SIR,—A letter published in your issue of May 7 on
the Gibraltar crisis signed by Mr. Dudley Davies, has caused great consternation in Gibraltar, and the allegation that we are 30,000 foreigners shows how little Mr. Davies knows about Gibraltar.
We are descendants of a nucleus of people who came to Gibraltar from Britain, Italy and Malta 260 years ago, and as the White Paper aptly puts it, 'The civil population of Gibraltar, who are not Spanish, have been established there for longer than many immigrant communities in the New World.' Mr. Hugh Kay described the Gibraltarians as .an example to the world of a cohesive people who have been born out of a multi-racial society.
Mr. Davies's conception seems to be that rights and principles are applicable in accordance with the size of a territory. So, therefore, we are not entitled to any rights. If Gibraltar is a chunk in the Iberian peninsula, so are Portugal and Andorra, and if one were to bring this argument to its logical conclusion then the Channel Isles should go back to France.
Precisely because we are a small territory our cause merits a more sympathetic consideration than Mr. Davies has given us, and though• our fight is similar to that of David and Goliath, we are proud that despite the smallness of our territory and the numbers of our people our greatness lies in the fact that we are fighting a fight that free men in other parts of the world are waging, to preserve their dignity, their freedom, their liberty and self- The 'Gibraltar Post.' 93-95 Irish Town, Gibraltar
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