Letters to The Editor   
Financial Times 
11th December 1999                                         

From Robert John Peliza

Sir,

With some poetic licence Nicholas Woodsworth in his travel article portrays Gibraltar and Tangier of particular attraction to tourists looking for something unique, as they really are ("Seduced by fish 'n' chips and the Casbah, FT Weekend, November 13-14).

However, he feels, without any political malice, that there is something false about the Britishness of Gibraltar. He oversimplifies the nature of the Gibraltarians, as descendants of “camp followers” of a British garrison thus narrowly giving the impression that the Gibraltarians do not have a strong identity as a people who have lived on the Rock for 300 years.

It will interest your serious readers that, “With the advent of the British (1704) the entire (Spanish) population fled and only a very few Genoese settlers remained under the new flag…..the Gibraltarian race is unique and very proud of its British Citizenship”. A view expressed by the late General Sir Kenneth Anderson, (Nov 1950), then Governor of Gibraltar. His perception was confirmed on the September 10 1967 referendum when in a poll, 12,238 voted to remain with Britain and 44 to come under Spain. September 10 is annually celebrated as Gibraltar’s National Day. In practical terms these sentiments were proved to be genuine when Franco turned Gibraltar into a concentration camp for 15 years, by closing the border, to make the Gibraltarians change their allegiance to Spain.He failed just as the Spanish Governments that followed his are failing with similar uncivilized harassing tactics and threats of another closure of the frontier, 10 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall!

All political parties in Government and Opposition wish Gibraltar to be decolonised under the United Nations principle of Integration with Britain, in one form or another. This solution has been and is rejected outright by the Foreign Office without offering a credible alternative. So if there is a ring of falsehood in the Britishness of Gibraltar, as Nicholas Woodworth insinuates, the bell is in Whitehall.

Robert John Peliza,
former chief minister and speaker of Gibraltar