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INTERVENTION OF THE PETITIONER FROM THE TOWN OF GIBRALTAR SIR JOSHUA HASSAN
September 19th 1963
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In the first place, my colleague and I would like to
express our thanks to you and to all the members of the Committee
over which you so ably preside for acceding to our petition and
giving us this opportunity of stating the case of the people of
Gibraltar in the course of your deliberations on this matter,
which to us is of the utmost importance.
It is a clear sign of the enlightened times in which we live that
small communities are not the less important because of their
size and that their wishes must play a deciding factor in
determining their future. I want to make it clear that we have
come hereto New York on our own initiative in order to make our
views known to this Committee and to the world. This is an
exclusively Gibraltarian delegation and we are expressing the
views of the whole of the people of Gibraltar.
I think it would be useful if, before I deal with the matter of
substance, I should say who we are and what we represent. I am
the Chief Member of Gibraltar's Executive and Legislative
Council, of which I will have more to say in detail later. I was
elected to the Legislative Council by universal adult suffrage at
the head of colleagues of my party, the Association for the
Advancement of Civil Rights, the biggest political party in
Gibraltar, a party which has the affiliation of the Gibraltar
Confederation of Labour, the largest Trade Union of my city,
which is itself completely free and is in turn an affiliated
member of the British Trade Unions Congress and the International
Confederation of Free Trade Unions.
By separate elections, also on universal adult suffrage, I am a
City Councillor, in which capacity I have been re-elected at
every general election held since its reconstitution after the
war and I have had the privilege of having been unanimously
elected by all the Councillors irrespective of party as its Mayor
at sixteen annual elections, the last one having been held in
January of this year. I continue as leader of the party to which
I have referred and of which I was one of its founders during the
war years with the aim of achieving self-government for the
people of Gibraltar. I am sorry if I have appeared immodest in
describing the above. This was not my intention, but I must
establish my credentials to speak on behalf of the people of
Gibraltar.
My colleague is Mr. Peter Isola, a member of the Gibraltar Bar,
like myself, but much younger and indeed a product of the post-
war men in public life in our city. He is an elected member of
the Gibraltar Legislative Council, a member of the Executive
Council and the member associated with education. For all intent
and purposes, he is actually the Minister for Education, though
not yet so-called. Mr Isola does not belong to my party, he is
an Independent. In fact in local politics in Gibraltar he is my
most bitter and able opponent. His views and those of my party
on certain aspects of internal Government are opposed but on the
question of Gibraltar's future we are not only not opposed but we
are entirely of the same mind and so is every other elected
representative and indeed the whole population of Gibraltar. I
shall have more to say on this matter later on. Mr Isola was
unanimously chosen by all our colleagues to come with me in order
to make a delegation as widely representative as the
circumstances and the time available permitted. Both Mr Isola's
family and my own have been established in Gibraltar for well
over 200 years.
Spain has asked on many occasions that Gibraltar should be
returned to it. Now the Spanish representative seeks to achieve
this object under the guise of a passionate abhorrence of
colonialism. We do not question Spain's dislike of colonialism,
but we do most emphatically maintain that its application to
Gibraltar is completely irrelevant.
What is meant by colonialism? The word has a number of unsavoury
connotations. It implies, surely, the subjugation of a people by
an external and foreign power; the exploitation of the resources
of the colony and of the labour of the people for the benefit of
the colonial Power; the oppression of the people, economically,
by not allowing them the opportunities of a high standard of
living; socially, by refusing them opportunities for education
and by distinctions of class, if not of race; morally, by not
recognizing and respecting their worth as human beings; legally,
by not granting them redress before the law and the fullest
possible opportunities for seeking and attaining justice; and,
perhaps most important of all, politically, by not allowing them
the expression of their wishes as to the way in which they should
be governed and preventing them from putting their wishes into
effect.
To what extent are these qualifications for colonialism met in
the case of Gibraltar? Gibraltar is a very small place and,
understandably, the conditions of life there may not be very well
known by the busy world outside, but it is not difficult to
demonstrate - and to substantiate by every possible proof - that
not one of the qualifications for colonialism is to be found in
Gibraltar and that the case presented by the Spanish
representative, in so far as it rests on this argument - and it
does so to a very substantial extent - falls to the ground
accordingly, based as it is on false premises, not on a desire to
liberate or emancipate an oppressed people but on a centuries-old
obsession to alter a historical fact.
