive backwaters like the United States, in Britain fundamentalist Christianity is a phenomenon of the fringes, not the political mainstream.)  As the Rev. George Hargreaves, speaking for the party, put it, “We will not allow this evil symbol of the devil to reign over Wales for another moment.  Wales is the only country in history to have a red dragon on its national flag.  This is the very symbol of the devil described in the Book of Revelation 12:3.  This is nothing less than the sign of Satan, the Devil, Lucifer, that ancient serpent who deceived Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden” (he explains helpfully in case we haven’t heard of him).  Just for the record, Revelation 12:3 tells us, “And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.”  Far be it from me to contradict a man of the cloth, but I’ve been studying that Welsh flag and I’m afraid I see only one head and no crowns at all.

Now that’s the dragon of Revelation.  See?  Lots more heads.

But never mind that.  Hargreaves recommends that the Welsh dragon—which is of murky origins but has been in use on the flag only since 1959—be replaced by a black-and-yellow cruciform design called the Cross of St. David, which is the emblem of the patron saint of Wales (see the flag at right in the photo at the top of this article).  This flag is often flown on March 1st, which is the feast of St. David and the Welsh national holiday.  Adopting this flag would put Wales’s flag on the same footing as those of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Cornwall, which feature the traditional crosses of those countries’ patron saints—St. George (yes, of dragon fame), St. Patrick (patron saint of all Ireland, actually), St. Andrew, and St. Piran, respectively.

This vessel in Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee flotilla in 2012 featured, atop the cabin,
the flags of England, Scotland, London (England’s flag but with sword in upper left), Northern Ireland
(not official, but the St. Patrick’s Cross), Cornwall, and Wales,with flags for the sponsoring Motability, Inc.,
mixed in, plus, aft, the U.K. civilian ensign.

(Hargreaves, given his feelings about the Welsh dragon, will be equally vexed to learn that archaeologists have recently discovered, in the ruins of Leiston Abbey in East Anglia, the remains of a seven-foot-tall canine who some feel might have been the origin of the 16th-century legend of the “Hell Hound of Suffolk.”)

It is not just conservative Christians who are unhappy with Wales’s flag.  The radical, militant Free Wales Army (F.W.A., or Byddin Rhyddid Cymru), uses a vaguely swastika-ish black-and-white emblem as its flag.  The F.W.A. are republicans and presumably would like to eschew anything heraldic as too posh.  Among other parties, the left-wing socialist Cymru Goch (“Red Wales”) independence party, though republican, wants to keep the dragon flag—it’s red, after all!—as does the equally republican Cymru Annibynnol, the Independent Wales Party, along with the former majority party in the Welsh Assembly, Plaid Cymru (“the Party of Wales”), which has republican and pro-Commonwealth (monarchist) tensions within it.  Nor are these minor distinctions: Plaid Cymru came under fire (as reported at the time in this blog) when a party leader appeared alongside F.W.A. radicals and their flags at a rally marking the 729th anniversary of the killing by English soldiers of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd (Llywelyn the Last), the last true Prince of Wales (before it became a title affixing to any English crown prince), thus ending Welsh independence.  By contrast, the Scottish National Party has prevailed over republican Greens and socialists in its coalition and plans on keeping Scotland in the Commonwealth, with Elizabeth II as its head of state.

No one respectable wants to be seen alongside the F.W.A. banner.
(A more benign St. David’s Cross flag is at right.)

The Scottish referendum campaign has raised vexillological vexations in other parts of the kingdom as well.  Northern Ireland’s identity crisis in a post-Scottish dis-United Kingdom would be even more severe than Wales’s, since the Scottish ancestry of the Protestant Scots-Irish majority in the region is the only rationale behind it being part of the U.K., rather than the Republic of Ireland, in the first place.  Northern Ireland currently has no flag, and uses only the Union Jack, but the traditional flag of Ulster is used by the small minority (soon to be taken more seriously, perhaps) who wish Northern Ireland to be independent.  (Ulster, rather awkwardly, includes not just the Northern Ireland counties but the majority-Catholic county of Donegal within the Republic, so there might be some words over that ...)

Unionist rallies in Belfast sometimes feature the “red hand” flag of Ulster.

And what of a rump U.K. minus only Scotland?  The current Union Jack is a blending of the crosses of SS. George, Andrew, and Patrick—

—and without the Scottish St. Andrew’s Cross it would look like this:

Clearly, a lot less colorful.  Thus, some favor incorporating Wales’s green into it somehow ...

