The Rock of Gibraltar rises out of the sea at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsular to command one side of the Straits of Gibraltar, which link the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. It is linked to the Spanish mainland by a narrow isthmus. The Rock was one of the two Pillars of Hercules – the other being a mountain across the Straits in Morocco. Throughout all periods of history and by virtue of its strategic location and physical characteristics, Gibraltar has played a prominent role in the commercial, political and military affairs of the region. The present time is no exception.

It is not a large place. Gibraltar has an area of 6½ square Kms. It is roughly 6 ½ Kms long and just under 1 Km wide. The Rock is around 450 metres high at its highest point. But it is home to 30,000 Gibraltarians and other citizens.

The People of Gibraltar

So who are the people of Gibraltar? Our origins as a people is a mixture of various Mediterranean and British stock, but mainly Mediterranean, from Italy, Malta, Spain and North Africa and elsewhere in the Mediterranean basin. This ethnic cocktail, so common to the historical and current make up of many of today`s independent ex-colonies, has contributed a wonderful diversity of cultural influences from many countries that have, long ago over the decades, and since 1704, fused a cohesive and extraordinarily resourceful people, small in number, but immensely rich in heritage and culture. Gibraltarians are renowned for their entrepreneurial flair and for the religious, social and racial harmony that characterises its society. Our identity is distinct, separate and unique. We are not Spanish and we are not Anglo Saxon. As a people the only way in which we can be accurately described is therefore as "Gibraltarians".

Taking just the last 1300 or so years of Gibraltar`s history, since the year 711, Gibraltar has been Moorish for 751 of these 1300 years (711 – 1462), Spanish for just 242 years (1462 – 1704) and British for 297 years (since its military conquest in 1704 to the present time).

Gibraltar was taken by a joint Anglo-Dutch force in 1704 during the War of the Spanish Succession and has been British continuously ever since, having been ceded to Britain in perpetuity by the Peace Treaty at the end of that war, the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713.

Constitution

Gibraltar is one of the remaining 13 United Kingdom Overseas Territories (previously called Dependent Territories and before that, colonies). We therefore enjoy British Sovereignty and a Constitution which is a legislative Act of the Privy Council in the UK. That Constitution, which now dates back to 1969, creates in Gibraltar a separate political, administrative and economic jurisdiction.

It establishes a Parliament (House of Assembly), in which we pass all our own laws, and a ministerial system of Government and Opposition. Our political system, like the UK’s, is adversarial and party based. Our Constitution gives us a very large measure of self-government. The Gibraltar Government enjoys power and responsibility for policy and administration in all areas of government, from the economy to taxation, health, education, the environment, social services and social security, trade and industry, transport etc etc. All except defence, external affairs and internal security, which remain the UK’s responsibility through the Governor. Our Constitution thus establishes a separate judiciary, police force and public service, so that, like other overseas territories, Gibraltar is a separate legal, political, administrative and judicial jurisdiction from the UK.

Gibraltar joined the EC with the UK in 1973. The Treaty of Rome contains a clause extending its provisions to "any European territory, for whose external affairs a Member State is responsible". EC Regulations therefore have direct application in Gibraltar as they do throughout the territory of the EC, and EC Directives extend to Gibraltar. Accordingly the Gibraltar Parliament has to transpose them into Gibraltar law, as do Parliaments elsewhere in the EC. Gibraltar is excluded only from the Coal & Steel Treaty, the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Customs Union.

The Economy

Economically, Gibraltar is self sufficient. We receive no budgetary or other financial aid or support from the UK, although we do receive a small but welcome allocation of EU structural funds.

The Gibraltar Government raises revenues of about £165 Million a year, and spends about £150 Million. We pay for all public services, including public administration, health, education, law and order – everything. Gibraltar`s free public services are extensive, modern and highly developed.

The economically active labour force is around 15,000. Our GDP is about £450 million. The private sector is based principally on financial services , tourism, and port activities.

We operate a successful and growing international financial services centre. Because we are part of the EU, our finance centre is required to comply with all EU financial services directives and regulations. Indeed we are required to match the UK’s own standards of regulation and supervision. Accordingly our finance centre is probably the world`s best regulated and supervised offshore finance centre.

Our port is the Mediterranean’s biggest ship bunker supplier and it also operates a successful and strategically located ship repair and conversion facility. In tourism we receive nearly 7 million visitors a year and Gibraltar is one of the Mediterranean’s favourite cruise ship ports of call. In addition we are increasingly attracting new industries, especially in the field of Internet and international telecoms based activities and international communicate satellite handling facilities.

