I thought some readers might enjoy these two rather ancient articles (there are some terrible cliches in the first one, which I hope I should now avoid). One is a 2001 despatch from Gibraltar, then under threat from the Blair government. The other is a 2002 report from Spain's Gibraltar, the Ceuta enclave(from which you can see Gibraltar, ghostly in the haze, across the straits). My only previous visit to the Rock, for another newspaper, was for the extraordinary inquest which followed the shooting of an IRA gang by SAS troops. My father visited it often in his Royal Navy days, and I possess a rather evocative photograph he took during exercises not far out to sea, with the Rock on the horizon. His old friend, the novelist and former naval officer (and perhaps spook as well), Warren Tute, wrote a once-popular thriller about it. It is a fascinating place. The first sight of it will always make the newcomer gasp. Yes, it really does look like that. The Foreign Office will always want to get rid of it. Its people will probably always resist. You'd think people would just accept that, but they never do.
The current government's noisy drum-banging on the subject somehow doesn't wholly convince me. But that's only an impression. I can't put my finger on why. Anyway,. let's go days, weeks, months and years back in time, to the winter of 2001 and the Blair years...
25th November 2001:
FROM Peter Hitchens IN GIBRALTAR
The people of Gibraltar are as British as roast beef. They drink bitter, play cricket and proudly fly our flag. So why is the Government so very keen to hand over their home to their bullying neighbours in Spain? Like it or not, Gibraltar is just going to have to be liberated from its colonial British past. The Foreign Office Minister Peter Hain, an expert on liberating people, has decided that this shall be so.
The Prime Minister, who last week went to Nuremberg to proclaim his love affair with European integration, is right behind Mr Hain in the campaign to 'integrate' this British territory with Spain, its bullying neighbour.
But the question of whether they like it or not is the trouble. Gibraltar's people, a confusing mixture of Italians, Maltese, Jews and Portuguese, rather enjoy being British and think their colonial status is just fine. If this is living in the past, they say, then to hell with the present and the future. We like it here.
This is inconvenient of them. To the Foreign Office, which longs to reduce Britain to the status of a sea-girt Austria, the Rock and its unfashionable inhabitants have been an accursed nuisance for years. If the rest of the British Empire had been allowed to behave like this, then we would never have been able to hand it over to people such as Deng Xiaoping, Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe and Kwame Nkrumah, and then what might have happened?
This isolated lump of land defies liberal prejudices. Officially oppressed, it has a noisy democracy. Mostly Roman Catholic but fiercely loyal to the Protestant crown of England, racially mixed but culturally united, the Rock is both exotic and suburban. This week, Gibraltar's main street is decked out for Christmas, with plastic Santas and snowmen displayed among the palm trees, and Christmas puddings flying off the shelves of Safeway.
Everyone speaks both English and a mysterious Spanish-English patois. They drink English bitter in pubs and play cricket on coconut matting; their national dish is steak and chips; they bet on British horse races and watch British TV. They follow the English national curriculum in comprehensive schools; their judges wear horsehair wigs and they have juries. Yes, they are a colony, with a governor in a plumed hat, but Scottish separatists would be overjoyed to have the Rock's independent powers - especially over taxation.
The Britishness here is captivatingly out of date, redolent of the days of Two-way Family Favourites on the wireless and Morris Minors. It has been formed by many shared perils and sieges - the most recent being Spain's long and spiteful closure of the border from 1969 to 1984, which left its mark on everyone living here and is the cause of understandable mistrust of Madrid. Left wing Islington snobs, who adore every culture but their own, would loathe it.
It is an undoubted fact that this promontory of two-and-a-quarter square miles, much of it uninhabitable mountain, and its 30,000 people, form a unique society with as much right to choose its own future as any other. It is also a society worth preserving: a happy, contented, prosperous, law-abiding and free place.