... or in some other way taking the opportunity to give Wales a piece of the flag to call its own, if only to persuade them not to secede themselves:

Okay, well, maybe not that prominently.  It isn’t all just about Wales, you know.  Others favor solving the color problem in a more grandiose way:

If Scotland’s secession is followed by those of Wales and Northern Ireland, then England would find itself independent in spite of itself.  Indeed, the St. George’s Cross flag is the one preferred by the pro-independence party English Democrats (as reported on earlier in this blog):

... though some of independence-for-England activists prefer the “three lions” flag which is a modification of the personal royal standard Richard the Lion-Hearted (and which for complicated reasons—1066 and all that—is also a flag used by regional activists in the Normandy region of France):

Presumably, some of these suggestions are ones that the Welsh Christian Party can live with.  And if it’s Satanic symbols they’re worried about, just be glad they don’t have deal with Morocco’s national flag:

Oh, no, wait, sorry, I put it upside-down.  Here, let me fix that ...

Phew!  That was a close one.

Thanks to Jen Mayfield Shafer for alerting me to the report on the Leiston Abbey discovery.

[You can read more about Wales, Scotland, and many 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 interview for more information on the book.]

Scotland’s Shetland, Orkney Isles, Though Unionist, Scorn U.K. “Annexation” Idea

The Northern Isles of Scotland—the territories of Shetland and Orkney—have in this year of the Scottish independence referendum shown themselves to be mostly strident unionists.  They want to stay in the United Kingdom.  This they share in common with many Highlanders, since Scottish separatism is mainly a phenomenon of the more densely populated lowlands, where Glasgow and Edinburgh are.  But, even though the two archipelagoes are expected to be strongholds of the “no” vote in the September 18th vote, Orcadians and Shetlanders are apparently even less keen on another idea: “annexation” by the U.K. in case of a Scottish secession.

This suggestion was raised by Hugh Halcro-Johnson, a unionist (i.e., he is against Scottish independence) who headed the Orkney Islands Council until 2003.  He feels that if Scotland splits away, Shetland and Orkney should petition, separately or together, to rejoin the U.K., in a kind of “retrocession” movement (like West Virginia during the Civil War in the United States, or like Anglophone portions of Canada’s sometimes secessionist Quebec province).  As Halcro-Johnson told a reporter earlier this month, “Should Scotland vote ‘yes’ then everything changes.  I think that scenario would provide an opportunity for the islands to seek special status—particularly in relation to defense in view of the islands’ strategic importance.”  Unionists have typically invoked fears that a Scottish secession would compromise British security.  Halcro-Johnson is also, of course, mindful of the irony that an independent Scotland’s territorial waters would include most of the U.K.’s current lucrative North Sea oil reserves—with most of it being in the territorial waters of jurisdictions that want to stay in the U.K.

Hugh Halcro-Johnston—retrocessionist

But local leaders in the Northern Isles have solidly rejected the idea.  As Gary Robinson of the Shetland Islands Council put it, “We seek to benefit from the exploitation of the resources surrounding our islands by way of community benefit and more control over what happens around us.  I haven’t detected any overwhelming desire for outright independence for the islands or crown dependency status.”  Crown dependency is the status held today by the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey, which are under U.K. suzerainty and military protection but fully self-governing; they are not really parts of the U.K. but independent states in free association with it.  Crown dependencies set up in Shetland and Orkney would raise the question: why not just go the extra mile and be independent?  Full-on independentism is barely existent in the islands, however; the islanders prefer to be part of something.

Where the North Sea’s energy resources are—
and whose they are

Not surprisingly, Scottish separatists pooh-pooh the annexation idea too.  Robert Leslie, the “Scotland Yes” campaign’s chairman for Orkney, said Halcro-Johnston’s proposal was “not surprising coming from a movement that is determined to defend the privileges currently enjoyed by the political and business elite in the U.K.”

Scandinavian-style flags on (currently) British islands
(top: Orkney, bottom: Shetland)

So what do Shetlanders and Orcadians want?  Well, the referendum result is largely out of their hands; the islanders, numbering fewer than 40,000, are less than 1% of Scotland’s population.  But they are for the most part determined to parlay either a “yes” or a “no” vote in September into a conversation that leads to reforms that will give them greater autonomy—including control over, and remuneration from, their energy resources.  (See my article on this subject from this blog, “Orkney—the Next Dubai? Further Reflections on Scottish Independence.”)  These are a steely lot: their ancestors were Vikings, not Celts, and their culture is in many ways more Scandinavian than Anglo-Saxon.  Geographically, the islands are closer to Oslo, Norway, than to London—and closer to Bergen, Norway, than even to Edinburgh or Glasgow.

