Flying the Flag for British Overseas Territories
“The voyage out to Buenos Aires was uneventful, and on October 26 we sailed from that port for South Georgia, the most southerly outpost of the British Empire. Here, for a month, we stayed engaged in final preparation.” With this, explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton takes readers of South: The Endurance Expedition with him to cross Antarctica in 1914.
The Empire is now history, but one legacy is the British Overseas Territories. Among them are the Falkland Islands and its 800-mile distant neighbour in the South Atlantic, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. In the settlement of Grytviken, a former whaling station, outside a combined shop and Post Office is a small red ER II post box. Shackleton’s attempt to cross Antarctica failed. After one of the greatest recorded feats of leadership, courage and resilience, he brought his team safely home. He is buried in the local cemetery.
Administered by a few officials in the Falklands, South Georgia has no permanent residents. But it is temporary home to a few dozen members of the British Antarctic Survey which operates small two bases. One, King Edward Point, is a marine and fisheries research station overseeing the 1 million sq. km Marine Protected Area (MPA) surrounding the island.
South Georgia is the natural world at its most pristine: gin-clear water; unpolluted skies; icebergs; glaciers; fjords; mountains; King penguin colonies and lazy, fat seals almost comatose on the beaches and among the tussock grass as if they’ve had a heavy lunch. Almost brought to the brink of extinction, whales are now back.
The seas around South Georgia are crucial to maintaining the ecological balance of the sub-Antarctic region, on which sea mammals and birds, such as albatross and shearwater, depend. The MPA, one of the world’s largest, promotes sustainable fishing. A fisheries patrol vessel carries out at-sea inspections of licensed vessels and aims to deter illegal, unregulated fishing.
South Georgia can be seen as a stepping stone in the South Atlantic between the Falklands and the British Antarctic Territory, another British Overseas Territory. A wedge of Antarctica, the Territory lies 60°S to the Pole and between 20°W and 80°W. It includes the Antarctic peninsula and its islands. Both Chile and Argentina claim part of it.
Antarctica itself – ice-covered, inhospitable and almost uninhabited – is becoming the site of growing geopolitical tensions.
Since 1961, the Antarctic Treaty has governed the continent. Drawn up at the height of the Cold War (no pun intended), the original dozen signatories – among them the UK, the USA and the USSR – agreed that Antarctica “should be used exclusively for peaceful purposes.” Nuclear testing and “any measures of a military nature” were prohibited.
The Treaty emerged from the 1957-58 International Geophysical Year, the first concerted global effort to coordinate the collection of data relating to the Earth, oceans, atmosphere and near space. The advance of science and the collaborative exchange of knowledge set out in the Treaty was highlighted in 1985. Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey working in Antarctica’s Halley Research Station discovered the hole in the ozone layer. Two years later the Montreal Protocol outlawed CFCs and other ozone-depleting gases.
Like South Georgia, the British Antarctic Territory has no permanent residents. During the austral summer, about 250 people work for the BAS in its three research stations and two logistics centres. Launched in 2018, the Royal Research Ship Sir David Attenborough (almost named Boaty McBoatface) is a floating polar laboratory.
From the late 18th century, science, exploration and imperial expansion often went hand-in-hand. Captain Cook’s three-year voyage on the Endeavour was commissioned not only to establish the transit of Venus and to record natural history, but to search for the mysterious Terra Australis. If found, Cook was to claim it in the name of King George III – as he would claim South Georgia in 1775.
The British Antarctic Survey evolved from the secret Operation Tarbarin, a Second World War imperative to strengthen Britain’s presence in the South Atlantic and secure global shipping routes for the Allies.
Although the Treaty dedicates Antarctica to peace and science, today the continent is becoming ever more strategically significant. China is emerging as a key polar player, last summer opening its fifth Antarctic research base, Qinling Station. The deepening suspicions about Beijing’s intentions in the region grew in October. With Russia, it blocked new Marine Protected Areas and limits on fishing for krill, a vital food source for whales, seals and penguins. As the Royal Australian Navy website states: “Increasingly, China and Russia are acting as disruptors to good governance within the Antarctic Treaty System.”
In the light of Antarctica’s mineral potential, there is now a question mark over whether the Treaty’s ban on mining can hold in the long term. In addition, the Treaty does not prevent “the use of military personnel or equipment for scientific research or for any other peaceful purpose.” One nation’s scientific station could be another’s military outpost.
The awareness that the white continent of Antarctica might become a future front in grey zone confrontation – that uneasy area between peace and direct conflict – underlines the strategic importance of the British Antarctic Territory.
From the South Atlantic to the Indian Ocean … Earlier this week Lord Ashcroft described the Labour Government’s proposal to surrender sovereignty of the Chagos Islands as “outrageous, unnecessary and costly”.
The Chagos, also known as the British Indian Ocean Territory, is not an inconvenient relic of Empire, but a useful insurance policy in an uncertain world. The Government’s proposed giveaway has been noted by Falkland Islanders on their Facebook pages: both Santiago and Buenos Aires might also be wondering what the decision implies for their claims to the British Antarctic Territory.
Whether advancing science, monitoring climate change or simply an additional set of eyes and ears protecting the West’s strategic interests, Britain’s far-flung Overseas Territories are not historic embarrassments to be given away but assets to be nurtured for the future.