Into our 6½ square Kms, we cram all our housing, schools, hospitals, public buildings, roads, electricity generating stations, water desalination plants, refuse incineration plants and all the infrastructure of this small but self sufficient community.

The result is a small but vibrant, economically, politically and socially advanced modern European society. This is naturally matched by the aspiration of its people for further political evolution and advancement and maximum self government and to be masters of our own destiny – like all other colonial peoples before us.

It is against this background and in this context that we encounter the enduring claim by our neighbour, Spain, to obtain the sovereignty of Gibraltar. And that is the crux of the so-called "Gibraltar issue" – for our aspiration as a people to be masters of our own destiny and to decide our own future in accordance with our inalienable right (enjoyed by all colonial peoples) to self determination is not compatible with Spain`s claim and aspiration to obtain the sovereignty of Gibraltar, regardless of our wishes.

The view of the people of Gibraltar (as you would expect in a modern, self respecting, European democracy) is that, like all colonial peoples in the past, we have an inalienable right to self determination, that is, to decide our own political future in our homeland, free of external political interference and harassment. An entirely uncontroversial proposition, you would think in the democratic family of the European Union of the third millennium. Not a bit of it!

Spain vigorously challenges every aspect and tenet of our aspirations. To her Gibraltar is no more than a piece of Spanish territory occupied (some of it illegally, she claims) by the UK; a territory in which we, the people of Gibraltar, have no political rights as a people and certainly not the right to have our wishes respected, still less to enjoy the right to self determination.

For this extraordinary, undemocratic and anachronistic proposition Spain relies on the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713! In one of the Articles of that Treaty, Spain (having lost Gibraltar militarily 9 years earlier in 1704) ceded the sovereignty of Gibraltar to Britain in perpetuity. That clause added that if Britain ever wanted to alienate the sovereignty of Gibraltar, Spain would have the right of first refusal. This, Spain claims, effectively operates to deny the people of Gibraltar the right to self determination or any other right even to have our wishes respected because she believes that any exercise of the right to self determination would result in alienation of British sovereignty and thus trigger her right of first refusal. Spain resents even the self government that the people of Gibraltar enjoy and systematically seeks to undermine our constitutional institutions and authorities. She believes that all measure of self government is similarly a derogation from British Sovereignty and therefore infringes upon her alleged right of first refusal. For good measure she adds that, in any case, we are not a real colonial people worthy of the name or the right to self determination – but rather that we are an artificial concoction - a parachuted population – not a colonial people, but descendants of the British colonists.

These Spanish arguments are not difficult to rebut. The notion that Gibraltarians do not enjoy the right to self determination because we are not indigenous to the territory is historically, legally and politically disingenuous and untenable. There is no doctrine of international law that the right of self determination only enures to the benefit of people who are indigenous to the land. How could there be? Just consider the history of global decolonisation? Who exercised self determination in Australia, New Zealand or Canada? It certainly wasn’t the aborigines, the Maori or the North American Indians. Who exercised the right to self determination in every single Caribbean country, if not liberated Afro-American black slaves? None of them were indigenous to their territories.

Gibraltar ceased to be Spanish in 1704 – that is 297 years ago! Let’s put that into perspective. That’s longer than the USA of America has existed even to-day, let alone at the time of the Boston tea-party! And whatever costumes those who threw the bales of tea into Boston harbour may have been wearing – does anyone think that the right to self determination in the American colonies was exercised by the indigenous Indians? Or was it exercised by the colonists and their descendants and other immigrants to the colonies and their descendants? And, for that matter, who exercised the right to self determination in Spain’s southern and Central American colonies if not Spanish colonists and their descendants? They were no more indigenous to those lands than the people of Gibraltar to the Rock of Gibraltar

What about Spain`s argument that her right of first refusal under the Treaty of Utrecht operates to deny us the right to self determination? Even if the Treaty of Utrecht were still valid, it is of course incongruous that a European democracy within the EU should seek to rely on a strained interpretation of a 300 years old treaty to deny 30,000 citizens of another European democracy within the EU their modern, basic, political rights. But the reality is that Spain herself has, by her actions, repeatedly renounced this Treaty -–even if it were to mean what she claims. The ink was not yet dry on that Treaty when Spain launched the first of her many attempts to militarily retake Gibraltar. Indeed, she spent the next 100 years doing so – laying military siege after military siege – despite the Treaty of Utrecht in which she ceded sovereignty to Britain in perpetuity! And despite that Treaty cession in perpetuity Spain continues even now to claim the sovereignty of Gibraltar. How can Spain rely on a Treaty which she herself has renounced? Is the only remaining valid clause in the Treaty to be the two lines which she relies on to deny us self determination? By the way, the same clause says that Jews and Muslims may not live in Gibraltar. Obviously this clause, like everything else in the Treaty, is now ignored. But are we to perpetrate that breach of human rights because a 300 year old Treaty says so?

