Empire remnants a burden not an asset

By Ian Black

Hong Kong returned to China, but a fistful of islands and territories, 13 in all, still fly the British flag. Some live well from offshore financial services or the narcotics trade. Others have precarious economies and worry about dwindling aid programs. Three are uninhabited; all the others have tiny populations fiercely loyal to Queen Elizabeth II.

LONDON: Even after Hong Kong reverted to China, the sun will not quite set on the British empire: from Pitcairn Island in the Pacific to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, the world is still spanned by possessions which lie under the Union flag -- and which lay their problems at London's door.

Political correctness took over long ago: as early as the 1950s British governments frowned on the use of the word "colony". They opted instead for "Dependent Territory", an unlovely but precise description of the 13 outposts that make up what looks like being the permanent empire.

Left over after decolonization, Dependent Territories -- the official shorthand is the even less attractive: "DTs" -- are unlikely to seek independence, because they are either too small or too poor to stand alone.

Bankers in the British Virgin Islands and fishermen on Tristan da Cunha look to the British Foreign Office to solve their very different problems. And in London the Dependent Territories Association (DTA) hopes to use the Hong Kong handover to concentrate minds on these last pink bits.

"Once numbers decrease after Hong Kong goes, the problem may become more soluble in terms of the British Government's point of view," said Tom Russell of the Cayman Islands government, current chairman of the DTA.

Yet the signs are that the 180,000 people left in the DTs face an uphill battle to win hearts or minds in London.

"There are unlikely to be any fundamental changes in the relationship between the United Kingdom and the dependent territories for some time to come," Baroness Symons, the Foreign Office under-secretary, said this month.

Crucially, this includes the emotive citizenship question, under which all DTs apart from the Falklands and Gibraltar -- both white and claimed by foreigners -- have only British Dependent Territory status. Under the 1981 Nationality Act, their people have no right to live and work in Britain.

Foreign Office officials hint privately that an exception is likely to be made for the uniquely isolated 5,500 "Saints" of St Helena. And efforts are also being made to allow residents of DTs visa-free access to the European Union, though many, especially in the Caribbean, care more about securing Green Cards to the United States.

DT representatives say they were long led to believe that the citizenship situation could change once Hong Kong had gone. But the Government insists it will not.

British aid is unlikely to grow any more generous. Last month a report by the National Audit Office (a watchdog over public spending) highlighted the need to further reduce liabilities, citing problems ranging from Gibraltar pensions through Caribbean corruption, drugs trafficking and money-laundering to St Helena's alarming lack of insurance cover.

Such exposure can be reduced, but not eliminated, since no DT currently considers independence an option. When the Bahamas chose nationhood a lot of its offshore business went to the British Caymans, which now has 300 banks. Bermuda learned the lesson and kept such relics as the plumed hats worn by Governors and the holiday to mark the Queen's birthday.

Against a background of charges ranging from prejudice to parsimony, there is talk in the DTs of the need for a new attitude by Britain, whether in the appointment of governors who are more familiar with the region, or more self-government, or simply greater policy cohesion.

Strikingly, the British Foreign Office has no single department, official or minister in overall charge of all 13 territories. Citizenship and nationality issues are the province of the Home Office (Ministry of the Interior).

"The British government should be more aware of its overall responsibility for the DTs," argues Bill Samuel, the British representative of the Turks and Caicos islands.

"The attitude at the moment is that they are a nuisance left over from the colonial period. We will drip feed them enough aid to keep them ticking over, but there is no coherent strategy to help them develop. The British Government's attitude is 'Oh God, not the Turks and Caicos again. Send them another million and keep them happy'."

Co-ordination between DTs is difficult because of their sheer variety. Wealthy Bermuda, with a per capita GDP of pounds 19,375 (US$31,000), has very little in common with Montserrat, sitting on a rumbling volcano and earning a paltry pounds 3,500 ($5,250). Yet, insists Suki Cameron of the Falklands government, there is a new sense of solidarity in the DTA, and optimism that the British position could yet change.

Three uninhabited DTs carry echoes of great past endeavor. The British Antarctic Territory, extending to the South Pole, is covered by ice and supports 70 resident scientists. The South Sandwich Islands and South Georgia, briefly occupied by the Argentines in 1982, are also uninhabited.

British Indian Ocean Territory -- the Chagos Archipelago -- contains the joint British-United States naval base on Diego Garcia, a very live relic of cold war strategic co-operation and handy for long- range bombing during the Gulf war. Its native Ilois people were forcibly resettled in the 1960s.

Pitcairn, most remote of all, is a tiny footnote to an age that has passed. Midway between Panama and New Zealand, it is Britain's last Pacific territory. Settled by nine of the Bounty mutineers in 1790, its population is just 55, each islander receiving pounds 3,700 ($5,920) in annual aid. Its financial reserves -- a trust fund of pounds 1 million ($1.6 million) -- are being eroded by a mounting annual deficit.

This then is what remains, on the cusp of the millennium, of a once mighty empire, far more of a burden than an asset. It is, says one scholar, as if the whole imperial experience was no more than a historical blip, as Britain today finds itself ruling a fistful of islands, similar to that it began with three centuries ago.

And now, in the words of a former colonial governor, "Britain will have to fight very hard for independence from its dependent territories."

-- The Guardian