So why not just let well alone? It is easy to see why Spain once raged against a great foreign military base on Spanish soil and a giant foreign fleet in its territorial waters. It is easy to understand that after Spain's final loss of her own empire in 1898, the recovery of the Rock must have seemed essential to her pride. The unloved dictator Franco found that posturing on this issue actually made him popular. His democratic successors in a transformed nation really ought to have other things on their minds.
But Madrid still scratches at this sore place in her history.
Gibraltar's airport is throttled by Spanish restrictions. The Rock's phone system is overloaded because of Spanish boycotts and obstructions. Spain even blocks Gibraltar's entries to dog shows and tries to keep it out of international sporting bodies. Spanish frontier officials keep up an endless go-slow, making a simple journey unpleasant and irritating.
In a neat paradox, ultra-British Gibraltar pointedly flies the European standard alongside the Union Flag at the frontier, and displays large permanent notices urging travellers to complain officially about Spain's infringement of their EU right to travel freely. Arrivals on the British side are greeted by a sign saying: 'Welcome to Gibraltar, territory of the European Union'. Spain, normally a keen EU member, keeps quiet about it here, where she clings to a petty nationalism that belongs in the 19th Century. Mr Hain has accused Gibraltar of being 'stuck in the past'. This border, with its banana republic pettiness, rubs in the truth that it is Spain which is stuck in the past, obsessed with ancient parchment treaties and battles long ago.
If Spain relaxed the frontier, unblocked the phone lines and freed the airport, Gibraltar might in time choose any number of futures. An independent Gibraltar left unmolested inside the EU would inevitably grow closer to Spain as past fears and mistrust faded. Perhaps one day it might even want to be Spanish, or would simply cease to care. Spain's attitude and behaviour are not merely babyish but futile as well.
That is why the predictable outcome of the new round of talks is that the people of Gibraltar will flatly reject any deal on sovereignty between London and Madrid - even though they fear Britain will then leave them twisting in the wind, as Spanish harassment is stepped up and London looks the other way.
They suspect British public opinion is already being prepared for a sell-out. When I met him in his elegant office - a converted former chapel with his desk where the altar used to be - Gibraltar's Chief Minister, Peter Caruana, was angry about what he sees as smears against Gibraltar and its people which have begun appearing in parts of the British media, especially unsubstantiated claims of smuggling and money-laundering.
They are just not true, he insists, and are 'a politically motivated attempt to besmirch us'.
He is hurt and worried by the recent tone of the British Foreign Office. He has always assumed Gibraltar's constitution - promising no change of sovereignty without a democratic vote - was a genuine choice. Now he wonders.
'If you could choose to remain British at your peril, it would be morally indefensible,' he told me.
But he is baffled at a process which is aimed at reaching a conclusion by next summer; which seems certain to involve some loss of British sovereignty over Gibraltar and which is bound to be rejected by the Rock's people.
'There has to be some other purpose to the process,' he explained.
He fears that what is intended is to do a deal in the knowledge that it will be voted down - and then to put it to a referendum. He calls this 'making us choose between something that is unacceptable to us, or unspecified consequences'.
Mr Caruana - a youthful 45-year-old father of six - says that, if this is the plan, it will not work. 'The people of Gibraltar will not barter their British sovereignty. There is no amount of intimidation, harassment - or inducement -which will lead them down that road. We will organise soup kitchens before we accept that.' In this very British place, where older values of doggedness and determination survive perhaps more strongly than they do in the land from which they sprang, these are serious words.
It would be a grim day for Britain's standing in the world if they ever needed to be put into practice.
But why is it Britain which is in retreat and failing to defend a just cause? Why is it Britain which has begun talks with Spain in which it has conceded the main issue in advance? Why are we so keen to protect the rights of Kosovars and Bosnians, even to build a democracy in Kabul where we are not wanted, but anxious to dump Gibraltar, where we are wanted and liked?