And even if all these things were not persuasive in our favour, it is trite international law (and indeed specifically stated in the Charter of the UN) that the provisions of the UN Charter is primary international law and that if the provisions of any other bilateral (or even multilateral) Treaty is inconsistent with it – then the provisions of the UN Charter prevail. The charter of UN enshrines the right to self determination for all colonial peoples without exception. Indeed, Gibraltar is listed by the UN on its list of colonies (or non self governing territories, as the UN calls them). So that, even if (which is far from true) Spain`s (and partly UK`s) position as to the effect of Utrecht on our right to self determination were correct on a proper interpretation of that Treaty – it would be overriden by the provisions of the UN Charter.

The British Government, for its part has given the people of Gibraltar a solemn commitment and assurance that there will be no change in sovereignty contrary to the wishes of the people of Gibraltar. That is very welcome indeed. But on the issue of our right to self determination the British Government`s position is only a little more enlightened than Spain`s. Britain maintains that the people of Gibraltar do enjoy the right to self determination, but that it is "curtailed" by the Treaty of Utrecht i.e. cannot be exercised in breach of Spain’s "right of first refusal clause" under Utrecht. When asked what this allows in practice it appears to mean the maintenance of the status quo or a deal with Spain – but not apparently decolonisation.

We reject the British Government`s position as well, since it is demonstrably based not on principle but on political expediency, given that it has undergone a full U-turn as its relationship with democratic Spain came to require. In the 1960s the British Government argued passionately before the UN that the Treaty of Utrecht was irrelevant to the Gibraltarian’s right to self determination. In September 1964 the British Ambassador told the United Nations:

"First, I wish to say that my Government does not accept the interpretation of the Treaty of Utrecht presented by my Spanish colleague, nor does it accept that Spain has any right to be consulted on changes in the constitutional status of Gibraltar and its relationship with Britain. My Government is satisfied that the grant of Gibraltar to Britain under the Treaty, and as subsequently reaffirmed, was absolute and without any bar to constitutional changes in Gibraltar and the acquisition by its inhabitants of "a full measure of self-government" as the Charter requires".

The distinguished Representative of the United Kingdom went further on to add:

"My Spanish colleague has argued that the principle of self-determination cannot apply to the people of Gibraltar. He has not made it clear why that should be so. This Committee would not, I am sure, accept the implied suggestion in the statement by the Representative of Spain that the population of Gibraltar is too small to enjoy self-determination. It has repeatedly been said in this Committee and its organs that the size of a population is irrelevant to the applicability of the Charter and of Resolution 1514(XV)".

The fact that Spain subsequently became a democracy, NATO ally and EC member – does not alter either international law, or the rights of the people of Gibraltar under it. Principles are one thing and diplomatic expediency quite another thing. The correct position is therefore the one that Britain defended in the 1960s when it was motivated only by principle – and not the modifications that she has subsequently adopted in response to political and diplomatic expedience.

We believe that the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713 is entirely irrelevant to our modern day political rights. But, as others appear to disagree, the crux to the whole question is this? Is the Treaty of Utrecht still valid? If it is, what is its proper interpretation? Properly interpreted, what effect does it have on the right to self determination of the people of Gibraltar?

We have confidence in the merits and correctness of our case and arguments on these questions. We have therefore suggested to the UK and Spain to allow the three parties’ respective positions on these questions to be adjudicated on by the International Court of Justice. We say, let the International Court of Justice express a view about whether the people of Gibraltar enjoy the right to self determination; let the International Court of Justice decide whether this nearly 300 years old Treaty (Utrecht) is capable of denying or curtailing those rights. Spain of course, does not agree (as she must) to the referral to the International Court of Justice. Nor does the Uk Government appear to be willing to make such a referral to the International Court of Justice.

I must let you be the judges of why they should not want the matter adjudicated under applicable principles of modern international law!

The Political Prosecution of Spain`s claim

Spain prosecutes her sovereignty claim with much more political aggressiveness and doggedness than is widely known. Spain does not wish to recognise our constitution, our self government or our institutions. She systematically seeks to prevent Gibraltar`s participation in international fora. This frequently results in Gibraltar’s EU rights and Spain’s EU obligations towards Gibraltar being ignored whilst the EU Commission "looks the other way" and HMG in the UK fails to take any effective remedial action.

