Britain’s Overseas Territories - Anomalous Colonial Remnants or Self-determination Case Studies?

Matthew Collyer

The Second World War sounded the death knell for the European colonial empires. Vast and complex systems of political relations combining territorial control, condominiums, informal influence, and economic hegemony collapsed or were disbanded. Colonies demanded independence and countries such as Britain, France and the Netherlands could no longer maintain such structures. The fundamental principles of decolonisation were spelt out in the 1960 UN resolution on the topic (1514 (XV)). Notably, it stated that full power should be transferred to all ‘non-self-governing territories’ in line with the principle that the ongoing ‘subjection of peoples’ represented a denial of fundamental human rights. Furthermore, to deny independence to a colony on the grounds of an inability, or lack of capacity, to govern itself was not an acceptable reason to limit the process. By the mid-1970's few colonial possessions remained, although the formal end of the British Empire is often considered to be 1997 when Hong Kong was returned to China.

However, there still remain a number of territories which do not possess full self-government, but instead depend on Britain for their defence and foreign policies. At first glance the situation of such regions would seem to be in clear violation of the UN resolution discussed above. The UN committee of decolonisation lists them as ‘non-self-governing’ territories, and they clearly do not possess the full capacities of independent states. But the situation is somewhat more complex. Included in the text of the resolution was the right to self-determination, suggesting that all people have a right to “freely determine their political status”. Most of these are small islands in the Caribbean and Atlantic, whose populations opted not to follow the path to formal independence. 

The Falkland Islands are, perhaps, the most famous example. Argentina attempted to acquire the territory during a brief war in 1982, and declares in its constitution that the Malvinas (Falklands) are an integral part of their state. But the residents of the islands have repeatedly voted to continue the current arrangements, with 99.8% voting in favour in the 2013 sovereignty referendum. Similarly, Gibraltar voted overwhelmingly in 2002 against any sharing of sovereignty with Spain. The question therefore arises, should such dependencies be granted a political status which would allow independence but which does not reflect the will of people?

An interest example of an alternative approach to the question of self-government in overseas territories is that followed by France towards its own overseas possessions. The Fifth Republic has followed a policy of integrating such dependencies into the domestic political structure of France. Notably, territories like French Guiana in South America, with a population of 250,000 people and an area the size of Austria, are formally part of France, sending representatives to the National Assembly and to the European Parliament. British territories however, have considerably smaller populations and are extensively dispersed, and there is even greater complexity related to the territories that will not be discussed here, with the expulsion of the people of the Chagos Archipelago being a particularly difficult case.

To return to the title of this piece; perhaps, in true fence-sitting style, the answer to the question is ‘yes’, and ‘perhaps’. Britain’s overseas territories are remnants of a once vast empire that hold a status unlike that of almost any other group. They are, therefore, anomalies. On the other hand, many have expressed a desire to remain in their current situation, and have resisted attempts to change their political structures, and in this regard they are examples of peoples determining their own future. This correspondent believes that those who seek greater sovereignty must be supported, but the will of those who genuinely, and democratically, do not, must be respected.

Singing for Peace in Mali

Sophie Dowle

Music has a long history in Mali, and has been a part of the fabric of its history for thousands of years. From the griots, who were historians, storytellers, poets and musicians, to the tribal festivals and gatherings, to which poetry was an essential part, music and oral tradition played an essential role in ancient Malian identity and history. 

Following colonialism, it was Mali’s musicians who carved out a more cohesive identity for the disparate communities in the new country, and brought their people together. The country’s politicians quickly realised the power of music and harnessed this for their own ends. While the idea of publicly funded pop groups sounds strange to us, they are an important part of Mali’s political history. Leaders such as Sankara, a revolutionary leader in the 1980s, used his band to entertain and spread his political messages and ideas for public health, the economy and feminism. Some of Mali’s most famous musicians, such as the Afro-pop singer Salif Keita and Amadou (of the famous duo Amadou and Mariam), got their break through politicians’ bands. Today, musicians remain respected and influential political voices. Oumou Sangaré made her name with an album that tackles issues such as FGM and women’s rights. The continued political importance of music is clear; Fatoumata Diawara, a leading musician in Mali, explained, “[the people] have lost hope in politics. But music has always brought hope in Mali. Music has always been strong and spiritual, and has had a very important role in the country, so when it comes to the current situation, people are looking up to musicians for a sense of direction."

