Crisis in Gibraltar
SIR,—In your issue of May 7, Mr. D. G. Davies asks three questions about the British possession of Gibraltar and invites valid answers. Starting with his third question, I should like to clarify, first of all, that the population of Gibraltar are not foreigners. They arc citizens of the United Kingdom and colonies and their national status is therefore ex- actly the same as that of a person born in Britain. Mr. Davies's suggestion that the Spaniards are right because there arc thirty million of them and only 30,000 in Gibraltar (25,000 actually) is astonishing.
His second question is an emotional one. No one in Gibraltar doubts or underestimates Spanish feel- ing in this matter. But what are we to do? Are we to change our political beliefs and traditions and submit to an alien form of government? Or, alterna- tively, are we to surrender our birthplace and our homes and go into exile to satisfy Spanish national feeling?
It is not for me to give the reasons why Britain stood inactive when India seized Goa, but surely Mr. Davies does not suggest that, if Britain was wrong not to intervene on that occasion, she should now, out of a perverted sense of consistency, do the wrong thing again? If, on the other hand, Britain was right in keeping out of the Goan affair, it does not in the least follow that she should now hand Gibraltar back to Spain against the express wishes of the population of Gibraltar and, judging from the exchanges in Parliament and the overwhelming support of the British press, against the majority of British public opinion also.
In fact, of course, the Goan affair is totally irrelevant, if for no other reason, because the people involved were the subjects of a foreign country, oldest ally or not—more emotional thinking by Mr.
Davies. The people involved in the dispute about Gibraltar--which, in any case, unlike Goa, is British territory—arc British subjects and, apart from a few British people in Britain concerned com- mercially, Mr. Davies stands almost alone in sug- gesting that the British Government should abandon them or fail to maintain their rights.
Finally, would Mr. Davies feel the same if Gib- raltar, instead of being a 'chunk' or 'lump' of what he calls 'mainland.' were a large territory of the size of, say, Portugal, which is no less physically a part of the Iberian peninsula and which was also once in other ways a part? If his view remained the same he should, in logic, agitate for the incorpora- tion of Portugal into the 'mainland.' If his view in such a case were different then he would once again be falling into the error of confusing size with right.
JOSHUA HASSAN
Office of the Chief Minister, Gibraltar
Previous page
