No sooner had the Chagos deal been struck than attention turned to the Falklands. Would Keir Starmer support the Islands as steadfastly as his predecessors? Would he seek some sort of grubby compromise with Argentina? Can we trust him with British overseas interests? As the Islands celebrate their liberation day today, marking 43 years since the end of Argentina’s military occupation during the Falklands War, these questions seem particularly poignant.
Many asking those questions, however, care not a jot for the people of the Falklands and are still less inclined to bother asking them what they actually think. And that’s a shame, because if they did, they might be surprised by what they’d discover.
It is in the interests of some to stir things up
There’s no doubt that the hoopla surrounding Chagos has had a major impact on the inhabitants of the Falklands. That’s not because they fear that Starmer and Lammy are about to hand away sovereignty. They don’t. Rather, in the words of Gavin Short, a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) of the Falklands, with whom I spoke last week, ‘It brings back the nervousness and unpleasant memories of the late 1970s and early 1980s,’ when the Foreign Office did indeed ‘try to get rid of us’.
The Foreign Office, of course, was doing the bidding of the government of the day. We all know about 1982 and the heroism of the British forces who liberated the Falklands following the Argentinian invasion. We recall Margaret Thatcher’s determination that the aggressor must not prosper. But what is less well known, though keenly remembered in Stanley, is that her government had tried in 1980 to persuade the Islanders to accept a transition of sovereignty.
The Islanders were having none of it and made their feelings only too clear, not least to one of Thatcher’s senior ministers, Nicholas Ridley, whom she sent down to Stanley on a fool’s errand. But would the Argentine invasion have happened unless her government had signalled a willingness to negotiate?
That’s one reason why the Islanders have every sympathy with the plight of the Chagossians, who were betrayed during the 1960s. ‘What happened to them was terrible,’ Mark Pollard, another MLA, told me. ‘But for the Falkland Islanders of today, what makes it all worse, and deeply distressing, is that some people are now deliberately conflating these two separate issues.’
Pollard is right: the issues of the Falkland and Chagos Islands are completely different. Whereas the indigenous people of the Chagos Islands are recognised as such by the UN and others, the Falklands never had an indigenous population and were settled permanently by the British from the 1830s.
But it is in the interests of some to stir things up. No sooner had the Chagos deal been struck than Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, referred to it as the sort of ‘mechanism’ that could be used to make the Falklands Argentinian. Argentina’s Foreign Minister Diana Mondino said: ‘We celebrate this step in the right direction and ending obsolete practices.’ Last week a statement from her ministry described the deal as ‘a historically significant event in the decolonisation process’, before hammering the tired line that sovereignty over the Falklands remains ‘a standing objective of Argentina’s foreign policy’.
I doubt if Milei, Mondino or their officials believe a single word of that. It’s a well-worn tactic: distract Argentinians from domestic problems by stirring up trouble elsewhere. And it changes nothing. Yes, Keir Starmer has a claim to be the biggest flip-flopper in recent history. He’s U-turned on just about everything he promised when running for the Labour leadership, and a lot more (just ask farmers, pensioners, WASPI women and small businesses) since entering Downing Street.
But on the Falklands? Even I trust him not to give them away. There are very few issues in British politics where there is unanimous agreement. But the Falklands is one. With the exception of Labour under Corbyn, who got nowhere near power, all major parties have been shoulder to shoulder with the Falklands for the last 43 years.
That’s exactly how the Islanders regard it, too. ‘The government, from Starmer and Lammy downwards, is rock solid,’ Short assured me. ‘There is no advantage in doing anything else,’ agreed Pollard. They are right. They have to be. And any Argentine who might think that the Chagos surrender will somehow lead to a Falklands betrayal is simply engaged in wishful thinking.
For once it’s not our own government that’s the issue. It’s Argentina. And, as Short says, ‘We are grateful for the 300 miles of cold Atlantic separating us.’ However enlightened Milei might appear, the Islanders won’t ever trust him. ‘We are actually more nervous about a reasonable-sounding Argentine,’ Short told me. Because despite its humiliation in 1982, Argentina continues to pursue its flimsy claim to the Falklands and to intimidate, undermine and refuse to cooperate even on matters where there is clear mutual advantage, such as sharing data on fishing stock. Milei’s government is just like all the others.
That’s why steadfast support from every government in the UK is so crucial. It’s why I trust Starmer, at least on this one matter. And it’s why the message must go out that, while the Chagos deal might be awful, it has no bearing whatsoever on the future of the Falklands.
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