This context makes the banning of music by the Islamist insurgents in 2013 even more tragic. When these al-Qa’eda-linked militias, many of whom were foreign soldiers, captured the vast northern desert area, they implemented strict laws, banning (among many other things) football, music and dancing. They not only banned music, but also collected instruments and burnt them, posting pictures and videos of this online. As Baba Salah, one of northern Mali’s most popular musicians said, "In northern Mali, music is like oxygen. Now, we cannot breathe." The violence meant that many musicians in the North, such as the world-renowned, Grammy-winning group Tinariwen, had to flee the country. While the insurgents were primarily in the North of the country, music in the South was also affected. Many live music venues in the capital Bamako have closed, as have hotels and restaurants, as numbers of foreign tourists dwindle.

Traditionally a very tolerant society, and a refuge for outspoken musicians, such as Senegalese reggae artist Tiken Jah Fakoly, this violence was unprecedented in Mali and had widespread effects. In a country that is poor in mineral resources, music and culture is a key part of the economy and draws in many tourists. The Islamist insurgence and instability in the North forced the renowned Festival in the Desert to go into exile from 2013. The festival, which was a key tourist attraction and thus a key economic event as well, is based on the ancient Tuareg gatherings. These gatherings have always been a part of the Tuareg's nomadic lifestyle, and were a place to share stories, race camels, and play music. In 2013 the Festival in the Desert, unable to be hosted in its homeland, toured as the Caravan of Peace. It travelled from Mauritania to Mali and onto the Tuareg refugee camps in Burkina Faso. 

This is just one example of the musicians in Mali fighting back. Following the banning of music in the Islamist controlled areas Fatoumata Diawara brought together 40 stars from all over the country to sing together in a symbol of unity, releasing a song called Mali Ko (“For Mali”). With the efforts of French and UN forces, combined with the cultural battle waged by Mali’s most prestigious musicians, the Islamists have been pushed back. The North remains hugely unstable and Islamists still have a hold in some areas, but music is slowly returning. 

In the South, the Festival of the Niger was held in 2015, and while its audience was less than a third than in 2010, it nonetheless went ahead. Alongside continuing peace talks, music is being used to bring Mali’s many ethnic groups together. A group called Malikanw (Voices of Mali) brings musicians from six different regions of the country together, promoting stability and cohesion, just as musicians did in the days following colonialism.  

Perhaps the Islamists are right to fear music's strength. But they can never contain its power in a place like Mali. As Rokia Traore, one of Mali's most famous international stars says, "without music, Mali will cease to exist." But the musicians kept singing throughout the violence of 2013 and 2014, and so Mali is now on the road to recovery. 

A Split in the Party? Contradictory reports raise questions on China's economic direction

Ed Bithell

When asked to name a country with a lively political debate in its newspapers, few would name China. And so, when even indirectly expressed, political tensions in the leadership may indicate serious fault lines.

An anonymous but "authoritative person" was interviewed on Monday in Communist Party standard bearer the People's Daily, playing down expectations of any imminent economic upswing. The source leaned heavily on "supply-side structural reform" and reduced state intervention in markets, as well as debt-led growth, rather unlike the emphasis from Premier Li Keqiang in March that failing to meet growth targets was "impossible for me to say". 

