The Falklands Issue
The issue of the Falkland Islands is rearing its ugly head once more. These Islands, stolen from Argentina by the British in 1833, and since then colonised by British sheep farmers, have been the
subject of dispute between Britain and Argentina ever since. Needless to say,
the three thousand sheep farming population of British descent is in itself of
little or no interest to either Argentina or Britain. However, the
geostrategic position of the Falkland Islands, the oil and gas contained in the
sea bed within the 200 mile exclusion zone that Britain has arrogated to itself
around the Falkland Islands, their rich fisheries, as well as the claims that
sovereignty over Argentina give to sharing the riches to emerge from Antarctica
are all of huge significance, to the extent that 30 years ago they led to a
bloody war between the UK and Argentina over territory which at the time to the
untutored eye hardly seemed worth the effort.
At that time, and at the height of a general
jingoist hysteria whipped up by the British media, Lalkar carried an
article, reproduced below, explaining, among other things, the legitimacy of
Argentine claims to the Falkland Islands. Shortly after the article was
published a 74-day war took place in which the Argentines were ousted from the
Islands and de facto British control was re-established at a cost of 649
Argentine lives, 255 British lives and countless others severely injured and/or
traumatised for life.
Following the war, the United Nations General
Assembly has passed resolution after resolution demanding that Britain discuss with Argentina all aspects of the Falklands Islands issue, including the question
of their sovereignty. In other words, the United Nations officially takes the
view that the issue of the sovereignty (a) is a disputed matter, (b) that the
matter remains unresolved, and (c) that it ought to be resolved by
negotiation. It is not hard to see that it would be expected that both parties
should give some ground and reach agreement as to shared sovereignty, or
possibly some territory being ceded to Argentina while other territory remains
under a British flag. However, since the question of sovereignty is really
only a means to an end, i.e., claiming the financial benefit of various energy
exploitation and fisheries exploitation rights, plus in years to come extending
such rights to the Antarctic region, then it should be expected that the
Argentines and the British should be able to come to some reasonable decision
as to how to share the spoils.
In 1995 it did appear that a breakthrough had been
made on this front with the Joint Declaration designating a Special Area of
Cooperation for exploration of offshore minerals (including oil), but alas,
despite being a party to the Joint Declaration, Britain simply used it as an
excuse to behave exactly as if the question of sovereignty had been decided and
had been decided in its favour. Without any thought of consultation with Argentina, Britain unilaterally began to grant exploration licences outside the agreed boundaries.
It also began to grant fishing licences within its 200 nautical mile
self-declared ‘exclusion zone’ to multinational fish harvesters, thus raising
some $40 million a year, much of which goes to providing a high level of public
services to the islanders with a view to keeping them proud to be British!
(Ironically, under the British Nationality Act of 1981 the Falklanders were
deprived of their British citizenship except in the case of individuals who had
at least one parent or grandparent born in the UK – but now that it has become
clear that their Britishness is the only argument, whatever its inadequacy, in
favour of British sovereignty over the Falklands, the decision has been
reversed and their right to British nationality was restored in 1983). Britain has also pre-empted the sovereignty issue by maintaining a military base and naval presence
in the region which Argentina claims is inhibiting it from exercising its own
oil drilling rights that were theoretically agreed with the British in 1995.
All this is clearly in breach of UN General Assembly Resolution 31/49 which
urges both parties, the UK and Argentina, to the dispute to refrain from
adopting unilateral modifications to the issue while the solution to the
dispute over sovereignty is pending. However, in complete disregard of the
wishes of the United Nations, Britain is continuing to refuse to discuss the
issue of sovereignty and simply insists that there is no dispute because the Falklands are British and that’s all there is to it.
Britain gets away with such bare-faced defiance
only because it is militarily and economically infinitely more powerful than Argentina and, moreover, has the backing of US imperialism. When it comes to looting the oil wealth
of the South Atlantic, US imperialism is very much Britain’s partner in crime.
The reason why it is now that the ongoing tensions
between Argentina and the UK are coming to a head once more is not that Prince
William is being deployed to the Falklands in his wondrous Apache killing
machine, or even that it is the 30th anniversary of the Falklands
war, but the fact that a short while ago, in mid-2010, a company called
Rockhopper discovered an actual exploitable oil deposit, meaning that oil from
the Falklands undersea deposits can start to flow. According to Brian Stint
(‘Oil Grab in Falklands seen tripling UK reserves’, Bloomberg, 19 January
2012), “Oil explorers are targeting 8.3 billion barrels in the waters around
the islands, three times the UK’s reserves. Borders & Southern Petroleum
plc will drill the Stebbing prospect next month, one of three Falkland wells
that Morgan Stanley ranks among the world top 15 offshore prospects this year.”
