TNAG-0714-FCO40-910-Future-of-the-Dependent-Territories-1978 — Page 32

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in regard to the nationality provisions and such

consequential matters as differential taxation. In regard

to the former, the defect was rather in the means of their

implementation than their content itself. The conscription

safeguard appears to have been observed, but it seems

to have been dropped (inevitably perhaps) on the

outbreak of war in 1914. The same event inevitably put

an end to the tariff provision. As far as can be

detected, local law and custom was respected so far as

consonant with German public policy, but, for example,

dispossessions over the fortification of the island must

have substantially disturbed it in practice. The rights

of Lloyds and Trinity House in their properties seem to

have been respected-again until the Great War.

The Gambia and Los Islands

In so large a negotiation as the Anglo-French Convention, the

safeguards for the rights of the inhabitants in two such small units

(whose inhabitants were in neither case European) did not loom large.

The safeguards stipulated in the Convention, Article VII, were:·

(a) In both territories native law and custom now existing

was as far as possible to remain undisturbed.

(b). In the Los Islands, for a period of 30 years from the

ratification of the Convention, British fishermen were to enjoy the

same rights as French fishermen in regard to anchorage,

provisioning, repairs to their ships, transshipment of goods, sale of

fish, and landing, drying and repairing their nets, subject to local

French regulations in force for the time being.

NOTES

(i)

Initially in the negotiations the British had proposed the

same comprehensive clause for safeguards as in the

Heligoland agreement, including the provisions for

exemption from French conscription, for the security of

corporate property and even the tariff. These were

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