The answer may lie in Mr Blair's visit to Nuremberg last week. There, too, a British politician was seeking to placate a powerful neighbour increasingly irritated by our independent ways. Almost incredibly, he chose that beautiful but sinister city, forever linked with Europe's shameful return to the Dark Ages, to make his most fervent declaration of love for European unity. It would be 'backward and self-defeating' for Britain to isolate itself, he alleged, as he proclaimed that our destiny lay as a full partner in a more closely integrated continent.
If he does not even want Britain to be British, what possible hope is there for poor little Gibraltar?
AND….
29th September 2002
Blair is ready to hand over Gibraltar - but Spain will never quit its own secret colony
By: PETER HITCHENS
As Madrid steps up its demands over the Rock, Peter Hitchens discovers that when the Spanish are asked to give up one of their outposts, they reply with fierce refusals and stern lectures...
Spain does not want you to know that she has her very own Gibraltar, a mirror-image of Britain's Rock which she has absolutely no intention of handing over to any foreign power this side of doomsday. Even while Spain demands the right to rule over 30,000 Gibraltarians who defiantly want to be British, Spanish troops, ships and helicopters stand guard over another rock, just 30 miles away, whose people equally defiantly want to be Spanish, but which Morocco claims for her own.
The Spanish Gibraltar is called Ceuta (say it see-you-tah, to rhyme with 'scooter') and the similarity between the two places is eerie. Both are military and naval bases dominated by fortified mountains in which tunnels and caverns conceal secret installations. Both have disputed borders. Both are small and cramped and long ago lost the purpose for which they were originally conquered. Both have populations which are racially mixed, but united in loyalty to the mother country.
Gibraltar has achieved harmony with a mixture of Jews, Catholics and Muslims. Ceuta's equally successful cultural melting pot has the same ingredients but also includes Hindus.
Spain wants Gibraltar. Morocco wants Ceuta.
The Spanish could easily puncture Morocco's demands by holding a referendum which would certainly show that almost nobody in Ceuta wants to leave Spain. But they dare not. For that would hugely strengthen Gibraltar's case - a case which will be underlined by a completely predictable pro-British vote due to take place a few weeks from now, where the only question is whether the pro-Spain faction will score above single figures.
It might also draw the world's attention to the fact that their case for holding on to this quirky little toehold is actually weaker than Britain's for keeping the Rock. By clever diplomacy since the days of the dictator Francisco Franco, Madrid has managed to keep up the monstrous pretence that Ceuta is not a colony, and therefore needs no changes, whereas Gibraltar is a colony, and so must be decolonised.
This argument is so far from the truth that the only sensible response is to laugh. Gibraltar, with its own culture, laws and customs, could justifiably declare independence tomorrow and seek admission to the UN as a small but proud European nation.
Ceuta, on the other hand, is much more like the classic idea of a colony. It is a little patch of Spain kept in existence on African soil solely by military power and diplomacy. Its landward side is guarded by a savage 15ft fence topped with barbed wire and dotted with watchtowers.
Its main border post with Morocco is one of the most shocking confrontations between the First and Third worlds that I have ever seen, starker and harsher even than the US-Mexican frontier at El Paso, where hungry shanty towns stare across into the world of fast food.
To get to Ceuta's gate into Africa, you drive along smooth, tree-lined and ordered streets which could just as well be in Barcelona, passing hypermarkets, shiny new office blocks and a surprising number of busy building sites with billboards declaring that they are subsidised by the European Union, which means you and me. Spaniards relax in pleasant bars and restaurants.
Well-dressed citizens stroll beneath palm trees and chat into mobile phones. Modern warships sit in the harbour. A smart recruiting van advertises jobs in the Spanish Armada, ie the navy, a mixed-sex force very different from the 1588 version.
And then you reach the city limits, turn the corner and see the filthy, flyblown fence, its barbed wire festooned with garbage. Just beyond it is the dirty, poor chaos of Africa, pounding at the gates of Europe. The scene is painful and disturbing.
Because Morocco refuses fully to recognise the frontier, a curious tax-free-port has developed here, one which nobody looks into too closely.