It is thus easy for the editorial to be interpreted as an attack on Li and the State Council's management of the economy, with inflationary measures in place throughout early 2016 for growth that is now flagging. However, it can also be read as instead supporting the wider message of the key reform meeting of the 3rd Plenum in 2013, with its commitment to market-driven growth. Whichever the true intent (and it may well be a combination of the two, if not more, factors), the article has widely been taken as a move by actors loyal to President Xi Jinping, who has made further moves towards greater overall control of the Party with proposals to abolish the powerful Politburo Standing Committee by 2017.

"You can’t have both 6.5 percent growth and painless reform, even in China" - Michael Every, Rabobank HK

In its phrasing, the article ties in closely to recent policy statements by Xi himself, who the same day hosted a meeting in which he emphasised again "supply-side structural reform", a policy dedicated to state-sponsored improvement of the economy through efficiency, quality and cutting excess capacity - and explicitly not neoliberal in its outlook. Last week, he outlined his vision for improving Chinese economic performance, bemoaning that "the problem in China is not about insufficient demand or lack of demand, in fact, demands in China have changed, but supplies haven’t changed accordingly". In managing private companies and state-owned enterprises to meet the new demand, says Xi, supply-side structural reform will be achieved.

However, commentators both within and without China have been questioning this official narrative, that until now has been consistent from all parties - that the economy will be both radically transformed and also continue to comfortably grow. "We have the promise of a painless reform process with no mass bankruptcies or layoffs, and without radical liberalisation of the services sector to boost growth there," said Michael Every, head of financial markets research at Rabobank Group in Hong Kong, back in March. "You can’t have both 6.5 percent growth and painless reform, even in China." It appears that despite Li's recent promises of a "win-win" growth projection, Xi is determined to make sure his reform agenda remains the top priority.

The State Council, however, issued a rebuttal the same day, asserting that growth remained stable, and Li personally hit back with a statement framing the economic future in terms of necessary evil, declaring that the reforms "must be endured for the country, for the good of the people". While these comments hardly seem to be the inflammatory rhetoric we expect of political rivals in the West, even before the most recent personal politics of the EU referendum and US presidential election, such subtle variations in official policy statements can reflect major differences in viewpoint, especially between the marked ideologue Xi and his reserved and technocratic premier. In a time marked by the anniversary of the Cultural Revolution, and state galas hailing Xi as the heir of Mao, such tensions in the Chinese leadership may merely be the beginning of major storms to come. 

What About the Children?

Nilen Patel

This is Europe’s quiet crisis. The lives of children are depicted as the most precious. They are meant to be lives to be protected and nurtured. They are supposed to be the future of our societies after all.

However, 96,500 unaccompanied children applied for asylum across Europe in 2015. Over 10,000 of these are unaccounted for or missing.

Europol, the EU law enforcement agency, believes many of these children are working as slaves, on construction sites and farm land or as sex workers. How can we let these children, the most vulnerable and valued members of society, be the ones to be let down by our European politics? In a society governed by numbers, the extent of human trafficking has long since passed the stage in Europe where it should demand attention and response.

Perhaps this is just further evidence of Europe’s ineffective strategy to cope with refugees. UNICEF found that children currently have to wait up to 11 months between registration and transfer to a country that has agreed to accept them. In Sweden up to 10 children are reported missing each week and in Slovenia more than 80 per cent of unaccompanied children went missing from reception centres. The situation is a complex and emotional one, but traffickers are taking advantage of the waves of migrants and operating across Europe due to the weakness of Europe’s child protection system.

Even on a national scale, we are far from rising to the challenge. Just last month the House of Commons defeated an amendment to an immigration bill that would have seen the UK accept 3000 child refugees. The Home Office argued that they were doing enough already to help child refugees in Syria and neighbouring countries. David Cameron maintains that we must ensure that refugees don’t have the incentive to travel across Europe. Yet the National Crime Agency identified that the number of children being trafficked in the UK increased by 46% from last year, so this is a problem that is clearly not diminishing or going to disappear.