Funny, you don’t look Celtic: a Shetlander in the annual “fire festival”

It should also be mentioned that is not only those in the British Isles who are watching the Scottish referendum campaign closely.  The above quotations come mostly from a report filed from Orkney by a reporter for R.I.A. Novosti, Russia’s state news agency, which of late has been a geyser blasting forth shrill and often wildly inventive propaganda about the conflict in Ukraine.  This coverage routinely shines a spotlight on western Europe’s separatist troubles, in places like Catalonia, northern Italy, and of course Scotland, mostly as a way to show that NATO supports separatism only when it is convenient.  Fair enough, and it is true of most world leaders, of course, not least President Vladimir Putin, who bombed Chechnya into the stone age to keep it part of Russia but now pays lip service to Crimeans’ and eastern Ukrainians’ sacred right to binding secession referenda.

A pro-independence rally in Edinburgh

There is an exception, though.  Around the world, it is hard to find a country that, as much as the United Kingdom, supports separatism even when it is not convenient.  Once the largest empire in the world, swallowing up massive civilizations in India, Africa, and elsewhere, the U.K. is, with astounding maturity, committed to holding on to no territory against the majority will of its citizens, whether it is Hong Kong, the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Northern Ireland, or Scotland.  The world—and the neighborhood of Russia in particular—would be a better place if everyone settled their borders as the English and Scottish are finally able to do, with words, arguments, and an orderly vote.

[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 some time in 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]

Chagossians Squander Britons’ Goodwill by Linking Resettlement Cause to Argentina’s Falklands Claim

All things being equal, the people of the Chagos Islands in the central Indian Ocean are due a lot of sympathy, and the British are for the most part a sympathetic, hospitable lot.  The Îlois or Chagossian people, who are of mostly African descent, were removed from their remote homeland in the late 1960s and early ’70s to make way for a massive United States, United Kingdom, and NATO air base that is a keystone of Western air capability for Middle Eastern and African conflicts, most of it on the large Chagossian island of Diego Garcia.  For decades, about half the 3,000-strong Chagossian nation has lived in exile in the village of Crawley, in Sussex, England, and this diaspora has become more and more politicized, demanding a chance to resettle in the cluster of atolls that they regard as home.  Only just last year (as reported at the time in this blog) did the U.K. government seem to give in, promising to  “study” the “feasibility” of resettling the Chagossians in what is now, formally, the British Indian Ocean Territory (B.I.O.T.).

It is hard not to side with the Chagossians.  Whatever the usefulness of the military base, their rights were violated, and they are a landless people.  From a human-rights perspective, it is an open-and-shut case, and most British tend to agree.

Olivier Bancoult, Chagossian activist

But that is about to end.  The president of the Chagos Refugees Group (C.R.G.), Olivier Bancoult, told Argentinian media last week that his people’s cause had a natural ally in that of Argentinians who want the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic to come under Argentina’s sovereignty.  “We can join forces with Argentina,” Bancoult said to the Argentine news service Télam.  “The day will come when all those responsible are going to have to answer for the crimes against humanity which they committed.”

Argentina invaded the Falklands in 1982 and ended up soundly defeated in the subsequent war with the U.K.  The Falklands, which have no indigenous people, has never had a permanent Argentinian population, though it was claimed by a Connecticut naval mercenary in 1820 on behalf of Argentina’s predecessor state, the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata.  Argentina’s persistence in pressing its claim—now only in legal and political fora—is wildly popular throughout Latin America (even Pope Francis backs the claim!), despite the fact that there is no real argument behind it except proximity (even weaker than Russia’s argument for annexing Crimea).  A referendum in the Falklands on the islands’ status a year ago came out with 1,513 votes to keep the current status—a self-governing territory of the U.K.—and only 3 votes against.

It seems fairly likely that the Argentine administration of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner were the ones who had the idea of linking the Chagossian and neo-Perónist Falklands-annexation causes.  This wouldn’t be the first time Argentina has tried to scare up allies among groups who see Britain as a colonizing aggressor.  Last year, Buenos Aires tried to get separatists in Scotland on its side.  Part of this plan was a hope that the presence of a large ethnic-Welsh population in Argentina’s Chubut province, in Patagonia, could strum the harp strings of Scottish feelings of pan-Celtic unity.  But this was a misjudgement: Scots and Welsh people died defending the Falklands from Argentine aggression too.  Even the anti-Westminster nationalists north of Hadrian’s Wall were insulted by the Argentine suggestion.