Multitudes of Moroccans, dressed in the fashions of the Old Testament, cross backwards and forwards, bringing who knows what with them, and returning with Western consumer goods. Where these are too heavy to carry, they plunge into the sea and float them back. I watched border guards ignore a swimmer as he navigated a Spanish fridge along the coastline and brought it safely to shore in the Third World. It gave a whole new meaning to the phrase 'duty free'.
Not all the border incidents are so amusing. Not all can pass. Some are brusquely turned away and put in a holding pen before being sent back.
I saw one little boy waiting forlornly behind the cruel fence after being refused entry. Europe's way of life is, of course, better than Africa's, and it would be suicide to open its frontiers to all who wanted to come in, but it seems specially hard when the poor can glimpse the richer part of the world but cannot touch it.
But you can, and do, quite easily, put this upsetting sight out of your mind when you return to the town.
Nothing here is quite the same as it is in more normal parts of the world. Sitting over mint tea in a cafe where some of the other customers openly rolled joints, I asked a leading Ceuta Muslim, El Mehdi Flores (no dopesmoker he), if he wanted Muslim Morocco to take over the town. He definitely did not. 'We don't want a Moroccan administration in Ceuta under any circumstances,' he replied. He and other Muslims prefer Spanish prosperity to Moroccan poverty, enjoy the better schools and health services. He has his discontents with things as they are, but an Islamic kingdom does not seem to be the answer to them.
Later, over beer and olives in a city centre cafe, I asked a group of thirtysomething Spanish Ceutans what they would think if their Premier, Jose Maria Aznar, tried to hand them over to Morocco, as Anthony Blair is trying to hand Gibraltar to Spain. Jose Olmo Sanchez, 34 and a civil servant, spoke for them all when he said: 'There would be outrage. It would be as if the Spanish government had taken its trousers down in public, utterly undignified.' He was also scornful of Britain for being so weak. 'It would be wrong for the British government to do such a thing,' he said. 'The people of Gibraltar should choose their future in a referendum. If they want to remain British they should be allowed to carry on being British in peace.' All these modern, European-minded young men were immensely proud of Spain's recent recapture of the uninhabited Parsley Island, just down the coast, seized by the Moroccans a few months ago. They nodded fiercely when Jose said: 'For the first time in our lives we felt proud of being Spanish.' They had a similar admiration for Britain's Falklands stand.
The official Madrid line remains that there is no comparison at all between Gibraltar and Ceuta.
Attempts to speak to the local authorities met with endless excuses and postponements, though an unguarded young soldier gave the game away by saying: 'Ah, you must be here to write about the similarities between Ceuta and Gibraltar.' The Spanish Embassy in London had earlier subjected me to a stern verbal pounding for so much as mentioning the two places in the same breath. The main part of the Spanish case, all the more intense for being so shaky, is that when they got hold of Ceuta there was no such country as Morocco. This means that, unlike Gibraltar, there is no treaty governing its existence. This is not quite true (three treaties were signed with local Arabs, in 1767, 1782 and 1799).
What is true is that Spain has done what Britain should have done, and bound its colony securely and permanently to the homeland. Ceuta sends an MP to Madrid and is officially as Spanish as Seville. In fact, it is a lot more Spanish than the Basque country, which constantly demands separation. Yet again, it reminds me of Gibraltar. There, too, a small, isolated, yet tolerant and multiracial people have become much more patriotic than the citizens of their mother country. This is mainly because they have a fairly good idea of the alternative, which begins on the edge of town. It is also because, in far too many cases, the people of Britain simply do not know how lucky they are.
Both these cramped stockades are inconvenient and irritating to the politically correct potentates of the world. These grandees think we all ought to live in the featureless, multicultural paradise they dream vainly of creating.
They forget that real people like to live in small places among known neighbours who share their hopes and fears, not in a vast global wilderness where your only identity is printed on a plastic card. Long may they both survive.