Three other lucrative wells are the Sea Lion
belonging to Rockhopper, Darwin belonging to M&S, and Loligo belonging to
Falklands Oil & Gas Limited (FOGL) Although Rockhopper is a British
company, its capitalisation is only £889 million and it will need substantial
backing to continue to develop its wells. However, a major US energy company Anadarko is said to be interested in purchasing Rockhopper’s interest at a most
satisfying profit for Rockhopper’s entrepreneurs.
From Argentina’s point of view, Britain will be engaged in profiting from the emptying of the wells, leaving nothing for Argentina if at any future time she is able to regain her rightful sovereignty.
It is because it has these plundered treasures to
‘protect’ that Britain is stepping up its militarisation of the islands, and
the massive destroyer, HMS Dauntless, has been sent over there to dissuade
anybody who imagines that British capitalists can easily be parted from their
hard-earned loot. Prince William is just so much royal icing on the cake, the
main purpose of his visit being no doubt to cause Falkland islanders´ little
hearts to burst with jingoistic pride – just it case they start to feel that
the estimated £111.7 billion tax windfall that their public finances are
expected to receive from the South Atlantic finds is insufficient to secure
their undying loyalty to the British Crown – or to keep them in the Falklands
while the threat of war hangs over them, when they remain entitled to remove
themselves out of the line of fire to the UK!
Hands off the Falklands
Las Malvinas Argentinas
(Lalkar, April 1982)
On Friday 2 April, 1982, the
Argentine armed forces invaded, and established complete control over, the Falkland Islands, which the Argentines have always laid claim to and which they call Las
Islas Malvinas, thus restoring these islands to Argentinean sovereignty. Following
this successful Argentinean action, the British government has found itself in
the throes of a most severe crisis – of the kind not seen since the days of the
Suez crisis more than 25 years ago – and the chief hallmarks of its policy have
aptly been described by that great friend of the Tories, the Daily Telegraph,
as being “confusion, ambiguity and irresolution”. The government simply
does not know what to do and in which direction to move. It is simply being
propelled by the unfolding events into actions and in directions not of its own
choosing. This governmental crisis has already produced 3 ministerial
resignations – that of the Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington, and those of his
junior colleagues at the Foreign Office, Messrs Atkins and Loos – and all the
signs are that more ministerial heads will roll. The resignation of the
Defence Secretary, Mr Nott, is almost a foregone conclusion. And the future of
the prime minister, and indeed of her government, is far from assured.
The question of
sovereignty
Before going into the question of right and wrong,
the legitimacy or otherwise, of the Argentine action, it is important to look
at the question of sovereignty over the Falklands in the proper historical
perspective. Mrs Thatcher claimed the other day in Parliament that Argentina “has not a shred of justification nor a scrap of legality”. The British
bourgeois press and media have put forward the same viewpoint, painting Britain as the victim of an unprovoked aggression. Here are a few salient facts
appertaining to the history of the Falkland Islands.
Both Spain and Britain claimed title to these Islands by discovery, the former through Vespucius and the latter through Drake and
Hawkins. The French seem to have landed a party on these islands in 1764 and
were only turfed out by the Spaniards. The French called the Islands Les
Iles Malouines (after their sailors, who came from St Malo) and the Spanish
called them Las Islas Malvinas. In 1767 the French transferred their
rights to the Spanish. In 1770, the Spanish ejected a British landing party.
A year later, in 1771, for some unknown reason, the Spaniards relented and
allowed the British back. However, the climate proved stronger than the
collapsing Spanish Empire, and the British settlement packed it in 3 years
later. The British withdrew, leaving behind a British flag and a lead plaque
saying that the Islands were “the sole right and property” of George
III.
Thereafter the Islands went through many
vicissitudes of claims to their sovereignty and periods of internal disorder.
Spanish occupation ensued until 1810, followed by occupation by the government
of Buenos Aires. In 1820 the newly-independent Republic of Buenos Aires announced that it had inherited the rights once exercised by Spain and started to develop a colony on the Islands. The poor Argentinean colonists made the
mistake of 1831 of seizing 3 American sailing vessels in retribution for their
occupants having taken stock belonging to Islanders. The Americans, wielding
their big sticks – as has been their wont ever since then – organised a sharp
naval assault which laid waste the Islands. The US then declared the Islands to be “free of all governance”. The British government saw in this
Argentinean misfortune a splendid opportunity and reoccupied the Islands with a
military force in January 1833, expelling the local Argentineans from the Islands.