Flag of the Falkland Islands

The Chagossians will find that they have misjudged as well.  What Argentina tried to do the Falklanders in the 1980s is exactly what the British did to the Chagossians in the ’60s and ’70s.  The British realize that.  They may think twice before giving the Chagossians’ very legitimate grievances a hearing again.

Bancoult, the C.R.G. president, does not live in Crawley, but in Mauritius, an Indian Ocean island nation where most of the rest of the Chagossian diaspora lives and which, awkwardly, also claims the B.I.O.T. as its own.  I hope Bancoult likes it in Mauritius: after making the serious blunder of pandering to a nation still seen as a fierce enemy of the British people, he may not be going home any time soon.

Making themselves at home for the time being: the Chagossian national football team
(as mentioned before in this blog) plays in Britain against stateless teams like Sealand and Alderney.

[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 some time in mid 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]

Yorkshire City Home to Somali Diaspora Recognizes Independence of Somaliland

The Republic of Somaliland is treated by most of the world as an independent state, and it has functioned as one since 1991, when Somalia—of which it formed the northern third or so, on the Gulf of Aden—collapsed in civil war.  No state has ever formally granted it diplomatic recognition.  But Somaliland may have come a step closer to legitimacy this week as the city of Sheffield, in South Yorkshire in northern England, recognized its sovereignty.

The City Council decided on April 2nd, in an 83-to-2 vote (with one abstention), to recognize Somaliland’s independence.  The resolution called upon “the British government to recognise Somaliland as an independent state and to encourage other governments around the world to do the same.”

Sheffield’s population of a half-million is about 2% sub-Saharan African, including possibly as many as 12,000 ethnic Somalis (many of them Somalilanders).  There has been a Somali community in Sheffield since the 1930s.  Somalilanders in the United Kingdom include prominent figures such as the Olympic track-and-field gold-medallist Mo Farah (profiled two years ago in this blog).

Mo Farah, the world’s most famous Somalilander

Somaliland’s minister for foreign affairs, Mohamed Bihi Yonis, was on hand for the Sheffield vote, and stated, “Somaliland is a peaceful, democratic nation which has been striving to be recognised by the international community since declaring its independence in 1991.  Sheffield’s decision will help strengthen our campaign for recognition.”

Somaliland’s foreign minister, Mohamed Bihi Yonis, in Sheffield

Sheffield is the first significant jurisdiction outside the Horn of Africa to grant Somaliland recognition.  Even though it is legally meaningless, since Sheffield cannot conduct foreign policy, the foreign policy nonetheless may have an effect.  It is a strategy used extensively by the Armenian-American diaspora, for example, which has (as discussed before in this blog) used its large numbers to successfully pressure city councils and state legislatures to pass measures on recognition of the Armenian genocide at Turkey’s hands as a genocide (something the United States government refuses to do; see article from this blog) and granting diplomatic recognition to the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (N.K.R.), an Armenian—and to some extent Russian—puppet state which the fledgling Republic of Armenia carved out of the Republic of Azerbaijan’s southwestern flank in a bloody war of ethnic cleansing after the collapse of the Soviet Union.  California alone has more Armenians than Armenia itself, and observers estimate that the Armenian-American lobby is the most powerful immigrant-community political lobby in the U.S., exceeded in its influence only by the Jewish (Israeli) and Cuban-expatriate lobbies.

But after Russia annexed Ukraine’s republic of Crimea earlier this month, Armenia became one of only 11 United Nations member-states—alongside brutal regimes like those of Syria, North Korea, Sudan, and Zimbabwe—to side with Russia against a U.N. resolution condemning the annexation.  This has cast Armenian-Americans in a negative—even unpatriotic light—and is an embarrassment to jurisdictions such as the U.S. states of Massachusetts (as reported at the time in this blog) and Rhode Island (ditto), New South Wales in Australia (see article), and most recently the City of Los Angeles, who have supported the N.K.R., a puppet regime not much unlike the Russian one in Crimea that ushered in the annexation.  In fact, many believe the N.K.R. may be the next territory to be formally annexed, either by Armenia or by an expansive Russia.  The post-Crimea world order is also making it difficult for aspirant states like Somaliland to secure recognition, since they inevitably use many of the arguments used so disingenuously by the Russian government in regard to Crimea.

Somaliland has everything except a seat at the U.N.

The Sheffield vote on Somaliland may seem like a victory.  But, due to world events, recognition by the international community seems even farther out of reach than it did a month ago.

Monty Python’s Michael Palin, who was born in Sheffield, is an activist on behalf
of Somali asylum-seekers in the U.K.  He is shown here with his fellow activist, Musa Ibrahim.

[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 some time in mid 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]