Notebook
It was in fact nearly three weeks ago that a band of 'scrap dealers' raised the Argentinian flag on the island of South Georgia. Events have moved so rapidly in recent days that that incident-may easily be forgotten in the general excitement of the Royal Navy's 8,000 mile voyage to the Bat- tle of the. Falklands and the resignation of the Foreign Secretary who, it now appears, .‘N'as made aware of Argentina's plans for Invasion a week before it took place. The il- legal landing by the scrap dealers appeared to have come just in time to save our one armed naval vessel in the area, HMS En- durance, from being made redundant by the Ministry of Defence next month. Here surely was self-evident justification for the continuing presence of the white ensign in the South Atlantic. There can be no deny- ing that the Ministry of Defence's decision t° save a paltry £4 million by scrapping a ship with 15 years more life in its hull gave clear notice to President Galtieri of the im- Eortance which the Government attached to British interests in the South Atlantic. (In refusing to accept Mr Nott's offer to resign On Monday, Mrs Thatcher said he was not responsible for Falkland Islands policy. But was he who resolved to take the `1,isastrous step of withdrawing Endurance 111311.1 service.) When Argentina set up a Weather station on South Thule, one of the South Sandwich Islands, in 1977 the British gc,3verriment lamely accepted the position, although a show of naval strength on the high seas did deter any further moves against the Falklands. When the Argenti- nians tried it on again, the Government merely told Endurance to proceed towards South Georgia and wait. Why were orders 3Ot given to land a party of marines on the Se isl and and — as the Governor of the Straits ttlements suggested, , rather less realistically, to General Percival in "ecernber 1941 when the Japanese landed On the Malayan coast — shove the little men off? Shoving them off the Falklands Will prove a lot more difficult.
Until last week, my knowledge of the t Falkland Islands was derived from heir very attractive postage stamps which I used to collect in the reign of King George ,* They show pictures of whale bones,
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steep, the upland goose, the black-necked swan and several Antarctic survey ships Which sail in those remote parts. I have now tle aned much more information from Lord haekleton's 450-page, two-volume etilornic survey which was published in t.776. The divorce rate among the popula- 119" of 1,800 is alarmingly high: between 65 and 1974 there were 207 marriages and 56 divorces. Something to do with the
weather? More importantly, there may be large reserves of oil and gas beneath the ocean, and that part of the South Atlantic is apparently so rich in fish and seaweed that it represents one of the world's largest un- tapped sources of protein and of alginates. That is also worth fighting for.
nly two hours after his resignation was announced, it seemed odd to hear Lord Carrington reading a lesson at the memorial service to R. A. Butler. The lesson was taken from the Book of Wisdom: 'Wisdom is glorious and never fadeth way. Yea she is easily seen of them that love her and found of such as seek her ...' I think Rab would have ap- preciated the irony of that.
It is the time for remembering our British outposts. In less than two weeks' time the frontier between Gibraltar and Spain will be reopened after 13 years. In the UN debate on the Falklands last weekend, Spain was one of four countries to abstain from voting on the demand for Argentina to give up its illegal possession. But I do not think that the Gibraltarians need fear for their immediate future. In fact, Gibraltarians stand to gain more in the short term from an open frontier than the Spaniards. They will be able to travel again freely, they will benefit from Spanish investment and they will do their best to impose restrictions on Spaniards wishing to own property or to work on the Rock. (Spanish workers may be obliged to join the Transport and General Workers' Union, which is bound to cause trouble.) There is little incentive for anyone to go to Gibraltar except to work; for the visitor it is a depressing place. In spite of holiday agents advertising the best of Britain plus the sun, my predominant impression when I was there two years ago was of scruffiness. After years under siege Gibraltar is unquestionably run down; there was litter everywhere and cars aban- doned on the roadside were a common sight. And whatever the travel writers may say, the food is pretty awful, and there is lit- tle night life except for the English pubs. This may change, but for the moment the only tourist advantage of Gibraltar (apart from the excellent Garrison library) is the Rock casino. It was here in the Seventies that a visiting Spanish minister was said to have been playing baccarat one night with Gibraltar's prime minister, Sir Joshua Hassan. Towards dawn the Spaniard made Sir Joshua a lighthearted challenge: to play one hand for a special stake — the Rock. Spain won. There are other ways to resolve the future of Gibraltar, which will take much longer. Negotiations are about to be resumed. But they will probably achieve the same result in the end.
Statistics have always rightly belonged where Mark Twain put them — with lies and damned lies — but they seem lately to have been even more mendacious and meaningless than usual. We have had crime figures which, according to The Times, 'tell neither the truth about the extent of crime nor about police success in clearing it up,' and we have had countless, usually conflic- ting, statistics to show the strength of sup- port for the SDP/Liberals after Mr Jenkins's by-election victory. A Mr Ivor Crewe, from the University of Essex, told us that the Hillhead results 'on new consti- tuency boundaries ... would produce a Parliament in which Labour was the largest party (284 seats — more than it has now), the Alliance hold the balance (248 seats) and the Conservatives were reduced to a rump of 78'. Apart from the fact that it is quite pointless to give figures for a general election based on the result of one by- election, Mr Crewe completely failed to ex- plain his extraordinary projection. In the past two weeks in the Spectator, Ferdinand Mount has given the most lucid and per- suasive interpretation of the crime figures and the Hillhead result; but I am still slight- ly bemused. The only thing which seems clear is that the Alliance, in the first 12 months of its life, has failed to gain any senior Conservative support (with the notable exception of the Duke of Devon- shire), nor has it attracted the working classes or students in any numbers. (The editor of Cherwell wrote the other day from Oxford to point out that the party was fast losing its appeal among students there.) If the Alliance is ever going to break the mould — it remains a party of the middle- aged, middle-of-the-road, middle class — it will have to refashion its own mould. In the mid-19th century Michael Bakunin, a Rus- sian aristocrat, formed the Alliance of Social Democracy in Switzerland. He was the founder of Anarchism (he and Marx soon parted company), and the movement caught on across Europe, principally among agricultural workers and the unemployed. It might be going a bit far to suggest that today's Alliance of Social Democracy should adopt all the tenets of Anarchism, which were invariably associated with violence. But part of the Anarchist doctrine consisted in a rejection of industrial life, a hankering after old- fashioned values and a more morally ascetic way of living. Could there be the makings of a new deal here for the Alliance of the Eighties?
Simon Courtauld
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