Since then, though Britain has hung on to these
Islands which gave it domination of the strategic South Atlantic and Cape Horn
sea routes, Argentina never forgot and never gave up its claim. In 1965 the
General Assembly of the United Nations voted by 94 votes to nil, with Britain abstaining, that the two sides should hold talks to resolve the issue peacefully.
Since then talks have been held between the two sides, interrupted by several
naval confrontations and the breaking off of diplomatic relations between 1975
and 1979. The British government employed the tactics of delay and
procrastination and, in the end, Argentine patience ran out and they took what
was theirs by force since they could not get it at the negotiating table.
From the above facts it is clear that the
Argentines were forced to leave by the superior force of arms at a time when
the British navy really ruled the waves; it is clear that the Argentinean
population of these Islands, las Malvinas, was expelled by the same
superior power of the day. If history has turned round and played a joke on
the British ruling class, why should the latter complain, even if what has happened
is not much to their liking? What was conquered by sword and fire has been
taken back by those who had legitimate claim to it, and who have never dropped
this claim even if they were hitherto powerless to press it militarily. Much
is being made of the undisturbed occupancy for the last 150 years by the
British of these Islands, but then much has always been made of such occupancy
by all the colonial powers. Did not France make such a lot of its occupancy of
Algeria and other countries? Did she not regard her colonies as mere
provinces of France? Did Britain herself not make similar claims with regard
to the territories that once constituted her vast empire? It is also said that
the people of Falklands do not wish to be part of Argentina, that they are
passionately British – more British than the British themselves. That is
undoubtedly true, but that is no fault of the Argentinean people who were as
much the victims of British colonial expansion as were the people of British
descent on these isles who were brought there on the understanding – false as
it turns out – that they were forever British. These islands were British as
long as the might of British arms was in a position to sustain this
Britishness. This has in fact been implicitly recognised over the decades by
successive British governments who have conducted negotiations with the
Argentine government over the question of sovereignty over these islands. If
these islands had been British and their sovereignty were unquestionable, what then
was there to negotiate about with the Argentineans?
The fact of the matter is that the 1,700 Islanders
are not worth a farthing to our government. What has made these islands now
such a bone of contention is the rich fishing stocks and oil deposits around
these islands. People have never mattered very much to our ruling classes, but
considerations of strategy and profits have always done so.
One has only to contrast the present demands of
some Tory and Labour MPs for governmental blood over letting the people of the
Falklands down with their deafening silence over the expulsion in 1968 of 1300
inhabitants of the island of Diego Garcia to realise the utter hypocrisy of
these jingoistic lickspittles and flunkeys of monopoly capitalism.
Jingoist hysteria
For the first time in more than 25 years, the House
of Commons sat on a Saturday – i.e., on 3 April 1982. During the debate on the
islands, it has to be admitted that Tory right-wingers and Labour left-wingers
vied with each other in jingoist hysteria. During the debate was born the
Leader of the Opposition. So jingoist was Michael Foot’s performance that the Daily
Telegraph gave him the kiss of death by describing his performance as the
best ever, adding that this was “the language of gut patriotism”. And
further, “The furrowed, white-haired old pacifist was leading nothing less
than an opposition drum-roll for war” and “It was Labour at its
patriotic, flag-waving finest”. Such is always the fate of social
chauvinism.
And The Times in its editorial of 5 April
1982, full of sabre-rattling and patriotic fervour, i.e., imperialist jingoism
(we shall return shortly to this editorial) commented on Labour’s performance
in the following terms: “The time may come when the unilaterialist Left will
look back on its Churchillian posture on Saturday with amazement and regret.
For the present it is enough to welcome the prodigal’s return”.
Large Task Force
On Saturday 3 April the House of Commons gave a
near unanimous mandate to the government to dispatch a formidable naval task
force comprised of 36 ships, including the aircraft carriers Invincible
and Hermes, as well as guided-missile destroyers, frigates and
nuclear-powered submarines, for the purpose of “liberating the Islands from
Argentinean rule”. This force is already on its way and there is every
prospect at the moment of a bloody battle of these islands. It is of the
utmost importance that we make our attitude to this impending battle clear.
The bourgeois attitude has been outlined by the government, by the opposition
and by the press. Not a single one of these has, not surprisingly, said or
done anything that is in the interests of the working class of this country.
