TNAG-0714-FCO40-910-Future-of-the-Dependent-Territories-1978 — Page 22

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IV.. Suggestions as to the Future Disposition of these S.D's.

Time has not permitted me to make any useful suggestions of detailed nature on this, (still less to do the study required), but I would venture to make a few (I trust) relevant observations.

(a). It does seem that, fortunately, none of these remaining S.D's

are of the kind which presented so serious a problem in, for example,

Malta where we clearly had exceptionally serious obligations because the particular use we made of the island (and for 150 years) had practically

informed and determined its whole economy and almost even its very de

an

demography, and so, unqualified or abrupt withdrawal would have involved grave consequences for it. No such cases appear to me to be found amongst the present remaining S.D's unless one regards our plantation use of the W. Indian islands on a slave labour basis as leaving us with large and direct obligations to these labourers' present descendants; and that is certainly not as demonstrable as in, e.g., the Malta case.

but

(b). With regard to such places as Gibraltar and the Falklands where there is a British settled population with a (pronounced) loyalty to Britain and for whose wishes and interests we must of course have a proper regard, but which is also a major obstacle to a settlement with the contending foreign Power, I would make the following observation,

necessarily without suggesting that it in any way solves the problem or/implying any

It has often been said in regard particular course of action to that end. to the Unionists in Ireland (now mainly in N. Ireland) -and was said as long ago as 1835 by the quite impartial French observer, De Tocqueville that the Unionists' knowledge of the certainty of continued British support for them was a majot factor stimulating and confirming their intransigeance and hence in their continued obstruction to a compromise

solution. The same has often been said in more recnt years of the

Gibraltarians. In an imperfect world where compromise is so often neces8-

ary, it is well to bear this point in mind, and I think it is almost

certainly true that if we did, in such cases, make our intention of