The Modern Political and Constitutional Development of Gibraltar, 1940 - 1988

MI E UNIIVE IRS ITV. 0 F I—I U LL_ - The Modern Political and Constitutional Development of Gibraltar, 1940 - 1988 being a Thesis submitted for the Degree of PhD in the University of Hull by Joseph John Garcia, BA October 1991 C CD NI -FE NITS PREFACE - Discussion of source material INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE - THE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS, 1940-1945 The evacuation background, 1940-1942 The origins of the AACR, 1942-1943 Repatriation - 'a matter so fraught with hysteria and heart burning', 1943-1944 Reconstitution of the City Council, 1944-1945 CHAPTER TWO - THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL, 1945-1950 British commitment to set up a legislature, 1945 The nature of the Legislative Council, 1945-1946 Composition of the Council and Proportional Representation, 1946-1948 Gibraltar before a Cabinet Committee, July-October 1948 AACR split and the Trades Tax agitation, 1949-1950 The first elections to the Legislative Council, November 1950 CHAPTER THREE - CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS AND POLITICAL GAINS, 1951-1956 The Spanish question The introduction of income tax, 1951-1952 The second Legislative Council elections, 1953 The Royal visit of 1954 The Commonwealth Party The Constitutional Crisis of 1955 Further Constitutional progress, 1956 CHAPTER FOUR - THE DEVELOPMENT OF A MINISTERIAL SYSTEM, 1957-1962 Members and not Ministers - Responsibility without power, 1957 Speaker appointed and Chief Member created, 1958-1959 A Council of Members, 1960-1962 CHAPTER FIVE - THE TROUBLES WITH SPAIN, 1963-1969 Gibraltar before the United Nations, 1963 The 1964 Constitution Integration with Britain and restrictions intensified, 1965-1966 The 1967 Referendum The 1969 Constitution CHAPTER SIX - CONSTITUTIONAL STAGNATION, 1969-1988 The rise and fall of the IWBP, 1969-1976 Diplomatic breakthrough, 1976-1980 The lifting of the restrictions, 1981-1984 The collapse of the AACR, 1984-1988 CONCLUSION BIBLIOGRAPHY REFERENCES APPENDIX 1 - Article X of the Treaty of Utrecht, 1713 APPENDIX 2 - The Lisbon Agreement, 1980 APPENDIX 3 - The Brussels Agreement, 1984 APPENDIX 4 - The Airport Agreement, 1987 APPENDIX 5 - Map of Gibraltar FP Ft FAO 'DISCUSSION OF SOURCE MATERIAL_ Serious research into any aspect of the history of Gibraltar is sadly lacking. The vacuum in historical research in Gibraltar's modern political history is even more glaring. The historian of any aspect of the Rock therefore has to rely on primary sources more than historians of other fields. There are no debates between academics on this subject,-no learned controversy over any aspect of this British Mediterranean territory. The fundamental aim of this thesis, therefore, is to fill in some measure the serious vacuum in knowledge, and hopefully to stimulate other historians of the Commonwealth to take an interest in Gibraltar. The primary sources used for this thesis outnumber the secondary works enormously, for the reasons outlined above. Dr. Howes's work 'The Gibraltarian' was first published in 1951 as a population study showing the origins and development of the people of Gibraltar since 1704. This book was the first serious academic work on an aspect of Gibraltar's political life. Howes was Director of Education for the Gibraltar government after the War, and therefore had easy access to source material. Despite the publication of a number of books and articles in the years after Howes's work, these tended to concentrate on Gibraltar's role as a fortress, or on the problems with Spain, and the political development of the Gibraltarians was almost totally ignored. Even George Hill's 'The Rock of Contention', published in 1974, which could be termed the general text book history of the Rock, was more concerned with the diplomatic wrangle between Britain and Spain than the development of the Gibraltarians themselves. In 1987 General Sir William Jackson, a former Governor of Gibraltar, published the most comprehensive general history since Hills, and stimulated Gibraltarians to involve themselves in research also. It is only comparatively recently that Gibraltarian historians have started to take an interest in their homeland. This can be seen in the publication of Charles Caruana's 'The Rock Under a Cloud' in 1989, which traces the history of the Roman Catholic Church in Gibraltar, followed by Tommy Finlayson's 'The Fortress Came First', which deals with the evacuation of the civilian population during the Second World War. Despite this renewed interest, there can be no doubt that the secondary material available on the history of Gibraltar is both scarce and too general, and that the researcher has to rely mainly on primary sources. - The primary sources which were consulted in this thesis fall broadly into two groups. In the first place are the records housed at the Public Records Office in Kew, and secondly those available in Gibraltar itself. The former comprise mainly Colonial Office and Cabinet papers, and are subject to a thirty year rule. Gibraltar being a sensitive diplomatic problem, there are files which have been closed for longer. The constitutional