What the Home Office failed to acknowledge is that a significant number of these refugees were under 14 years of age, and travelling alone without the protection of adult family members or guardians. As a means to pacify protestors to the UK stance, the government has agreed to fast-track child migrants who have family members in the UK as well as take in children registered in Greece, Italy or France before the refugee deal was created with Turkey. Yet is a fast-track modification of a notoriously slow process actually helpful? Furthermore, this is another act of ostracising the children who need help the most - the ones without parents or guardians. Smugglers and traffickers, meanwhile, are presenting these migrants with “solutions”, an escape route to a better life, far exceeding what the asylum jungle currently offers them.

It is this internal conflict of how to respond that is symbolic of the EU attitude towards this ever-growing crisis. Unaccompanied children just aren’t valued enough by a society hypocritically putting children in that vulnerable and important societal position.

The fact is that the conflict driving this migration isn’t disappearing, meaning it has become a question of humanity to acknowledge the situation and respond as best as possible. We need to counter the “offer” of smugglers and traffickers rather than restricting our borders. The situation they are fleeing from will always provide a greater incentive to migrate than any disincentive David Cameron could ever create.

The crisis of child refugees is a quiet one, but it shouldn’t be this way. There is an incongruence of what we as a society place value on and what our policies place value on. By reassessing what we believe is important and then crucially protecting these values, we can hope to better the situation in Europe.

Just How Special? Brexit leads to new questions on Anglo-American relations

Ed Bithell

Barack Obama is a man used to having his voice heard. 

And yet, when he came to the UK, often referred to as the US’s closest ally, to express his views on our biggest foreign policy decision in forty years (in fact, since the one we might be about to reverse), that didn’t quite happen. The irony, of course, is that it was the very Eurosceptics who tout our “special relationship” with the with the US as more important than Europe that dismissed his statement that a post-Brexit UK would be at the “back of the queue” in US trade priorities (a statement which clearly showed his pro-British sentiments with its concessions to the word “queue”, whatever Boris Johnson says). 

Suddenly, Obama was irrelevant, his views on Brexit an intrusion on our decision as a nation, despite his government’s policy being the cornerstone of Brexiteers’ trade plans. He was also accused of having bias against the UK informed by his Kenyan ancestry, an accusation that combined the unpleasant tactic of deemphasising his American nationality with a possible admission that the narrative of strong links and trust with former colonies being a somewhat rose-tinted view of the past.

But the cat was out of the bag. Despite what Boris thinks, the elected president of the United States doesn’t think that the UK is more of a priority than the EU - and even if he did, the least active Congress in the history of the United States would be unlikely to hammer out a brand new trade agreement in the foreseeable future for him anyway. On the other side of the political spectrum, Brexit has only been championed by Ted Cruz with even Donald Trump, whom even Boris Johnson found himself dismissing as talking xenophobic nonsense, declining to endorse the Leave camp. 

However, the main reason that nobody else’s views can really be examined is that Barack Obama is pretty much the only politician in the entire United States who has time to spend more than a sentence at a time discussing something other than the next presidential election. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have expressed support for the EU and Ted Cruz has attacked it, both because it stands for big government and because it was an opportunity to contradict Obama, but these are merely facets of their overall statements on US foreign policy - because that is, and will remain, their priority until November, by which time the EU question will be long decided. It is further symptomatic of Donald Trump’s general attitude to politics that he did not express a view - after all, it might find itself in conflict with a more important view that he wishes to hold later on. Presidential candidates aside, prominent members of the US Congress have uniformly declined to express any view. In fact, politicians in the US are remarkably unified in their opinion that it is the decision of the British people alone.

As a result, we see more from the response of the rest of the USA’s political heavyweights (and Ted Cruz) than we do from President Obama. It isn’t that the top flight of American politics are anti-British, or in cahoots with the Eurocrats. It’s simply that our relationship with the EU isn’t their priority. And when we notice that, perhaps we can re-evaluate our relationship with them.

Photo from the Executive Office of the President of the United States.