Nothing could be further from the truth than to suggest that the
people of Gibraltar are subjugated or exploited by a Foreign
Power. The people of Gibraltar are descended from persons who
came to Gibraltar after it had been conquered. They came to
Gibraltar and they settled there in the full knowledge that
Gibraltar was a fortress and that the conditions of their lives
would be subject to the overriding demands of the fulfilment of
Gibraltar's role as a base of war. It is no secret that the
modern conditions the value of Gibraltar as a fortress has
declined from what it used to be. It may have been an accident
of history that when this decline began, something else - the
liberalization of colonial rule in the world at large - was
gathering momentum. Be that as it may, the last forty years, and
particularly the last twenty years, have seen changes in the
whole way of life of Gibraltar which are entirely consonant with
the gradual growth of Gibraltar as a political entity in
proportion to its declining value or use as a fortress. In the
light of the modern, enlightened concept of human rights, it may
be argued that it was wrong that the democratic liberties of
Gibraltarians should in the past been subordinated to the purely
functional uses of war, defence or commercial strategy. The fact
remains that our concern today is not with the past but with the
present, not with Gibraltar as a military colony in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but with Gibraltar as
an enlightened, emancipated community in the 1960's, with a mind
of its own and, surely, within the spirit of the Charter of the
United Nations, the right to determine its own future.
Let us take the next qualification for colonialism: the
exploitation of the resources of the colony and of the labour of
the people for the benefit of the colonial Power. Great Britain
does not derive any revenue from Gibraltar nor from the labour of
the Gibraltarians. On the contrary, the people of Gibraltar
derive benefit from the presence of the armed forces of Great
Britain, from the commercial turnover which this represents, from
the opportunities for employment which are made available, from
the grants under the Colonial Development and Welfare Acts, and
from the whole background of administrative expertise, judicial
independence and responsible legislature which characterize a
system of government at its best.
What shall we say about the economic oppression of the people?
Prosperity is enjoyed by all sections of the community, which
will not be satisfied except with the highest standards of food,
housing and material prosperity generally.
In the educational sphere, the number of young men and women from
Gibraltar who proceed from school to university, teacher-training
colleges and technological studies is very great pro rata. How
does this compare with other colonial territories where
oppression and exploitation are being, or have been maintained
and where over-all progress has been retarded by depriving the
peoples of those territories of even the most elementary
opportunities for educational advancement, with all that this
implies in the economic, social and political fields?
There are no distinctions of class, race or religion in
Gibraltar. In such a tightly-knit community, with over 12,500
persons to the square mile, such distinctions would be as absurd
in practice as they are detestable in principle.
The "Englishman" does not lord it over the Gibraltarian. We live
in mutual respect; so too does Catholic with Jew, Jew with
Protestant, Protestant with Catholic, Catholic with Hindu, Hindu
with non-conformist or agnostic.
The moral aspect of Gibraltar's social condition is, of course,
intimately connected with the whole question of class, racial or
religious distinction. It is in this sphere that, with all the
modesty of which I am capable, I can claim - and challenge anyone
to disprove it - that Gibraltar has achieved one of the very
first objects of the Charter of the United Nations: its faith in
fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human
person and in the equal rights of men and women. This, to my
mind, and to the minds of all those who have any knowledge of
Gibraltar, is so self-evident that a proposition that I am sure I
do not need to labour the point.
The legal and judicial system of Gibraltar is based entirely on
that of Great Britain. Justice is meted out to everybody,
irrespective of class, creed or race and without fear or favour.
There is a wholesome respect in Gibraltar for the impartiality of
our courts. In my twenty-five years as a practising lawyer I
have not had experience of a miscarriage of justice.
