Ceuta and Melilla? Gibraltar?

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We used to hear occasionally about the Spanish government wanting Gibraltar to become a part of Spain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disputed_s ... _Gibraltar

The New York Times has an article this morning about two Spanish cities, Ceuta and Melilla, which are on the African continent and which border Morocco.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/31/world ... 18218&_r=0

The Moroccan government thinks that these two cities should be a part of Morocco

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceuta_border_fence

and objects to the Spanish barrier fence. The differences between Morocco and the two Spanish cities that border Morocco are considerably more stark than the differences between Spain and Gibraltar.

What do you think? Should Spain cede these two cities to Morocco? Should the UK cede Gibraltar to Spain?

I believe in self determination and any change in status should be supported by the people of those disputed territories. Spain and Morocco have no "right" to these places, they have no rights at all. Only individuals can have rights. The state exists to protects the rights of the individuals that live in it, the implication of the state having rights is that it tramples all over years

Well, that's a good point.

It is interesting, too, that when it came to Hong Kong, the Brits just said "Here! Take it! We don't want it any more!" But, they fought tooth and nail for the Falkland Islands, and hold on dearly to Gibraltar.

The Hong Kong situation is different, because that was basically a lease that ended. It was agreed from the start that Hong Kong would be given back (in 2000 or so? Don't remember exactly).
I also believe that for the Falklands, Gibraltar etc the citizens should determine their own future. Those areas have been British for ages anyway, and by far most people there want things to remain this way. The Spanish government has always been very much AGAINST self-determination because they are afraid their own regions might break away (Catalans, Basques). They oppose every border change, like Kosovo. Basically, no one should take seriously what the Spanish government says.

Hong Kong Island and Kowloon were originally ceded to Britain "in perpetuity." The New Territories were on a 99-year lease.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_o ... _Hong_Kong

Morocco wants a lot of things and democracy isn't usually their tool of choice. They've been trying to take the Western Sahara territory, which was abandoned by Spain, for forty years and have blocked a UN backed referendum time and again. The Polisario don't want to join Morocco so Morocco has been trying to pack the ballot box with immigrants for decades. Similar to what China has done in Tibet. If China ever allowed a vote, they'd win. Tibetans are a minority in their own country now. Just like the Native Americans in Oklahoma. It's over.

I doubt very much that majority Spanish EU backed cities are going to want to join Morocco and no doubt the King wants nothing to do with an actual vote. The King will have to wait for immigration to do his work for him and for a time when there is less economic disparity.

The Spanish can piss off.

Gibraltar is British. No Surrender.

My personal dream would be to see Gibraltar integrated into the United Kingdom.

Oh, and here's a good video from the last UKIP conference - they had the head of the (unfortunately tiny and unrepresentative) Integration with Britain Movement speak. He's getting on a bit but I thought it was a good speech.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1vu3soZbYA[/youtube]

If Gibralter and the Falklands could keep out of the news for a good few years, I think they'd be more likely to be given back. The Falklands especially - it must cost quite a bit to keep them on. But when we had a war over them in recent memory (the last UK military involvement those so inclined can feel flag wavingly proud of), it could be taken as a loss of face to say, 'actually, you have them. It's far more trouble than it's worth'.

Perhaps both places should be given full independence. Seems the fairest way.

It's not going to happen - the principle of self-determination is far too strong.

Not even in the late 1970s/early 1980s were they seriously about to give the FIs back. A government minister of the time went to the islanders to suggest a deal with Argentina, and the islanders told the minister to get stuffed. It was never government policy to hand back the islands.

The Falkland Islands is self-sufficient apart from defence and that is only needed because of the Argies. If the oil deal comes through for them, they can then easily choose an association agreement with the UK should they wish (whereby they help fund the British presence there).

As for Gibraltar: it costs Britain nothing to keep that and it's a net advantage for the UK. Bermuda is considerably richer per person than the UK and they do not want to give up being British either.

If you're thinking of an overseas territory that actually costs money to keep, somewhere like Saint Helena or Montserrat. Saint Helena is a poor, isolated (but beautiful) island in the South Atlantic. Montserrat is also poor (half of it's uninhabitable) and half the population fled in 1995 due to the volcano (many have stayed in the UK). These kinds of places are dependent on overseas aid. I have no problem giving aid to these territories - these places should come first.

Last edited by Tequila on 31 Mar 2014, 11:41 am, edited 2 times in total.

So you're thinking a sort of variant of what happened to Singapore in 1965?

That's not very nice.

The Spaniards are having to go to quite a lot of effort to keep would-be migrants out of their North African cities.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/wor ... 79226.html

I was wondering what the African Union's position was on these cities, but Morocco isn't a member

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Union

and is presently in conflict with the African Union over the former Spanish Sahara

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Sahara

so it is probably moot.

Wasnt there a Caribean island (Anguilla? maybe) that was given independence from Britain around 1970. And the island rose up in revolt against independence, and demanded to remain a colony?