development of Gibraltar was handled only by the Colonial Office, therefore Colonial papers are particularly relevant. The Foreign Office did not come into the scene effectively until after 1963. This material was subject to the thirty year rule and therefore could not be used in the thesis. It was also possible, from Colonial and Cabinet papers, to assess the attitude of Foreign Office officials through reports from ambassadors and inter-departmental minutes. The Colonial Office papers provided a wealth of information on the subject. Reports from the Governor of Gibraltar and from other colonial administrators to Whitehall revealed a distinct paternalistic attitude towards the colony. The Cabinet papers were also particularly relevant, especially in mid-1948 when the whole issue of the Rock's future constitutional direction was brought before Attlee's Cabinet. II Material at the archives of the Gibraltar government was even more extensive. There were a huge number of files available on the evacuation and repatriation of Gibraltarians during the Second World War. This event was instrumental in triggering the political demands which followed. There were files available on the various elections held in Gibraltar and on the controversial decision to introduce proportional representation for elections to the legislature in 1950. Gibraltar newspapers were also available at the archives and these have been used extensively throughout. The Gibraltar Chronicle, the only daily newspaper in Gibraltar, has proved particularly useful. It was founded in 1801 as a forces newspaper to cater for the needs of the military, and it then served the purposes of both newspaper and gazette. This changed when a board of trustees was set up and the Gibraltar Gazette became the official organ. Although owned by the military in the earlier part of the thesis, and being carefully controlled during and immediately after the War, by the 1970s and 1980s there can be no doubting neither the impartiality of the newspaper nor the integrity of its journalists. The Chronicle reproduced reports from Hansard verbatim when Gibraltar was discussed and also reproduced reports from the British press whenever there were important articles on Gibraltar. It has therefore proved an extremely useful source, and every single Chronicle in the period in question has been scoured over. Other important archival material were minutes from the City, Legislative and Executive Councils which were available for inspection whenever necessary. Material on Gibraltar before the United Nations, and various other government reports and statistics were also found in the archives. III Given that the thesis is primarily concerned with the internal constitutional development of Gibraltar, and not with external events, the Spanish source material used has been subject to this consideration. The thesis is not about Gibraltar's relations with Spain, but rather about the colony's changing relationship with Britain. An interview with a Spanish Foreign Ministry official proved extremely discouraging in terms of the archival material available in Madrid. However, it proved extremely useful to see that when Spain begins to emerge onto the scene, there were plenty of documented original correspondence, diplomatic notes, speeches and other material collected in two Spanish Red Books, published in 1965 and 1967. These contained more than enough primary material on the Spanish point of view throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Given that the books were issued by the Spanish Foreign Ministry, the historian took great care to establish that the sources quoted were correct. For instance, the record in the first Red Book of the speeches delivered before the United Nations by Gibraltar's political leaders in 1963 and 1964, was carefully compared with the transcript supplied by the United Nations Secretariat. In this way the primary sources in the Red Books were found to be reliable. The main advantage found when researching at the archives was that there is no thirty year rule in Gibraltar. Given this situation, access was requested to material on the 1968 Constitutional Conference. The government archivist doubted that this would be forthcoming, but placed the request before his superior, the Administrative Secretary of the Gibraltar government, effective head of the civil service. When the reply came back in the negative, I decided to argue the case before the Chief Minister of Gibraltar himself, and on doing this obtained access to material after 1960, which provided a valuable insight into relations between Gibraltar and London at a time of intensifying Spanish pressure. IV Other avenues were explored which were not so fruitful. The archives of the AACR were non-existent after a fire damaged much of their original material, and this was complicated further by a riot during which the party's premises were ransacked. The personal material belonging to former Chief Minister Sir Joshua Hassan was also assessed. This was found to be a collection of personal letters and photographs in total disorder which contained nothing of real value except the material listed in the bibliography.

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