And so, in flagrant breach of EU and other international treaty obligations Spain has our telephone system in a stranglehold, through her refusal to recognise our IDD Code (350). This results in only 30,000 of our telephone numbers being accessible from Spain. So too, she forces her mobile telephone operators not to recognise Gibraltar mobile phones, so that our mobile phones do not work in Spain; nor does she permit air or ferry services between Gibraltar and Spain. Only last week I was on my way back to Gibraltar on the British Airways flight from Heathrow. Bad weather set in over Gibraltar unexpectedly. The plane could not land at Gibraltar. The flight was not allowed to divert to neighbouring Malaga Airport – because it started life as a Gibraltar-bound flight. We had to land in Tangier/Morocco and then go on to Malaga! The border between Gibraltar and Spain is operated with such degree of delay as Spain whimsically and artificially decides from day to day. Sometimes it operates fluidly – sometimes its very slow – causing hours of delay to cross; Spain boycotts international sporting events in which Gibraltar participates, seeks to procure our exclusion from international sporting federations and even seeks to disrupt our international dog shows. Within the EU, Spain seeks systematically to exclude Gibraltar from measures which she believes would prejudice her sovereignty claim. Most recently she has cajoled the UK into agreeing to exclude us from the EU Single Skies measures and even from a forthcoming anti-terrorism Aviation Security Regulation!

And all these things, between European Community territories and governments! Yet no-one effectively challenges this uneuropean and defiant Spanish behaviour.

Dialogue

Despite all this we do not seek to turn our backs on a normal European neighbourly relationship with Spain. Gibraltar contributes nothing to the tension of the relationship save the mere desire not to be integrated into Spain. We do not reject, indeed we seek, dialogue with Spain to promote good relations and mutual co-operation between us. We have no difficulty with properly structured discussion of possible ways forward which might be acceptable to all sides – but especially and primarily to the people of Gibraltar in exercise of our right to self determination. But we will not trade our sovereignty, nor our right to self determination for good neighbourly relations – nor for respect for our EU rights – to both of which we are entitled in exchange for nothing, let alone our fundamental rights as a people. Nor can we agree to our rights and aspirations as a people being ridden roughshod over, simply to alleviate what has clearly become an inconvenience to Anglo/Spanish relations and to fluidity of EU business.

Is dialogue capable of providing a solution to the problem caused by Spain`s claim? We believe that it is, but Spain would first have to moderate her aspirations and accept the principle of consent, ie that the consent of the people of Gibraltar would be required to any change in that status and that, in the meantime, the people of Gibraltar enjoy rights that must be respected and that we must be allowed to develop and participate in Europe, free of restrictive measures and harassment. And she would have to do that in the knowledge that current generations of Gibraltarians would not consent to Spanish sovereignty. She has to accept that, firstly because she is herself a democracy and secondly because it is an inescapable reality she would have to accept that only the people of Gibraltar can decide its political future. That is the only way forward.

Nor does Gibraltar seek, through self determination, to sever our constitutional links with Britain still less to give up our British Sovereignty. We very much value both. And therefore, because we do not wish to give up our British Sovereignty in a sense, the argument about the meaning and validity of the Treaty of Utrecht is, in any case, academic in practice. Spain`s alleged right of first refusal is not triggered – since it is not proposed that British sovereignty should end.

But we do wish to modernise our Constitution, in order to maximise our self government and so that our constitutional relationship with the UK should be modern and non-colonial – without giving up our British Sovereignty. A Constitutional Select Committee of our House of Assembly is presently working on how that might be achieved.

The people of Gibraltar are united and determined that we will not yield to pressure or threats. We will not be cajoled out of our right to self determination, and we will not be "nudged" towards Spanish sovereignty by being denied all other options, including the status quo.

Any objective analysis of these issues in accordance with modern, democratic political and human rights principles leads to only one conclusion. Is it nevertheless to be denied to us because we are small, or because of our geographic location, or because of the political expediency of Anglo/Spanish relation or because Spain makes the Gibraltar issue problematic to the smooth running of EU business? Can Spain reasonably expect to restore the map of the world to what it was in 1704! What would happen if others tried to do the same? Can any of these things prevail over the fundamental political rights of a people under democratic principles, human rights principles, the UN Charter and other principles of modern international law that have developed since 1704? The answer can, I would suggest, only be – No.