It was given independence under a federation with Jamaica I think. The islanders did not want that, so they rebelled. Devoid of any other options, they remained an overseas territory instead.

It was the federation with Jamaica that they objected to, not independence per se.

Most of the Caribbean islands aren't particularly 'British' in tone these days - it's more officialities. Most of these islands are too small for independence on their own.

The Falklands morally forfeit either remaining British or self determination, by having a nasty racist culture.

Wartime governor Rex Hunt's own memoirs revealed this - a man with friendly links there who helped them in the war then moved there found even in those circumstances they rejected his desire to belong. "I tried to explain to him that no one could be a true kelper, no matter how much he had done for the islands or how long he had lived there, unless he was of kelper stock and born there, but Jack left, a sad and disappointed man."

As soon as that story became known, all births on the islands should have been made illegal and all mothers forced to fly to toher places to give birth then tested that unless they accepted Jack they had rejected their own children so would lose them. If the racist attitude described was not seen to be ongoingly eradicated from Falklands society by this policy, then peremptory cession to Argentina against their will, but without punishing any individuals there who don't share the racist attitude, so all who declared their acceptance of Jack would be evacuated to Britain free and with lavish state help while all who refused to declare their acceptance of Jack would lose their citizenship and their every shred of British asset in the cession as their deserved punishment for race hate crime, but if they had children the children would be evacuated to Britain until they could make their own minds up, and one parent allowed to come with them temporarily and always allowed to make it permanent at the price of declaring their acceptance of Jack.

Last edited by tern on 01 Apr 2014, 5:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

So by that standard most countries in the world forfeit it then.



Did you know that only about a third of all Falkland Islanders were actually born on the islands? Most of them were born in the UK.

It's worth noting that his memoirs were written in 1992. He stayed on the island for another 15 years after that, being a very prominent figure indeed in local politics there and being on the Island Council.



And who is the one talking about having a deeply racist attitude?

What you've just said there is a textbook example of that.

I don't know much about the situation on the Falkland Islands, but they do quite value immigration to their islands (about 40 people can apply to live on the islands per year, although not all are accepted) . There are a number of South Americans living there and they're quite well liked. (I hear tell that there's the odd Argentinian living there even!)



That's like saying, "because I think that people in the Channel Islands are racist, all of the Channel Islanders should be forcibly deported to Britain and the islands given to France."



Ethnic cleansing on a pathetic pretext.

You can't force tolerance but from what I hear, the islanders are - yes - a bit insular (wouldn't you be if you lived on a large, sparsely-populated collection of cold islands hundreds of miles from nowhere?), but they are like the British as a whole - generally tolerant and accepting.

By the way - the middle-of-the-road residential package for the Falkland Islands is as follows:

2GB of bandwidth
Over package charge: 9p per MB
Maximum connection speed: 640kbps download; 256kbps upload
Number of e-mail addresses: 5
Monthly charge - without a pay monthly premium mobile account: £40.00
Monthly charge - with a pay monthly premium mobile account: £37.00

In other words - slow, slow, slow...

Quite possibly, but I would measure it in much smaller areas than countries, so as not to make innocent regions suffer. Point is, in most countries being country sized means you can avoid being affected by any small community's racist insularity, the Falklands is an exception to that as an isolated territory with the population of one village.

Delighted to know that it's progress in putting on leverage against the bigots. It will be even better to read some source evidence that they are now making life bearable for successors to Jack and the situation is no longer like in Jack story.


Racism is to have prejudice against people defined by their ethnic group belonging or their ancestry including inherited physical features, and to want to exclude them or make them suffer social injustice or crimes of physical assault. To force parents to take a position of anti-racist acceptingness or else suffer the due consequences of racist rejection of their own kids, is a device to stamp out racism with the deep thoroughness and revenge for every Jack that is effected by hurting head-on each bigot's ego. As such a measure does not inflict on anyone a prejudice against their ethnic group or ancestry or inherited physical features, or an ill-treatment by reason of these things, but instead it inflicts a coercion not to themselves commit these things upon others, the measure obviously can't be racist itself.

It would be, yes, though separately for each island and only if the racism was evidenced to be dominant enough in whole community life that it had inflicted a Jack experience on anyone there. As I have not heard of any such situation in the Channel Islands I'm not proposing it be done there. The reason why when you cite the idea of doing it to the Channel Islands it sounds wrong, is because you have not heard of anything happening there that would make it right, and of course it would be wrong to do it to innocent places that have not behaved as the Falklands did.

Re treating each island separately - Hunt's story indicated Jack found no solution in the entire Falklands community, that means apply the response to all the islands. But there are 2 major islands in the Falklands, so hypothetically if instead Jack had found rejection on one island and acceptance on another, then you would apply the measure only to the nasty island and not to the nice island, and any innocent nice folks living on the nasty island could move to the nice island.