Lastly, we come to the political aspect, which, in the context of
this discussion, is perhaps the most important question of all if
only because politics cover practically every field of human
activity. You will, I am sure, bear with me if, in order to
drive home to the utmost the actual facts of the situation as it
exists at present, I remind you of sub-paragraph (b) of Article
73, Chapter XI of the Charter entitled "declaration Regarding
Non-Self-Governing Territories". The relevant part of Article 73
reads as follows:
"Members of the United Nations....accept as a sacred trust the
obligation to promote to the utmost....the well-being of the
inhabitants of these territories, and, to this end:
In the governmental sphere, there is a Legislative Council, an
Executive Council and a Council of Members. The Legislative
Council has a popular elected majority. Its decisions are
subject to the reserved powers of the Governor, who may refuse to
assent to the enactment of legislation passed by the Council. In
fact, and to illustrate my point about the extent of power
wielded by the elected members beyond those set forth in the
constitutional instruments, the Governor's reserved powers have
been exercised on only one occasion since the establishment of
the Legislature thirteen years ago. The use of these powers was
followed immediately by the resignation of all the elected
members, an emergency visit to Gibraltar by the Secretary of
State for the Colonics himself, and the evolution of a compromise
solution which took into account the wishes of the elected
members, who then stood for election once again and were returned
to power unopposed.
In 1956, a scheme was instituted for the association of members
of the Legislature with government departments. This scheme has
worked so satisfactorily that there can be no doubt that the
appointment of members as fully responsible ministers will not be
long delayed. My party put in a claim to this effect on 20
August this year and I am confident that the constitution will be
changed in this respect in time for the general elections due in
1964. The scheme ensures that heads of government departments -
who are, of course, responsible to Her Majesty's Government's
representative in Gibraltar - do not take any policy decisions
without consulting the member associated with the department.
General matters of policy, not directly related to any particular
department, are made the subject of consultation with the Chief
Member.
The Executive Council sits under the chairmanship of the Governor
and consists of equal numbers of official and elected members.
By the constitutional instruments the Governor is entitled to
disregard the advice tendered to him by the Council. In my
recollection this has happened only once - and I refer to the
occasion which I have already mentioned when the elected members
resigned and thereby gained their objective. In practice the
Governor acts on the advice of the elected representatives of the
people.
Some eighteen months ago, as a further step in constitutional
development, approval was given to the formation of a Council of
Members. This body consists of the elected members in the
Executive Council under the chairmanship of the Chief Member and
its functions are to consider in detail items put before the
Executive Council, the implications of which are wholly or mainly
domestic - that is, not concerned with such matters as defence
and external affairs - and should be considered in a forum
consisting exclusively of locally elected representatives who are
in a position, moreover, to call upon any member of the
administration to appear before them. Again, this innovation has
been extremely successful and there are now at least three
meetings of the Council of Members to every meeting of the
Executive Council. The conclusions arrived at by the Council of
Members are subject to the endorsement of the Executive Council
but no case has yet arisen of the recommendations of the former
being negatived by the latter. Moreover, it has already been
granted that an additional elected member shall be appointed to
Executive Council after the next general elections, thereby also
broadening the representation in the Council of Members.
Further, in the claim for further constitutional development
which I have already mentioned, there is a demand for the
creation of a Council of Ministers which will give formal
sanction to the practice actually being followed now.
It must, I think, be evident to all you gentlemen that although
Gibraltar is still, formally, a "Crown Colony", in spite of the
fact that the word "colony" and its cognate expressions have been
expunged from all local institutions, nothing could be further
away from the generally accepted interpretation of "colonialism"
than the situation in present-day Gibraltar.
We have such control of our affairs that no one other than
persons who belong to Gibraltar, by having been born there and by
having parents belonging to the place, can live there as of right
and without licence. Even United Kingdom nationals require such
licence there, and in the case of those who have official
functions to perform the nature of the exemptions are contained
in legislation over which we have full control.
I have gone into this matter in some detail, because, with the
greatest respect to the Spanish representative, it is my view
that an attempt has been made to mislead the Committee by the
application to Gibraltar of the word "colonialism", a word that
in many instances in the past and, regrettably, in some instances
in the present, bears a well-deserved stigma, but a word which
cannot conceivably be applied to Gibraltar except in so far as
Gibraltar, by an archaic relic of terminology, is still
designated a Crown Colony.