In the circumstances the working class and its leadership must, in the
interests of its own class, make its attitude clear. Our attitude is that the
Falklands belong to Argentina and not to Britain. We have no wish forcibly to
take other people’s territory or loot other people’s wealth. Our demand should
be that our government desist from all military action against Argentina and conduct negotiations with the Argentine government on the single issue of
securing the lives and well-being of the 1,700 islanders. We should refuse to
be fooled by the hysterical leader writers of the imperialist press, and we
should treat their outbursts with the contempt they deserve.
In its editorial, referred to above, The Times
tries to compare the Falkland invasion with the Nazi invasion of Poland and with a racist tinge adds: “The Poles were Poles; the Falklanders are our
people. The Falklands are British territory. When British territory is
invaded, it is not just an invasion of our land, but of our whole spirit. We
are all Falklanders now”.
As a matter of fact, there are two spirits living
side by side in Britain – one imperialist and the other proletarian. To the
former all other people’s territory is ‘our’ territory; to the latter it is not
so. To the former it is an invasion of ‘our’ spirit when we cannot plunder
other people. To the latter, it is not so. We are not all Falklanders, and if
the British bourgeoisie wishes to go and fight it out, let it do its own dirty
work. We in the working class have no wish to shed a single drop of blood for
protecting the interests of British imperialism.
The Argentine fascist
junta
It is now being claimed that we should knock the
hell out of Argentina and oppose the latter’s claims to the Falklands because
it is ruled by a fascistic military dictatorship. Says The Times: “It is
the misfortune of the Argentine people to live under a fascist dictatorship as
they have done many times over in their turbulent, truculent, unstable 150-year
history. The people of Argentina are again today on their knees under the
rifle butts of a military tyranny which has introduced a sinister new idiom to
their language – ‘the disappeared ones’. The disappearance of individuals is
the junta’s recognised method of dealing with opposition. We are faced now
with a situation where it intends to make a whole island people – the Falklanders
– disappear.”
There is not the slightest doubt that the
Argentinean government is fascistic and its rule the most bloody, most nasty
and most sordid. It is true that more than 12,000 Argentines have disappeared
since this fascist junta came to power. And we congratulate The Times,
and the rest of the British media, as well as Her Majesty’s government and
opposition, for having made this belated discovery. Some of us have correctly
characterised the Argentinean junta as fascist right from its inception. Over
the years, The Times, and most of the other newspapers who today wax
eloquent over the disappearances, kept silent. The British government and
British big business were doing good out of the misfortune of the Argentine
people, as they have done out of the misfortune of the South African, the
Chilean, the Salvadorean and countless other peoples. The fact of the matter
is that these nasty, bloody, fascist regimes would not last a day if it were
not for the financial, political and military support afforded them by the
various imperialist countries, Britain included. It is indeed ironical that
the Royal Navy will be facing in a couple of weeks’ time some of the
sophisticated hardware provided to the Argentine fascist junta by the
benevolence of the British government. These facts ought to be remembered by
those who are now calling upon the working class to make sacrifices in a futile
and unjust cause, as well as by the working class.
The fact that Argentine people are under the heel
of fascism should in no way blind us to the national rights of the Argentinean
people over the Falklands. Nor should this fact lead us into the camp of
British imperialism and into the defence of its interests. We should not be
fooled by the crocodile tears of the age-old apologists of British colonialism
and imperialism such as The Times. These tears are not shed over either
the misfortune of the Argentine people nor that of the Falklanders: these are
tears shed over the humiliation and misfortune presently afflicting British
imperialism. No doubt the Falklands question is a popular issue in Argentina and the fascist generals need it to distract the latter’s resistance to their
fascist rule. No doubt that temporarily the generals will gain some
popularity. But in 6 months’ time this will no longer be the case – there will
be no more Malvinas to inflame national feelings. Then the people of Argentina will still be under the heel of the fascist junta and they will doubtless get rid
of it by waging revolutionary war against it.
National issue
“Falklands is a national issue and no regrets
about the past or anxieties about the future should be allowed to conceal from
Argentina Britain’s total resolution … What matters in the next few weeks is
that the government should have the fullest possible backing for a combined
military and diplomatic operation which calls for nerve and skill on an unusual
scale” (ibid.).
So says The Times, expressing the desires,
wishes and interests of British imperialism. For our part we, expressing the
desires, wishes and above all the interests of the working class, say that Falklands is not a national issue. The issues that matter to us are those concerned with
getting rid of unemployment (3 million at present), housing shortages,
inadequate social services, of racialism, of war – indeed getting rid of not
only the present nasty government but the whole nasty system of production that
ever reproduces these problems. We are concerned with conquering these real
problems rather than conquering other people’s territories. This is the line
of thought and policy which must permeate every working-class organisation.