Do not let us delude ourselves. We all of us know the true
reasons why Spain has raised this matter in this Committee. And
I, my colleagues, and the people of Gibraltar, knowing the
Spanish character as we do and the Spaniard's regard, above all
else, for his honour, not only understand his attitude towards
Gibraltar also have a high regard for their honour. The land in
which they live is their birthplace and was the birthplace of
their forebears - for no less than 250 years.
There is no place for such notions of honour in a utilitarian,
entirely materialistic world. But neither the Spaniard, nor the
Gibraltarian, nor any other person who has a sense of nationalism
consonant with international obligations and duties will regard
his birthplace in so cynical a fashion. A man has an indefinable
pull towards the land in which he was born. He wants to continue
living in this land and he wants to decide for himself how he
shall live there. The people of Gibraltar want to continue
living in Gibraltar; they have decided how they want to live
there; their objective has now been all but fulfilled, as is
shown by the fact that my colleague and I are here to speak on
this subject for ourselves. Our position before this Committee
and before the world is a simple one and one which all members of
the United Nations are in conscience bound to uphold. We ask for
nothing except to be allowed to live our lives the way we want to
live them without interference from outside, in friendliness with
all peoples and in cooperation with our immediate neighbours for
what, I assure you, can only be our mutual good, socially,
culturally, economically, and in every other way. We are a
community of only 25,000 persons, but we believe that the
humanitarian ideas of this modern world, as enshrined in the
United Nations Charter, have as much regard to the wishes and
aspirations of small communities as they have to those containing
millions.
I have every confidence that in acknowledging the justice of our
position and endorsing our attitude this Committee will also
support our view that the imposition by Spain of restrictions
against Gibraltar, designed to destroy its well-being and
undermine its prosperity, are as directly contrary to the spirit
of the United Nations Charter is would be an act of open
aggression.
Other arguments, besides the latest one of colonialism, have been
adduced in the past by the Spaniards in support of their claim to
Gibraltar. There are answers to those arguments and we are not
afraid of taking issue on them. We submit, however, that the
prime concern of this Committee is to ascertain whether
colonialism is in fact being practised in Gibraltar and, if not,
then to agree that, in the spirit and the letter of the United
Nations Charter, the people of Gibraltar are entitled without any
unwanted external influence to decide how they wish to shape
their own future.
Even if, as the representative of Syria has said, Gibraltar
should be dealt with as a colonial area within the terms of
reference of this Committee, we say that the main concern of the
Committee must be the right of self-determination of the people
in accordance with paragraph 5 of resolution 1514 (XV), on which
we should like to lay great stress and to which the
representative of Denmark has referred in his short but pertinent
intervention. In any case, I am very happy to see that the
representative of Syria, in placing the order in which the
interests of the interests of the three parties concerned should
be taken, has put first those of the people of Gibraltar, and I
am indeed grateful to him for doing so.
What, then, are the wishes of the people of Gibraltar? The
United Nations, working through this Committee of Twenty-four is
anxious to ensure that all Non-Self-Governing Territories reach a
full measure of self-government. As you are all aware, Principle
VI of the Annex to resolution 1514 (XV) defines three forms of
what can constitute a "full measure of self-government".
Principle 6 says:
"A non-self-govering territory can be said to have reached a
full measure of self-government by:
There are also practical reasons which make the third possibility
of full self-government envisaged by the United Nations - that
is, integration with an independent State - extremely difficult
to implement. The conditions of life in Gibraltar are different,
in a number of ways, from those in Britain, economically,
culturally, and climatically. Geographical reasons, too, would
make it very difficult.
But, apart from the practical reasons, there are also political
reasons. How could the wishes of the people of Gibraltar, who as
I say, are in a number of ways different from the people of
Britain, be implemented in Gibraltar if Gibraltar were integrated
with Britain or with any other State?
At most, Gibraltar would be represented in the British Parliament
by one member - one among over 600 members. Gibraltar would not
be integrated; it would be swallowed up. It would not have
achieved self-government; it would have developed from a state of
colonialism to a state where it would lose its individuality, its
very self. Gibraltar cannot emerge as an independent State; it
cannot and will not be integrated with another independent State.
The third possibility envisaged by the United Nation is "free
association with an independent State". It is this that the
people of Gibraltar aspire to, and it can surely be the people of
the Gibraltar alone who can decide with which independent State
they wish to be freely associated. Any other way of association
would not be a free association. It would be a continuation of
the system of colonialism, or, even worse, an annexation of
territory against the wishes of its inhabitants.
With whom, then, does Gibraltar wish to be freely associated?
For the reasons which I have already outlined in the earlier
parts of my statement, Gibraltar wishes to be associated with
Britain. This is the free choice of the people of Gibraltar, and
I, their spokesman before this Committee, am entitled and
empowered to say so with the full backing of the whole of
Gibraltar. It would be foolish to pretend that every country in
this world, that every member of this Committee, agrees with the
British way of life or with British institutions. The point is
that the people of Gibraltar, of their own free will, have chosen
this association and no other. We are not asking you to agree
with the British way of life, or even with the Gibraltar version
of this way of life. We are asking only that our rights to
choose our own way of life should not be impaired in any way.
And believe me when I tell you that, small though Gibraltar is,
there is a distinct Gibraltarian way of life. No community can
exist for over 250 years without creating its own individuality,
its character, its personality.
Gibraltar has achieved its own culture in the widest sense of
that word. It has drawn for this culture from many sources, but
naturally the two main sources have been Britain, for political,
and Spain, for geographical reasons, and Italy where the bulk of
the civilian population originated.
We are not afraid to say that we have drawn something from Spain.
It is precisely because our culture is eclectic that it has
become individual, and it is precisely because it is individual
that we do not desire to allow Gibraltar to be swallowed up by
Spain, Britain, or anybody else.
Let me make it quite clear that we do not want to be under
Britain; we want to be with Britain. The people of Gibraltar, as
citizens of what until recently was primarily fortress, have
suffered as a result of that status. I referred before the
accident of history that combined the changing role of Gibraltar
with the new breath of liberalism and liberty for the people of
colonies throughout the world. But if these had not coincided in
time, then the movement of liberalism, by itself, would have been
enough - although the struggle might have been harder. I can
tell you, as the leader of my political party - whose title is
the Association for the Advancement of Civil Rights - that there
has been a struggle. There has been a struggle for twenty years,
and although it still continues, it is nearly over.
At this very moment the people of Gibraltar, all 25,000 of them,
are waiting with anxiety to see what conclusions this Assembly
will reach and how its members will react to our pleas. I have
no doubt that the utter sincerity, the wholehearted unanimity and
the severe anxiety of the people of Gibraltar at this crisis,
this climax, of their political development, will find an echo
and a response in the hearts as well as in the minds if the
delegations of this Committee, whatever international political
allegiances, affiliations of sympathies they may have.
We have nothing but a desire to be true friends of our
neighbours, as we have been for well over two centuries, and to
live in peace and amity with them. We fully appreciate their
strong feelings in this matter in attempting to recover
peacefully what by conquest they gained and by conquest they
lost.
We, the people of Gibraltar, who had nothing to do with these war
conflicts of the past, should not be made to give up what we hold
most dear in order to reverse an accident of history.
Spain is a big country with a wonderful history of achievements
and with a sense of honour and dignity which we and all the world
admire.
We feel sure that this grandeur will not in any way suffer if we,
the people of Gibraltar, continue in our own way of life, which
we cherish and which we fervently desire to preserve.
I stated in my original telegram to the Secretary-General that we
wished for the continuation and development of the closest links
with Britain, not only because of our centuries-old association
with the mother country and of our traditional adherence to the
British way of life, but also as a safeguard for the large
measure of democratic control of our domestic affairs which, as I
have already described, we have achieved and which, we are
confident, will be increased.
The Committee of Twenty-four, representing as it does the big and
the small nations, will strengthen their prestige as upholders of
the rights of colonial peoples by reaffirming the principle of
self-determination, thereby allowing us to continue the way of
life which we have freely chosen for ourselves.
Many thanks, Mr Chairman, for your patience and forbearance and
for the patience and forbearance with which all the members of
the Committee have listened to me.
Ref: United Nations, Doc. A/AC.109/PV.214.
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